The Man with the Compound Eyes (18 page)

When Alice visited that time in university, some petrochemical firm had already moved in and reclaimed land for a refinery in another little village to the south. Life changed after the plant was finished: Grandma’s oyster field silted up more and more every year, occasionally an oily film slicked the ocean, and the sky was always hazy. Grandma had to drag the water buffalo into the icy sea every few days to check the racks or pick oysters. Oyster picking is toil, and the winter wind off the ocean is chill, but sitting in the cart laden with oysters on the way back, with the wheels leaving much deeper tracks in the mud, you had such a steady, satisfied feeling. After picking the oysters, Grandma would spend the whole afternoon sitting on a chair “shucking” them. Those tough-looking oysters were actually soft inside. In a few short months Alice got used to oyster soup, oyster omelette, oyster crisp, mud crab and yam greens planted in the backyard. The days passed, and at some point so did her boyfriend’s face.

Alice thought later maybe her personality changed in some subtle way during those days she spent at Grandma’s place. When she went back after her break, her classmates all felt she was different.

The year Thom and Alice started building the Seaside House, Alice’s brother called to inform her of Grandma’s death.

“What did she die of?”

“Of old age.”

“Of old age,” Alice said, as if reciting. Actually Grandma had suffered from lung and kidney disease for more than a decade. Most of the people in the village left the world on this account. So one holiday, Alice and Thom made a trip back to the fishing village on the other side of the island. Driving through, they could hardly see any open gates. There didn’t seem to be anyone there. From the seashore they saw that another petrochemical plant had been built to the north. Alice vaguely remembered protests against the plant over quite a number of years, but it got built in the end.
Lots of bird-watchers used to visit the shore, huddling behind their telescopes as if anticipating the advent of some great change in their lives. But later, according to Ming, after the petrochemical plants, even the birds had changed direction.

The plants needed workers, not old people. One time when Alice went back for a visit, Grandma launched into a litany of the conditions the neighbors were suffering from. Usually a reserved person, Grandma just would not stop talking that day, like she was afraid she’d never get another chance. Alice listened, feeling that those old folks who’d left the world before Grandma had probably died of loneliness, and that loneliness had led to the other symptoms.

Thom stood on the strand. Mostly buried in the sand, the oyster rack only reached his calf. Grandma’s house, the water buffalo shed and the empty oyster racks seemed like an assemblage of monuments without anything to commemorate. And without anybody to maintain them, the bracken and the sandy muck were gradually encroaching.

Thom said, “Seems like it was once a charming little fishing village. Now all you could do here is film a period flick.”

Alice gave him a cold stare and said, “Actually, it’s been plundered.” Maybe because she’d been standing in the mud too long, her feet were quite stuck when it came time to leave. Thom had to help pull her out. Watching the distant smokestacks belch black smoke, Alice suddenly recalled the tabi booties with the separate big toe that Grandma always wore to keep her feet from sinking into the mud.

Alice felt her head hit something when she dove into the ocean that day. Her arms and legs went instantly numb; the water was frigid. Then everything went black. The first thing that crossed her mind after waking up in hospital was Ohiyo. The devastated shoreline was playing on the TV news, and wouldn’t you know it there was Ohiyo.

“She must be looking for me. She has to be. Ohiyo is trying to find me!” Alice removed the IV: ouch! She’d always hated getting shots, and if she was awake and the doctor said she needed a shot she would definitely make a scene. Alice ran a bit, deliberately making a detour to give the nurse she’d
just bumped into the slip. When she got to the entrance, she pretended to be going out for a stroll just like a regular patient. Luckily she was wearing her own T-shirt, just not the one she had been wearing when she had jumped out the window.

Dahu must have brought it for me. He knows I do not like to wear hospital gowns, Alice thought. She had jumped into a taxi before panicking when she realized she had no money on her. She sure hoped Dahu would be at the Sea House when she got there. But when the driver saw the mess on the shore he didn’t even ask her to pay.

“You live here, ma’am? You can’t live here anymore. The houses have all been flooded. Forget the fare, it’s on me.”

“No, I insist. I just don’t have money on me is all.” Alice took down his license and phone number and promised, “I’ll send it to you tomorrow!”

Moon and Stone were the first to see her there, and their barking caught the attention of Dahu and a few police officers. Dahu came right over. His shirt was extremely wrinkled, and he had obvious bags under his eyes. He looked like he’d had an unfortunate life. There were people there, maybe the police or from some disaster relief agency, cordoning off the Sea House with a ring of a yellow tape.

Dahu said, “They’ve just cleared a spot for the things that fell out of the Sea House. Anything that could be salvaged is there. I was watching.” He did not ask what Alice was doing there, why she wasn’t in hospital. Alice wasn’t surprised, because that was the way he’d always been. Dahu! Don’t you know women like a guy to take charge sometimes?

There was a rotten odor in the air Alice had never smelled before. Maybe it was seaweed mixed with the things that had been washed up on shore by the wave.

“Have you seen Ohiyo?”

Dahu shook his head. Alice wondered whether that meant he’d forgotten about Ohiyo or that he really hadn’t seen her. The coastal villagers were all gathered on the beach talking. Several people waved at her, but from that far off it was hard to say if they were unhappy, in low spirits or what. Whatever they were feeling, they seemed prepared for the worst.

Actually, when the ocean started rising a couple of years ago, the only
residents on this stretch of shore who had not moved uphill were the owners of the Sea House and the Seventh Sisid, so there were very few homes left. Everyone was trying to get as far away from the ocean as possible, like it was the plague. Not that it was necessarily any safer in the hills. When they were building the big seaside amusement park and hotel, for instance, they ended up loosening the dip slope of the mountain, and now there were several spots where the shoulder of the highway would always subside after a heavy rain. As Dahu had put it, “The mountains here seem like they might trip and fall at any moment.”

Alice walked over by the Sea House. The coastguard and a few of the cops kept coming over to ask her questions, but she ignored them, speaking only to Dahu. “Is Hafay all right?”

“She’s fine, staying at my place for the time being. You’re welcome to come over, too.”

Alice fell silent, then said, “Dahu, can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“I need you to help me charge the car and park it around here for me. Can you do that? Then I’ll come and drive it away?”

“Sure, but you need to tell me where you’re going.”

“Um, okay, but some other time, I promise. Are our friends around here all doing all right?”

“They’re all well. But everyone’s worried that the sudden hail and the wave are bad signs.”

Bad signs. There had been enough bad signs. Too many. So many that they no longer counted. Alice picked up a blue backpack she’d bought with Thom in Oslo and started packing things she might need. Crossing the cordon, Alice found the home first-aid kit by the Sea House—only one wall had collapsed. Luckily she also found her wallet and cards, which she’d put in a drawer. The sleeping mat she had just bought for Ohiyo and the waterproof hard drive containing photographs of Toto were there, too. She kept picking things up, feeling like here was her life, scattered all over the place. On the verge of tears, she hurried to speak to try to distract herself.

“What happened? Where’d all those things come from?”

“From the sea. The Trash Vortex brought all of it. You remember all those news reports about the Trash Vortex? Plastic refuse thrown away around the world drifting around with the ocean currents, gradually gathering together, until eventually …”

“Oh, that. I remember that. That was big news. Didn’t the government say it would do something about it?”

“You believe the government?” Then, seeming to remember something, Dahu slapped himself on the thigh and said, “Is Ohiyo the black-and-white cat you found?”

“Yeah, I thought you remembered.”

“
Aiya
, when you suddenly appeared I was so relieved that my mind relaxed for a while there. I didn’t realize what you were asking. There’s a camera guy who apparently got footage of her.”

“Right, I saw it in the hospital. It was on the news.”

“I’ll go find him. He was staying at Hafay’s before the wave. I know what he looks like,” Dahu said, running off into the crowd.

Alice looked off toward the Seventh Sisid. Perched on a rock, it seemed left out in the cold. It was half a lifetime of labor, Hafay’s heart and soul. It was as much part of Hafay as the Sea House was of Alice.

Alice had almost finished packing by the time Dahu returned with a tall man with a buzz cut. They nodded and exchanged greetings, then the man flipped open the monitor on his camera. In the footage, Ohiyo was walking along the refuse-strewn beach and mewling, apparently quite distraught. This was the clip that they had played on the television news. The next part had not gotten airtime: Ohiyo hopping from the beach up onto the road, walking in the direction of the path to the stream where Alice often went to draw water. At the end of the clip Ohiyo disappeared into a thicket of grass.

“I’m a cat person, and this kind of footage is compelling, so I tracked it awhile. It looks like it went that way.”

“Thanks. Dahu, I’m off to find Ohiyo.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No, I’m fine by myself, and they need you here. If you can, help me tidy up the stuff that fell out of my house. And take good care of Hafay.
See if our friends here need any help.
Aiya
, what am I saying? You’re already doing these things.”

“All right. But you have to tell me where you’re going to be. I can’t just let you go like this.”

A cop wanted to stop her from leaving, so she looked over imploringly at Dahu.

Dahu came up with a plan. “Here, you take this,” he said, getting out his cell phone to give to Alice. Then he did all the talking for her, saying, “It’s all right. Let her go. Nothing’s going to happen to her. Look, she’s fine. I’ll make sure she goes to the station to report her losses.” The policemen all knew Dahu. This one just waved her on, not wanting to argue.

Dahu turned to Alice and said, “You have to answer when I call, all right?” Alice nodded and jogged off. Moon and Stone kept following her.

“Go back! Back! Back to the shore,” said Alice, shooing them away.

Alice walked up the path to the stream hollering, “Ohiyo! Ohiyo!” It was getting dark out, had started drizzling. She slipped the waterproof cover onto her backpack, and put on her raincoat. The path was really slippery, but Alice had walked it a million times. All she could think about was finding Ohiyo as soon as possible, as it would get cold at night and something might happen to her. Alice kept calling Ohiyo, Ohiyo, until she rounded the bend and saw that a huge section of the side slope had slid down and almost buried the path. As it was still a bit light out, Alice assessed the terrain and tried climbing over. But the slide was higher than it looked, so she tried to squeeze through the grass on the other side of the path instead. Then she heard the sound of beating wings.

A few moments later, tens, no hundreds, of butterflies or moths that must have been hiding in the grass until Alice disturbed them flew to the other side of the slide in an undisciplined but seemingly coordinated fashion. The sky was dark now, making it hard to tell their colors. All she could see was that each was the size of her palm. It all happened so suddenly that Alice could not help crying out. And right when she did, she heard a cat’s meow, as well as what sounded like the call of a muntjac. The call was really close, seeming almost to come from the ground beneath her feet.

Alice, who had fallen back onto her butt, managed to free herself from
the vines and stems she was tangled up in and get round the slide. The first thing she saw on the other side was Ohiyo emerging from the grass to greet her. Then her heart skipped a beat when she saw an adolescent, a youth with skin like mud, lying on the ground, apparently immobilized, pinned down by earth and rocks. There were tears in his terrified eyes.

An image resurfaced in Alice’s mind, of one time when Dahu caught a muntjac. He and Thom had killed the beast with a gun, then taken turns carrying it down the mountain. They showed Alice a photo of the muntjac in the trap. It was still alive. The animal had a broken leg, and a look of despair, Alice sensed its desire to live. That night she refused to make dinner for them. She felt angry at the men for their nonchalant attitude, and because they had brought back the photo like a trophy or an interesting topic of conversation.

The young man now trapped under the slide had the same expression as that muntjac.

When Atile’i saw the woman appear before him, he remembered the Roaring Rite the Earth Sage had taught him. The Earth Sage said, if you encounter anything you are unable to understand, then roar with the strength that lies beside your beating heart and you will speak with the voice of your true self and even evil spirits will flee. Atile’i tried roaring now, but as soon as he opened his mouth and yelled his heart and leg began to ache, as if someone had taken a stone knife and minced his spirit into fish paste. That’s how painful it was! So after yelling a few times Atile’i started to cry.

The Earth Sage said, “To let a single tear fall is to submit, to plead for help, to render all rituals inefficacious.”