I don’t keep servants, my father says. He’s furious, trembling with rage. The old man looks at the dark blue sky and blinks. I’m finished with all that, my father says. The word ekawi has been banished from my life. I don’t want to hear it.
My mother comes to the door. Let him come in for water, she murmurs. My father flings the ladder down, wordless. The old man clambers up, carrying one heavy bag at a time. My mother tries to take one of them and staggers.
He is Tipyav. He will stay with us and help my mother and sleep in a hammock underneath the house. He will never leave us. I don’t know how he developed such loyalty, perhaps only in response to desperation. He will be our friend, our doddering uncle, our confidant, the means by which we get news from the village, our messenger, our forager, a back for me to ride on, a backbone for us all, long-suffering, patient. And he will be my mother’s servant. That much is decided, that first night. Then you take him, my father shouts. Take him, if you want him. But I will be no one’s ekawi.
And he swings down the rope ladder into the dark.
He took his boat out that night, and so he wasn’t there when we opened the heavy sacks. The old man opened the first one for us, his big, black-nailed hands fumbling with the strings in the rushlight, the contents of the sack shifting and clinking. The mouth of the sack opened all at once, we saw his hand jerk to stop something from falling, but he was too late, it clanked on the floor. We watched it roll, mesmerized. My mother gave a cry. It was a cup, somber and weighty, made of gold.
Let me hold it, I cried. Give it to me.—She was so slow, she picked it up and stared at it with her mouth open. I couldn’t bear the sight of that lovely thing in her squat, misshapen hand. I smacked my palm on the floor. Give it to me!
Humbly, she put it into my hands. Oh, it was beautiful, burnished, heavy. I pressed it to my cheek: it was cold, like water. My breath made cloudy patterns over its etched design of triangles and stars, and I wiped it carefully on my shirt. My mother had brought out the razor and was cutting the strings of the other sack, and always, I’ve always found that moment so strange, for despite our different spirits we were both blinking unusually fast, both of us struggling with our tears of joy. Why, of course you can ask me why, you’ve never seen our tiny house with the mud walls and thatched roof, the poor skin maps, the water pots repaired with gum, the narrow pallets and murky light, and you’ve never seen that light when it falls on gold. It wasn’t only the golden cups and bowls, the amber necklaces, the beads of jade and coral, the ivory flutes. It was the way the room was changed by the luster of those objects, and the light became like the glow of a thousand fireflies… Suddenly this room, our room, so stifling, so eternally sad, became like a place where things were always happening, a place of enchantments, reversals, lovers’ quarrels, impromptu poetry, where the air had the soulful, exciting odor of incense. Oh, look, oh, look, we whispered, laughing and crying. And Tipyav wore such a mournful and awkward smile, as he told us in his shy and halting way of my father’s sister, his younger sister who was called Jetnapet. Jetnapet, a beautiful name, it makes you think of the first rains, the smell after all the dust has been washed away. I’d never heard of her. I held her jade bracelet and kissed it, saying, Jetnapet, oh Jetnapet, my aunt! I loved her, I knew all about her, her beauty, her slender wrists like mine, which were so unlike the thick wrists of my mother. I knew how sad she was when she thought of my father, for what she had sent him was as valuable as an entire inheritance.
It’s mine, it’s my inheritance, I whispered. Then: Give me that, I told my mother sharply, snapping my fingers. I held out my hand, my arm deliciously heavy with rich jewelry, for the bowl she had held up admiringly to the light. What’s that? What are you wearing?
She looked startled, confused, ashamed, her hand wandering to the amber at her throat.
Take it off, Tati… Gods, on you…
We had not heard my father come in: he looked at me aghast, as if I had struck him.
How it was on the hill.
The beautiful lacquered tableware, the jade cups, the decorum, the immobility. My father tells me more about it now that I’m very weak, now that I’m dying, although we don’t call it that. During our last months in the village the stories well out of him along with his tears, he unburdens himself to me. He doesn’t play the flute anymore, he drinks millet beer, he smells of beer as he unplaits and combs my hair.
It was agony, he tells me thickly, his voice growing older, taking on the uneven texture of the rushlight. My mother, I’ve never told you about her. God of my father, Jissi, a woman to make you kill yourself, or her, or both. All right, I’ve told you some. I know I’ve told you how she never shouted or showed anger, only simpered and smiled. She had been well brought up, what they used to call “hill quality,” a child-bride from the mountains up the coast. But listen, how can I tell you. She had a series of servants, always young girls, terrified as rabbits. As soon as one got used to her, showed signs of resignation, my mother would replace her with another. She needed them to be frightened, you see, needed that entertainment in her life of seclusion, someone to terrify. She needed the sound of weeping in the house, from behind the screen where the maid slept… It soothed her, helped her to sleep herself… They were always inseparable, my mother and her trembling maid. Other women, our clanswomen, would visit. My mother had a note at which she pitched her voice to speak to the maid—chilling, penetrating, and yet so soft… The girls lived in terror, it was unspeakable. One of them ran away. The laborers tracked her. Yes, they would have killed her. But she escaped, she must have gone aboard a Pravish ship. I hope she settled somewhere, I hope she found love.
Love, Jissavet. In our house it did not exist. It was the same with everyone on the hill. Love, for our people, was synonymous with dishonor. It was something to be avoided, hidden, crushed… They spoke of it in hushed tones, telling about my cousin who loved a man forbidden to her and drowned herself, or disapproving of a father who doted on his young son, saying the child would be spoiled, would become a weakling. Then I don’t want to be strong, I told my mother before I left. That was her complaint, that I was weak. I don’t want your kind of strength, I said. Do you know what she said to me? I wish I’d aborted you with tama-root.
He strokes my hair softly, my disease, my sun-red hair. It’s better here, he whispers, despite everything. I know he means, Despite the fact that you are dying young. On my cheek, a tear. It is not my own.
But she loves you, I said. Your sister.
I think it was true, despite what he said, his hatred of her gifts, his conviction that she was trying to poison his home. She was young when he ran away, a girl of sixteen. He must have been a god to her: this kind, sad-eyed elder brother. She must have wept when she saw that his jut had disappeared from the altar, that he was gone. And she had preserved her memory of him for years, hoarded her wedding gold, made cups and bangles disappear, perhaps blamed a maid. Her treasure growing slowly in a cupboard. And then, one day, she thought it was enough, and she found the servant who had most loved him, an old man now, and she said to him: Find my brother. And old Tipyav shouldered the sacks, and she stood at the door in the twilight and watched him, her heart full of pride and love, never knowing how her gift would be received.