The Quiet Part 1

THE QUIET.

George Florance-Guthridge.

George Florance-Guthridge is the most western, most northern, and by all odds the coldest writer in this collection. He lives and teaches in Gambell, an Eskimo village on St. Lawrence Island, which is about fifty miles from Siberia. He says that this story (along with some forthcoming work that also combines anthropology with near future science fiction was one of the major catalysts for my interest in a teaching position in a remote location. "

The one time I met Guthridge, he was an English professor who had just published his first story, his name not yet hyphenated (the "Florance" in his byline is a tribute to his wife's role as live-in critic). He pursued the craft of English professors.h.i.+p for six or seven years, and then edited a science magazine from 1980 to 1981.

Guthridge has sold about four dozen stories in the past few years, as well as a truly oddball Western novel, The Blood letter, featuring the adventures of Joshua .44-40, a fifteen year-old r.e.t.a.r.ded dwarf.

Kuara, my son, the Whites have stolen the moon.

Outside the window, the sky is black. A blue-white disc hangs among the stars. It is Earth, says Doctor Stefanko. I wail and beat my fists. Straps bind me to a bed. Doctor Stefanko forces my shoulders down, swabs my arm. "Since you can't keep still, I'm going to have to put you under again," she says, smiling. I lie quietly.

It is not Earth, Earth is brown. Earth is Kalahari.

"You are on the moon," Doctor Stefanko says. It is the second or third time she has told me; I have awakened and slept, awakened and slept, until I am not sure what voices are dream and what are real, if any. Something p.r.i.c.ks my skin. "Rest now. You have had a long sleep."

I remember awakening the first time. The white room, white cloth covering me. Outside, blackness and the blue white disc.

"On the moon," I say. My limbs feel heavy. My head spins. Sleep drags at my flesh. "The moon."

"Isn't it wonderful?"

"And you say my husband, Tuka-dead."

Her lips tighten. She looks at me solemnly. "He did not survive the sleep."

"The moon is hollow," I tell her. "Everyone knows that. The dead sleep there." I stare at the ceiling. "I am alive and on the moon. Tuka is dead but is not here." The words seem to float from my mouth. There are little dots on the ceiling.

"Sleep now. That's a girl. We'll talk more later."

"And Kuara. My son. Alive." The dots are spinning. I close my eyes. The dots keep spinning.

"Yes, but . . .

The dots. The dots.

"About a hundred years ago a law was formulated to protect endangered species-animals that, unless humankind was careful, might become extinct," Doctor Stefanko says. Her face, no longer blurry, seems underlain with shadow. She has dark gray hair, drawn cheeks. 1 have seen her somewhere long before I was brought to this place. I cannot remember where. The memory slips away. Dread haunts my heart.

Gai, wearing a breechcloth, stands grinning near the window. The disc Doctor Stefanko calls Earth haloes his head. His huge, pitted tongue sticks out where his front teeth are missing. His shoulders slope like those of a hartebeest. His chest, leathery and wrinkled, is tufted with hair beginning to gray. 1 am not surprised to see him, after his treachery. He makes num-power pulse in the pit of my belly. 1 look away.

"Then the law was broadened to include endangered peoples. Peoples like the Gwi." Managing to smile. Doctor Stefanko presses her index finger against my nose. I toss my head, 1 don't trust her. She frowns. "Obviously it would be impossible to save entire tribes. So the founders of the law did what they thought best. They saved certain representatives. You. Your family. A few others, such as Gai. These representatives were frozen."

"Frozen?"

"Made cold."

"As during gum,' when ice forms inside the ostrich-egg containers?"

"Much colder."

It was not dream, then. I remember staring through a blue, crinkled sheen. Like light seen through a snakeskin. I could not move, though my insides never stopped s.h.i.+vering. So this is death, 1 kept thinking.

"In the interim you were brought here to the moon. To Carnival. It is a fine place. A truly international facility. built as a testament to the harmony of nations. Here we have tried to recreate the best of what used to be." She pauses, and her eyes grow keen. "This will be your new home now. U."

"And Kuara?"

"He will live here with you, in time." Something in her voice makes fear touch me. Then she says, "Would you like to see him?" Some of the fear slides away.

"Is it wise, Doctor?" Gai asks. "She has a temper, this one." His eyes grin down at me. He stares at my pelvis.

"Oh, we'll manage. You'll be a good girl, won't you, U?"

My head nods. My heart does not say yes or no.

The straps leap away with a loud click. Doctor Stefanko and Gai help me to my feet. The world wobbles. The Earth disc tilts and swings. The floor slants one way, another way. Needles tingle in my feet and hands. I am helped into a chair. More clicking. The door hisses open and the chair floats out, Doctor Stefanko leading, Gai lumbering behind. We move down one corridor after another. This is a place of angles. No curves, except the smiles of Whites as we pa.s.s. And they curve too much.

Another door hisses. We enter a room full of chill. Blue gla.s.s, the inside laced with frost, stretches from floor to ceiling along each wall. Frozen figures stand behind the gla.s.s. I remember this place. 1 remember how sluggish was the hate in my heart.

"Kuara is on the end," Doctor Stefanko says, her breath white.

The chair floats closer. My legs b.u.mp the gla.s.s; cold shocks my knees. The chair draws back. I lean forward. Through the gla.s.s I can see the closed eyes of my son. Ice furs his lashes and brows. His head is tilted to one side. His little arms dangle. I touch the gla.s.s in spite of the cold. 1 hear Gai's sharp intake of breath and he draws back my shoulders, but Doctor Stefanko puts a hand on Gai's wrist and I am released. There is give to the gla.s.s. Not like that on the trucks in the tsama patch. My num rises. My heart beats faster. Num enters my arms, floods my fingers. "Kuara," I whisper. Warmth spreads upon the gla.s.s. It makes a small, ragged circle.

"He'll be taken from here as soon as you've demonstrated you can adjust to your new home," Doctor Stefanko says.

Kuara. If only I could dance. Num would boil within me. I could kia. I would shoo away the ghosts of the cold. Awakening, you would step through the gla.s.s and into my arms.

Though we often lacked water, we were not unhappy. The tsama melons supported us. It was a large patch, and by conserving we could last long periods without journeying to the waterholes. Whites and tame Bushmen had taken over the Gam and Gautscha Pans, and the people there, the Kung, either had run away or had stayed for the water and now worked the Whites' farms and ate mealie meal.

There were eleven of us, though sometimes one or two more. Gai, unmated, was one of those who came and went. Tuka would say, "You can always count us on three hands, but never on two or four hands." He would laugh, then. He was always laughing. I think he laughed because there was so little game near the Akam Pan, our home. The few duiker and steenbok that had once roamed our plain had smelled the coming of the Whites and the fleeing Kung, and had run away. Tuka laughed to fill up the empty s.p.a.ces.

Sometimes, when he wasn't trapping springhare and porcupine, he helped me gather wood and tubers. We dug xwa roots and koa, the water root buried deep in the earth, until our arms ached. Sometimes we hit na trees with sticks, making the sweet berries fall, and Tuka would chase me round and round, laughing and yelling like a madman. It was times like those when I wondered why I had once hated him so much.

I wondered much about that during k.u.ma, a hot season when starvation stalked us. During the day I would take off my kaross, dig a shallow pit within what little shade an orogu bush offered, then urinate in the sand, cover myself with more sand, and place a leaf over my head. The three of us-Tuka, Kuara, and I-lay side by side like dead people. "My heart is sad from hunger," I sang to myself all day. "Like an old man, sick and slow." I thought of the bad things. My parents marrying me to Tuka before I was ready because, paying bride service, he brought my mother a new kaross. Tuka doing the marrying thing to me before I was ready. Everything before I was ready! Sometimes I prayed into the leaf that a paouw would fly down and think his p.e.n.i.s a fat caterpillar.

Then one night Tuka snared a honey badger. A badger, during k.u.ma! Everyone was excited. Tuka said,. "Yesterday, when we slept, I told the land that my U was hungry, and I must have meat for her and Kuara." The badger was very tender. Gai ate his share and went begging, though he had never brought meat to the camp. When the meat was gone we roasted ga roots and sang and danced while Tuka played the gwas.h.i.+. I danced proudly. Not for Tuka but for myself. Numpower uncurled from the pit of my belly and came boiling up my spine. I was afraid, because when num reaches my skull, I kia. Then I see ghosts killing people, and I smell the rotting smell of death, like decaying carca.s.ses.

Tuka took my head in his hands. "You must not kia," he said. "Not now. Your body will suffer too much for the visions." For other people, k'ia brings healing-of self, of others; for me it only brings pain.

Tuka held me beside the fire and stroked me, and num subsided. "When I lie in the sand during the day, I dream I have climbed the footpegs in a great baobab tree," he said. "I look out from the treetop, and the land is agraze with giraffe and wildebeest and kudu. 'You must kill these animals and bring them to U and Kuara before the Whites kill them,' my dream says."

Then he asked, "What do you think of when you lie there, U?"

I did not answer. I was afraid to tell him; I did not want him to feel angry or sad after his joy from catching the honey badger. He smiled. His eyes, moist, shone with firelight. Perhaps he thought num had stopped my tongue.

The next day the quiet came. Lying beneath the sand, I felt num pulse in my belly. I fought the fear it always brought. I did not cry out to Tuka. The pulsing increased. I began to tremble. Sweat ran down my face. Num boiled within me. It entered my spine and pushed toward my throat. My eyes were wide and I kept staring at the veins of the leaf but seeing dread. I felt myself going rigid and s.h.i.+vering at the same time.

My head throbbed; it was as large as a ga root. I could hear my mouth make sputtery noises, like Kuara used to at my breast. The pressure inside me kept building, building.

And suddenly was gone. It burrowed into the earth, taking my daydreams with it. I went down and down into the sand. I pa.s.sed ubbee roots and animals long dead, their bones bleached and forgotten. I came to a water hole far beneath the ground. Tuka was in the water. Kuara was too. He looked younger, barely old enough to toddle. Tuka, smiling, looked handsome. He is not a bad person, I told myself; he just wants his way too much. But he has brought meat to our people, I cannot forget that. And someday perhaps he will bring me a new kaross. Perhaps he will bring many things. Important things.

I took off my kaross, and the three of us held hands and danced, naked, splas.h.i.+ng. There was no num to seize me. No marrying-thing urge to seize Tuka. Only quiet, and laughter.

"This will be your new home, U," Doctor Stefanko says as she opens a door. She has given me a new kaross; of genuine gemsbok, she tells me, though I am uncertain why she speaks of it that way. When she puts her hand on my back and pushes me forward, the kaross feels soft and smooth against my skin. "We think you'll like it, and if there's anything you need . . ."

I grab the sides of the door and turn my face away. I will not live in or even look at the place. But her push becomes firmer, and I stumble inside. I cover my face with my hands.

"There now," Doctor Stefanko says. I spy through my fingers.

We are in Kalahari.

I turn slowly, for suddenly my heart is s.h.i.+ning and singing. No door. No walls. No angles. The sandveld spreads out beneath a cloudless sky. Endless pale gold gra.s.s surrounds scattered white-thorn and tsi bushes; in the distance lift several fiat-toped acacias and even a mongongo tree. A da.s.sie darts in and out of a rocky kranze.

"Here might be a good place for your tshus.h.i.+-your shelter," Doctor Stefanko says, pulling me forward. She enters the tall gra.s.s, bends, comes up smiling, holding branches in one hand, gui fibers in the other. "You see? We've even cut some of the materials you'll need." "But how-"

a "The moon isn't such a horrible place, now is it?" She strides back through the gra.s.s. "And we here at Carnival are dedicated to making your stay as pleasant as possible. Just look here." She moves a rock. A row of b.u.t.tons gleams. "Turn this k.n.o.b, and you can control your weather; no more suffering through those terrible hot and cold seasons. Unless you want to, of course." she adds quickly. "And from time to time some nice people will be looking down . . . in on you. From up there, within the sky." She makes a sweep of her arm. "They want to watch how you live; you-and other tribal people like you-are quite a sensation, you know." I stare at her without understanding. "Anyway if you want to see them, just turn this k.n.o.b. And if you want to hear what the monitor's saying about you, turn this one." She looks up, sees my confusion. "Oh, don't worry; the monitor translates everything. It's a wonderful device."

Standing, she takes hold of my arms. Her eyes almost seem warm. "You see, U, there is no more Kalahari on Earthnot as you knew it, anyhow-so we created another. In some ways it won't be as good as what you were used to, in a lot of ways it'll be better." She smiles. ".We think you'll like it."

"And Kuara?"

"He's waking now. He'll join you soon, on a trial basis." She takes hold of my hands. "Soon." Then she walks back in the direction we came, quickly fading in the distance. Suddenly she is gone. A veil of heat s.h.i.+mmers above the gra.s.s where the door seemed to have been. For a moment I think of following. Finally I shrug. I work at building my tshus.h.i.+. I work slowly, methodically, my head full of thoughts. I think of Kuara, and something gnaws at me. I drop the fiber I am holding and begin walking toward the opposite horizon, where a giraffe is eating from the mongongo tree.

Gra.s.shoppers, kxon ants, dung beetles, hop and crawl among the gra.s.ses. Leguaan lizards scuttle. A mole snake slithers for a hole beneath a uri bush. I walk quickly, the sand warm but not hot beneath my feet. The plain is sun-drenched, the few omirimbi watercourses parched and cracked, yet I feel little thirst. A steenbok leaps for cover behind a white-thorn. This is a good place, part of me decides. Here will Kuara become the hunter Tuka could not be. Kuara will never laugh to shut out sadness.

The horizon draws no closer.

I measure the giraffe with my thumb, walk a thousand paces, remeasure, walk another thousand paces, remeasure.

The giraffe does not change size.

I will walk another thousand. Then I will turn back and finish the tshus.h.i.+.

A hundred paces farther I b.u.mp something hard.

A wall.

Beyond, the giraffe continues feeding.

The Whites with the Land Rovers came during ga, the hottest season. The trucks bucked and roared across the sand. Tuka took Kuara and hurried to meet them. 1 went too, though I walked behind with the other women. There were several white men and some Bantu. Gai was standing in the lead truck,, waving and grinning.

A white, blond-haired woman climbed out. She was wearing white shorts and a light brown s.h.i.+rt with rolled-up sleeves. I recognized her immediately. Doctor Morse, come to study us again. Tuka had said the Whites did not wonder about their own culture, so they liked to study ours.

She talked to us women a long time, asking about our families and how we felt about SWAPO, the Southwest African People's Army. Everyone spoke at once. She kept waving her hands for quiet. "What do you think, U?" she would

ask. "What's your opinion?" I said she should ask Tuka; he was a man and understood such things. Doctor Morse frowned, so I said SWAPO should not kill people. SWAPO should leave people alone. Doctor Morse nodded and wrote in her notebook as I talked. I was pleased. The other women were very jealous.

Doctor Morse told us the war in South Africa was going badly; soon it would sweep this way. When Tuka finished looking at the engines I asked him what Doctor Morse meant by "badly." Badly for Blacks, or Whites. Badly for those in the south, or for those of us in the north. He did not know. None of us asked Doctor Morse.

Then she said, "We have brought water. Lots of water We've heard you've been without." Her hair caught the sunlight. She was very beautiful for a white woman.

We smiled but refused her offer. She frowned but did not seem angry. Maybe she thought it was because she was white. If so, she was wrong; accept gifts, and we might forget the ones Kalahari gives us. "Well, at least go for a ride in the trucks," she said, beaming. Tuka laughed and, taking Kuara by the hand, scrambled for the two Land Rovers. I shook my head. "You really should go," Doctor Morse said. "It'll be good for you."

"That is something for men to do," I told her. "Women do not understand such things."

"All they're going to do is ride in the back!"

"Trucks. Hunting. Fire. Those are men's things," I said.

Only one of the trucks came back. Everyone but Tuka. Kuara, and some of the Bantu returned. "The truck's stuck in the sand; the Whites decided to wait until dawn to pull it out," Gai said. "Tuka said he'd sleep beside it. You know how he is about trucks!" Everyone laughed. Except me. An empty s.p.a.ce throbbed in my heart; that I wanted him home angered me.

Then rain came. It was ga go-male rain. It poured down strong and sudden, not even and gentle, the female rain that fills the land with water. Rain, during ga! Everyone shouted and danced for joy. Even the Whites danced. A miracle! people said. I thought about the honey badger caught during k.u.ma, and was afraid. I felt alone. In spite of my fear, perhaps because of it, I did a foolish thing. 1 slept away from the others.

In the night, the quiet again touched me. Num uncurled in my belly. I did not beckon it forth. I swear I didn't. I wasn't even thinking about it. As I slept, I felt my body clench tight. In my dreams 1 could hear my breathing-shallow and rapid. Fear seized me and shook me like the twig of a ni-ni bush. I sank into the earth. Tuka and Kuara were standing slumpshouldered at the water hole where we had danced. Kuara was wearing the head of a wildebeest; the eyes had been carved out and replaced with smoldering coals. "Run away, Mother," he kept saying.

I awoke to shadows. A fleeting darkness came upon me before I could move. I glimpsed Gai grinning beneath the moon. Then a hand was clapped over my mouth.

Doctor Stefanko returns after I've finished the hut. She and Gai bring warthog and kudu hides, porcupine quills, tortoise sh.e.l.ls, ostrich eggs, a sharpening stone, an awl, two a.s.sagai blades, pots of Bantu clay. Many things. Gai grins as he sets them down. Doctor Stefanko watches him. "Back on Earth, he might not have remained a bachelor if your people hadn't kept thinking of him as one," she tells me as he walks away. Then she also leaves.

Later, she brings Kuara.

He comes sprinting, gangly, the gra.s.s nearly to his chin. "Mama," he shouts, "Mama, Mama," and I take him in my arms, whirling and laughing. I put my hands upon his cheeks; his arms are around my waist. Real. Oh, yes, so very real, my Kuara! Tears roll down my face. He looks hollow-eyed, and his hair has been shaved. But I do not let concern stop my heart. I weep from joy, not pain.

Doctor Stefanko again reminds me he's here on a trial basis only. Then she leaves, and Kuara and I talk. He babbles