XI
I study Vittoria 's blue-black hair and velvety brown eyes, her heavy, obstinate chin. Her waist is too long (like a flexible mermaid's), her solid thighs and buttocks surprisingly sturdy. Vittoria gets a lot of praise in Whileaway because of her big behind. She is modestly interesting, like everything else in this world formed for the long acquaintance and the close view; they work outdoors in their pink or gray pajamas and indoors in the nude until you know every wrinkle and fold of flesh, until your body's in a common medium with theirs and there are no pictures made out of anybody or anything; everything becomes translated instantly into its own inside. Whileaway is the inside of everything else. I slept in the Belins' common room for three weeks, surrounded in my coming and going by people with names like Nofretari Ylayeson and Nguna Twason. (I translate freely; the names are Chinese, African, Russian, European. Also, Whileawayans love to use old names they find in dictionaries.) One little girl decided I needed a protector and stuck by me, trying to learn English. In the winter there's always heat in the kitchens for those who like the hobby of cooking and induction helmets for the little ones (to keep the heat at a distance). The Belins' kitchen was a story-telling place.
I mean, of course, that she told stories to me. Vittoria translates, speaking softly and precisely: "Once upon a time a long time ago there was a child who was raised by bears. Her mother went up into the woods pregnant (for there were more woods than there are today) and gave birth to the child there, for she had made an error in reckoning. Also, she had got lost. Why she was in the woods doesn't matter. It is not germane to this story.
"Well, if you must know, it was because the mother was up there to shoot bears for a zoo. She had captured three bears and shot eighteen but was running out of film; and when she vent into labor, she let the three bears go, for she didn't know how long the labor would last, and there was nobody to feed the bears. They conferred with each other and stayed around, though, because they had never seen a human being give birth before and they were interested. Everything went fine until the baby's head came out, and then the Spirit of the Woods, who is very mischievous and clever, decided to have some fun. So right after the baby came out, it sent a rock slide down the mountain and the rock slide cut the umbilical cord and knocked the mother to one side. Aid then it made an earthquake which separated the mother and the baby by miles and miles, like the Grind Canyon in South Continent."
"Isn't that going to be a lot of trouble?" said I. "Do you want to hear this story or don't you?" (Vittoria translated) "7 sap they were separated by miles and miles. When the mother saw this, she said 'Damn!' Then she went back to civilization to get a search party together, but by that time the bears had decided to adopt the baby and all of them were hidden up above the forty-ninth parallel, where it's very rocky and wild. So the little girl grew up with the bears.
"When she was ten, there began to be trouble. She had some bear friends by then, although she didn't like to walk on all-fours as the bears did and the bears didn't like that, because bears are very conservative. She argued that walking on all-fours didn't suit her skeletal development. The bears said, 'Oh, but we have always walked this way.' They were pretty stupid. But nice, I mean. Anyway, she walked upright, the way it felt best, but when it came to copulation, that was another matter. There was nobody to copulate with. The little girl wanted to try it with her male-best-bear-friend (for animals do not live the way people do, you know) but the he-bear would not even try. 'Alas' he said (You can tell by that he was much more elegant than the other bears, ha ha) I'm afraid I'd hurt you with my claws because you don't have all the fur that she-bears have.
And besides that, you have trouble assuming the proper position because your back legs are too long. And besides that, you don't smell like a bear and I'm afraid my Mother would say it was bestiality.' That's a joke. Actually it's race prejudice. The little girl was very lonely and bored. Finally after a long time, she browbeat her bear-mother into telling her about her origins, so she decided to go out looking for some people who were not bears. She thought life might be better with them. She said good-bye to her bear-friends and started South, and they all wept and waved their handkerchiefs. The girl was very hardy and woods-wise, since she had been taught by the bears. She traveled all day and slept all night. Finally she came to a settlement of people, just like this one, and they took her in. Of course she didn't speak people-talk" (with a sly glance at me) "and they didn't speak bearish. This was a big problem. Eventually she learned their language so she could talk to them and when they found out she had been raised by bears, they directed her to the Geddes Regional Park where she spent a great deal of time speaking bearish to the scholars. She made friends and so had plenty of people to copulate with, but on moonlit nights she longed to be back with the bears, for she wanted to do the great bear dances, which bears do under the full moon. So eventually she went back North again. But it turned out that the bears were a bore. So she decided to find her human mother.
At the flats to Rabbit Island she found a statue with an inscription that said, 'Go that way,' so she did. At the exit from the bridge to North Continent she found an arrow sign that had been overturned, so she followed in the new direction it was pointing. The Spirit of Chance was tracking her. At the entry into Green Bay she found a huge goldfish bowl barring her way, which turned into the Spirit of Chance, a very very old woman with tiny, dried-up legs, sitting on top of a wall. The wall stretched all the way across the forty-eighth parallel.
" 'Play cards with me,' said the Spirit of Chance.
"'Not on your life,' said the little girl, who was nobody's fool.
"Then the Spirit of Chance winked and said, 'Aw, come on,' so the girl thought it might be fun. She was just going to pick up her hand when she saw that the Spirit of Chance was wearing an induction helmet with a wire that stretched back way into the distance.
"She was connected with a computer!
" That's cheating!' cried the little girl. She ran at the wall and they had just an awful fight, but in the end everything melted away, leaving a handful of pebbles and sand, and afterward that melted away, too. The little girl walked by day and slept by night, wondering whether she would like her real mother. She didn't know if she would want to stay with her real mother or not. But when they got to know each other, they decided against it. The mother was a very smart, beautiful lady with fuzzy black hair combed out round, like electricity. But she had to go build a bridge (and fast, too) because the people couldn't get from one place to the other place without the bridge. So the little girl went to school and had lots of lovers and friends, and practiced archery, and got into a family, and had lots of adventures, and saved everybody from a volcano by bombing it from the air in a glider, and achieved Enlightenment.
"Then one morning somebody told her there was a bear looking for her-"
"Wait a minute," said I. 'This story doesn't have an end. It just goes on and on. What about the volcano? And the adventures? And the achieving Enlightenment-surely that takes some time, doesn't it?"
"I tell things," said my dignified little friend (through Vittoria) "the way they happen," and slipping her head under the induction helmet without further comment (and her hands into the waldoes) she went back to stirring her blanc-mange with her forefinger. She said something casually over her shoulder to Vittoria, who translated: "Anyone who lives in two worlds," (said Vittoria) "is bound to have a complicated life."