200 - The commonality of mutual humanity

“You can do it,” he said. “So long as you get off thinking that you can’t.

“Remember what asa kraiya is,” he said. “The natural state. Any time life is drawn away from that—you’ll know this from whatever you’ve picked up from Kaninjer—it is urged back to it, hard, however much that urging is hidden.” I almost was not hearing him, my mind in a whirl, anger and fear and shame all tearing at me. “Remember why you had no will or ability to fight him—the commonality of mutual humanity, you called it, or something like that.” I sat down again and buried my face in my hands, lost, furious, bereft, terrified. He patted my shoulder, and stood to go. “You don’t have to understand it immediately, no one’s attacking you tomorrow. Let it roil around inside and it will come in time.”

†

Dear Chevenga:

I can’t stand not to tell you this, but you’re on asa kraiya island, so I have to pretend to write a letter as is my habit to the people who are not with me.

You were right to tell me to hold off trying to make peace with Niku the day you were ceremonially reinstated. An insincere apology… yes, she’d have seen right through it.

It’s my father who finally got me to see the light. He has made me see the light about so many things. It’s like he’s raising me. I’m being raised the second time. My father never got a chance to raise his child back then so he’s doing it now. I would have thought it was far too late. But perhaps it never is.

It’s about accepting her as a human being, he said to me. “She’s your husband’s wife. How can you not accept her as a human being?” I wanted to ask him, how do you deal with all those… foreigners?

“I look at her and, like with a Lakan, I can’t help think about monkeys,” I said to him.

“You imagine your shadow-son in bed with a monkey?”

We were in the hot-tub at the time, and I happened to be taking a sip of tea, and it came spluttering out my nose. “Well…! Um… no. But if I think of her as a human being I have to do chiravesa… I have to. It wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t. And I really don’t want to. I don’t know if I can… she’s Niah. I bet she wouldn’t want to do it either.

“It could be; she’s a foreigner, she hasn’t grown up with the custom.”

“That means I don’t have to!” I said. Papa laughed. I write all of this to you hoping to All-Spirit you’ll forgive me, my child.

“My shadow-son meets her in the vilest, most ugly place in the world, a place that we should have razed as far as I’m concerned… and falls in love with her. She gets away, but doesn’t manage to get him out, for all she loves him…”

“That wasn’t her fault.”

“No… true. Then she goes home and they nearly cut her throat because she’s told my shadow-son about the wing. Some spat on her shadow because we were going to know… they couldn’t take it. There was one older guy, pretty damn swarthy, dried-up old stick… he just could not get it through his head that we were…”

“Human beings?”

Touché, Papa.

“Everyone else apologized for him, their excuse that he wasn’t all there. I don’t want to be the old uncle who isn’t all there.” I guess I am saying this to you, Chevenga, more than I was saying it to him. “When I was a kid, I didn’t even dream of this… a tenth of the changes… it’s too fast, it’s too much…

“I figured I’d prove to him that she wasn’t good enough for him, sparring… I didn’t think, really, about… I couldn’t see her as a warrior, aside from being ornamental, muscular but ornamental; they weren’t warriors. I wanted to show her that she shouldn’t be with my shadow-son. I was so angry. I can never just sit and just do nothing but talk, I have to do something…” He just listened. So gently. “I blamed her for Chevenga being mad at me. In some part of me, I still do. It was as if he rejected Yeola-e by choosing her.”

“He didn’t reject Yeola-e. Look what he did.”

“No, his Yeoli girlfriends rejected him.”

“Now we know why.”

“I mean… how could she… I was astounded that someone not-Yeoli could say yes, once I understood! And he had to get so mad at me to protect her… in a foreign country. I know what he did and why, and I was wrong to do what I did. Some part of me can’t forgive her for being right yet… because if she’s right than I’m wrong.”

“If you forgive her,” my father said. “You’re both right.”

“That’s like putting my head on backwards… I don’t know how. I’m so used to one right and one wrong… it just balances wrong. I’ve heard it said that both people in a disagreement can win… I don’t understand it, I don’t see it… in any conflict there is a winner and loser, and I don’t want to be the loser. Papa, you really want me to do this, don’t you?”

“I want you to have peace in your family,” he said.

“I did say I would do anything. If it means that he’s happy, and she’s happy… and it’s just at the cost of my pride, that’s worth it.”

“How is it at the cost of your pride?” He looked genuinely puzzled, Chevenga.

“Like I said, that’s all I know… how else can I come at it? I can apologize sincerely and honestly and absolutely down to my guts… That kind of thing I can swallow. I’ve done it all my life.”

“You don’t think you’d feel happier?”

“I don’t know. On some level it’s easy enough to split yourself in two… you throw what you feel in a corner and put a lock on it… you do what you should, you do what’s right. I can do that, I know how.”

I think, Chevenga, he didn’t understand a word. I think perhaps you don’t either. Or perhaps you do… or did… all too well. I will write the rest of this later.

†

Dear Piatsri:

Merao and I were in the hot tub when we got to talking. In water is the only place I can feel light, now that I weigh as much as three people. Even in the air I feel heavy. But it relaxes you too. Maybe that’s why she picked this moment.

She looks me straight in the eyes. “Niku... your husband has gone asa kraiya. The way of peace. You think maybe now’s a good time to make peace with his shadow-father?”

I stare back at her. “Umm. It... it’s peace enough, isn’t it?”

“Hmm,” she says. “If I were to ask Chevenga, what do you think he’d say?”

Piat... where do the Yeoli women learn to be so pointed with their words? “He’d say... they’re polite to each other, but don’t get along.”

“And that would be peace enough?”

“He leaves my children be and that’s what I watch him for. I... care... when I think about him wanting me dead rather than married to his shadow-son, but I try not to think about it much.”

“Hmm. That doesn’t sound like peace to me. It seems more like a fragile mutual non-aggression treaty.”

“Mer... you’ve landed on the sorest point I have... from a thousand man-heights. I’m afraid of apologizing because it feels like I’d be agreeing with him. And that’s crazy.”

“Agreeing with him? But apologizing isn’t about what he has said or done or thinks, it’s about what you did.”

“I’d be apologizing for defending myself, Mer. That cuts.” I twitch a bit because I’m getting kicked a couple of times from the inside. Or maybe pummeled.

“I guess you’re stuck with it then. As long as you’re happy, and those you love are, too.”

Piat, there’s got to be a school for talking like that. I wonder if it’s in Vae Arahi. I looked across at the cool pool where the kids were jumping in from the edges and splashing.

“Not happy, Mer. I...” The tears welled up. Damn the pregnancy. “I can swallow a lot for the kids to be happy, including my own happiness when it comes to some people. I should apologize to the man.”

She laid her hand on mine, gently. “You think you could make it sincere? There’s no point in doing it if not; he’ll just see through it.”

“As sincere as I can, to a man who doesn’t see me as any more than a baboon. Though my behind isn’t as red.”

“A baboon? But you sparred him. That part of him, at least, can’t see you that way.”

“I suppose. He’s never shown any signs of that kind of respect. The thing I’m totally sincere about is that I didn’t want him dead and don’t now. And I’m... impressed with him taking back all the shit he heaped on Ch… Virani-e... He’s stronger than he thinks.”

“Have you ever told him you’re impressed by that?”

“Never.”

“Have you ever told him you sincerely don’t want him dead?”

“No. You don’t tell someone who’s tried to seriously kill you kak like that.”

“Niku... the Lakans were trying to seriously kill us in the Lakan war. Then they were our allies against the Arkans. And Chevenga decorated them when they deserved it as much as he did his own. Old enemies can make peace and become friends.”

“So... I have to forgive him for wanting me dead.”

“Niku... just start with telling him what you just told me. You don’t want him dead. That’s something that people like to know, you know.”

“Given that it’s the thing sticking in my craw, I get it. I can tell him that and mean every word.”

“Of course... hmm... maybe I’m not thinking here. You tell him, ‘I don’t want you dead,’ and he might turn around and say, ‘Well, that’s nice to hear from family.’ I’m not sure I wouldn’t say that if I were him.”

I sighed and sank my head under and blew some bubbles before coming up again. “Well the mutual non-aggression treaty is going to have to be good enough then.”

“Niku... you were saying you appreciated what he’s doing for Ch… Virani-e, right?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever told him that?”

“Hmm. When I look at the great cracks opening up in him... with his dad too... I can like him... He’s become a better person. There are all kinds of things I never saw in him before. But when he looks at me, he closes up like a giant clam.”

“Of course he does. He doesn’t know that you don’t want him dead. I guess it would be good to tell him that, even if he answers sarcastically... hey, he might not.”

“And if I’m ready for a sarcastic remark, I won’t prick and get mad. I’ll just be able to sign chalk and agree with him.”

“Niku... if he were to say it’s not right to go that long with family not telling them you don’t want them dead... he’d have a point. And you not telling him that you appreciate what he did for Chevenga, that’s you being a giant clam. You see what I mean?”

I had to go under again. Did she not see that it worked both ways? “It’s either he’s right and I’m wrong, or I’m right and he’s wrong,” I said when I came back up. “And one of us ends up feeling we should be dead. I don’t appreciate being told that the only way to make peace is to admit I was wrong and should have let him just kill me.”

She looks at me kind of pop-eyed. “Who said that?”

Oh kak, I think, she thinks I’m saying she did. “Ummm. No one. I think I just figured out why I’m so mad about it.” That’s why, I think they’re thinking I should have let him kill me. Not… something… I want to keep thinking. I had to talk to Surya about this, I knew, Piatsri.

“If no one said that... where did it come from? Niku... you can both be partly wrong and partly right. So come clean on your wrong, and maybe he’ll come clean on his.”

“I feel as though if I do that... I’m not just losing... but... handing him the knife and saying ‘Finish what you wanted.’”

“He’s not going to do that! Niku, if you pull this off, both you and he, and everyone else, will win. Because peace is victory for both sides. If you do it and he doesn’t come through with his end... then you’ll have proved yourself better in everyone’s eyes… then you get the victory.”

I took a deep breath. And another. I was starting to feel a little nauseated so I pulled myself out of the hot water, leaving only my legs in. “You’re right. I’ve got to do it sometime. Not immediately. I have to think this through. But I do have to set things straight, with him.”

“Niku, it’s like this. If two people each wait for the other to make the first peace-move, it never happens. It takes one. It can never be both until it is one. Because it’s never going to be both at the same time.”

“Mer. You can stop trying to persuade me now. I did say I’d do it.”

“I don’t mean to hurt your pride, Niku.”

“I know, Mer. I know. I’m defending something that doesn’t need.” I want to change the subject now. “How are your parents dealing with Kyirya’s new lover?”

“Well.” She pursed her lips. “There’s another case where I’m trying to talk someone into... doing what you have to do to make peace. It’s the same situation, really. But it might just take time.”

More later, Piatsri. Child needs chasing. At least with the ones within, I always know where they are.

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