The Man with the Compound Eyes (24 page)

The
Lavian
that time was my father, as always. Before dawn, the party assembled and formed a ring in an open field and waited for my father to sprinkle wine and sing.

“Tell me what has come before my gun?” my father sang.

“All the deer have come before my gun,” sang the other hunters.

“Tell me what has come before my gun?” my father sang.

“All the boar have come before my gun,” sang the other hunters.

Our guns overflowed with the smell of liquor. On the way to the hunting ground, I overheard my father whisper to my uncle that he’d seen a sign in a dream, but somehow he’d forgotten it after the wine sprinkling ceremony. My uncle reassured him, saying that people forget dreams all the time. Besides, not having a dream or forgetting one is no reason to leave the hunting party.

That time we carried out
Mabusau
, a hunting technique. First the
Lavian
judges where the boar is hiding and lets the dogs drive it out. Then the hunters fan out to surround it. At about five in the morning, when the sky had just gone light, the dogs caught a whiff of the boar and started barking like crazy. My father saw something rustling in the grass from far away and knew it was a huge boar, maybe that
Hanito
of a boar. He guessed which way the beast had fled and assigned pursuit routes to each of the hunters. I got the left-most route, because I was still a child of these hills with everything to learn. I ran and ran, listening to the dogs barking and the grass rustling as the scent and shade of every tree went swooshing by. Then I tripped and fell, head over heels. I picked up my gun, got up and ran, pressing down on my knife with my hand to keep it from slapping against my thigh.

I don’t know why, but after I got up I couldn’t hear anything at all: the forest had gone completely quiet, as if the world had been silent from the very beginning. I stopped to check which way the wind was blowing, what direction the distant grass was swaying in, when suddenly a huge shadow
swept past up ahead, moving fast as wind. I took a deep breath and went after it, running so swiftly I was almost holding my heart in my hands. I don’t know how long I had run when that shadow stopped dead, turned, and bellowed at me.

I was scared stiff. It was like watching a video that appears silent until it starts playing with the volume turned up all the way. Standing before me was a man. He was staring at me, his hair flying vinelike in the wind.

The man began to speak … if it can even be counted as speaking. His mouth didn’t move in the least, but I heard him loud and clear: “Child, you are fated never to catch a boar, never to become a good hunter.”

“What can I do then?”

“What can you do?” he asked me back. I discovered his eyes weren’t like human eyes. They were more like compound eyes composed of countless single eyes, the eyes of clouds, mountains, streams, meadowlarks and muntjacs, all arranged together. As I gazed, each little eye seemed to contain a different scene, and those scenes arranged to form a vast panorama the likes of which I had never seen.

“What can you do?”

The question echoed back on a gust of wind, and I found myself standing over a sheer cliff, just like a mountain goat. It was like I was standing on an island. The distant sky was the color of a ginger lily, with dark green trees and a creek below.

I only found out later that the whole hunting party had been looking all over for me because something had happened to my father. My uncle’s gun misfired and shot my father in the right eye, rupturing his eyeball and ripping a hole in his head. Father did not die right away. On the third day he actually managed to take out his breathing tube and summon my brother and me to his bedside. He asked me, “Where did you go that day?”

“I don’t know.”

“He was found by a cliff, just standing there like he was dreaming,” my elder brother explained.

My father pointed at my brother. “You must learn to be a Bunun hunter.” Then he pointed at me and said, “You cannot be a hunter anymore, not after shooting the goat ear.”

“What should I do then?” I asked.

“Become a man who knows the mountains.” Father’s voice became very far away, and the blood from the wound to his right eye started seeping through the gauze again. He started losing consciousness. My elder brother pushed the button by the bed and the nurse rushed to find the doctor. My father held on in a kind of stupor for only seven more days before leaving us.

I didn’t tell him I’d met a man with peculiar eyes. I thought there wasn’t any need. Now my father’s eyes were shut for ever.

After that, every time I went hunting I was found standing in a daze at the edge of a cliff. People avoided taking me along. Luckily I did well at school, and ultimately I even went to a university on the west coast. By the way, have you ever seen this hat of mine? I really like it. Those are bamboo partridge feathers on top. When my father named me, he caught a bamboo partridge, fed me the meat and kept the feathers for me as a memento. This might well be my most precious possession.

After Millet left, I started coming back to the village now and again to help Anu operate the Forest Church. Maybe I’m slowly getting to know the mountains. Now I just feel we have to make sure mountains like this don’t disappear, mountains without potholed roads or tunnels, mountains where goats and boars and deer can run wild.

It’s been blazing hot the past few days. Yesterday, looking up at the mountain from the coastal highway, I saw many trees that seemed scorched by the fiery Foehn wind. One time my father took us swimming at the seashore. “When the sea is sick, the mountains will be sick, too,” he said, squeezing my little willy between his fingers.

I opened the Seventh Sisid because I wanted to have a dwelling with windows on all four sides. Because I’m afraid of houses without windows.

Dwelling places are really important to the Pangcah aborigines, because we think houses are for spirits to inhabit. Me and Ina drifted into the city, spent so long living there, but all the houses we lived in were haphazard, more like shacks. So the first thought I had when I made some money was to build a house of my very own, right by the seashore.

I remember Alice and Thom started building the Seaside House just when I broke the soil on the Seventh Sisid, so our houses were twins. Their house was really special, like nothing I’d ever seen before: it had solar panels on it, and the shape of it was unprecedented in these parts. I didn’t have relatives or friends in the local Pangcah village, but when I was building the house everyone still came out to help. Remember? When it was finished we held a
mitsumod
. You were there, weren’t you? You even helped me slaughter a pig Ah Jung’s family raised. Time sure flies.

Would you mind if I ask you about Millet? Ahem. I mention her because hearing you talk about her reminds me that I used to do the same kind of job. Maybe I understand how Millet felt, more or less. Besides, maybe at the same time as I was working she was doing the rounds in a place with little rooms somewhere else. You know? The worst part about the job is when you’re standing in the doorway, about to knock, and you don’t have
any idea what kind of man is waiting for you on the other side. You can’t refuse, even if you don’t like him, even if he’s disgusting. You knock, the door opens, and you’ve got to spend an hour with a stranger.

I had a close friend at work at that time. Her name was Nai. She told me, try pretending you’re a real masseuse, not someone doing “dirty” work. Every guy who comes here
must
have some aches and pains. So when you massage a customer, ask him what needs special attention, where you should press harder, and when you massage those places it’s like … it feels like there’s something alive inside. Nai said that if you give those places a serious rub, the customer might initially say it hurts but eventually he’ll relax. Some guys go to sleep, others open up and start confiding in you. If you show him some tenderness a customer usually won’t be too demanding, because lust will have been replaced with something else.

But there are all sorts of difficult customers, and some are sick with you-know-what and they’re not too happy if you don’t want to touch them or let them touch you. Some guys really make a scene. Sometimes when you’ve done half the massage, the wife or girlfriend will call and you pretend you’re not overhearing, but it’s really awkward. Some customers who haven’t been able to come when time’s up will try to pay half price and leave. Some will toss the money on the counter downstairs and jump into a cab. And when the bookkeeper counts it there’s not enough. And other customers will even make harassing phone calls.

When I was doing you-know-what with the guys, I would turn off the lights and the TV. The room would get real dark, and I’d imagine I was on a small, deserted island somewhere.

I often thought: If I ever make enough money I’ve got to move someplace that’s sunny and bright.

Nai always told me, whatever you do, don’t fall for a customer. She told me for my own good, and for her own good, too. But there was one time when I almost did. I still remember the way his back looked. He had broad shoulders, with a long, tapering line from his neck to his waist, like this boy I knew in elementary school. He often came exhausted, with numerous knots or clots in his energy flow. I had to struggle to work them out. He
hardly ever spoke, but you could sense his breathing was labored. Even though I almost never talked to him, I felt he wasn’t a happy guy.

When it was time, I would turn off the light and tell him, “Mister, you can lay on your back now.” He would turn over quietly, and I would sit by the bed with my back to him, holding his thing and relieving him. Sometimes he would gently touch my back with his big hands. Maybe you don’t believe me but a woman’s body can sense the emotion in someone’s touch. Even when you just lay a hand on someone or someone lays a hand on you, you sometimes get a sense of what the other person has on his mind, though you’re not real clear what it is. It’s kind of elusive, whatever it is that’s communicated through the skin. It’s hard to describe, but you know it when you feel it. You can sometimes tell whether another person loves you or not, just by touch.

He visited almost every other week, and he always asked for me. I came to recognize his scent and physique. He wasn’t like most guys who go to a place like that. I mean … most guys want to get their rocks off, whether they’re young soldiers or middle-aged married men. Many of them start pawing you right after you go in because they’ve paid their money. But he wasn’t like that, for some reason. He was always very gentlemanly, and regarded me as a masseuse except when I “relieved” him. Lots of times he didn’t even ejaculate. The alarm would go off and he’d wipe himself down with a hot towel, say thank you, and leave.

He kept coming for about half a year I reckon. It sounds funny but in the last few months I started pretending that I had just gone for dinner with him, or for a stroll at the seashore, or that he’d just gotten off work and was so beat he’d just collapsed facedown on the bed as soon as he came in the door, and I would walk over and give him a massage without a word. I would imagine scenes like this. Sometimes I would even stare at his long pale back and imagine him suddenly turning over and saying something like, “You look great today,” in that deep voice of his, like it was nothing special.

Of course, nothing of the sort ever happened. I hardly ever said a thing to him face to face, and all he would say to me was thank you. Then he’d put on his hat and leave, not looking up.

The only time we ever talked was this one time I started singing along with the MTV channel. After I was done, when he was putting on his clothes he asked me whether I liked singing. I said I did. From then on every time he visited he brought me a CD, all English songs I’d never heard before. He said they were all popular songs and that I could learn these songs since I had such a great voice. I can still sing all of them now, because he was the one who gave me the CDs. I even remember the names of the singers. Those singers were really good. It was like each of them had a magic trick only he or she could do.

Just like Nai said, any guy who comes here is someone else’s husband, boyfriend or dad, so whatever you do, better not get any illusions. But Nai fell in love with a customer who later became her boyfriend, all the same. And I started to look forward to that man’s visits, counting the days until he’d come see me again. I never asked him what his name was or what he did for a living. During the day I put my earphones on and listened to those CDs he gave me until I fell asleep.

He stopped coming in November of that year. The last time he appeared was the last day of October. I didn’t have his cell phone number or any other way to reach him. All I remember is his back, and all I have are the CDs he gave me.

When I was massaging the bodies of strange men in those dark little rooms, the rooms you entered when your number was called, I would often wonder what was going on in the next room. I didn’t even know what was going on next door. The wallpaper in the room I usually used was a picture of the seashore, but it was the sea in Greece not here. It was a sea I’d never visited. Anyway, it was just wallpaper the renovator had stuck up for no special reason. You could only see it clearly with the light on, but if you did that you’d discover damp rot in a lot of places. A big sheet of it had peeled away from the wall, and the sea didn’t look the least bit real. It looked the most real when you turned the light down low. In those days, I was living right by the sea, but I rarely went to the shore, because I was sleeping days and working nights.

I’ll always remember Ina’s expression when she looked out to sea through the train window on our trip back to the east coast. She patted my head
and tapped on the windowpane, murmuring things to me about the sea as the Pangcah people know it.

She said that the original ancestor of our village was the sky god, who lived in Arapanapanayan in the south. By the fourth generation the sky god had six great-grandchildren, the youngest of whom was a girl named Tiyamacan. The sea god took a liking to Tiyamacan, but she was not willing to marry him and hid herself from him wherever she could. The sea god became angry and raised a flood. That sea god would not take no for an answer.