by Wu Ming-Yi
“May the sea bless you, for Kabang has His reason,” he murmured, and stacked the books in a certain place, but the stack got heavier and heavier, and some of the books ended up sinking back down into the sea.
At first Atile’i depended on the novelty of his collections to sustain his deteriorating psyche, but anyone who has dwelt long in solitude must be aware that the gap between moments can seem like a yawning chasm that no one can cross by mind alone. Atile’i now tried to fill it with remembrance. Having suffered great physical torment at sea, he relied on his aversion to jellyfish to keep from killing himself. The only thing keeping him pathetically alive, was memory. He recollected his last night on Wayo Wayo to relieve himself of desire, the words of his father and the elders to understand the sea, and the island songs to know the ways of love.
Atile’i had almost forgotten in which direction Wayo Wayo lay.
If a Wayo Wayoan encountered a rough current or some other hardship while out at sea, he would close his eyes, raise his head and stretch his spine, for it was said that the man of rich experience could “smell” the direction in which Wayo Wayo lay. At first Atile’i could still catch a whiff of the island’s powerful aroma through the stench of the sea and rain, but seven songs later and only the thinnest filament of scent remained. After another seven songs he could only roughly guess that Wayo Wayo was somewhere toward the sunset. Alas, like all Wayo Wayoans, Atile’i knew that the sun sets in a different place every evening, so that was not the exact direction in which Wayo Wayo was to be found.
The past few days, Atile’i had seen all manner of ocean scenery. He had never experienced such weird weather in all his life: one moment it was scorching, the next minute freezing, and the sky could turn from fair to foul before a single fish was hooked. Sometimes night came suddenly, and sometimes darkness would rudely descend on the afternoon. One minute the stars would be shining, and the next moment the sun would rise with a blinding light. One time he saw nine cyclones appear at once above the sea, with thunder chasing the lightning through the clouds. The clouds seemed to grow spidery legs that reached downward to the sea, and as soon as they touched the water up a vortex sprang. A storm followed hot on the heels of the twisters, and Atile’i kept praying to Kabang to just take him away and let that be the end of him. When the sky cleared, Atile’i was surprised to find a long shadow lying like a ribbon on the sea. He swam over to take a closer look. The ribbon was composed of butterflies’ corpses, which had floated here from who knows where. There were so many of them, and they stretched out so far, that he was reminded of his own interminable odyssey. Oh, when would it end?
Atile’i was losing any notion of dusk and dawn or noon and night, and he gave up trying to tell direction by observing the heights of the moon and the morningstar. He let himself go like a fallen leaf, like a dead fish floating on the sea. Hungry, he ate. Tired, he slept. For a while he even thought that Wayo Wayo was just a poignant fantasy, a story he had made up. But Atile’i had to admit he wanted desperately to see his island home again, that any ghost would do. Atile’i would holler at the sea whenever he sighted the shadow of a whale, for he knew that the spirits of the second sons turned into sperm whales by day. Even the north-migrating eagles were sad to hear him this way. It would be so nice if Rasula and her mother Saliya were here, Atile’i thought. In all the island, only their voices had the power to summon Masimaga’o (“a whale with a body like the sea” in the Wayo Wayoan language), whose posture in the water allowed the Sea Sage to divine the future. Wouldn’t you know it, one day a pair of Masimaga’o really did appear after Atile’i had finished singing. They “joined tails” near the island and knocked a hole in the weakest part. When they surfaced their bodies were covered in colorful objects, like idols ready for some religious rite.
Once, Atile’i speared a sailfish swimming by the island and got dragged into the water when it swam off. Just when he was about to let go and give up, the speed of the dive caused him to black out. His head told his hand to let go, but his hand held on tight. By this time the wounded sailfish had swum into the island maze, sometimes rising to the surface, sometimes sinking among the sundry oddities of the island. Atile’i could only pray, “O Kabang, the only one who can dry the sea, even if you have forsaken me, please let my corpse turn into coral and drift homeward for Rasula to find.”
The fish tried and tried but could not find the way out of the underwater island. It had gotten all scraped up, and its head was covered in clutter. Badly wounded now, it was losing strength, giving Atile’i, who was still clutching the spear, the chance to flip the fish over, grab onto a corner of the island and find a pocket of air. He realized an instinctive need to see the light of day again. He only ate a single piece of sailfish before stashing the rest of it there. The next day all of it had vanished. Even the bones were gone.
Alone, not knowing when he would be able to go back to Wayo Wayo, Atile’i thought he would need a place that could withstand the wind and rain. He found a sheet of highly water-resistant blue cloth and draped it over a lattice of flexible yet sturdy rods to make himself a little makeshift shelter. It was soon wrecked by a storm, so Atile’i resolved to build himself a small house. Of course it wouldn’t be able to withstand a real storm. (Nothing in this world could, right?) But at least it would not be quite so flimsy as the shelter. “A weak house makes a weak man,” as the Wayo Wayoan proverb put it. Atile’i used whatever rain would not rot, nor seawater erode, in the construction of his house. It would drift with the ocean currents, maybe someday all the way back to Wayo Wayo. Even if by that time he was dead and gone, his house might still be there, bringing back news of what had befallen him at sea.
Now that he was seriously considering building a house, Atile’i discovered that the island was actually rich in rot-resistant materials. Atile’i used the metal rods from the shelter and whale jaws and ribs for the beams, with the kind of club he had used to make the spear for the columns. Then he secured the frame with a colorful material that would not rip no matter how hard you yanked on it. At first he built a structure with space inside for three people to lie down in, and as the sun and moon kept trading places the house was taking shape. Atile’i also built a storage shed, as well as a place to store water, which he called the sakaloma, meaning “a well on the sea.” Made of things available around the island, the house blended in with its surroundings when you looked at it from a distance, as if purposefully camouflaged. Looking at the house he had built with his own two hands, Atile’i felt himself truly rich.
But Atile’i had also noticed a lot of other dead sea creatures around the island, guessing they must have eaten part of the island just like the turtle. The island sometimes looked like a giant floating cage—a shadowy incantation, a rootless place, the cemetery of all creation. Aside from a few species of seabird that made nests and laid eggs on the island from time to time, nothing else could survive there. Creatures that died from eating bits of the island eventually became part of the island. Atile’i thought he too might end up becoming part of the island. So this is what hell was like, he thought. So this is the land of death.
In the distance Atile’i had seen mighty ships far bigger than a talawaka, and frighteningly noisy iron birds. He remembered the Earth Sage had spoken of “the birds of hell and the ghost ships of the white man.”
Atile’i knew nothing of the worlds inhabited by other men. He heard that when the Wayo Wayo islanders first saw the white man they had said, “Have you come here along a road through the sky?”
A rainbow was a road through the sky. The Earth Sage said, “Only spirits are light enough to cross it.” Atile’i sometimes saw rainbows in the distance, wondering what he would do if he ran into a white man. How should he talk to him? Could a white man take me back to Wayo Wayo? Atile’i remembered another of the Earth Sage’s offhand remarks: “The white man may come and the white man may go, but we will live by the law of Wayo Wayo. We don’t need the white man. The gifts he left us are harmful, ill
-gotten gains. There’s just this useless watch, a couple of books, and a few children like Rasula.” The Earth Sage sighed and said, “But there may come a day when the other men who live upon the earth cause Wayo Wayo to vanish. You never know.”
The other men who live upon the earth … Everyone had probably forgotten him. But that couldn’t be the whole truth, for Atile’i was well aware that everyone on Wayo Wayo knew he had gone to sea. They were just intent on forgetting him, trying not to remember. The thought made Atile’i feel that death would be easier. It was like he had been imprisoned in a world so much larger than the only one he had ever known, like a terrible silent punishment had been imposed upon him. But why? Was this the will of the omnipotent Kabang, the fate of second sons?
The pain only eased when he discovered a kind of twig he could use to draw pictures in a “book.” Actually, he had found many such twigs. He used them to poke around on the island or in the tongue-and-groove work in his house, and was amazed that one of them left marks on certain things. Day after day, the greatest foe Atile’i faced was silence. There was nobody on the island to greet him, nobody to praise his swimming technique, nobody to wrestle, and nobody to compete in diving with. But at least with this kind of twig he could draw what he saw and thought.
Quietly combing the island for twigs, Atile’i found ones of different sizes and colors, though some stopped drawing as soon as you started using them. He also discovered that there were many materials you could draw on besides books, including his own skin. One day on a whim he started to draw the sights and sounds of the island on his calves, thighs, belly, chest, shoulders, neck and face, as far along his back as he could reach, and even on the soles of his feet. He layered drawing upon drawing like a palimpsest. When the drawings came off in the rain, Atile’i drew new ones.
This morning Atile’i was racing around the island. From a distance he did not look like Atile’i anymore. He looked more like some other kind of being, like a ghost perhaps, or maybe like a god.
5. Alice’s House
Toto was born the third year after Alice and Thom met. Guess you could say he was an accident, or that it was fate. She and Thom had never thought of having a child. They did not think it possible, psychologically or physically, and a child was not a part of either’s life plan. Thom and Alice disagreed on a lot of things, but they both felt that bringing a child into this world was a kind of punishment, a form of suffering.
Preparations for Alice and Thom’s house had been finalized when they found out Toto was on the way, but it wasn’t too late to calculate his future into the design. Thom had drafted the plans himself. The exterior was based mainly on Erik Gunnar Asplund’s three-in-one Summer House, with some adaptations. Thom added a second story to the cabin on the right-hand side, and raised the ceilings in the two blocks in the main wing. The original Summer House was a cosy cottage lying low in the forest; Thom’s design looked rather different. The structure also had to be different, because Asplund, building on a fjord, hadn’t had to worry about the resolute tides and wayward winds of the western Pacific.
The summer they met, Alice and Thom went traveling together from Denmark to Sweden. The third day in Stockholm, they made a special trip to see the City Library, another of Asplund’s creations. As soon as she walked in the library Alice gasped with surprise. It seemed as if the shelves had been arranged to the lovely rhythm of Claude Debussy’s Quartet for Winds, level upon level, floor upon floor, as if they led all the way up to heaven. This was the most beautiful “book repository” Alice had ever seen.
Haven County had beautiful scenery, but except for some heritage sites the cultural landscape was horrendous. The new train station was ghastly, the library nearby even more so. Alice remembered the Taipei municipal government had built a nice library in Pei-tou, but that was just a container without too much in the way of content. Asplund, by contrast, had grasped the true meaning of a library. Though the circular wall of books seemed to weigh down on you like history, it was not overbearing or oppressive. With the little open windows around the rotunda above letting in rays of sunlight, Alice had the sense she was participating in some sort of religious rite as she stood on tiptoe to reach up for a book on the top shelf. Her hands trembling, Alice felt like a handmaiden of light and like the lady of the books.
Alice especially liked the Story Room. It seemed to have the power to turn back time. It was on the ground floor, in a children’s corner inside the library. When you walked in, it was like a fairy kingdom in a mountain cave. There were murals of scenes from Swedish folktales on the walls, with the reader’s chair (which seemed to give whoever sat in it the ability to tell magical stories) in the center of the room. Children were sitting on the crescent benches on either side of the chair, or right on the floor in front. Warm light shone on the murals, making it seem as if the slightest breeze would start the elves talking. The children’s eyes were gleaming as they listened to the story. For the first time in her life, Alice thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if she had a child of her own.
“Only in places like this have spirits ever appeared,” Alice said.
Realizing Alice was under Asplund’s spell, Thom had an idea. “Any plans for tomorrow? Want to visit another building by the same architect? It’s a private residence, though, not a public building.”
“We had plans, but they just changed.”
The next day they set off from the campground, rode the bus for almost two hours, and walked for over ten minutes from the bus stop until they reached a path through the woods. It was summer. The sunlight sprinkled down through the leaves, dappling the path, like a sign. The ambience made Alice feel so much younger, especially with Thom there. She felt like a maiden who could weave a new life for herself with thread spun from her lover’s smile.
At the end of the forest was a trail winding leisurely up a hill. It was quite a long hike, but the view was so beautiful that one did not feel the least bit tired. At the top a meadow opened up: to the left, obdurate, unyielding, a crag; to the right, a famous fjord; and straight ahead the Summer House. Though the owner was not in, they could still look on politely from afar. But Alice would often remember that moment in later years. It was as if she had witnessed something, not just a house but daily life itself.
“Will I ever live in a house like that?” Alice asked, a bit slyly and flirtatiously.
“Of course,” replied Thom, matter-of-factly. For a moment Alice did not quite feel like herself; usually she would never speak in such a way to such a visibly younger man.
And now the only consolation Alice had was this house in the sea. She remembered how they met. In retrospect, it was her romantic nature making mischief. That summer, after finally completing her infinitely tedious Ph.D. in literature and sending off an application for a job she thought she had no hope of getting, she packed a tent, a camera and a laptop and took a trip to Europe. Alice actually intended to write a book about her travels, Tales of a Lady Wayfarer perhaps, and launch her literary career. Maybe it would be a best-seller and she would not have to enter the academy.
Her first stop after landing in Copenhagen was the Charlottenlund Fort Campground on the outskirts of town. The campground really gave you a sense of history. There was a big old cannon covered in waterproof camouflage tarpaulins. There was even a stable. Alice had planned to make this her base for a weeklong visit in Copenhagen. One evening she missed the last bus and had to walk all the way back through the sparsely populated suburbs. Alice felt a bit fazed. Worse, she took a wrong turn, and had to walk across a forest park to get back to the campground. Much bigger than a typical “park,” it was more like the Black Forest (it actually was a black forest). The trees might be centuries old or even a millennium or more, and there were fallen logs blocking the path, which was none too visible in the first place. The forest park was a different world in the evening. There were no dog-walkers or joggers anymore. The only thing she could hear was the hooting of the owls. Just as she was starting
to get really anxious, there was a pale beam of light in the distance, and a crackling sound.
Alice was instinctively suspicious of anyone she might meet in a situation like this. Her heart started racing involuntarily. She was anxious to find a place to hide out of sight of the path, not expecting how incredibly quickly the figure would approach. A tall, bearded man, with a slightly juvenile look came riding along on his bike, stopping by her side.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” Alice managed.
“Going to the campground?”
“Yeah.”
“Hop on, I’ll give you a lift.”
“I’m all right.”
“Don’t be scared. Look, this is my staff ID. I saw you yesterday. You’re staying at Charlottenlund Fort Campground, aren’t you? I work there. You’ll be frightened walking alone, and soon it’ll be dark. You can trust me. The forest recognizes my bicycle.” Actually, Alice knew that around this time of year it would not get dark until after nine. But her heart was still racing, which made it hard for her to judge why she felt at a loss—was she nervous, or was there some other reason? She glanced at his bicycle, a road bike without a rear rack.
“On this? How will you give me a lift?”
The man took a detachable rack out of his backpack, mounted it on the seat post, and said: “You couldn’t be more than a hundred pounds; this thing can bear a person of a hundred and forty. No problem.”
