Ha'x mibli Kao-a so su-Yilakili : The Sound of a Few Words Ringing
The Memoirs of Kilomela-Jann Urmonaxi
A Saiyan Among The Korud-Jin
VII.
Earth and Paper : Kalon ma Om'yattu
The patriarch put me to work, true to his word, as soon as the worst of the healing was over. The war had come to a dramatic end, the soldiers had returned, and the drama of ordinary life was expected to continue. It had been thought that the violence brewing in the capital would never reach Urmon, a place that hardly encountered change of any sort. Three hundred years earlier, the region would have seemed much the same, save the delivery trucks that rolled along the main road from time to time. Even then, the mud slowed the tires to a labored crawl. The land itself fought progress with all of its might.
Urmon's rich, dark soil was ideal for the cultivation of xa'k, the staple grain from which the common variety of flour is made. All of the labor is done by hand, the average estate requiring five man-hours per acre for two thousand acres over the course of a year. The patriarch and his ancestors had not chosen an easy life, but one that had provided a steady profit over the centuries.
In the weeks following my initiation, Talarin spent most of his days pacing about the house and throwing stones into the river. Although my chores kept me occupied, I still had not forgotten the ominous letter, hidden away in the cover of a thick blue book.
Although I was an adult in the official sense, I was still too small to do the heaviest work. While Jann-Run and many of the other men carried bags of commercial fertilizer up the hill or dug tunnels to drain excess water, I was assigned lighter, but equally necessary duties. I filled jugs at the tap in the kitchen, took organic waste to the compost heap at the edge of the property, and retrieved tools from the shed when they were needed.
Between chores, I climbed the leaning tree in front of the house and searched the sky for approaching storm clouds, rolling so low across the plains they seemed to brush against the roof tiles. On slow mornings, I folded gliders from old newspapers, and sent them soaring into the wind.
Sometimes Tsi and Kalis found colorful insects in the weeds. We imprisoned the jewels of the field in glass jars and created a private zoo in the corner of the shed. Their fluttering iridescent wings shimmered like robes of the court ladies, always aloof and haughty when my mother had passed by with her head lowered. The insects always perished before we remembered to set them free. I poked apart their exoskeletons with a pin to see their insides, but like the wives of the high-ranking generals, they appeared to be entirely bloodless.
My brother spent his days with Mama, crawling about in the grass while food was cooked and laundry was hung. The two youngest daughters of the patriarch, called Nai and Rev, took a special interest in Apuru, and treated him like a favorite doll. Often, I would find him slathering muddy handprints on the clean sheets, with bright hair-ribbons tied around his tail. My two little aunts were both mischevious and undisciplined, behaving as they pleased. I wondered if they had also lost their mother. Mama, their sister-in-law, dressed them, wiped their faces, and scolded them when they behaved badly. Even so, they constantly undermined her authority, giggling and squealing as she begged them to help with chores or wash their hands.
After contemplating the mystery of the letter for several weeks, I made up my mind to steal it. Certain that Talarin was sulking behind the shed, I scrambled through the kitchen and up the stairs, hoping that I would pass through unnoticed. I shut the door quietly behind me, waiting for the gentle click of the lock before I set upon the desk in pursuit of the book.
Since I had arrived, the order of the books on the shelf had been changed. I could read none of the titles, and quickly became frustrated. Perhaps it had not been a blue book at all, but a black one, or one with a gold stripe on the binding. I seized the books by their spines and shook them, waiting for the fine sheet of crumpled paper to fall from the pages. Driven by a burning curiosity, I did not hear the door creak open behind me.
"Kilomela, what is this mischief?"
I recognized Talarin's voice immediately, and knew I had been caught. Talarin sat down on the bed, and retrieved the letter, now torn and yellowed, from his sleeve. " I suppose someone ought to tell you. There should be no secrets between the men of this house. We have all been at odds with one another these weeks, and it is only natural that you should ask why."
He read:
"Urmonaxi Talarin-Aliriki, son of Urmonaxi Ter-Silliki,
"We regret to inform you that your engagement to Varasalixi Kikivi-Yek, daughter of Varasalixi Nor-Url must be immediately dissolved. The Varasalixi no longer wish to continue personal or business exchanges with families that openly or privately support the recent actions of the royal family against our foreign trade partners.
"According to custom, we must settle the matter of the dowry that has already been paid to your father's accounts. We demand that three-quarters of this sum, 10,040 gold Korud, be returned to us in shipments of X'ak of equal value after the next harvest. The remaining quarter, you may keep. It is not our intent to cheat you or your family, and the interests of both parties will be best satisfied if the banks are not involved.
"Although Kikivi has been truly upset by this turn of events, we are confident that we will soon be able to negotiate a more appropriate match. She expresses her great relief upon your safe return from Vegetasei, and hopes that you and your family meet with fair weather and a good harvest this year.
"We are distressed that we cannot count your family among our allies, but we must sacrifice your valued friendship for the good of our government and our people.
"A hired barge will be sent upriver five months from now to collect the shipments. A messenger will be in contact with your father before then.
With Regret,
Varasalixi Par-Jann,
Treasurer, Varasalixi Galactic Export Group"
Talarin sighed. "We have never met, and already, I have lost her."
"Is she so important to you, this girl you have never seen before?" I asked.
"Our marriage was delayed after I was called to serve on Vegetasei a little more than a year ago. At first, I was glad to escape my obligations, to see the the universe that exists beyond this quiet place. I did not want to love this faceless girl, a silly, innocent girl who was chosen for me from a list of strangers. But war is not an adventure, and death lurked around every corner. Officers I had respected and admired were incinerated in flash of cold light. A man who risked his life to bring water to my unit was beaten to death, his bones cracking like twigs as he was tossed against the side of a cliff. Our captain was captured and his drowned, bloated body appeared one morning tied to a post overlooking our camp in the occupied zone. He rotted there until Sunno-Kami hobbled across the border to cut him down."
If I had truly been raised in Urmon, I would not have known that men were capable of such cruelty and indifference. Time and time again, my cousin had held my head underneath the brown water in the garden pool, only releasing me when I stopped struggling and pretended to fall limp among the lily pads. The elite soldiers also played this twisted game, but unlike bullying children, did not bother to let go.
"When Kikivi's letters arrived, they were full of beautiful trivialities. I read each dozens upon dozens of times.The story of a neighbor's missing ring. A new pair of gloves. Her brother-in-law's terrible manners. A chance meeting with a childhood friend in front of a tea shop. I lived for all the promises I had made to her. The little flower garden we would plant behind the shed. The storage closet that would become our very own bedroom. The sailboat I would name after her. The songs we would sing to our children.The future we built in those letters kept me alive."
"Oh." I whispered, humbled. I too, had once survived on a meager ration of dreams and delusions.
"The leadership of the Varasalixi clan believed that they would benefit when Vegetasei fell under the rule of Prince Furiza. Now, there is an enormous excess of materials available for purchase, but nobody remains to buy them. Some of the most powerful merchant families believe the recession to be irreversable, and many have already declared bankruptcy." he explained.
Exporters. Recession. Bankruptcy.This was the mysterious refrain of Prince Konnyakku's war song, the urgent, rhythmic whispers of the generals and advisers as they devised their futile strategies.
Talarin paused." The Varasalixi clan has made a small fortune by buying grain from the farmers in Urmon and sending it to other planets where resources are scarce. Now they must settle all of their debts and wait for their fortune to run dry. We are fortunate in that my father is owed many favors, and our surplus will not go to waste this year. While men and women still break bread, we are assured a decent living."
Every patriliniage was associated with specific trades and industries. Unless I was singled out for some other purpose, I would, like Talarin, be limited to agricultural work. While men remained bound to their own extended family, a wife's loyalties were divided between her father's family and her husband's. If the marriage of Urmonaxi Talarin-Aliriki and Varasalixi Kikivi-Yek were to take place, the solidarity of both clans would be severely compromised.
I thought about this for a moment."So now, the merchants and the farmers can no longer be friends."
"That is true." said Talarin. " Some say that there are better reasons for starting a rebellion, and that the king will soon restore his older son, Prince Kuura to his place in the line of succession. But as long as Furiza-Korudsiki remains the legal heir, and we persist in our support of King Korudo, the Varasalixi clan will have nothing to do with us."
" You will find another wife." I said encouragingly. " There must be many good women who would like to marry you." Secretly, I was glad that I would not lose Talarin to the mysterious Kikivi-Yek. I did not think that Talarin should be married to a pampered, fragile woman who knew only of half-empty promises. This kind of woman, a woman like my mother, would forever be unhappy.
"We all have our complaints about the state of the economy, but we are certainly not prepared for the civil war that the Varasalixi clan is bent on starting." Talarin wiped his eye on his sleeve. "In the interest of peace, I will remain a bachelor, and a loyal subject to the king."
"I'm very sorry for trying to take the letter." I admitted.
"You wouldn't have been able to read it," he said. " Besides, I'm sure that you were only curious. There is no fault in that."
That evening, Talarin made a sudden reappearance after having been goaded into playing a game of cards with his father and brother. Jann-Run called me away from my lonely perch on the window ledge, where I had been sulking guiltily.
"My brother tells me that you have a budding interest in politics," he said, drumming his fingers on the table.
Embarassed, I stared at a water stain on the floorboards.
" It is my opinion that you would do well if you were sent to school with other boys your age. An inquistive mind, left untrained, can sprout troublesome ideas." Talarin and the patriarch nodded in agreement.
" You will have to speak proper Korud'go, as a condition," interjected the patriarch." And you will have to learn to write well enough to pass the school entrance examination." My heart sank. I could barely communicate with the other members of the household, and now I was faced with the daunting task of reading and writing a new language as well.
"Most boys enter the local school at the age of twelve. You will have two long years to prepare," said Talarin, drawing a card. He compared it to the others in his hand and frowned. Fortune, it seemed, had never favored Talarin-Aliriki.
Until 766, no public education system existed in Urmon, and the tuition for the local school limited the number of children each household could afford to enroll there. The vast majority of young men learned to read and do sums at home, never consdiering a formal education. Talarin and Jann-Run had each finished the upper school at the age of nineteen, but had not been accepted to any of the universities. If I passed the lower school's entrance examinations, the patriarch would be taking a rather costly risk. In order for the clan's financial sacrifice to be worthwhile, I would have to see the challenge through to the very end.
" Tomorrow night we will take out the copybook, " declared the patriarch. "I have a strong feeling that our efforts will not be wasted."
" I will do my best." I whispered, wondering if their confidence had been misplaced.
From that day on, my chores were cut in half, and I was to spend the afternoon in the kitchen stumbling through Jann-Run's crumbling, dog-eared schoolbook. At night, I read aloud to the Patriarch, stumbling through the simplest sentences, wringing my hands in fustration. I practiced writing in the dust with a twig, and in the river clay with a broken reed. When Mama prepared bread, I drew words in the flour on the counter and rubbed them out one by one.
Korud'go is written in a complex script that relies on a syllabary and thousands of ideograms, pictograms, and logograms. Novels were printed with the charcters arranged in the familiar right to left order, but newspapers and magazines read from left to right. Personal letters, a true art form, were written in vertical columns from top to bottom. Grammar seemed to eschew simplicity, and small ideas were elegantly stretched to distortion. While Saiyago was the crude and uncomplicated language of commoners, Korud'go was the invention of nobles and silver-tongued poets.
Slowly, the mess of symbols became sense, and I required Talarin's translations less and less often. As the damp weather gave way to the bitter cold of the dry season, I began to sound more and more like a native. I talked to anyone who would listen, asking questions about fishing and spacecraft and snowflakes until they chased me away.
" What a noisy little bird you have become!" observed Mama. "Chirping and chirping all day long."
During the last week of the harvest, a letter carrier trudged up the path, shivering in the morning chill. I ran to the door to let him into the vestibule. He removed his fur hat, and produced an envelope, upon which the name Urmonaxi Talarin-Aliriki was written in blue ink. I gave the letter carrier a coin from a jar in the kitchen, and opened the envelope in the privacy of the toilet, careful to preserve the red Varasalixi seal. Later, repaired with a drop of paste, the letter would make its way into my uncle's hands.
Inside, was a plain card that read:
Tomorrow.