But Alice had her own issues to deal with. All this time at the hunting hut, it appeared she had just been quietly foraging, writing, getting on with her daily life, but actually she hated herself for not being able to live except in writing, except in a world in which she talked to herself.
Maybe I need to take a trip to the cliff myself, Alice had thought.
And as Atile’i carried her over the undulating forest floor, she suddenly remembered a time many years before on the way to the creek with Thom when they had caught a stag beetle with a lovely pair of mandibles. Delighted, she had brought it home to make a specimen of it, hoping to surprise Toto on his birthday. She used ether to put it under, pierced its exoskeleton with a size-three insect pin and placed it in one of the cells of a small insect specimen case. There were already two inmates: a giant Formosan stag beetle and a deep mountain stag beetle. The mandibles of this newest member of the collection were just so conspicuous. It was so beautiful, like a miniature deer.
One sleepless night, she went to get pen and paper out of the drawer only to be given a terrible fright. She jerked the drawer open, spilling out the contents.
It turned out that the newest member of the collection, still pinned in its cell, was slowly rowing its three pairs of legs, like it was in a swimming pool. Maybe because the dose of ether was too small, that bug, brimming with life, had only gone into a temporary coma. Now it was resurrected. Its neighbors were still peacefully impaled, while this tiny deer kept pacing the void, unable to go anywhere.
Do insects feel pain? Maybe when their relatives or family members are gone, they are oblivious, but when pierced with a size-three insect pin are they really as senseless as we imagine them to be?
As Atile’i carried Alice through the forest, each of them was giving off a distinctive smell, because of memory. The olfactorily acute forest critters noticed. The damp, long-settled leaves were silent, but the freshly fallen leaves sounded like brittle bones. Atile’i snapped the bones of the forest floor with every step. It was raining now, the raindrops falling gently, and when Atile’i looked up he thought he could see the end of every thread of rain.
They finally managed to get through the forest to the base of the massive cliff before nightfall. It was like a wall, a giant creature. All the winds in the world had to stop before it, and the forest could only look up in wonder.
Atile’i let Alice down and wiped his sweaty, shining face. Alice pulled out the raincoat stashed in her windbreaker and put on her rain hat, wrapping herself in a small, yellow world. She was calmer than she had expected. So here it is, she thought. Here it was.
Since it was already dark, Alice and Atile’i had to stay another night in the mountains. And because the bear had destroyed the tent, they had to search all over for a place to get out of the rain, finally finding a hollow beneath the cliff. It was not deep, but if you crouched down you could pack a few people in there with you. The ceiling was higher on one side than the other, and at the low end the hollow was apparently connected to another cave, though Alice could not see for sure in the dark. She remembered the people in the alpine association telling her that the cliff never used to exist, that it only appeared after the earthquake due to fault displacement.
The mountain was split asunder, the cliff made manifest. This was the destination on the map. Was this where Dahu had found Thom’s body?
Alice stared at Atile’i from behind. He was making a fire to brew tea. In the flickering light, his shadow on the wall beside her was sometimes as big as Thom, sometimes as small as Toto. She caressed Atile’i’s shadow on the stone wall of the hollow embedded in the base of the cliff, murmuring, “So this is where you’ve been, all this time.” Now, in full possession of her faculties, Alice finally realized that all is shadow. But even a shadow is enough. Even a shadow of a shadow is enough.
Atile’i, having finished making the fire, was sitting quietly watching the rain outside. The rain suddenly became surprisingly heavy, and rainwater started flowing in and down toward the nether reaches of the hollow, whence it trickled away. It was as if there was a river running through the cave straight toward the heart of the mountain, destination unknown.
“How is the weather at sea today?” asked Atile’i, calmly.
Alice did a double take for a few seconds before replying, in a voice as fine as drizzle, “Very fair.”
29. The Man with the Compound Eyes III
The man sits up, but the pain forces him to lie back down. Then he yawns a big yawn, whether due to sorrow or some other emotion he does not know. It is as if the world of men has become too tedious and he would prefer eternal sleep.
After the yawn, the man is pleasantly surprised to discover that the pain has subsided somewhat. The man stops stifling his urge to yawn, and the yawns come fast and furious, like they are lining up, waiting for the man to exhale them. In less than a minute he yawns a grand total of thirteen times.
“Not as painful as you might imagine, is it?”
The man knows most of the bones in his body are broken, that it’s the kind of compound fracture that can never be reset. He has sustained many serious fractures in his life, and knows what it feels like, as if the feeling has been etched in his memory. But this time he does not actually feel any pain.
“Strange, it doesn’t hurt.” The man quickly alerts to what this lack of pain implies. “So, I’m dead?”
“How many yawns?”
“Fifteen.” The man has miscounted. It’s actually been thirteen.
“Then, by the regular definition, you’re dead.”
The man does not understand what “by the regular definition” is supposed to mean. He props himself up, stands up, and walks away from the cliff, looking up anxiously. “But my son is still up there.”
The man with the compound eyes shakes his head, as if perplexed by the man’s inability to understand, and says, “He’s not up there. You can say he’s up there all you want, but in fact he isn’t. You know it well.”
I know it, I know it not, I know it, I know it not, I know it, I know it not, I know it, I know it not … Incensed, he ignores the man with the compound eyes and tries to climb up the cliff by himself, but finds he cannot. He seems to retain a physical existence, but cannot operate his body as he pleases. More precisely, he can’t climb. He seems to be limited to a single plane of movement, as if he’s gone flat. So this is what death is like.
“You can’t go up, not anymore,” the man with the compound eyes confirms, his reply impassive, unwavering, unhesitating.
He knows the man is right, he cannot go up, so he sighs a sigh so heavy and so cold that it seems to cover the plants around him with a film of frost. But he is still worried about his son. He is so anxious he gets up to try over and over again.
The man with the compound eyes does not stop him, only waits until he tires himself out and sits down dejectedly on the ground. In despair he looks at the man with the compound eyes, as if to use every last ounce of strength to appeal for assistance, but all he sees is the man’s compound eyes, which seem to change from moment to moment in hallucinatory permutations and combinations. And the scene in each of the tiny ommatidia that compose every compound eye is completely different with each passing instant. Watching carefully, the man’s mind is helplessly mesmerized by the instantaneous images playing in each ommatidium: could be an erupting undersea volcano, might be a falcon’s-eye view of a landscape, perhaps just a leaf about to fall. Each seems to be playing a kind of documentary.