The People in the Trees: A Novel

by Hanya Yanagihara

  63 Fa’a was the third son in a well-respected clan of wild boar hunters who were known throughout Tavaka for their generosity and bravery. But so strong was the U’ivuans’ distrust of Ivu’ivu that his extended journey there—in the company of three ho’oalas, no less—greatly damaged his and his family’s reputation. When it was revealed that he had died on the island, his family (although not, significantly, his wife) denounced and later disowned him. Norton later told me that he heard whisperings among the Tavakans about Fa’a’s suspected fate: that he had been eaten by the Ivu’ivuans (a persistent fable), that he had become one of them, and, most damningly, that he had become the very thing that he had gone to search for, that not-human, not-beast hybrid that roved the island still—a mo’o kua’au.

  It is unlikely that Fa’a would have confided in Uva and Tu that he had, however accidentally, come into contact with an opa’ivu’eke; the taboo was simply too powerful. But it is likely that they somehow contrived a story that rendered them unwilling participants in Fa’a’s scheme and therefore blameless. At any rate, they joined the rest of the family in excluding Fa’a’s wife and children, although they reportedly did give them gifts of food and supplies on an occasional basis.

  The fate of Fa’a’s wife and children remains unknown. Because all U’ivuans share a single family name—in this case, all three of them would have been Utuimai’ele, or “Of Tuimai’ele,” because they were all born during that king’s reign—Norton would later find them impossible to track down. Given their elusiveness, he would conjecture that they might eventually have been forced to disown Fa’a as their husband and father in order to reenter society, or, alternatively, that they decided to undergo conversion at the hands of the Christian missionaries who would come to dominate island life in the following decade.

  64 Norton later compiled many of these illustrations and descriptions into a book called The Painted Sea: A Naturalist’s Guide to Ivu’ivu (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972). He is in fact credited with discovering both the orchid (Miltonia perinia) and the insect, a relation of the staghorn beetle (Draco perinia). Excellent examples of the latter are on view at the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution, but botanists have been unable to create ideal situations for the orchid to thrive anywhere but in the upper Amazon region of Brazil and in the Wai’ale’ale Valley of Kauai, Hawaii.

  65 Tallent had in fact made a map of the route to the turtle lake on their first excursion to it with Mua, but Norton was too intimidated to ask to borrow it—although he did tell me that he rummaged through Tallent’s bag one night when he was asleep but was unable to find it. Unfortunately, this map is now lost to scholars, along with Tallent’s other papers.

  66 The hundred that had been raised from the age of fifteen months.

  67 “Mental Deterioration Observed Among Subjects After Having Consumed the Opa’ivu’eke Turtle of Ivu’ivu,” Annals of Nutritional Epidemiology (January 1958), vol. 47, 259–72.

  68 For at least a decade after their arrival in the States, the dreamers continued to manifest (physically, at least) the reflexes and health one would typically associate with a sixty-year-old. In later years their cholesterol levels, heart rate, lung capacity, and bone density would worsen dramatically, which Norton attributed to their compromised diet and lack of physical activity. However, without access to a control group on Ivu’ivu, this is impossible to conclude definitively. (For further explication, see note 74.)

  69 The move to NIH marked the end of another chapter as well. In the month before Norton left Stanford, the remaining mice from the first group of his initial experiment died, at the age of 120 months. Group C expired shortly after the move to NIH, as did the pinkies from Group B, all around the ages of 118 to 121 months—more than six times their natural lifespan.

  70 This specimen is still at NIH and can be viewed by special request.

  71 Uva would have been about fifty-two at the time.

  72 Norton had proven incontrovertibly that the consumption of the opa’ivu’eke would grant its subject an impossibly extended lifespan. What he did not know—nor indeed did anyone else—was how. This was not Norton’s fault; the difficulty was that the science simply did not exist even to give a name to the problem, much less to provide its solution. You must remember that what we now know as the study of genetics is a very, very immature field; as Norton notes, by the time the science was available to theorize that the opa’ivu’eke prolonged an organism’s life by inactivating telomerase, it was too late. (Simply stated, telomerase is the naturally occurring enzyme that degrades telomeres and thereby limits each cell’s number of divisions; in the absence of telomerase, cells become “immortal” and the person ceases to age. What is theorized is that while the opa’ivu’eke stopped the action of telomerase in most of the body’s cells, it for some reason failed to cease the process in certain parts of the brain. This is why, although the body and certain parts of the mind—especially the part governing hearing and gross motor skills—remained remarkably intact, the parts of the brain that control fine motor skills, sight, and reason were not similarly affected.)

  This, however, is the story of science. A man discovers something. He doesn’t know what it is or what it’s for or what it might solve, but he knows he has unearthed another piece of a puzzle whose entire shape and picture and form he can only guess. He spends the rest of his life trying to find that next piece, but because he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for, it is very hard work and he is unlikely to find a solution. Then comes a man from the next generation. He sees the piece of the puzzle that has been found and he finds the next. So now there are two pieces. And then there are three, and four, and five. But at no point, no matter how many pieces there are, is any one man ever able to say he knows what the puzzle’s ultimate shape will reveal. When he thinks he is working toward a picture of a horse, he will suddenly find a fish’s fin and realize he’s been wrong all along. Then he thinks he’s trying to build an image of a fish, but the next piece that slots into place will be a bird’s wing lifted in flight. To be a scientist is to learn to live all one’s life with questions that will never be answered, with the knowledge that one was too early or too late, with the anguish of not having been able to guess at the solution that, once presented, seems so obvious that one can only curse oneself for not seeing what one ought to have, if only one had looked in a slightly different direction.

  73 For years Norton petitioned the various pharmaceutical companies that were thought to have imported mo’o kua’aus to their labs for news of the four dreamers—Ivaiva, Va’ana, Ukavi, and Vi’iu—he had left behind. Perhaps not surprisingly, he was disappointed time and again, and today it is unknown whether the dreamers he was forced to abandon were captured or eluded their fate by either hiding (which seems unlikely) or dying (for which one can only hope, for their sakes).

  Norton also continued to inquire about Tallent, but no one could or would admit to having encountered him. And for as much forest as was cleared on Ivu’ivu, there was more than enough so that Tallent in theory might have survived their aggressive explorations.

  74 Norton is here referring to two of modern science’s more notorious and less fortunate human research projects. Willowbrook State School was a home for around six thousand mentally retarded children on Staten Island. Between 1963 and 1966, children were infected with hepatitis A so researchers could better study the effects of the disease. Naturally, when this became public knowledge there was a great public upset and the experiment had to be abandoned. Tuskegee, the better known of the cases, was an ambitious four-decades-long (1932–1972) project in which poor black sharecroppers in Alabama infected with syphilis were studied but were not offered penicillin, even long after that drug became the standard treatment for the condition.

  Contemporary legislation and guidelines (not to mention bioethics as we know them) governing human experimentation are a direct result of the Tuskegee scandal. Although the NIH had established the Offic
e of Protection for Research Subjects in 1966, it was not until eight years later that the review board that Norton mentions was established and was given real oversight and power.

  In 1975 the commissioners paid a visit to Norton’s lab to observe for themselves the dreamers’ treatment. It is still unknown why they decided to focus on this very small population of subjects when far worse abuses were being committed against subjects in other labs, but one can only imagine that they were encouraged to do so by one of Norton’s numerous enemies. Although the visit is often depicted as a “raid,” I can tell you authoritatively that it was nothing of the sort. After a few of these site visits, however, the commissioners decided that the dreamers would be more comfortable living in a more social environment, and in October 1975 they were moved to the Thornhedge Retirement Community in Frederick, Maryland.

  Not surprisingly, the transplant was not a success. Even though the dreamers were by this stage fairly noncognizant of their surroundings, they were at times still sensate enough to be alarmed and frightened by their new environment and missed one another’s company (at NIH they had all lived together in one large room). These radical and cruel changes—to their surroundings, their diet, and their caretakers—disoriented them greatly, and their decline worsened. In February 1976, Norton petitioned the commission to reverse its ruling on the grounds of the dreamers’ clear and obvious mental anguish and distress.

  During that appeal, the news of the dreamers’ existence—which had until that point remained, remarkably, relatively quiet—somehow broke in the mainstream press. Three months later, in June 1976, the dreamers were the subjects of an attempted abduction by a radical native Hawaiian sovereignty rights group that called itself HAWIKA (Hawaiians Avenging White Imperialism, Killing in Anger). The group, which promised to “fight [against what exactly was never specified] on behalf of all native Micro- and Melanesian peoples,” managed to, in its words, “liberate” both Mua and Ika’ana before its members were apprehended by the home’s security guards as they were in the process of trying to hoist Vanu’s wheelchair into their van. It was later discovered that one of HAWIKA’s members, a man named Paiea McNamee, had been working undercover at Thornhedge as an orderly for the previous two months. McNamee and his three accomplices were sentenced to prison, and the dreamers were restored to their rooms at the facility.

  Upon learning of my long professional and personal relationship with Norton, people invariably have many questions, and one of the first things they always ask about is the dreamers: are they alive still, and what became of them? The answer to the first question is yes: all of them are still living. Eve is 299 years old (this is working from the assumption that she was no younger than 250 when she left the island; it’s certainly possible that she could be even older than this). Ika’ana is 225. Vanu is 180. Mua is 153. (And remember, these ages are calculated by the U’ivuan calendar. By the Western calendar, all of them are older still.)

  Unfortunately, and as Norton notes in his narrative, their physical decline was both rapid and severe. All of them are exceedingly physically weak, and all lack many basic motor skills. They are capable of walking but reluctant to do so. Ika’ana is almost completely blind. They rarely speak, and rarely respond when spoken to. Their reflexes have degraded as well, and they are slow to respond to most stimuli. The one thing they do still take pleasure in is food: after gaining rapid amounts of weight on an institutional diet, they were in 1985 begun on a new nutritional regimen that more closely echoed their traditional fare. Although they failed to lose much weight—an unreasonable expectation, given how sedentary they now are—they did appear to relish the tastes of mango and what they must have perceived as hunono (actually, earthworms procured from an animal supply company). The great tragedy of the dreamers’ state, however, is that we will never know for certain how much of their physical disintegration was due to extreme age and how much was due to their changed environment. One must assume, however, that the environmental factor is the most important one here, as all of them began to display similar diminishments at the same time despite the extreme differences in their ages. (I should add that I am, alas, excepting Eve from all of the above-mentioned pleasures and abilities, however limited; two years ago, her caretakers noticed that her pupils were remaining fixed even in response to the brightest lights, and further tests have proved her to be effectively brain-dead. Her lung function, however, remains that of a woman a fraction of her estimated age.)

  After the HAWIKA incident, Norton fought very hard to have the dreamers returned to his care. But although the commission rejected his appeal, the dreamers were moved the following year to a secure facility. The place, whose name I cannot divulge for obvious reasons, is actually the gerontology unit of a well-known maximum-security federal prison, and there the dreamers have been reunited and live in their own self-contained wing. Although the facility is too far from Bethesda for Norton to make regular visits, it is close to a respected medical research hospital, and Norton was able to advise a group of gerontologists and neurologists there who make frequent trips to study and observe the dreamers.

  The second question I am always asked is whether I think Norton is responsible for the dreamers’ fate. This was for many years a more complicated matter for me. By the time I met the dreamers, in 1972, they already bore much more of a resemblance to the creatures they are today than to the ones Norton encountered in 1950. So I cannot say that I mourn the people they once were. On the other hand, the differences I saw in them between 1975, when the commission removed them, and 1977, when I was next allowed to visit, were quite appalling. When I first met them, they still possessed a little life, a little energy: one might stroke Eve’s hand, and she might respond with a purr, and one could imagine that it was a sound of contentment and that the lolling of her head against her wheelchair’s pillow was a gentle swoon of pleasure. In 1977 she would do nothing at all. Her head would be tipped back, her forehead strapped to the cushion to keep it from dropping forward, and she would be completely silent. Her hand was as cold as stone. One had the feeling one was touching something made of clay and hair, not something human at all.

  It was such a shocking and unpleasant experience that I can only imagine now how difficult, how devastating, it must have been for Norton, who had known them when they were much more vibrant beings, ones still capable of speech and movement and even endowed with their own small sensory gifts. But still—and I will admit it, shamefully—at the time I was angry with him and held him responsible. For years I thought (but kept to myself) that he should have found some better way to take care of them, even that he should have found some way to return them to Ivu’ivu. But these were childish, uninformed opinions, and I eventually grew out of them.

  The fact remains: Norton did as much as he could for the dreamers for as long as he could. He did far more than he was ethically or legally required to do for them. He tried to make every provision for their comfort and well- being. They were never hurt under his supervision, or ill-treated, or starved. He was, indeed, a pioneer in human experimentation, and under very difficult circumstances. For anyone to suggest anything less reveals not only a grave misunderstanding of his efforts but is scurrilous in the extreme.

  75 Esme Duff was particularly vicious and unrelenting in her assaults on Norton, whom she perplexingly but unwaveringly held responsible for Tallent’s disappearance. After Tallent vanished, she remained at Stanford as a lecturer but never earned tenure. She never married, and committed suicide in 1982 at the age of sixty-two.

  76 So thorough was the various pharmaceutical companies’ and universities’ removal of the mo’o kua’aus who were allegedly discovered on Ivu’ivu that it is thought highly unlikely that any of them were actually ever transplanted to U’ivu. Naturally, both of the aforementioned parties had their own reasons for not allowing any of the dreamers to migrate there, but it is also highly unlikely that the U’ivuans—given the mythology and fear surrounding the mo’o kua’au—wanted a
ny of them in their midst. (Later several of the pharmaceutical companies would claim that they took the dreamers who were discovered back to the States for their own protection, because they would surely be ill-treated or ostracized if they were displaced to U’ivu.) Consequently, the dreamers, as well as the vaka’ina ceremony, remain as exotic and incredible on U’ivu as they do in the States—perhaps even more so: a particularly vivid ghost story, never to be definitively disproved.

  PART VI. VICTOR

  I.

  He was difficult from the beginning. Difficult is such a useful, vague word, but in this situation its lack of specificity is intentional. This is because almost everything about Victor—every interaction, every exchange, every rite of childhood—seemed particularly fraught, and even the basic facts about him that should have been easy to ascertain became the subjects of labyrinthine explorations and investigations. There are children who make life difficult for themselves through their bad behavior or lack of personality or common sense, and there are others for whom—through genetics or circumstances—life is already difficult. It should be said that although Victor eventually became a member of the former category, he began life with me as a member of the latter.