I
am in the mess hut, eating a late lunch of fungo and dried fish, when
a flap at the curtain distracts me from my staring into the fire. I
had a good count going.
It is the visitor.
Honrick.
I
give him a quick glance, but I could not look at the unmuddied face
for too long. It is like seeing someone stripped naked.
He gives me a quick
nod, then makes his way to the other side of the hut, dragging a sack
which wobbles the tables as he brushes past. He is trying to get as
far away as possible from me. The Mister had introduced him to us by
now. We were told that he would be leaving us soon. When he was well
enough.
He
sits on the far end of the bench, his arms hugged tight round
himself. It is a mild spring day, not one for extra layers, yet he
shivers as if in the depths of winter.
‘If
you are cold,’ I say, ‘you can sit here next to the fire. Take a
cup of chope?’
He
looks around at the other tables before he answers. Doman is around
here somewhere, preparing the roots for supper, but there is only
myself and him here in the mess hut proper.
‘That
is a good idea,’ he says. ‘Yes please.’
I
heard him say yes
please
when the Mister introduced him in the Barr hut, when someone asked
him if he wanted the door to be closed. Mudders say .
Chiramites say yes
please.
He
makes his way to the chope pot and ladles a serving into a cup, then
sits down at the table behind me. I do not turn to look, but I hear
his greedy slurps between shivers. A silent moment passes, then I
decide to speak.
‘You
are still unwell,’ I say.
His
trembling stops as he considers whether to respond, The Mister had
told us not to go too close to the visitor, that he himself had
requested it. But how could I sit beside someone without saying
anything? He wants to get up and leave, but I know he won’t abandon
the warmth of the fire.
‘I’m
improved,’ he says, ‘but I can’t get warm up here.’
We
continue in silence, our backs turned to each other. I notice his
agitation ease as the fire warms him.
‘You
speak in a different way to us Mudders,’ I say. ‘But we can still
understand you.’
He
stops his slurping and I hear him place the cup on the table.
‘Can
you say that again?’
‘Your
speech is different. How come we can understand you?’ I ask.
‘We?’
he asks.
‘Yes,
us Mudders,’ I say.
I
turn round to him, so that we are sitting shoulder to shoulder,
facing the fire, each of us at a different table. He smells like the
old vegetables at the bottom of a boiling pot, just as you began to
wash it. It is not my favourite smell, but it is sufferable. I sense
the dense stitching of his grey mantel, tightly bound to his arms and
body.
He
is smiling now.
‘Our
languages are the same,’ he says. ‘More or less. I don’t have
to change it so you can understand.’
‘So
if I went to Chiram, they would be able to understand me?’ I ask.
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‘Yes,’
he says.
‘Yes
please,’ I say, smiling at him, but he doesn’t respond.
‘Within
a few days, you would speak the same as any Chiramite,’ he says
finally.
I
smile as I picture myself for a moment as a Chiramite - clean-faced
and shivering, flapping my arms meaninglessly about myself.
‘Are you going to
be a Mudder now?’ I ask him.
‘No, I cannot
become one of you,’ he says. ‘I am not from any of the clans.’
‘You would be a
Mudder if you stayed here,’ I say.
‘No,’ he says,
firm. ‘Did you hear yourself earlier? It sounded like you said
instead of , when you were talking about the Mudders.’
‘What
do you mean?’ I say.
‘Earlier,
you said
Mudders, we
can
understand you. Can you say it again?’
‘Us
Mudders,’ I say. I don’t understand what he is talking about.
‘You
hear how it is different from the way I say ‘us’?’ he asks.
‘When
you say it like that, yes.’ I say. ‘But I don’t say it like
that. I don’t hear any difference in the way I say it and the way
you say it.’
‘Well,
to my ear, the way you say it is quite different,’ he says. ‘It
sounds like an old way we used to say it in Chiram. A long time ago,
people used to say that to mean our
group, not including you.’
He brings his two palms to his chest, holds them there for a moment,
then pushes them away from him to show the distinction.
‘You
have two different words for ?’
I ask. ‘One for your clan and one for all the clans?’
‘Not
any more,’ he says. ‘We only say ,
for all the clans. Uns
started
to
disappear
after we started having more contact with other groups. There used to
be another word for ‘we,’ as well, but it disappeared too.
‘Say
the two words again,’ I say.
‘
and us,’ he says. He places special weight on the first
pronunciation, but I can’t hear much difference. Maybe our words
are slightly different, but not as different as he is making out.
I
stare into the flame again for a moment, thinking about what he had
said.
‘So
our languages
different then,’ I say.
‘It’s
a small difference,’ he says. ‘But it is an important one. That
you say
means that I can’t be one of you.’
I
want to tell him again that we don’t say it like that, but I let it
drop. He drains the chope from his vessel, then places it on the
table with a heavy thunk. He holds it there between his two hands, no
longer shivering.
‘These
cups are so strong. Much stronger than the ones we have in Chiram,’
he says.
‘I
made it,’ I say. ‘It’s the hinch glaze we put on when we bake
them in the kiln. It’s almost unbreakable.’
‘Hinch?’
he asks.
‘Yes,
we get it from the mountain,’ I say. ‘We use it for lots of
things.’
‘And
you made this?’ he asks, caressing the smooth curves of the cup.
‘Yes,’
I say.
‘Impressive,’
he says, testing its weight. After a moment, he puts it down again,
then stands and makes ready to leave.
‘You
know, I’ve never actually heard it said before,’ he says,
adjusting the strap on his sack. ‘.
I’ve only ever seen it written, in old stories.’
‘Written?’
I ask.
‘You
don’t have writing?’ he says. Then, quietly, to himself he said,
‘Of course.’
He looks at me now,
the first time he has focused on my eyes for more than a second. Then
he sits back down, his eyes leaping this way and that, reckoning on
something. Then, with a sudden dip, he reaches under the table and
pulls his bag up onto his knees.
He
lifts the great grey tongue of the bag and puts his hand into the
jumble inside. The bag is made from a similarly dense weave as his
mantel and I chance to take a quick grip of the material between my
fingers while he rummages. Finally, he removes a handful of thin
yellow sheets cut into neat squares and places them on the table in
front of me. A gust of wind from the doorway torments them and I
place a heavy hand on them to stop them blowing away. I try to
understand the possible uses of something so flimsy.
‘I
can sit beside you,’ he says, and before I can protest, he is
sitting at the table next to me.
He
pulls open the fastenings of his mantel and produces a sharpened
little stick from an inner pocket. I watch him closely as he
scratches circles and triangles, curved lines and straight lines,
sitting alongside each other and on lying top of each other, his
little stick giving the shapes colour. I understand immediately what
he is doing. The intense, determined way in which he neatly lines up
the scratches, his jaw tightly set, makes it clear that these symbols
carry meaning.
‘Now,’
he says. ‘This says we
can understand you.’
He says this slowly, giving each word some breathing space, as he
runs a long fingernail underneath the scratchings.
I
lift the sheet into my hands and bring it close to my face. I can
almost understand it, if only I could look at it in the right way. He
knows things Mudders don’t, this outsider. The world does not
solely consist of the things you can see. This is what I am learning.
There are worlds beyond.
‘Can
you show me how to do this?’ I ask.
