The Man with the Compound Eyes

by Wu Ming-Yi

  “I did? Ha! I told you about Millet?”

  “Uhuh. Oh yeah, do you know what Hafay means in Pangcah?”

  “Sure do. The first time I went to the Seventh Sisid, I thought, Hey, isn’t that a coincidence? Hafay means millet.”

  Like the sound of some plant weeping, Hafay suddenly started to sing. She sang in Pangcah, improvising the lyrics up as she went along.

  Ignored, unseen, mislaid with ease, a tiny millet grain,

  might fall away in the faintest breeze,

  beneath the August rain.

  You passed on by, you passed on out, my wristwatch read 6:10,

  the time the grain was set to sprout,

  interred, to live again.

  17. The Story of Atile’i’s Island

  “My name is Lasu Kiyadimanu Atile’i,” I said. “You can call me Atile’i.”

  “I’m called Alice.” I guess that’s what she said.

  Alice has brought some food and a temporary house. It is a bit stuffy, but at least we don’t get rained on. It’s a bit like the house I built on the island of Gesi Gesi. She rubbed a strange-smelling ointment on my wound and told me to swallow some other remedies.

  She lives in the wooden house, and I live in the temporary house. At first she wanted me to live in the wooden house, but since she saved my life, I cannot live in a nicer house than her. That’s not the way of Wayo Wayo. At first she couldn’t understand anything I said, but gradually we have come to recognize the scales and tails of speech, to realize the fish eyes of what the other is saying.

  That strange black-and-white creature is called a “cat,” and Alice calls her Ohiyo. I asked, “What does Ohiyo mean?” Alice released a torrent of words once she gathered what my question was, but it wasn’t hard to guess that Ohiyo is what you say to greet someone in the morning.

  “Ohiyo.” I try pronouncing the name, but the word feels awkward on my tongue. The cat just walks away when she hears me call.

  “What about you? What do the people of Wayo Wayo say?” I think that’s what she wants to ask. I have told her our island is called Wayo Wayo.

  We say, “i-Wagudoma-siliyamala.”

  “What does that mean?” she said, raising and lowering her shoulders; I gather that here as on Wayo Wayo this gesture means, “I don’t understand.”

  I point at the distant sea and spread my arms to indicate that today the sea is calm. Today the sea appears holy and tranquil, like a sleeping animal or a dead whale. “It’s very fair at sea today.”

  “i-Wagudoma-siliyamala.”

  “i-Wagudoma-siliyamala,” she repeats, but these words are a bit hard on her tongue.

  Alice seems unaccustomed to this kind of life. I often find she can’t get to sleep at night. She has a strange box: you press it and it gathers part of the world inside, like an eye that can remember what it sees. She uses the box to hold the “reflections” of flowers, birds and bugs, which she then compares with “reflections” in her books. In those books are the “reflections” of the “reflections” she has seen. I wish I could draw a picture like that, a picture of a reflection that looks just like the real thing.

  She’s also brought things called “tables” and “chairs” and put them outside the wooden house. If the weather is nice she sits in a chair at a table and uses a “pen” (I finally understood that those twigs I drew with during my stay on the island of Gesi Gesi are called “pens”) to write what appears to be words in a book. She always writes for a long time, and all the while her eyes are dreaming.

  I asked her what she was writing and she said she was “writing a story.”

  “What are you writing a story for?”

  “I am writing a story to save a life,” she said, I guess.

  She likes to look at the pictures on my skin and ask me what they mean. I’ve told her the story behind each picture, the story on my shoulder, the story on my back, the story on my elbow. But I don’t know if she understands my stories or not. Some of the pictures on my body faded, so I’ve drawn new ones over them. The picture on the left side of my belly is of the day Alice saved me. I used the pen she gave to me to draw her reflection in my eyes when I was held fast in the earth. And the trees behind her, too. She looked sad when she saw the picture.

  She’s fed me things I’ve never eaten before. I was getting familiar with the alpine terrain, so when my leg got a bit better I tried to make the house a bit bigger with some wood. I put up an awning, so that even if it rains she can still write outdoors sitting under it.

  Sometimes first thing in the morning Ohiyo brings back things like crabs or rats and puts them on the steps of the wooden house. I think she wants to offer tribute to Alice.

  When Alice isn’t writing she likes to talk to me. At first we did not know what the other was saying but gradually we got better and better at “sensing” meaning. She tells her stories and I tell mine, of Wayo Wayo, Rasula, my Yina, the Sea Sage and the Earth Sage, and the beached whales. I don’t think it really matters if she understands me or not, because to Wayo Wayo islanders words can be smelled, touched, imagined and closely followed with your gut the way you follow an enormous fish.

  I like to tell my stories and to hear Alice tell hers. I like the sound of her voice and the look on her face when she pets Ohiyo. Sometimes her voice reminds me of my Yina, other times of Rasula. So as long as the rain isn’t too heavy, we sit together day after day in the morning, gazing at the sea. I tell her, “Let me tell you about Wayo Wayo, to let an image of Wayo Wayo grow in your mind.”

  Ours is an island of warriors, a place where dreams gather, a way station for shoals of migrating fish, a coordinate of the rising and setting sun, and a rest stop for water and for hope. Our island is woven out of coral and covered with the droppings of seabirds. Kabang has formed a small lake upon Wayo Wayo out of His tears, a lake we depend on to eke out our existence.

  In the beginning, all things imitated one another: the island imitated the sea turtle, the trees imitated the clouds, and death imitated birth, so that everything was more or less the same. Originally our tribe lived deep in the ocean. We built a city in a trench, and Kabang gave us a kind of fluorescent shrimp to eat. In an underwater land of plenty, we didn’t have a care in the world. But, being the cleverest race in the sea, we discovered that there were many things tastier to eat than shrimp, and we kept reproducing, feeding, migrating, expanding our city without restraint to satisfy our every whim, until we had almost driven away or annihilated all the other ocean races. Finally we roused Kabang to anger.

  Kabang resolved to punish us. One night the undersea volcanos at the two ends of the ocean erupted, a great murky cloud engulfed our city, and our ancestors emerged upon the face of the deep. But just then a school of dosi dosi fish swam by, their scales glistening so brilliantly they blinded the eyes of almost all the ancestors. The blind did not know where to turn. The few tribesmen who had not gone blind were responsible for caring for those who were without sight. Among the sighted, the warrior Salinini speared a dosi dosi fish. He wanted to give it to the elders to eat, only to discover that every scale bore the unmistakable mark of Kabang. Only then did the people realize that they had angered Kabang, that this was His punishment, and that the only remaining recourse was to beg for His forgiveness. The brave Salinini resolved to swim alone to the Sea Gate at the extremity of rain and mist, for it was said that on the other side there was a True Isle, the abode of Kabang. Salinini wanted to go there and pray to Kabang, hoping to receive His mercy, that He might grant the people a new place to dwell.

  Salinini swam for the time it takes for the sun to live and die a thousand times. His skin peeled, his hearing failed, and his back fin broke, but the rainbow was always in the distance. Finally, moved by Salinini’s determination, the omniscient Kabang decided to give the people another chance. He said: I can allow you an island, but your numbers must never exceed the trees growing thereupon. You will lose the ability to subsist in the sea for more than a short length of time, an
d you will be exiled from the vast, shoreless, open ocean. As prisoners on the island, you will know isolation and the fear of drowning. Once a friend, the sea will become a foe. It once gave but now it will take. Yet you must still rely on it, trust in it, worship it. Hearken, ye people, my song will turn to rain, my gaze to lightning, as my mind is all-pervading like the water of the sea. The words I utter will become the spirits of the deep. They will watch over you and edify you.

  Thereupon, our underwater ancestors waded out of the sea and onto Wayo Wayo, and these words of Kabang became the most sacred prayer in our Sea Rite.

  One day, who knows how many years later, a gigantic bird arrived on the island. The bird began to preen itself and out of its feathers fell seven baby birds. Each of these baby birds became the leader of a tribe. The birds taught our ancestors the skills they would need to survive on land. When the birds left, they each left an eyeball behind, one for every tribe to guard and watch over. One stormy day, the seven eyes all split open at once. Two of those eyes hatched arms, two legs, one a head, one a torso and one an organ of increase. And the spawn of the seven eyes then combined into a swarthy giant of a man, a man with a sorrowful mien who called himself: the Sea Sage.

  The Sea Sage was well-endowed: he never closed his eyes, not even while sleeping, like a fish. While diving he memorized the hills and dales of the seabed and the extent of the great kelp forest. He also familiarized himself with all the cracks in the rocks around Wayo Wayo where swimmers could breathe pockets of underwater air. He could even foretell the mood of the sea, knowing whether it would be fair or foul, in high spirits or low, and presage precipitation and ocean flow. Every day he made three tours of the island, declaring that he had to listen carefully to the news brought back by every seabird, every gust of wind and every little shell. He once said that every beached whale would leave behind valuable wisdom concerning the future and fate of the island. He knew that every stretch of sea and shore had its own unique aroma, shadow and glow, and since his knowledge came from the migrating ocean races, there was nowhere it did not reach. His incantations were like feathers, each one-of-a-kind and inimitable. The signals brought back by the waves were so faint that the Sea Sage would often stand at the shore like a parched tree, his sun-bleached hair sparkling. He refused to eat or drink, nor would he smile.

  But sageship has never been inherited. Since the beginning it has been attained through initiation and instruction. The children of the Sea Sage cannot call their father Father, because the Sea Sage is of the island and no longer the head of a family or the father of children. The Earth Sage is the same. Each sage can choose any boy on the island and teach him everything he knows. Because any single boy might not get the chance to grow up, each sage chooses more than one disciple. My father is the Sea Sage, and to become the Sea Sage he had to receive a complete training from the previous Sea Sage. I received the Sea Sage’s training along with my twin brother, and five other island boys. We learned everything there is to know about the sea.

  My father is short a leg, but he has a keen inborn intelligence, and though many did not look well upon him he still found favor in the former Sea Sage’s eyes. Knowing that he was disabled, he honed his swimming technique until his good leg was overgrown with barnacles. The Sea Sage used a whalerib as a staff, and even with just one leg, he was an unrivaled swimmer. It was as if that good leg of his was his tail fin.

  It is said that in every generation, the incumbent Sea Sage receives a sea map from his predecessor, which he will hide straightaway under the skin of his back. This map is an accretion of wisdom, the revelation of Kabang. It alters with time to show the seasigns around the island moment by moment. But for the sea map to appear, the island people and the Sea Sage all have to suffer excruciating pain. When there are no fish to catch and the people face starvation, the Sea Sage will go somewhere alone to think up a way of tormenting himself, for only when his spirit approaches death will the sea map emerge and show the fishermen where to find the fish.

  Every year when the shoals of migrating fish approach, the Sea Sage leads a flotilla of seven boats from the seven tribes of the island and presides over the Sea Rite. The Sea Sage floats facedown in the sea for a day and a night to commune with the ocean races and thank them for sacrificing themselves so that the people of Wayo Wayo might live. And the seven fishermen who represent the seven tribes take turns casting their nets, but are not allowed to haul up a single fish, to signify that they will keep the covenant against excess.

  The Sea Sage is versed in all branches of sea lore, but most of the time he talks incoherently. It is as hard to get a grip on what he says as it is to grasp an ocean wave. Elders say that the first Sea Sage created the language of Wayo Wayo by imitating the sounds of seabirds. They say he could describe over a thousand kinds of waves, from finely pleated ripples to intermittent swells, from breakers smooth as blubber to surf like sparkling foam, from windblown rollers to impromptu undercurrents that flow when schools of fish swim past, and from wavelets born of the shallows to benthic volcanic tsunamis. Since the waves come in as many shapes and sizes as there are kinds of fish, and since seabird calls are beyond the ear of the common man, the difficulty of the language of waveshape and birdsong is extreme for most people. The only one who can make it comprehensible is the Earth Sage, the hunter, navigator and tamer of language.

  When I was young, my father told me that, a long, long time ago, the Sea Sage and the Earth Sage were one and the same, until there came a day when the wife of the Sea Sage had twins. They squeezed out of her birth canal side by side, without priority. One was blue-eyed, while the other’s eyes were dark brown. Though equally smart and alert, their talents differed. The Sea Sage knew that for the islanders to live well they had to attend to more than the signs of the sea, and that Kabang had for this reason given him two sons, neither subordinate to the other. The blue-eyed son inherited his father’s untamed nature and sea lore, while the brown-eyed son declared that he had a method for turning sea into land: he had found an extremely hard transparent bottle (of a kind found everywhere on the island of Gesi Gesi, on which I later ran aground), actually three of them, and he filled these three bottles with pig innards, the pubic hair of virgins and a dash of the richest soil on the island. He brought the bottles to the shore and walked alone around the island ninety-nine times, and while he was walking the stars stopped moving and the sea stopped raging, yet the plants on the island grew ferociously. The Sea Sage announced: “Since the island is big enough and the creatures on the island have gone forth and multiplied, the people of Wayo Wayo shall covet nothing more.” Having said this, he smashed the bottles into fragments the size of fish eyes. At the same time he laid down a law: as the habitable space on the island is limited, each family can only have one man-child and any second son has to leave alone in a talawaka on the hundred and eightieth full moon following his birth. He is not allowed to look back, not even if he is the son of a sage.

  In addition to his linguistic gifts, the Earth Sage is also good at drawing. His drawings all seem like things that really happened, or as if things that were really happening halted when he drew them. He is also a skilled house-builder. He taught Wayo Wayoans to use grass, mud and fish skin in the construction of their houses, and to stick the materials together with fish glue. To make fish glue, you simmer fish eyes, skin, bones and scales until the mixture turns the color of sap. Maybe because of the fish eyes, the joins of our houses glow by day and in the dark, reflecting the light of both sun and moon, as if there are spirits hidden within. Wood is only employed in a few spots, because it is simply too precious. The Earth Sage often reminds us that the island is small, and our treasure trees grow slow, so slow they are wiser than men. No man should be so rash as to cut them down to make something for his own use.

  The word the Earth Sage uses most frequently is gesi. This word has many different meanings, but mainly it is used to describe what one does not understand. He often says gesi gesi, gesi gesi. He says t
here is gesi everywhere, and that there are things in the world that not even the Sea Sage and Earth Sage understand.

  The day I left Wayo Wayo, the Earth Sage and the Sea Sage, my father—a prophet and a wise man—conducted together the rite of departure. For I am a second son, and second sons represent exploration, eternal immaturity and divine oblation.

  I never expected to get grounded on Gesi Gesi, the name I gave to the floating island, meaning a place covered in incomprehensible things. I saw endless gesi gesi there, and even witnessed the formation of an island: black smoke burst forth from the sea, I smelled the reek of sulfur, and lava kept erupting for dozens of alternations of sun and moon. The boiling hot sea sizzled, and volcanic ash flew all around. Then lightning struck down through the clouds, and finally a new island floated above the waves.

  In the name of Kabang, I swear: I saw the birth of an island with my own eyes.

  I don’t know how much time passed, but Gesi Gesi kept drifting until it neared your island. I discovered someone had landed on the floating island and immediately dove to get away. The sea brought me here to your island, where I was fortunate to meet you, my savior.

  In those days I spent drifting around, I kept asking Kabang: Why am I the second son and my brother the elder one? Why should a pair of twins, born into this world only minutes apart, have fates so far apart? When my mother was carrying us, did that not already mean that we were “in this world together?” So where is there any distinguishing between a first and second son? I know there are no answers to these questions, for, as we say on Wayo Wayo, nobody knows where the fish swims in the vastness of the sea before it’s caught upon the hook. I am a second son and have drifted here on Gesi Gesi, and these are things that cannot be changed.

  18. The Story of Alice’s Island

  The kid is unlike anyone I’ve ever met. He’s like a character out of a story, or a being from another world. His demeanor is at once novel and quaint. His leg isn’t fully healed, so his mobility is limited. Most of the time he sits quietly on a rock and gazes at the sea in the distance. Sometimes he completely ignores me and falls into a most peculiar state, a combination of sighing, moaning and giggling. It takes me a while to cross the wall of language between us and figure out what he means. Mostly we rely on gestures and expressions to understand one another. I imagine that communicating in this way is always superficial, that what you can actually express to a person who speaks a completely different language is quite limited. I suddenly feel a loneliness more intense than mutual silence.