“This is o’ca?” Teenae was impressed by their enterprise in importing from such a distance.
“She’s here to see Zeilar,” said the boy.
“Ah. You are interested in the skins. We have a small but superior stock. My husband Zeilar only collects them as art so that he shall remain inspired by the masterpieces of others. He saves the best of the leather that passes through the hands of my husband Meikam.”
She led Teenae upstairs and then up another flight on an almost vertical wooden ladder to a large room that was the only room on the third floor. It was spacious and better lighted than the apartments below. Zeilar sat upon several of the larger pillows that littered the floor, reading a handwritten book beside a window three times as tall as any other in the building. Through the window the peaked roofs of the village thrust upward to obscure the sea. The hides of perhaps a dozen men hung about the room as partitions or in place of tapestries. Surfacing the low table that dominated the whole space was a quilt of leather designs and behind this table stood a multijointed mirror, man high, with almost golden reflectivity, which was built to give one an image of oneself from many viewpoints.
Zeilar set his book aside and she saw that his face was carved in an abstract symmetry that would make the effort to decode his current expression an almost impossible task. “Look around,” he said comfortably.
The most enormous hide was perhaps the strangest for it carried unconventionally representational scenes of mountains and cities and ships connected by a wild looping of roads. “Do you know the stories of these men?” she asked.
“Harar ram-Ivieth,” Zeilar replied. “He was an accomplished songwriter and one of the few men ever to have rounded Geta on foot. I never met him for he died before I was born but many Ivieth know his stories and more than once an Ivieth has passed through Sorrow called to Harar’s Pilgrimage. I have a copy of his book, Folio-wing God.”
The smaller hide of a woman attracted Teenae’s attention when she recognized its delicate workmanship. That’s what she wanted. The cuts, the fine work, the control of the scar-tissue texture, the embossing, and the final tattooing were unbelievable.
“Not for sale,” said Zeilar noting her interest. “She’s my oldest niece. I had her skin to work with since she was a child and she inspired me, the saucy wench. She was drowned by the Njarae. I’m not sure she wasn’t murdered. Her death left a knife in my heart.”
“I’m not here for leather.” Teenae dismissed the notion, saddened that a woman had lost her life to the sea in the fullness of her youth. She smiled at the artist. “It’s for me.”
Was it consternation or joy that crossed his indecipherable face? “Ah yes.” But the voice carried pleasure. “What design do you wish? Choose any one that catches your spirit or I can give you an original sketch. The work cannot all be done in one day, you understand. Many healings are required to control the texture.”
“I wish some form of the four wheat kernels.”
His motions froze. “You are a convert to the teachings of our Oelita?”
“Yes,” she lied with her gentlest voice.
The son appeared up the ladder again with tea, followed by his naked sister. The tea was poured into shallow o’ca bowls.
“Do you wish this sacrament done now or with friends?”
“Now. You are my friends for you follow Oelita.”
“Son, hurry and fetch a maita leaf from my satchel to freshen our guest’s tea.” He turned to Teenae. “I prescribe only a mild narcotic since awareness of the pain brings faster healing. Fast healing gives an aura to the new tissue, a fineness of texture and color.”
“I have never used a narcotic, maita or otherwise. It is not logical to fear pain. It is only logical to fear the damage that generates pain. The symbol is not its referent. So the o’Tghalie teach.” She went to the mirror and disrobed. An infinity of golden Teenaes formed ranks in that geometric never world. “My lower back is smooth,” she said.
The boy re-emerged from the trapdoor with the large maita leaf, followed by an eruption of sisters and another brother. For these young ones it was an event to watch the master work his magic with brush and knife and flesh. Each child made his presence unobtrusive. None let their eyes stray from Teenae.
Zeilar swabbed and cleaned her back with alcohol and then began to sketch on the skin over her kidneys while she stood inside the mirrors and watched this new flattery take shape upon her crowded body. Sometimes he erased and began again. Sometimes her eyes wandered to the hides of these other humans who had all once stood naked like herself in a shop like this. The children stared.
Teenae’s logical mind was relishing the ironies all about her. She never really understood the way in which the non-o’Tghalie staggered blindly past, and over, the contradictions of their private worlds. They neither saw nor felt nor heard the storm. Zeilar worked in a room that was a showplace of cannibal feasting, creating the symbol of a philosophy that denied cannibalism upon the back of a woman who would one day be eaten. She smiled. Artists had a way of living with the cross-purposes that flowed through the soul of the Race.
Teenae wondered why she was here, why she was doing this. As yet the design was only ink. But it was not Oelita’s dietary laws that attracted her; it was the woman’s gentleness. Teenae had lived in a stern family that had not let her grow up to practice mathematics, and now she was part of a clan inexorably bent upon planetary conquest. Gentleness attracted her.
Slowly the essence of maita leaf saturated the tea. The boy brought it for her to drink, lifting the bowl to her lips. She sipped. For a moment the artist paused, then brushed on some finishing lines. He stood back for her approval and she saw a hundred golden Teenaes with their backs to her and their heads turned. All of them nodded.
The design had been modified to flow with the form of the prior cicatrices; the wheat stem was bent, as if caught by the wind while ripening on the round hills of her buttocks. Zeilar was satisfied; she was satisfied. He paraded her before his children who clapped, too, and began to josh each other for positions around the table, not so quiet as they had been. The master went for his tools and Teenae took her place on the table, stomach down, face resting in her arms, smiling at the littlest girl, winking.
“Is Oelita as warm as she sounds?”
He brought Teenae rods to hold in her fists and a strip of hardwood on a finger-high stand so that she might bite or leave it, as she wished. “Our Oelita has a golden kalothi. You and your husband are the ones who know gold. Life beats her in hammer strokes but she never breaks. A little bit of her is enough to gild everything with luster.” He selected a knife, and adjusted a minor to get a better light from the window. “Are you ready?”
“So many people seem to worship her.”
“Oh yes,” said the artist making his first swift cut.
Teenae gasped and clamped her teeth on the hardwood, breathing with deep breaths as the knife opened up more lines of blood. “Wait! God, wait!”
He indulged her but used the time to expose the design again by washing away the blood with a light solution of numbing maita tea. “I’ll be trimming next. The pain will be intermittent but sharp.”
“Has she been here long? Did you notice her as a child?”
“This will hurt.” Snip. “She came and went with her father.” Snip, snip. “Those times when he brought her to the village she would run far ahead of him.” Stab, snip, stab. “I remember the time when she crawled upstairs and sat down to supper with us.” Slice, snip, stab. “She chattered our ears off. How’s it going?”
“Just get it over with!”
He laughed. “We can’t hurry or I’ll slip. I’m going to cauterize some points and put a mashed beetle salve on other spots. That gives a different texturing effect. The salve will sting worse than the fire.”