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process," said Grace. "He must put it in context. He must tell you the story of
all living things."
Wang-mu knew that she could sit on a mat for hours with little or no movement,
for she had done it all her life. But Peter was used to sitting folded, and this
posture was awkward for him. He must already be uncomfortable.
Apparently Grace saw this in his eyes, or simply knew about westerners. "You can
move from time to time, but do so slowly without taking your eyes from him."
Wang-mu wondered how many of these rules and requirements Grace was making up as
she went along. Malu himself seemed more relaxed. After all, he had fed them
when Grace thought no one but him could eat; she didn't know the rules any
better than they did.
But she didn't move. And she didn't take her eyes from Malu.
Grace translated: "Today the clouds flew across the sky with the sun chasing
them, and yet no rain has fallen. Today my boat flew across the sea with the sun
leading it, and yet there was no fire when we touched the shore. So it was on
the first day of all days, when God touched a cloud in the sky and spun it so
fast that it turned to fire and became the sun, and then all the other clouds
began to spin and turn in circles around the sun."
This can't have been the original legend of the Samoan people, thought Wang-mu.
No way did they know the Copernican model of the solar system until westerners
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taught it to them. So Malu may know the ancient lore, but he's also learned some
new things and fit them in.
"Then the outer clouds turned into rain and poured in upon themselves until they
were rained out, and all that was left was spinning balls of water. Inside that
water swam a great fish of fire, which ate every impurity in the water and then
defecated it all in great gouts of flame, which spouted up from the sea and fell
back down as hot ash and poured back down as rivers of burning rock. From these
turds of the firefish grew the islands of the sea, and out of the turds there
crawled worms, which squirmed and slithered through the rock until the gods
touched them and some became human beings and others became the other animals.
"Every one of the other animals was tied to the earth by strong vines that grew
up to embrace them. No one saw these vines because they were godvines."
Philotic theory, thought Wang-mu. He learned that all living things have twining
philotes that bond downward, linking them to the center of the earth. Except
human beings.
Sure enough, Grace translated the next strand of language: "Only humans were not
tied to the earth. It was not vines that bound them down, it was a web of light
woven by no god that connected them upward to the sun. So all the other animals
bowed down before the humans, for the vines dragged them down, while the
lightweb lifted up the human eyes and heart.
"Lifted up the human eyes but yet they saw little farther than the beasts with
downcast eyes; lifted up the human heart yet the heart could only hope for it
could only see up to the sky in the daytime, and at night when it could see the
stars it grew blind to close things for a man can scarcely see his own wife in
the shadow of his house even when he can see stars so distant their light
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travels for a hundred lifetimes before it kisses the eyes of the man.
"All these centuries and generations, these hoping men and women looked with
their half-blind eyes, staring into the sun and sky, staring into the stars and
shadows, knowing that there were invisible things beyond those walls but not
guessing what they were.
"Then in a time of war and terror, when all hope seemed lost, weavers on a far
distant world, who were not gods but who knew the gods and each one of the
weavers was itself a web with hundreds of strands reaching out to their hands
and feet, their eyes and mouths and ears, these weavers created a web so strong
and large and fine and far-reaching that they meant to catch up all human beings
in that web and hold them to be devoured. But instead the web caught a distant
god, a god so powerful that no other god had dared to know her name, a god so
quick that no other god had been able to see her face; this god was stuck to the
web they caught. Only she was too quick to be held in one place to be devoured. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]