“I suppose I’ll start by telling you how I ended up living as an untouchable in the first place.”
“Sure.”
“No…wait,” Ottoman put a finger to his chin, “Before I explain that, I guess I should explain how I ended up in the land of Kaiiba. In your hometown of Bahlia...”
“Uh…OK, then -“
“No…no…I think I ought to tell you about where I came from first. My origins. I don’t suppose I’m going too far back in order to explain this, am I?”
“Right…I don’t know. Whatever you think is best...”
“So…you mentioned earlier that my name is a rather unusual one. Did you not?”
“Uh-huh,” Bunnu sighed.
“My name is, in fact, unique to a culture that no longer exists. It’s vapor! That is to say, it’s a culture that’s been forced to disperse by circumstance、which is quite different, mind you, from a culture that’s been dominated, influenced by another, or even lost in history. After all, in such cases, remnants of the culture remain. Relics. Or scriptures. Maybe through the accounts of descendants of either pure or mixed blood. Traditions might endure. Or myths, or artwork…or even a history. Something that can give the world a firsthand look at this culture. Of course, there are cultures we were in contact with that will still vouch for our existence—neighboring and rival tribes with whom we traded. But someday, their accounts of us may as well be relegated to myth. Without something concrete like an artifact, there is no proof. And, sure, there are probably some artifacts lying around the site of my village, even still, but nothing that would likely distinguish us significantly from our neighboring tribes. Maybe if there were still a solid group of us practicing our traditions and using our language, passing on our history, we might still, as yet, have a chance of making our existence known to future generations of humanity. However, it’s quite unlikely, as the surviving descendants of my culture fled our village at different times…and in different directions. Maybe if even some of us were still together, or if we met by chance, there might be something left to call a culture. If through nothing else, then through the spirit of togetherness that bound us. But I highly doubt that’s the case now…or that it will be the case anytime in the future. Because…I think, secretly, we all wanted out. And we’re glad to be done with it.
“You see, I come from a place deep in the South, far beyond the borders of your country, Mr. Bunnu; beyond the confines of that glorious homeland of yours that I have come to love and have since adopted as my own; beyond the boundaries of that wondrous paradise once known to the world as Kaiiba. You probably didn’t see it as a paradise, but I cannot help doing so, for my village was, by comparison, a terribly cold and barren land: a place that, if you visited it now, would seem like a rendering in shadow of something that never was.
“In my childhood, my community mined coal, the necessity of which kept our trade going with the nearby villages and our homes warm in the harsh cold of the winter. I lived with my parents and my sister in a village of maybe 30 or 40 houses. Yes, we were a small village. But we were close. We knew everything about each other. Of course there was gossip, as tends to happen. And of course, there were long standing feuds that existed between people. Sometimes between families. Yet, our tribe was able to survive because we understood how important it was to cooperate. It was instilled in us by our parents and in them by their parents. The tribal community had a long history. And we were proud of it. In the spring and the summertime, school was in session and I would leave my house in a rush just to feel the sunlight on my face, wishing that the natural warmth I felt would never go away. Outside, the world was alive, not just with people, but with nature too. The birds and the flowers. The butterflies. Beehives. The market always had fresh fruits and vegetables. And the man who owned it would always smile as he handed my friends and me apples on our way in to school. Our teacher would be waiting outside the schoolhouse, tapping his foot, with his arms folded, as we took our time getting there. My friends and I often had races to see who could climb trees the fastest as the other boys and girls watched. Some sat on rocks, playing a pan flute…and some a lyre, while the more mischievous kids voiced profane lyrics along to the tunes of the songs being played. Our teacher usually had to come out and search for us. Upon finding us, he’d scold us the whole way to the schoolhouse about the importance of an education.
“When I think about that now, I guess it’s kind of a funny thing to reminisce about. I mean, education is, in many ways, a sort of indoctrination into one’s culture and traditions. Not wholly, but when one considers the idea of civics and of history and of all the other seemingly meaningless things we were being taught at the time, the purpose was to develop a frame. A collective frame by which we could, as a consensus, view our reality. After all, historical accounts must be given from someone’s frame of reference. What they were looking for was consistency of that frame. Something that could bind us as a group. Preserve our culture. And now…I’m one of the few remaining products of such efforts.”
“Right…” Bunnu said slowly. An old Vasallan man, bald except for scraggly tufts of hair that sprung from the top of his head, stood shirtless at a doorway that seemed to lead into the darkness of an old rundown stone building. He rested a shoulder against the wall, licking his lips as he looked at a group of Drawan children scavenging in the street. “So, where does my family come into this?”
“I’m getting to it.” Ottoman-13 responded, his eyes on the old man. “Anyway, that was the spring and summer. When the village was alive and warm—but those seasons were overshadowed by the harshness and cold of our winters, throughout which, we had minimal contact with one another. The temperatures often got so cold that we were forced to stay in and isolate ourselves even from our own neighbors. Some people we would only see two or three times over the course of the whole winter. Others, we wouldn’t even see again until the following spring. And then there were some, whom we might have been looking forward to seeing in school the following year, who ended up succumbing to an illness during the winter.
“We all lived together, but in seclusion from one another. That was the reality of the winter and we all accepted it and did our best to get by. The coal that we mined was an important part of these efforts. In the fall, just as the animals tend to forage, so did the families of our village. At the end of summer, we started to stockpile coal, vegetables, and meats, which we kept stored in places that could get us through the coldest months. The coal and vegetables were often kept in cellars, built into the floors, in order to maximize space. However, gathering the supplies to get us through was usually rather time-consuming and required help and, as such, often became a village-wide effort. The last month before the winter came in was usually the busiest for shoring up our food reserves. It sometimes even got to a point that the workers in the coal mine were pulled away from their duties to help. That made it so they couldn’t mine the yields that were required to keep the village going through the winter, in time…and so they had to work through the first month of winter in the cold and amidst the snowfall.
“Which was typically not a problem—just extra work for the coal miners. They usually made the deliveries themselves to the other people in the village and on rare occasions, to the other nearby villages that we traded with. But one day, during the first snowfall of the winter, there was a horrible disaster. The mines collapsed. When we found out, we were shocked. Many of the miners had been killed in the collapse. Not only that, but the collapse was a devastating blow to the whole town. Coal was our livelihood. We couldn’t survive without it. Economically or otherwise. Everyone had plenty of food, but at the time, our coal stockpiles were probably just enough to get us through the next month. Now, how’s that for an exercise in cooperation? What do you think happened next?”
Bunnu shrugged, “Everyone cooperated and your culture thrived?”
“If only…” Ottoman-13 sighed. “At first, peo
ple did share…and in many cases, homes were abandoned as whole families saw no other choice, but to share a roof with their neighbor. We didn’t mind it so much. Times were different, then. Back when I was a boy, that is. Back then, people watched out for one another. The village was our extended family. I mean, literally. Our extended family, but that only strengthened our bonds with each other. I think people really did try to cooperate for a while. But over the course of days and weeks, cramped together in tight spaces, tempers begin to flare. Naturally. People get cabin fever and they start to withdraw from one other. I don’t know what it is about the winter that does that to people. Maybe it’s because there’s less sunlight. We seem to become different people in the winter. We seem to interact differently with one another. Don’t you think?”
Bunnu nodded.
“And that’s what started happening to all of us. It wasn’t long before abandoned houses were again inhabited by those turned away by friends and relatives. And we were back in the same situation. All of us: isolated from one another. We didn’t have enough coal to survive the winter. The men of the village met to discuss the various courses of action. Some suggested finding ways to get back into the mine, while others believed strongly that we should send an envoy to the neighboring towns calling for help. Still others, albeit few, felt that it was best to abandon the whole village altogether. The men deliberated and argued for hours. Some discussions got heated, as this crisis had gotten some people’s passions flaring. Personal attacks and accusations were dealt left and right, but nothing was accomplished. They adjourned their meeting with no feasible plans and a growing mistrust for one another.”
“So much for cooperation!” Bunnu smirked.
“Mmm…so, weeks passed and the supplies were down to half what they were at the start. Desperation spread through our village like a plague…and that’s when the looting began. A group of young men started breaking into houses and shops and stealing things. In some cases, they threatened or even injured any residents who got in their way. They justified the measures they were taking by calling it a kind of political revolution. They had either been convinced or they had convinced themselves that what they were doing was a form of social protest. They sought change and they proclaimed that they would do whatever it took to take control, even by violent means.
“But at first, we didn’t think much of it. Just some angst-ridden teenagers and young adults, perhaps, taking their impatience out in one destructive way or another. We’d seen it before. Vandalism. Theft. Maybe some fighting here or there. Anything that even remotely resembled a political revolution amounted essentially to resorting to threats they couldn’t follow through on. Usually, it was just a ploy for attention. You know how kids can be at that age. And so any injuries that might have occurred seemed incidental and unintended. So, naturally, it didn’t seem like something to worry about. We’d seen it before and figured that they’d tire themselves out with all this carrying on and things would soon settle down again.
“But then, the news came one day from one of my neighbors that one of the key tribal council members had been dragged out of his home and killed. The perpetrators had apparently broken into the man’s home, tied the family up, knocked the man out, loaded his coal into a wheelbarrow and hung him from a nearby tree.”
“Hmmm…”
“Yes…well, we were certainly surprised by the news. At first, we wanted to think that this was simply an isolated incident. Perhaps fueled by some kind of ongoing feud. We simply couldn’t allow ourselves to think that this had happened because of this so-called revolution. But then, over the next few days, more reports started to come in through the grapevine. Other members of the tribal council suffering the same fate. And then, the following week, more reports. This time more gruesome. Entire families slaughtered. Wives and daughters raped. Fathers, sons, and elders tortured and killed. It seemed like the news was getting worse and worse each day. Until finally, one day, we stopped hearing reports altogether. The grapevine had withered away. Either people were afraid to leave their homes to find out what had happened to their neighbors, or they themselves were dead. Whatever the situation, there was no way of knowing truly what was going on out there.
“My father decided that it was time for us to get out of town. His plan was to try to find some of the other survivors and leave together. With our collective efforts, we had a chance of making it. As long as we cooperated. But even still, our chances were pretty minimal and my father knew it. Many families had already fled in fear for their lives, but in those conditions, few, if any, could really make it past the mountains without freezing to death. There was little hope.
“It’s a really strange thing, you know? When you know you’re going to die soon and knowing that everyone around you, everyone you’ve ever known in this world—they’re going to die, too. I mean, we all die, of course. As do all the people we’ve ever known. I’m not disputing that, but to be in those circumstances with that kind of foreknowledge. That your whole society, your whole culture is, in effect, dying. Killing itself off, really. Well, it’s…it’s an indescribable feeling.
“And when a whole village starts dying like that, other strange things begin to happen, too. It’s like a beacon signal is being transmitted through the ice, and through the wind, to all of the surrounding nature. A message that says that these creatures are on their way out. Soon to be extinct. And predators, scavengers, and leeches—they have a kind of sixth sense for homing in on that kind of signal. They can smell the vulnerability and desperation in it.
“A pack of stray wolves wandered into town. My father saw them in the early morning from our window as they were converging on the house of the family of one of the dead councilmen. He ran outside and shooed them away rather easily, but not before falling host to a rare breed of Shadow Parasite. You know, the kind that pass between people’s shadows and suck the life out of them. Well, there’s no known cure for them, nor is there any known way to prevent or remove one. And apparently, as we soon realized, they can also pass from animal to human. That being said, it was only a matter of hours before my father’s body was completely sucked dry to the point of desiccation.”
Bunnu perked up for a second, “Hold on a second! You know what?”
“What?”
“I think something’s coming back to me. This story…it sounds familiar, for some reason.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible. I haven’t even gotten to the part where I met your family yet. There’s no way you could have heard this part. Who could you have heard it from? I’m the only one left to tell it.”
“Yes, but I feel like I’ve heard a similar story before. Yet, it was told from a different point-of-view…”
“Well, I-“ Ottoman-13 started to say, but stopped short as an untouchable walking in the other direction bumped into him. The roads were beginning to narrow and become crowded. Bunnu could feel the movements of other people brushing up against him in all directions. Ottoman pulled him by the arm inward so the two were now walking closely together.
“But please continue.” Bunnu said, looking down at Ottoman’s hand on his arm. “I’m eager to hear where my family comes into this…”
“Yes…yes, your family. I’m getting to that soon,” Ottoman-13 said quickly. His voice was now quieter. The two were now walking close enough that he seemed to feel justified in whispering into Bunnu’s ear. “Where was I?”
“Your father’s body was completely drained to desiccation…”
“Right! So, that night, my mother, my sister and I stood around him and chanted a requiescat together, careful to make sure that our shadows did not overlap with his. Outside it was a full moon. Have you ever seen a full moon over a snow-covered landscape? I’m sure you have. The snow has a tendency to reflect and, thus, intensify the light until everything outside has a kind of nightmarish glow. It’s like you’re stranded on the moon
itself. And that night, it was almost easy to feel like that was the case.
“That being said, my sister, forgetting that it was a full moon out, stood in front of the window to my parents’ bedroom and the reflected moonlight cast her shadow upon that of my father. And she, too, became host to the parasite. Upon realizing this, my mother told me to leave the room immediately. She said she would attend to my father and sister herself. After I walked out, she closed and locked the door behind me. I looked out the window and could see something moving around outside through the snow in front of our house. Behind it, I saw several more shadows. I knocked on the bedroom door and called to my mom, saying that the men were coming. She assured me they wouldn’t come tonight and told me to get some sleep. She told me she loved me.
“Beyond the door, I could hear my sister crying and my mother saying something to her in a sweet and soothing voice. I’ll never forget that voice. My mother was not one to show her affections very tenderly. She was a strong woman. The women down south were like that. Very tough! But her voice, that night…it had a certain frailty to it, different from the reassuring tone one would expect from a mother’s voice. It had a weakened, quivering sound to it. As though she were too frightened to speak in a loud voice. I remember one time watching a friend feed his pet snake a baby mouse. The tiny mouse shivered in the corner of the cage as the snake watched it. But the snake wasn’t doing anything else…it was just waiting and watching, as though it were savoring the moment. That was how I imagined my mother: as that baby mouse, shivering in the corner being watched by the snake. I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying to my sister that night, but that voice of hers…it still haunts me in my dreams sometimes.”
“Ssss...” Bunnu inhaled abruptly as he felt a pang of Ottoman’s pain seep into him. He had never empathized with anyone on this level before, had never been able to connect with someone’s feelings so intensely without himself having had the same sort of experience to draw upon.
“Unsettling, isn’t it?” Ottoman-13 remarked, seemingly empathizing with Bunnu’s empathy, “It was for me, as well. Incredibly unsettling! And yet…that night, I fell asleep almost immediately. One wouldn’t think I would be able to sleep after all I’d been through that day. But I did. I think I was too tired to worry. Too tired to grieve. That might have had something to do with it. I remember falling asleep by the artificial warmth of the coal stove that night and waking up hours later to find that the room was freezing once again. The sky outside was getting brighter and the sun would probably rise within the next half hour or so. Looking outside, there was no one out there in the snow and I couldn’t see any footprints, but they might well have been covered over by the drifts.
“I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and knocked on the door to the bedroom. There was no answer. I knocked harder and called out both my mother’s and sister’s names. Nothing. I stood there for a long time, hoping that someone would say something. But, of course, I knew that there was no one there to answer. Thinking back to it now, it seems rather odd, but, even then, I couldn’t grieve. In fact, I think it’s completely possible that, at that point, it didn’t occur to me that I should. All I could think of was whatever it was I had to do next. I was now alone and it was up to me to take care of the house. I had to do whatever I could to survive. Perhaps, in the back of my mind I felt that I could only afford myself the opportunity to mourn my family’s loss once I had properly steered myself clear of this situation. That is, I could only mourn when I had the luxury to do so. But first…first, I had to make it through that winter.
“We still had a stockpile of coal in the cellar. Whether it was sufficient to get me through the winter was something I was unsure of, but highly doubted. I decided it would be best to get as much out of the cellar as possible, to save myself the trouble of having to go down continually with a bucket to get more. I remembered that my father kept some rope and pulleys in his storage shed. Thinking that it would surely make the job of moving the coal much easier, I went outside to retrieve them. On my way back, I could hear some men nearby talking. I hid behind the open door of the shed and listened.
“There were three of them. All young. I knew I recognized their voices from somewhere, but it wasn’t until later that I realized that it was because they were all distant cousins of mine. One of them, the oldest of the three, was complaining that they’d been at it for three days non-stop without a break and proposed they call it a day. This generated some moans from the others, as they were eager to hit the rest of the houses that day, so they could ‘make the trade’ soon. Apparently, ‘the trade’ they were referring to was a deal with a neighboring town to the west. They were planning to hand over all the coal in our village in exchange for a train ride north, essentially, leaving the rest of us to die…that is, if they didn’t kill us themselves.
“And from what I gathered in their conversation, the larger and more developed towns to the west were also in a panic because of the mining disaster. Evidently, they had been waiting on some deliveries of coal from us that never made it. As a result, they didn’t have enough coal to get their trains out for extra food and supplies, resulting in a similar pattern of chaos there. It sounded like an equally serious situation, but on a larger scale, which made it perfect for a trade.
“So, the oldest of the three proposed that they hit the remaining houses the following morning, adding that if they got everyone in their organization to help, they should be able to finish pretty quickly and make it out of the area by the late afternoon. A second man expressed his agreement. But the third man started to voice his concerns about the future of their revolution. By the sound of his voice, I could tell he was the youngest of the three. And judging by the way he was speaking, he seemed remarkably dedicated to their so-called cause. He started to go on about how their leader and uncle, the wise and venerable Ottoman-3, would never have approved of these measures and how he couldn’t understand why the group couldn’t stay and make their political uprising work. The oldest laughed at him and said that their revolution ended the day the mine collapsed. And its ideals died with that old fool Ottoman-3. Now, they had a new ideology to abide by: one of self-preservation. But all they could hope to do now was to, by whatever means possible, take whatever they could and do whatever it took in order to survive. Even if that meant making certain necessary sacrifices, including anyone who tried to get in their way. And then, he said something I’ll never forget. He said, ‘That, my young friend, is what we call survival.’
“Their voices started to grow faint as they walked away, but I stood behind that door for a long time, listening to the man’s words ringing in my head over and over again. ‘That, my young friend, is what we call survival.’ I felt like he was saying it directly to me. I mean, what he was saying: it sounded merciless…and calculating. Slaughtering a whole village and taking its resources for oneself. For one’s survival. It was wicked and malicious…but at the same time, it sounded brilliant. Logical! Perfect!
“It was fair to say that, in some instances, a cold-blooded act was the only logical recourse for survival. The only virtue, at that point in time, seemed to embody a certain calculated and necessary cruelty. How else, after all, is one to survive? Not through mercy or soft-heartedness. I mean, imagine…what has kept our species here for so long through hundreds of thousands of years of hardship? What has kept mankind moving forward? Kept civilization progressing? Would you say it’s Competition? That sounds like it should be right, but that doesn’t even begin to explain it. Let’s call it a certain will to triumph over any obstacles, big or small, that cross our path. A necessary ruthlessness. Is high civilization not, after all, founded upon the necessity of cruelty? I’m sure I’ve heard someone say something to that effect before.”
“Yeah…I think it was that one guy. The one people quote all the time.”
“Yes…him! Anyway, I think he was rig
ht. Gains must be made at the expense of others, in order for a civilization to thrive in the first place. The survival of man, of civilization, itself, is dependent upon a baseline killer instinct that can only be suppressed, and when necessary, invoked and further rationalized by ideology. Yet, the ideologies that I had been taught up until then, my frame of reference by way of indoctrination, told me that there was no virtue in taking the life of another. On the contrary, self-sacrifice was seen as a greater virtue for the Common Good. The spirit of cooperation, after all, had its basis in altruism. But in these circumstances, I found myself not terrified by the possibility of transgressing the boundaries of morality that my culture held dear, but rather exhilarated by it. Maybe you can call it selfishness. Rugged individualism. The ends justifying the means. Call it what you like. But I knew for a fact that this culture was on its way out…and their boundaries, their ideologies: none of it mattered anymore. They didn’t apply to me. No one was going to be around anymore to tell me that I’d done something wrong. No one left to judge me from the frame of reference that defined my culture. I suddenly felt…free.
“A wave of ecstasy trickled through me. It was pure and perfect survival that I would seek from then on. Absolute and without the slightest flaw. It was the inner dynamics of man come to the forefront. The very essence of all life in its mystical intensity. An incontrovertible meaning circulated before me, whispering emphatically the sacred truths that oscillate like a pendulum out of reach and then back again, cyclical in the culmination of events and the realization of opportunities, unfaltering in the inevitability of paradises both lost and regained. The moment had until now strayed from my advances to the point of being exhausted and withered, only to now be opportunely deluged with a fresh flood of painful elation. I felt it rush over me as I could see a chance to survive looming before me. The moment bloomed again and filled itself with a grandeur I couldn’t help but taste in the frozen air that surrounded me. The bitterest of the bitter. The sweetest of the sweet. A static charge nipped at me like a prick of tens of thousands of needles upon my body: inside and out. The excitement! The beauty of this life of absolutes. It saturated my soul with a resolution and my spirit unflinchingly and inflexibly with a sense of duty. I would be a servant to my own freedom. And with that freedom, I had a new ideology to abide by. I guess you could say I embraced the very same principle as that of my cousins: that of self-preservation. One that would get me through and justify the actions deemed necessary for survival. The only difference, perhaps, between my cousins and me was that I didn’t require a group to achieve my individual ends.”
Bunnu rolled his eyes and chuckled to himself, “Hmph…Right!”
Ottoman paused mid-squeeze, “What’s the problem?”
“Long story short,” Bunnu yawned, “You, as the young hero, outfox and systematically kill off your cousins and the rest of the villagers with the help of the shadow parasites. Then, you single-handedly usurp their coal and trade it for a train ride north. I knew I’ve heard this story before!”
“How could you have heard this part before?” Ottoman-13 responded in shock, his grip on Bunnu’s arm loosening slightly.
“Well, in all honesty, it wasn’t from you,” Bunnu responded matter-of-factly. “I heard it from Rakesh-7—except he told the story from the point-of-view of the Shadow Parasites. Apparently, he preferred to use them as the protagonists. I didn’t know that you were the kid, though.” He sighed and continued in an unaffected voice, “Well…I guess that’s that!”
Bunnu suddenly felt a sense of relief. He was normal again: no longer influenced by this man’s method of suggestion. The realization that he had heard this story before from a different point-of-view seemed to make him suddenly insensible to Ottoman’s attempts at persuasion, perhaps even disillusioned at Ottoman’s hope of establishing a common perspective with which he might sympathize. He, thus, decided that he would not let the man make any further inroads to his will. He would protect himself with a barrier of cynical musing. That’d seemed to work wonders in the past. Sarcasm would be his tool of skepticism. This man was not worthy of his sympathies. He was simply a piddling actor…and not a very good one at that. Moreover, his version of the story was far less compelling than the one that had originally been told by the Outlander. When faced with different accounts of the truth, one was expected to make a decision. That’s simply the way things worked. Bunnu chose now to view Ottoman’s protagonist as a comical addendum to the main story, which is to say, he favored Rakesh-7’s perspective.
“That’s that?” Ottoman-13 responded quizzically.
Bunnu snorted complacently, “Never mind! Wow…so, I suppose I should ask for your autograph or something. Well, it’s like you said: we are acquaintances, so that means I know someone famous. I guess you could say it’s kind of like being acquainted with a character from a fairy tale!” He paused and looked at Ottoman-13, who didn’t look the slightest bit pleased to hear that, before continuing, “But yes…as far as I remember from the story, you basically duped them all into passing the parasite from one person to the other. And then, you grabbed the coal and made a run for it. Hell of a plot twist!”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t as simple as that…” Ottoman sighed. He released Bunnu’s arm again. “But that is more or less how it happened, yes. But if you’ve heard this story, I won’t belabor you any further with the details. And yes, I took a train and watched the town where I grew up—my so-called homeland—disappear behind me. But not before I set every house in that village ablaze. I wanted to eliminate every trace of it from the world. Anything that could remind me of the boundaries I grew up with. I can still remember the smell of that smoke, the crackle and the bursts, as I watched the flames shoot up at the sky, on my last night there…the sight of it: a gray cloud swirling up and scattering outward in the frozen night air, scattering ashes into the atmosphere. I thought about it the whole next day, on the train as I leaned out the window, watching the smoke rise from the engine. That was my village’s coal it was burning. Spreading smoke out over the landscape.
“And then…there was this sound. I feel a little strange mentioning this, but amidst the noises from the steam engine, there was this subtle, high-pitched wavering sound.” Ottoman paused uncomfortably, “I asked the engineer what caused it and he said it was the variation in the pressure created by the smoke. But it sounded to me like my mother’s voice that last night when she spoke to me through that door.”
“How touching,” Bunnu said flatly, “The very same mother who said you had an unforgettable face, right? Well I hadn’t heard that part of the story before! Kudos to your knack for pathos…it almost makes me want to cry,” Bunnu sighed facetiously, “So, where were you headed that glorious day? Kaiiba, I suppose.”
“Kaiiba, yes. The train was bound for the town of Bahlia. Apparently, a trade route had been established between Bahlia and the larger towns and city-states neighboring my village, soon after Bunnu-5’s isolationist reign ended. It was still winter there, but the winters were still much warmer and bearable than in my hometown. I think, that year, you were having an unseasonably warm one because in the landscape surrounding the town, some of the snow looked like it was melting. I could see the ice breaking and the water rushing over the rocks of the riverbed as we crossed the bridge. It was maybe one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. I couldn’t help but wonder if Bahlia was equally beautiful. I asked the engineer every five minutes how much longer it would be until we got there. I couldn’t wait to get there and start my new life.
“But when the train arrived, I got off and suddenly my eyes started welling up with tears. I didn’t know what triggered it, exactly. But then I realized that it was the first time I’d cried since my family had passed away. So, I walked the streets of Bahlia and allowed myself to cry, to mourn silently. But after a few hours, the feeling started to pass. Not subside. But just wither away comple
tely. It felt strange for such a thing to happen, given the circumstances. But even stranger than that was that none of what actually happened felt real anymore. Not like I was in denial. It was a different feeling. The existence of my village itself seemed to lack relevance to this new cosmos I occupied. It was lost somewhere in another time. Existing in another place. And perhaps I was there, but I, too, was a different person. Someone who lived a parallel existence. An existence rendered in shadow.”
“Hmmm…” Bunnu rolled his eyes.
“I decided that it was best to focus more on the here and now. So, I made my way to the Dowa District of Bahlia. I was still very young, so I had no choice, but to live among the untouchables. There was no work for me, so I would have to find other ways to eke out a living. But it’s easier to panhandle for food when you’re a child. So, that’s what I did for the next few years.”
“Huh…that must have been something.”
“Well…it’s a strange feeling being on the receiving end of the looks that people give you when you live as an untouchable. Most people look at the untouchables and they envision their lives as one of misery: these pathetic beings having to live in such sub-human conditions, performing the roles in society that no one else is willing to perform and without the ability to change their circumstances, living as effigies that Karma likes to burn whenever the fancy occasions itself. But in my hometown, we didn’t have any untouchables. There were too few of us to have those kinds of social stratifications. So, naturally, my perception of their situation was different from that of most people. The first time I saw how the untouchables lived, you know what I thought to myself?”
“What?”
“That I finally had a chance at a fresh start.”
Half Daughters, Quarter Sisters
I.
“So, you started your blissful existence as an untouchable. Where does my family come in?” Bunnu asked impatiently. “Isn’t that what you were supposed to explain to me instead of telling me stories I’ve already heard?” They were approaching the banks of the river. The muddy streets were now crowded with people moving back and forth restlessly like ants in an unbelievable rush. Bunnu found himself remembering the ants that he used to use as passengers in his toy boats and, consequently, found himself wondering if any of the untouchables around him had ever been on a boat before—if they had, indeed, been the subjects of a larger experiment to circumnavigate a Field heretofore unexplored.
“Right. I suppose it’s about time I got to the point.”
“My dear man, I do wish you would…”
“Well, there’s still a lot more to tell. I just didn’t want to leave anything out. Which would you prefer: the long version or the short version?”
“Which do you think?”
“Long story short?”
“You really are a master of intuition, Detective Ottoman.”
“Right. Long story short,” he said taking a deep breath. “I’ll skip ahead a little bit. So, I lived in the Dowa Districts for about a year as an unknown. It was a difficult life. As a child, everyone has designs on exploiting you to suit their own needs. Times were especially tough during the reign of Keisuke-610. Struggling to survive everyday, living among the lepers and madmen and the predators. Having people of higher castes look at you like they despised you for reminding them of your existence, sometimes abusing you. I managed like that for a long time, always remembering that it was survival that mattered most. And one day, out of the blue, I was discovered by the conceptual artist, Sanchez. You know him?”
“Oh yeah. I hate that guy! What did he want with you?”
“Well…he said he was having a kind of party and that he wanted to invite me. He told me he would give me food and money, if I came. So naturally I went.”
“Was it was one of his crazy theme parties?”
“In fact, it was. He called it a Degradation Party. The other untouchables and I wore elegant clothing while the other wealthy, snobbish types wore rags and served us high-class cuisine from silver trays. He gave each of his guests little cards with lines written down that they had to utter about how miserable they were and what an honor it was to be in the presence of such graceful and godly people as ourselves.”
“Sounds like Sanchez alright.”
“The guests loved it. Any chance to step out of their boring existence for just a moment suited them. And Sanchez simply went wild when he found out that I could read. Not like I meant to tell him. He just happened to have a book by my favorite poet sitting around in the dressing area. I stared at it for a long time and looked around to make sure no one was watching before I started paging through a little bit. And when he suddenly walked into the room, he wasn’t at all upset to see me handling his book, but more intrigued as to how I’d learned to read. But without waiting to listen for my explanation, his face brightened as he suddenly asked me to read from the book of poetry in front of his guests. You know, do a little recital. So, that’s what I did. Apparently, the idea was a hit with his friends, who just erupted in laughter at the sight of the emaciated untouchable reciting poetry. Many hailed it as his best party ever.”
“So, you became Sanchez’s toy…”
“’That, my young friend, is what we call survival.’ And the struggle for survival is often what begets these sorts of circumstances. Yes, I was something like a toy for a brief period. But you know how easily Sanchez gets bored.”
“Boy, do I!”
“At first, he wanted me to be a conversation piece in the living room. So he built a podium for me to stand on in the center. But it was very difficult to stand like that for so long, so after a while, he made it into a baby crib and asked me to wear oversized baby clothes. But soon, that became boring, too. So, it wasn’t long before I ended up being given out as a party favor to a guest at one of his dinner parties.
“The man who took me home was an underboss in the Mob. He wasn’t one of those typical mob types, as you might guess. After all, he was at a conceptual artist’s dinner party. He, too, had certain artistic sensibilities, however diminished they may have been by his crude and self-inhibiting ultra-masculinity. He knew, too, that he had to save face in front of his less artistically-inclined comrades and…not quite knowing what to do with me, settled on using me as a paperweight in the back office of a confectioner’s shop he used as a front for his criminal dealings. One day, when business was a little slow, it was just the two of us in his shop. And we got to talking. He told me that he didn’t know much about art, but wanted to know more. He asked me what it was like being a work of art. I told him that it was often a better position to be in, to be a representation of something… much better and much more revered, perhaps, than being that which is, in fact, represented. Cultures, after all, place a heavy emphasis on symbols. The signifier sometimes has a greater affinity to people than that which is being signified. Thus, since I had become a representation, I had a greater ability to connect with people. My existence carried a greater meaning to them.”
“So, in doing this, you succeeded in emerging from your life as an untouchable, then. You became something else. An object…”
“Yes and no. You see, I had emerged from the lifestyle. But I didn’t emerge from the brand. In fact, since Sanchez had exposed me to the village as his work of art, my persona, in fact, had become synonymous with the Untouchable lifestyle. Yes…I was a cultural icon, but I was typecast. I couldn’t escape from that public image, unless I did something drastic.”
“So, that’s where my family came in?”
“Yes. In fact it is.”
“Well…it’s about time! OK! So, what did my family do to help you emerge from that typecast?”
“Well…that’s the interesting part. I find it amazing that you don’t know yourself! It was highly publicized! Besides that, your older sister was at the center of it all!”
“I told you I don’t have a sister!”
“Wel
l…what about Didi, then?”
“Didi isn’t my sister.”
“But she-“ Ottoman-13 uttered in disbelief.
“She’s my quarter sister. She is older, though…”
“Don’t you mean half sister?”
“What’s a half sister?”
“Never mind that. You don’t know anything about-“ Ottoman started to say.
“Because,” interrupted Bunnu, “Didi is the half daughter of my father. Apparently, he and another man had some kind of ménage trois with the woman who gave birth to Didi. But that woman wasn’t my mother. So, Didi and I share half a father, but no mother. So, that makes her my quarter sister. But here’s the funny thing, and this is always what confuses me…if that woman in the ménage trois had been my mother, Didi and I would now share the same mother and half a father. So, would that have made her my two-thirds sister or three-quarters sister? It’s all a bit confusing actually. Anyway, I know for a fact that it wasn’t my mom in that ménage trois, because she almost hit the roof when Didi showed up at our front door. When was that? I think I was about 12 at the time…”
“Right, but-“
“So, what’s a half sister?”
“I’ll explain later,” Ottoman-13 said patiently. “Now, it’s time for you to speak with the Coach.”
II.