96 [July 28] - Let him kill me, what difference does it make?

“Deep breath,” he said.

“Surya… did he talk to you about this?” Though I was immersed in water, my mouth and throat were bone-dry. “Is that why…”

“No. My papa.” Of course. “Deep breath, Chevenga. Do I need to say it again, sorry?”

“No.” The word came out a croak. “I don’t think… it hurt me that badly. But then… Surya keeps pointing out to me… things that I thought… didn’t hurt me… but did… so I can’t know… it hurt like fire at the time… but I was just a kid.”

“Yes, you were,” he said, firm in the resolve of apology, even as the tears now spilled. “You did not deserve me doing that.”

“But… you didn’t… know. You couldn’t… I didn’t… tell you.” It took everything in me to get the words out, against some hot force that was rising up in me. I wiped his tears with the backs of my fingers.

“Chevenga, quit looking after me… It’s not your responsibility. I made you look after me over and over again, and I was the father. You even found my father, who is everything to me now.”

“You would have that undone? You needed, and I really understand, now, why you so needed. I’ve met your mother.”

“Chevenga, you were just a child, and I’m all right, and you don’t have to look after me. It’s all kyashin backwards.”

There was something else to his transformation, I realized, even through my emotion. He was going to go before the Committee today. Now he’d be able to tell them he’d apologized to me for what he’d done. My heart hardening a little, I wondered if they’d ask him when.

“I need to look after myself,” he added.

“I know a very good healer.”

He laughed. Almost from my first visit to Surya, I’d been in the habit of recommending him to people, so much so I now had a reputation for it. “This family has certainly given him a lot of work,” Esora-e said with a snort.

“Mostly one of us,” I said.

“Something Papa said to me last week: people get mad when they are scared. It doesn’t mean they don’t love you, even if they’re yelling at you... I never... I couldn’t... see it...” Are you trying to prove to me that you love me, I thought, or trying to prove it to yourself? But he added, “I’ll bet your Niku... is wildly scared of a whole passle of things we couldn’t know. When she comes back you’ll be able to figure all that out.”

“If she comes back.” Best I get the word ‘when’ out of my mind.

“And if Skorsas overheard any of this... fine. It’ll all come out in the Committee reports and he’ll be able to read anything he likes anyway.” He shifted from one side of the tub to the other, sculling the water with his hands, and I wondered what it felt like with one hand thumbless.

“Shadow-father, I forgive you.” Your eyes beg for it; can I say no?

He twitched in slight shock nonetheless, and his eyes filled with tears. “Thank you, shadow-son,” he whispered.

“At least I think I do,” I said. “Maybe I can’t really know whether I truly forgive, if I don’t know how much it might have hurt me… I forgive you in principle.”

“Right… well…” He clenched his eyes shut to squeeze the tears out and then threw water over his face. “If you need to hear it again, I’ll say it again.” His eyes flicked to the sword-side of mine; I realized I was rubbing the temple he’d hit with my own hand, with a tender pressure like a healer. His eyes stayed there; I dropped my hand.

“I promised I’d do anything in my power to help you...” He reached, and touched the spot with three fingers of his sword-hand, the same hand, with such gentleness it seemed the dream of a touch in the mind of one who has desperately yearned for it, more than a real one. I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he breathed again, wrapped his arm around my head carefully as if I were broken, and touched his lips to the spot the same way. “You didn’t deserve that.”

I found myself letting out a deep choking sob, then more. Tears came up burning, then words, that I couldn’t say in more than a whisper, that I had never told him or anyone. When I look back at how I recounted it in this memoir, even, I did not say these things, as if I had forgotten them.

“It felt like you were killing me,” I whispered, my throat strangling dry, and roaring in my ears. “It felt like you were killing me. My mind was flying into pieces. I thought, ‘He’s going to kill me. I don’t care.... I don’t kyashin care.’ ” His arm tightened around my head, and his whole body trembled with sudden sobs.

“ ‘So I die right now. Who kyashin cares? What kyashin difference does it make? Let him kevyalin kill me, it doesn’t matter. What’s anyone losing? Fourteen measly years, tops.” He started crying Aigh! with each breath. “So I’ll keep glaring at him till he kills me.”

“And I… I…” he gasped, “I was thinking… ‘I’ll make him respect me; I have to’…!”

I turned to stare at him, shock and anger cutting through the two curtains of my own tears and his. “I respected you! I loved you!”

“I’m sorry…! I’m sorry! Aiiiggh, Kahara, I’m sorry!”

“You were my shadow-father and you were going to kill me!”

“I shouldn’t have done it! You didn’t deserve it... I knew that... even then... or part of me did... aigh… aigh… aigh…”

“I guess I need to talk to Surya about this,” I said, from the sensible part of me, which stood off watching as always.

“Anything I have to do to help, Chevenga,” he said again, “I will. I can’t undo it… let me try to make up for it. If anything I can do will speed things up or make them easier for you…”

My strength had all drained out of me, I realized, as I whispered, “I’ll take you up on that, if there’s any way, if it’s necessary.” It wasn’t a matter of wanting to lie down, but having to, just as after the first visit with Surya, and many that had followed. “I’m done,” I said. “I mean, for the day. If this were the Marble Palace I’d call for a carrying-chair.”

I made a move for the steps out of the bath, dragging like an elder. He steadied my elbow. “I might be old but I can still carry you.” I didn’t let him, but I did let him take my arm over his shoulders, like a friend when you are wounded. Skorsas, who was hanging outside the door, took my other arm.

“Thank you,” I breathed as they helped me lie back in bed. “I love you, shadow-father.”

“I love you, too.”

I wanted his hand on my temple again, so I pulled it to and laid the four fingers there, laying my own across the stump where his thumb had been. I closed my eyes, and in a moment my thoughts began scattering along nonsensical paths, as they do when I am falling asleep. It was still before noon, but I had slept badly the night before.

I don’t remember it, but he told me later that as I was drifting off, I thanked him, calling him, “Dad,” as I never had in my life. Skorsas confirmed it, having learned the Yeoli word from hearing my children calling me it.

†

Excerpt from the Proceedings of the Chevenga Mental State Assessment Committee of the Assembly of Yeola-e, etesora 48, Y. 1556

Miniya Shae-Sima, Servant of Tinga-e-Pekola: You don’t remember how many times you struck him?

Esora-e Mangu: Not the exact number, no.

Mi: Can you approximate?

E: Maybe ten times.

Mi: Chevenga himself thought it was more than ten, but he wasn’t sure.

E: It could have been more. I… I was not counting. Or thinking.

Linasika Aramichiya, Servant of Michalere: You certainly weren’t.

Mi: Esora-e… while you were doing this, did you have any… doubts… by which I mean, did you have any thoughts of, it’s the mind of an anaraseye I’m jarring to semi-consciousness here, a mind whose good functioning is important to the future of Yeola-e?

E: Well, I was doing it for Yeola-e, in the sense that if he didn’t learn to sufficiently respect the authority of parents as a child, he wouldn’t sufficiently respect the authority of the people as a semanakraseye.

Mi: I understand your stated motive, but… all right, let me put it this way. Did you feel that the risk that he might not sufficiently respect the people’s authority as semanakraseye was great enough that it would be better to possibly damage his mental function through blows to the head, so that he would become one whom Assembly would not approve?

E: No! I didn’t think anything like that!

Mi: Did you just… not think it possible, that you could cause damage to his mind?

E: I… I was controlling the force of the strokes!

Mi: But you took him to semi-consciousness; you’ve admitted that, consistent with what he said and with the notes of the Haian. Are you not aware that that can cause lasting damage?

E: Yes, I am.

Mi: Were you not then?

E: Well, I wasn’t as… as aware as I am now. That night, the Haian came and spoke to me and told me exactly the chances… that I might have hurt him permanently and we could only know for sure over time. He told me even that, it’s rare, but it can happen that a person who’s been hit and not even that badly stunned can… die of it, a few days later. I was devastated… I’d never meant to really hurt him… if I’d killed him I’d have killed myself. I can’t say how desperately I hoped that I hadn’t, and how happy I was when it turned out he was all right.

Mi: So you didn’t have any such concerns at the time you were doing it?

E: No. It’s as I say, and the Servant of Michalere says, I was not thinking. I’ll regret it as long as I live.

Mi: Since that time, have you ever spoken with Chevenga about what happened?

E: Yes.

Mi: Have you and he made peace about it?

E: Yes.

Mi: How long ago was that?

E: This morning.

†

Omonae Shae-Lemana, Servant of Thara-e-Tinanga-e: Esora-e, when we had Chevenga before us on this topic, we asked him what he felt was the most painful thing you did to him, and he answered without hesitation that it was not striking him, but telling him, in any number of different wordings, that he was a son unworthy of his blood-father. That Tennunga would have disavowed him, or Tennunga could not have produced such a son, or Tennunga would have been ashamed of him, this manner of thing. How many times did you say the like to him, when he was a child?

E: I… I don’t know.

O: You mean it was too many to have kept count of in your mind?

E: Yes, I didn’t, who would keep track of that?

O: When he had grown up, did you say the like then too?

E: I have… a few times.

O: Have you made peace with him about this?

E: Uh… no.

O: Why have you not?

E: I… didn’t know it was so painful to him, until now.

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