Jetnapet, my aunt. I kept hundreds of dreams of her; I thought of her as I lay in the open doorway. I rested my eyes on the cool, marvelous structure of the hill, and I thought: Now, my aunt, you are combing your long hair. You comb it out into sections, each one fixed with a clasp of gold. And now you are trailing your pet dragonfly on a string. Your smooth face, your deep, compassionate eyes. Perhaps you’ve heard of me, perhaps you even know I’m wearing your bracelet.
My father’s mouth cracked. He laughed loudly; the sound frightened me. He drank from his brown gourd of millet beer, and his voice broke when he said: Jissavet, don’t do this to me. You have no right.
He closed his eyes: You have no right.
And later, it was during my mother’s excitement, her calculations, what we would have to sell to get us to Olondria: my father laughed harshly, sitting propped against the wall with the beer gourd between his knees in the hot night. His laugh woke me. I saw his hair straggling down the sides of his face, his wild eyes, the sweat dripping on his neck. Well, she’s proved herself, he said. His voice was far too loud, and my mother looked up guiltily from the corner.
She’s won, my father said. My wife is pawing through her ceremonial dishes, my daughter sleeps with a bracelet on her arm. He raised the gourd and drank, his arm swaying so that the whole room seemed occupied by its violent, wandering shadow. His teeth shone wetly when he laughed. Well, Jetnapet! Dream well on your cotton bed, you viper!
Jedin, my mother said.
Oh, the little frog is awake, is she? The little frog… He paused and wiped his sweating face on his sleeve. The little one, he muttered.
But we need these things, my mother said. For our journey. She stood holding a decorative ebony box.
Oh, I know it, my father groaned. Open that box, my love, it’s full of blood!
But the box was full of coral.
(6)
His hand strokes my brow, trembling over my ruined hair. The odor of millet beer on his breath. Moonlight through the thin gaps in the thatch, and from across the marsh, the sound of drums, a feast. Your mother, he says.
Yes, he told me the truth at last.
Here is another map. It is a map of a face, my father’s face. Small bones, a pointed chin, flat cheekbones, just like mine. Two lines between the eyes, just like mine. When he is thinking, he purses his lips in the same way I do. And his frown, like mine, deepens the lines in his brow. A swift smile, a certain noble look, and the intelligence in the eyes, the same, it’s mine, it’s exactly the same.
Your mother, he said.
Where is she? I asked, suddenly afraid. Where is she? Tchimu? Why isn’t she back?
She didn’t want you to know, he said, hoarsely, caressingly, his fingers still moving over my hair. There was so little light in the room, only the pricks of moonlight. Outside, the drums, faint voices, the baying of dogs. Go to sleep, Tchimu, I said, speaking with difficulty because of the fear. You’re tired.
No, he said. No.
He told me. He insisted on telling me. He said, The truth has its own virtue, which is separate from its content. He said, this is the last story, Jissavet, the last. And it was true. He never told me another story.
There was a girl, he said, a hotun girl from a very poor family. Her father died when she was only a child. No, don’t ask questions. It is difficult enough. She grew. She was beautiful, like—what. Beautiful like a dream one is unable to remember, with that mystery, that formlessness, that strength… and without knowing anything. She never knew anything, in spite of all of life’s attempts—well, enough. This girl, Jissavet, when she was close to your age, but a year younger than you are, only sixteen, she went along the pirate coast, looking for snails I think, with her sister. Well, her sister, you know, is dead.
Her sister is dead. But she—she is alive. That is her triumph. And it is a great triumph, Jissi, you know.
He laughed softly, brokenly. Why can’t I say it? he muttered. After all this resolution, I still hesitate… You see, it is—what happened, it is the sort of thing the gods should not allow. They should not allow it. But they do. Hianot was captured by the pirates of the coast. She lived with them in the caves for over a year. Sixteen months. Her sister jumped, that is another truth, her sister leaped from the cliffs and was lost. But not she. Do you see the virtue of the truth? You must know what a valiant mother you have. Her courage, her tenacity, are incredible, even more incredible than the beauty of which they still sing in the village. She lived in the caves, injured—they had stunned her with a blow to the head during the capture, the scar is still there. She ran away three times. After each of the first two attempts, they cut off one of the fingers of her right hand. The third time she escaped. She came down from the hill and into the village, like a ghost. She was with child.
He smoothed my hair softly, softly. The odor of millet beer. Tchimu, you’re drunk, I tried to say, but I couldn’t. A beam of moonlight glowing on the silver of his hair, his face in darkness. Midnight. Anguish. Dogs.
Then you’re not my father, I said.
And he: Of course I’m your father.—But I could hear the tremor in his voice. That tremor, I knew it: it was the shudder of fear.
No, I said. You lied to me, you and Tati. You have told me lies.
Yes, he whispered. He sat against the wall, his head hanging. Moonlight dribbled over his slack fingers.
You are not my father at all, I said. And then: The kyitna, I have it from him, don’t I?
He buried his face in his hands.
When the wound is discovered, the source of the pain, it does not bring pain, because the pain was already there from the first. This is the greatest surprise to me. I cannot believe that I am lying calmly in the darkness while he weeps. I think of the people at the festival, there across the marsh. They’re dancing, drinking millet beer from gourds. The old men, already drunk, have been drinking coconut liquor and are staggering to urinate in the weeds. Everywhere there are conversations, shouts. A woman turns. The musicians sweat over their drums and bells. The singer’s cries are hoarse; he looks possessed. Beneath a tree two women help another to fix her braids in place. And the young men, the girls dancing in lines, the moonlit laughter and the dogs, the sheen on the water, the fear of snakes, the beer spilled on the ground, the arguments, the secret love among the palms, the hands clapping, the crying child. It’s all there, complete, just out of reach. The discovery has hollowed out my spirit and made me light. Now I can hover over the world, now I belong to no one. And all things come to me of their own volition.
My mother, too. She comes back. She has spent the night in the forest, or perhaps in the hammock under the house, a feast for the mosquitoes. I haven’t slept. I watch her climb the ladder we left hanging and begin putting charcoal into the brazier.
I’ll never talk to her about it. I can’t. In that way I am like her, and not like the father who is no longer my father. I don’t believe in the virtue of truth. Like my mother, I’m cowardly, I hide, I’m unable to form the words. What would I say? I know that you were raped by a kyitna pirate. Why tell her that? She already knows I know. What else would I say, would I ask her about it, the cave, the death of her sister? No, there’s nothing in it, no virtue at all. And so those words will never be said, not when my father stops talking and we’re alone with only Tipyav to speak to us, not when we make the decision at last and go to the river Katapnay again to board the silent boat with its cargo of oil, not on the journey north, not on the ship or in the wagons carting us ever northward toward those pink-tinged hills, not in the mountains, not in the bleakness of the Young Women’s Hall of the sanatorium, not even in terror, in death. Never, never. Up to the end we keep living in the same way. Grain, fire, time to bathe, to sleep. This was how we communicated, though these hollow gestures. Porridge, then datchi. And later porridge again.