“I thought I was insane,” he said, in the controlled precise tone that sounded arrogant because his honesty would not permit him to evade. “I have been insane. Six years ago, after my wife died. There were two episodes. Linguists are often unstable.”
After a little while Tamara said almost in a whisper, “Ramchandra is a beautiful noble person…” She spoke in Ndif.
Ah-weh, weh, ah-weh, weh, went the chanting of the baliya dancers off on the dancing grounds at the edge of the village. A baby cried in a nearby hut. The dark-dazzling air was rich with the scent of night-blooming flowers.
“Look,” she said. “Doesn’t a telepath know what you’re thinking? The Ndif don’t. I’ve known people who do. My grandfather, he was Russian, he always knew what people were thinking. It was maddening. I don’t know if it was telepathy, or being old, or being Russian, or what. But anyhow, they’d get the thoughts, not the words—wouldn’t they?”
“Who knows? Maybe—You said it’s like a stage play, a movie, the island paradise. Maybe they sense what we expect or desire, and act it, perform it.”
“What for?”
“Adaptation,” he said, triumphant. “So that we like them and therefore don’t harm them.”
“But I don’t like them! They’re boring! No kinship systems, no social structure except stupid age-grading and detestable male dominance, no real skills, no arts—lousy carved spoons, all right, like a Hawaiian tourist trap—no ideas—once they grow up, they’re bored. Kara told me yesterday, ‘Life’s much too long.’ If they’re trying to produce a facsimile of somebody’s heart’s desire, it isn’t mine!”
“Nor mine,” Ramchandra said. “But Bob?”
There was a harshness, a homing-in quality, to the question. Tamara hesitated. “I don’t know. At first, sure. But he’s been restless, lately. After all he’s a myths man. And they don’t even tell stories. All they ever talk about is who they slept with last night and how many poro they shot. He says they all talk like Hemingway characters.”
“He doesn’t talk with the Old Ones.” Again that harshness, and Tamara, defensive of Bob, said, “Neither do I, much; do you? They don’t participate, they seem so shadowy… unimportant.”
“That was a healing song old Binira sang.”
“Maybe.”
“I think so. A ritual song, in the more complex language. If there is high culture, the Old Ones have it. Maybe they lose the telepathic power as they grow older; so then they can withdraw; they’re no longer influenced, forced to adapt—”
“Forced by whom to adapt to what? They’re the only intelligent species on the planet.”
“Other villages, other tribes.”
“But then they’d all talk each other’s language, all their customs would melt together—”
“Exactly! That explains the homogeneity of the culture! A solution to Babel!”
He sounded so pleased, and it sounded so plausible, that Tamara did her best to accept the hypothesis. The best she could do was admit finally, “The idea makes me queasy, for some reason.”
“The Old Ones have developed true language, nontelepathic language. They are the ones to talk with. I will request admission to the Old Men’s House tomorrow.”
“You’ll have to grow some grey hair…”
“Easily! Is it still black?”
“You’d better get some sleep.”
He was silent a while, but did not lie down. “Tamara,” he said, “you are not humoring me, are you?”
“No,” she said gruffly, shocked that he was so vulnerable.
“It is so very like a delusional system.”
“Then it’s folie á deux. All this about the language just brings the rest into focus. All six villages we’ve visited, all the same, the same things missing, the same—improbability—only it’s like overprobability—”
“Projected telepathy,” he said, brooding. “They are influencing us. Confusing our perceptions, forcing us into subjectivity—”
“Driving us away from the Reality Principle?” she said, defensive, now, of him. “Rubbish.” She recognized the quotation, and laughed. “We’re talking much too cleverly to be gaga.”
“I talked brilliantly in the mental institution,” he said. “In several languages. Even Sanskrit.” He sounded reassured, however; and she stood up. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “A fine night’s sleep I’ll have now! Do you need a fresh hot rock?”
“No, no. Listen, I’m sorry—”
“Askiös, askiös.”
No rest for the wicked. She had just lit her oil lamp and was spitting on her fingers and pinching the wick to keep it from smoking, which it continued to do, when Bob appeared in the doorway of her hut. The light of Uper haloed his thick fair hair; the importance of his return filled the entire biosphere as the bulk of his body filled the doorway. “I just got back,” he announced.
“From where?”
“Gunda.” The next village downriver.
He came in and sat down on the cane stool, while she swore at the burned poro fat on her fingers. An even more world-shaking announcement than that of his return loomed, imminent, in his scowl. She beat him to the draw. “Ram’s sick,” she said.
“What with?”
“Delhi belly, you could call it.”
“How could anybody get sick here?”
“They have a cure. You sleep with a hot boulder.”
“Christ! Sounds like a cure for potency!” Bob said, and they both broke into laughter. While laughing she almost began to tell Bob about Ram’s peculiar linguistic discovery, which for a moment seemed equally ridiculous; but she should let Ram do it, even if it was just a joke. Bob had gone serious again, and now emitted his announcement. “I have to fight a duel. Single combat.”
“Oh, Lord. When? Why?”
“Well, that girl. Potita, you know, the redhead. One of the Young Men in Gunda has his eye on her. So he challenged me.”
“An exogamy arrangement? Has he a claim on her?”
“No, you know they don’t have any affiliation patterns, stop hunting for them. All she is is an excuse for a combat.”
“I thought you’d get into trouble,” Tamara said priggishly, though she had thought no such thing. “You can’t sleep with all the native girls and not expect the assegai of a maddened savage in your back—Half the native girls, O.K., but not all of them—”
“Shit,” Bob said with discouragement. “I know. Look, I never got mixed up like this before. Sleeping with informants and stuff. I can’t seem to keep anything straight here. But they expect it. We talked it all out, way back in Buvuna, remember? Ram said he wouldn’t. That’s O.K., he’s forty, he’s an old man to them, anyhow he looks alien. But I look just like them, and if I refuse I’m offending local custom. It’s practically the only custom they’ve got. I have no choice—”
A laugh, a deep, Middle-Aged Woman belly laugh, welled up from Tamara. He looked at her a little startled. “All right, all right,” he said, and laughed too. “But God damn it! They always talked like these combats were voluntary!”
“They’re not?”
Bob shook his head. “I represent Hamo village against Gunda. It’s the only kind of war they have. All the Young Men are really worked up. They haven’t won a combat with Gunda for half a year, or some such huge historical timespan. It’s the World Cup. Tomorrow I get purified.”
“A ceremony?” Tamara found Bob’s predicament funny but trivial; she leapt from it to the hope of a ceremony, a ritual, anything that would prove some sense and structure in the rudimentary social life of the Ndif.