A Woman of the Iron People

by Eleanor Arnason

  I made the gesture that meant “I will.” “The old man says when different people get together, they teach each other new ways of doing things, and this can be disturbing.”

  The word I used for “disturbing” meant “to turn around or over,” “to stir porridge by moving a spoon in a circle,” “to empty a pot by turning it upside down.”

  Angai looked puzzled.

  “Because of this,” said Mr. Fang, “people have always disagreed about the benefits of travel and the exchange of information. According to Master Lao, in a country that follows the Way, people will avoid technological improvements. They will spend their whole lives in one village even though the next village may be so close that they can hear the dogs barking and the crowing of the roosters.”

  I said, “There are people in our country who think it is a bad idea to learn new things. These people don’t like to travel.”

  Angai made the gesture that meant “go on.”

  Mr. Fang said, “But Master Kong said the two great pleasures of life are acquiring knowledge and having friends come to visit from a long distance.

  “The literature of China is full of traveling, of friends parting and meeting again. That is how our civilization was created and held together—by the poets on horseback and the soldiers on the frontier, the women sent to marry foreigners, the ordinary workers who took caravans over the mountains and boats through the gorges of the Yangtze.” He glanced up and realized where he was. For a moment he looked startled.

  I said, “There are other people who like to learn new things. These people like to travel.”

  “I come from Sichuan, from ancient Shu. Without travel and the exchange of information, we would not be Chinese. On the other hand we might still have our native culture and ecology. I am the heir to Kong and Lao, Du Fu and Wang Anshi. That is an obvious good. But we have lost our ancient traditions, whatever they may have been. And we have lost our tigers, our elephants, our pandas, and our leopards. That is a terrible loss.”

  “There is both gain and loss in all this travel,” I said. “New stories are learned. Old stories are forgotten. New things come into the country. Old things go away.”

  “Even in the twentieth century, it was possible to find giant pandas in the forests of Sichuan. The snow leopard is—or was—remarkably elusive, but there were people who saw prints in the snow of the high mountains in the twentieth century. How does one balance that loss against the poetry of Du Fu, the philosophy of Master Kong, the benefits of socialism?”

  “This is not easy to explain,” I said to Angai. “He’s talking about his country. You don’t know the places or the people or the animals.”

  “Do the best you can,” said Angai.

  “All right.” I thought for a moment. “He is making a pile of the things that have been gained through travel. He is comparing it to the things that have been lost. Which pile is bigger? he asks. He can’t make up his mind.”

  “Aiya!” said the villagers.

  Mr. Fang lifted his head, looking directly at Angai. “We cannot decide whether or not it’s a good idea to visit you. Therefore we are asking you to decide.”

  I translated, then added, “Eddie and Ivanova are going to speak. Eddie is against this visit. Ivanova thinks it is a good idea.”

  “This is going to take a long time,” Angai said. “My people need to care for their children. The old women need to get up and walk around. We will stop for a while. There is so much information! So much to think about! So many questions to ask!”

  She made a gesture. The old women stood up, groaning. Some of them had to be helped to their feet. The crowd of villagers broke apart and we were alone.

  Angai looked at Nia. “Have you heard anything that sounds wrong?”

  “No. But there is a lot about these people that I don’t know.” Nia scratched her forehead. “Li-sa did not speak as much as the old man did.” She looked at Derek. “What was not said?”

  “She told you,” Derek said. “The old man was speaking about his country.”

  “Is what he said important?” Nia asked.

  “Judge for yourself.” Derek gave a meticulously exact translation.

  The natives frowned and began to ask questions. What is a panda? What is a Wang Anshi?

  I got up and walked into the sunlight, stretched and touched my toes. The morning clouds had vanished. The air was getting hot.

  I glanced at the group under the awning. Hua had joined them. She carried a jar made of silver. The body was round. The neck was long and narrow. She looked at me and lifted it. I went back, hunkered down, and drank a cool liquid that tasted bitter and made my mouth go numb.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It makes people happy,” Hua said. “When the old women drink it, they forget that their bodies hurt and their strength is leaving them. They dance and sing like girls.”

  “Hu!” I took another swig, then handed the jar to Derek.

  “You were in the tent,” I said to Hua.

  She made the gesture of affirmation. “If I had stayed out there,” she waved at the open area, “the old women would have pushed in front of me. I would have seen nothing and not heard much, either. I am going to be the next shamaness. It is important for me to see and hear what my foster mother does.”

  Eddie took the jar. “What is this stuff?”

  “A mind-altering substance,” Derek said.

  Eddie handed it to Ivanova, who handed it to Agopian. “Be careful, comrade,” she said.

  “I will,” said Agopian. He drank, choked, coughed, and gave the jar to Mr. Fang.

  I looked at Hua. “Why couldn’t you be out here with us?”

  “There is no room under the awning.”

  “Girls do not sit with women when they make important decisions,” Angai said.

  And maybe, I thought, it would not be a good idea for Hua and Nia and Angai to sit together in front of the entire village. The villagers might remember how close their shamaness had been to the woman they had exiled.

  People were coming back now. They carried objects: poles, which they dug into the ground, and pieces of fabric, which they stretched over the poles. Light shone through the fabric, taking on the color of each piece: red, green, blue, yellow, and orange.

  The people spread rugs and settled down. They handed around food: pieces of bread, bowls of meat, jars made of silver and bronze. Babies crawled through the colored shadows. Little children ran.

  Hua ducked back into the tent. A moment later she reappeared—or rather, her hand did, furry and brown, holding a large flat piece of bread. Eddie took it. We passed it around.

  Angai made a commanding gesture. The people in the square grew quiet. Angai looked at us. “Begin.”

  “Elizaveta and I flipped a coin,” said Eddie. “I lost. I have to go first. Derek, will you translate?”

  “Yes.”

  Eddie drew in a breath, then exhaled slowly. “First of all, repeat what Mr. Fang said: When different people meet, changes occur.

  “Most likely these people—the Iron People—will change more than we will, since they have a less developed technology. They may not like the changes they experience. And they may not find it possible to go back to the way they were.”

  Derek thought for a moment. “All right.” He looked at Angai. “Eddie says when people meet, they change one another.”

  Angai made the gesture of qualified agreement.

  “If the people have different kinds of tools, then the people with large and powerful tools will change less than the people with small and weak tools.

  “Eddie says our tools are large and powerful. Your tools are small and weak. Therefore you will change more than we do, and you may not like the changes.”

  Angai frowned. “This man is not being courteous. Our people are skillful. The tools we make are good.”

  The women around her made gestures of unqualified agreement.

  “However, it is true that new ideas make people un
comfortable. Maybe we will not like the stories you tell or the ways that you behave.”

  Derek translated this into English.

  Eddie frowned, then nodded. “Next, tell the shamaness that we have a long history of bad behavior toward people who are different. We have improved in the past two or three centuries, but we don’t know that the change is permanent. We may revert—especially here in this country, which is so much like North America.”

  “Is this necessary?” asked Ivanova. “Do we have to bring up all the ancient crimes of feudalism and capitalism? We are not those people. And most of us have not had to endure anything like those economic systems.”

  Mr. Fang said, “Eddie is not a Marxist. He does not share our analysis of human nature or of human history. For him this is a real concern.”

  Derek said, “Eddie says in the past our people acted badly toward people in other villages. He is afraid it will happen again.”

  “What do you mean by acting badly?” Angai asked.

  Derek translated.

  Eddie said, “Tell her about war.”

  “In the past our men used to go around in groups. They fought with men from other villages. The men who won stole things from the men who lost.”

  “What kind of things?” asked Angai.

  “Belongings, animals, land. Sometimes they took away people: men and women and children.”

  “How can you steal land? It cannot be carried away in a saddlebag or even in a wagon. And what purpose could there be in stealing people?”

  An old woman said, “There are stories about demons who eat people.”

  Angai frowned. “Is that what your people did?”

  “No,” said Derek. “Let Eddie explain.” He translated Angai’s questions.

  Eddie frowned. “This is really difficult. Wait a minute.” He stared at the sky. “There are two ways to steal land.

  “First, you drive off the people who are on the land and take it over yourself. That was done in North America.

  “Second, you take over ownership of the land. You don’t get rid of the original people. You keep them to work the land. You own them as well as the land. That was done in South America and Africa and—I guess—in Europe in the Middle Ages.”

  Derek translated.

  Angai said, “Why would people agree to work for strangers? What bond holds them together? They are not kin. They cannot possibly have any obligations to people who are thieves.”

  Eddie answered, “If they did not work, they got no food. Often they were beaten or hurt in other ways.”

  Derek translated, having trouble with the word “beaten.” He hesitated, then used the word that meant to hammer metal at the forge.

  “This is impossible to understand,” said Angai. “Why didn’t the people leave?”

  “There was no place to go,” said Eddie. “The world was full of people who fought and stole. Everything was owned.”

  “Hu!” said Angai. She looked at Nia. “Does this sound right to you?”

  “No. I have never heard any of this before. I know this man does not want you to welcome his people. Maybe he is lying.”

  Angai looked at me. “Is he lying?”

  “No. But what he is describing happened a long time ago.”

  “How long ago?”

  I did some figuring. “At least twelve generations have passed.”

  Angai leaned back and exhaled. “Are you certain these things really happened? A story can change when it is told and retold.”

  “We are certain.”

  “What happened? It is easier to change words than to change people. If the story is true, if it has not changed, then what happened to you? Why are you different now?”

  I hesitated. Derek translated our conversation.

  Eddie said, “I’m not certain that we are any different.”

  “Can I answer the question?” I asked.

  Mr. Fang and Ivanova nodded.

  “I think you are trying to undercut me,” Eddie said.

  “I’m trying to answer a question that Angai has asked. Derek will translate everything I say. If you want to comment, you’ll be able to.”

  Eddie made the gesture of reluctant assent.

  I looked at Angai. “Eddie does not believe that we have changed. But I do.”

  “How? And why?” asked Angai.

  I thought for a while, aware of the people listening—of the small noises, coughs and whispers, a baby crying, older children playing on the far side of the square. I could hear their voices, high and clear, not all that different from the voices of children on Earth.

  But when I looked, I saw dark fur and yellow eyes, slit pupils, flat broad faces that reminded me of no kind of human.

  “Eddie has told you that these people—our ancestors—stole from one another. That is true. They also stole from the entire world. People will treat everything the way they treat one another.”

  A very old lady—bent over and gray—said, “Hu! Yes! I know!”

  “They tore up the land, looking for various kinds of wealth: gold and silver and copper and other things. They cut down forests. They took water out of rivers so the rivers went dry. They put poison into other rivers so the water could not be used. They were even able to do harm to the sky. Burning rains began to fall, and the heat of the sun grew more intense.”

  “This is terrible,” a woman said. “Weren’t your shamanesses able to do anything? Couldn’t they plead with the spirits? Couldn’t they perform ceremonies of propitiation and aversion?”

  “They tried. But nothing worked. It was not spirits that were doing these things. It was people.”

  “Hu!” the woman said.

  “What happened?” asked Angai.

  “You have to understand, most of our ancestors were not deliberately evil. They did not intend to ruin the world. But they didn’t think about the results of what they were doing. They thought they could take without giving. They thought the world was like a fish in a shell. They could open it and eat it and throw the shell away.”

  I paused. Derek translated.

  “Fish in a shell?” asked Mr. Fang.

  Eddie said, “I’m surprised that Derek missed that one. Our ancestors thought the world was their oyster.”

  Mr. Fang still looked puzzled.

  Angai said, “They must have realized that they were acting wrongly. It is always wrong to steal. It is always wrong to harm other people—except when two men fight in the spring.”

  “They lied to one another about what they were doing,” I told her.

  “In the beginning—in the early days—they said, ‘We are making the world better. When we came to this place there was nothing except forest and wild animals and people who ran around naked. We have ended this. We have cut down the trees and planted gardens. We have made meadows where we can raise the kind of animals we like. We have taught the naked people how to wear clothing. All this is good! And look at the other things we’ve done! We have dug rivers and brought water to our gardens. We have turned dry canyons into lakes. Now there is more food. Now there can be more people. Now our villages can grow large and rich!’

  “After a while they began to notice that the world did not seem to be a better place. Everything seemed smaller and dirtier. Everything was wearing out—the soil, the hills, the rivers and lakes. The people said, ‘There is nothing new in this. There have always been places where the land is thin and useless. There have always been rivers where the water is not fit to drink. There is no problem.’

  “Things kept getting worse. Now the people said, ‘For everything that is gained, something must be lost. Look at what we have gained! Look at our villages full of big houses! Look at our houses full of many gifts! The forests that are gone have come back to us in gold. The rivers we cannot drink from have become jars full of bara.’

  “Finally everything became so bad that no one could come up with anything comforting to say. Then the people said, ‘Change is impossible. It’s already too la
te. Anyway, we don’t really mind the way things are.’ ” I paused. “Those are the four kinds of lie the people told. ‘We are making things better.’ ‘There is no problem.’ ‘There are no real gifts.’ ‘It is too late to change.’ ”

  “This is the worst thing I have ever heard,” a woman said.

  Angai said, “This can’t be the end of the story.”

  “In the end the people looked around and saw how terrible the world had become. Lying was no longer possible. They saw where anger and greed had taken them—to the edge of destruction. They had to choose. If they wanted to live, they would have to give up anger and greed. If they wanted to remain angry and greedy, they would certainly die.

  “Most people decided they wanted to live. They were like someone walking in her sleep, troubled by terrible dreams. All at once she wakes and sees where she is standing—at the edge of a cliff. One more step will take her over. The rocks below look hard.”

  Derek translated.

  Agopian said, “That’s a wonderful speech, Lixia. I’m impressed. But you left out class warfare and a lot of very serious revolutionary struggle.”

  “And you have ignored the benefits of technology,” said Ivanova. “Civilization is more than organized lying and stealing—though lying and stealing have certainly been important. Do you really think that we’d be better off if we were still digging for grubs with our fingers in the African savannah?”

  “I can’t get everything in,” I said. “And like Eddie, I am not a Marxist.”

  Angai said, “Is that all? Or is there more to your explanation?”

  “One other thing. Derek told you that groups of men used to go around and fight each other. That is how everything started—when one kind of people began to steal from another kind of people.”

  Angai made the gesture of acknowledgment.

  “Our men don’t go off on their own anymore. They stay with the women, and women do not like to confront and fight.”

  “That is true,” Angai said. “Maybe you are right to keep your men in the villages—if they get together and make trouble once they are on their own.”