Atile’i looked really happy that day, maybe because I gave him pen and paper of his own. He kept asking me, “Is the weather fair at sea today?” And I kept replying. Three minutes later, he asked again, for the sixth time. The seventh query came less than five minutes later.
I didn’t mean to ignore him, but my mind was wandering. Not having received my reply, Atile’i looked humiliated, as if he’d been snubbed by his best friend. He had to confront me.
“You must reply: ‘Very fair.’ ”
“But I already did.”
“When someone asks, ‘Is the weather fair at sea today?’ And you hear. When you hear you must reply, ‘Very fair.’ ”
“Even if it’s raining as hard as it is now, you still have to reply in this way?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you don’t feel like replying?”
“Yes.”
We both gazed out at the sea, which seemed to be slowly bringing rain. Every so often a breaker would come rolling in. Following a silence of ten waves, Atile’i asked me another time, “Is the weather fair at sea today?”
“Very fair,” I replied and for the first time I realized I could ask him back. “Is the weather fair on your sea today?”
“Yes it is, extremely fair,” Atile’i replied.
I don’t know why, but right at that moment we both began to cry.
19. The Story of Dahu’s Island
When I started to “categorize” all this trash I was amazed at all the strange, smashed-up stuff that turned up: the body panel of a scooter, a stroller, condoms, needles, bras, nylons, etc. I often wonder who the owners were and in what circumstances they threw these things out. I remember one time in the army I made a bet with a comrade that if I had the guts to wear a bra to bayonet practice he had to treat the whole company to drinks. Well, I really did it and we all laughed our heads off. That evening when I sneaked out to buy a midnight snack with a buddy, I scrunched up that pink lace bra and tossed it into the ocean. Sometimes I get this crazy idea it’s floated back here with the Trash Vortex.
I find lots of people are misled by news reports into thinking that the only materials that won’t decompose are plastics. My observation these past few days is that artificial fibers in general are also amazingly durable. And there are lots of things in plastic bags or styrofoam containers that are still particularly intact. I’ve found things like rings, glasses, watches and cell phones — these get sorted as “intact valuables.” I hear someone even found gold! That’s why there are so many outsiders on the beach these days: they think they can find treasures in the trash. But I’m more concerned about the residents of the tribal villages. They once depended on coastal planting and fishing to make a living, and now they can only get by picking through the trash on the beach. It’s hard to escape an occupation, and once you’re used to a certain lifestyle it’s hard to change. That’s what Millet told me, anyway.
I brought Millet here, too, when we were still together. We went for a few strolls along this exact same stretch of beach. This one time, one of her earrings fell out. We searched all over the beach, but instead of finding it we lost the other earring. I kissed one of her ringless ears and she squinted at me like a sleepy cat. I wonder if that pair of earrings is still somewhere on the beach.
Sometimes we also find living creatures trapped in the trash. Some fish seem to have survived in plastic bags for quite a long time. We discovered a nearly complete whale skeleton as well. What we find most often is dead sea turtles, ordinary green sea turtles as well as loggerheads and leatherbacks. The meat has usually been eaten, leaving only an empty shell behind. We notify the marine biologists, who come right away and measure the shells on the beach. These shells won’t rot anytime soon: in the end all they’ll do for these poor creatures is prove they once existed.
Each piece of trash that floated here seems to have brought a story with it from across the sea, because anything that’s been thrown away has its own tale to tell.
For the past week, various experts have been gathering on the beach. There are specialists in ocean currents, littoral biology, plastics, etc. Today there was a team of trash experts from Germany who have reportedly come to “study” the trash we’ve sorted. They took samples, which had to be clearly labeled, indicating where each thing was found and how much it weighs. I hear one of the trash experts wrote a cultural history of Germany based on a landfill in the Ruhr. He recommended that the trash on the beach be sorted according to “function” not recycling value, because who knows? Maybe some day it might be an important source for the study of the cultural history of globalization.
Our public officials, it seems, authorized the team to take a certain quantity of samples while refusing to implement an overly fussy trash-sorting system. They need to get this taken care of before the upcoming election. Some of the higher-ups told us privately that all we have to do is sort the trash into recyclable valuables and worthless junk, then divide the junk into combustibles and noncombustibles, and to do it as quickly as possible. “Junk is junk even after you’ve sorted it. What good does it do to study this stuff?” they said.
Though “Restore the Shore, Formosa!” (the stupid slogan the government came up with to get everyone involved in the “beach cleanup”) seems to be in full swing, I hear the expert assessment is that it’ll take more than a century for the coast to return to normal. For myself, I doubt whether there is even such a thing as “normal” anymore. Does the Seventh Sisid count as part of “normal?”
You know Hai Lee, the writer of ocean literature? He often visits the area around the Seventh Sisid, right? The past few days he’s been bringing students and volunteers to gather creatures that washed up dead on the beach. They’ve found shrimp, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, brittle stars, hermit crabs and true crabs. He says there are many species he’s never seen before. I asked him whether the sea would return to normal someday, and he said there’s no such thing as normal anymore: everything’s changed.
I said that’s not what my father taught me. My father said there were two things in this world that would never change: the mountains and the sea.
According to Bunun tradition, a man who doesn’t know how to hunt is not a real man. The Atayal call us “shadows,” because our hunting skills are so refined. But my father often said that the first thing to hunting isn’t learning how to hunt but getting to know the mountains.
Father said that during the colonial era the Japanese kept forcing the Bunun to move around for fear we would unite against the authorities. They even forced us to cultivate rice, just to prevent us from getting to know the mountains. Once we got used to paddy agriculture, the status of a hunter plummeted, and the Bunun people knew the mountains less and less. And mountains will not protect a person who does not know them.
My father said that traditionally Bunun kids start young, learning diverse mountain lore until they are old enough to participate in the hunt. That’s the year they undergo the ear-shooting ritual, which is like a qualifying examination to become a hunter.
I will always remember that year, the first time I was allowed to take part in the ear-shooting ritual. The elders put the targets in the ritual ground. There were six ears in alclass="underline" at the top a pair of deer ears, in the middle a pair of roebuck ears, and at the bottom a goat ear and a wild boar ear. The goat ear was a furry little thing, so adorable. We stood so close that for a Bunun kid who had gotten trained in the use of a bow and arrow it should have been almost impossible to miss. My father was an ace marksman, both with a gun and with a bow. From the time I picked up a bow and arrow as a boy I was always told I had my father’s shooting stance. The elders took turns carrying us kids to face the targets, and the arrows would pierce the ears with a thunk. They carried my brother out and his arrow hit an ear, a deer ear. Then it was my turn. I picked up the bow with supreme confidence and aimed, but in the instant I shot for some reason my bow sagged. I hit the goat ear instead!