Neverness (30 page)

   He rubbed his forehead with his bloody fingers. He said, "There is one of the Devaki who lives alone in a chamber off the side of the cave. He is your great near-uncle, and I must ask you, since you killed the first seal and it is your privilege, will you do the honor?"

   "Why does he live alone?"

   "He lives alone," Yuri said, "because he committed a great crime long ago, and no one wishes to live with him. He is the other 'Old Man of the Cave.'"

   "Did he murder someone?" I asked.

   "No, it is worse than that. He lived when he should have died. When it was time for him to make the great journey, his father became filled with the volcano spirit and saved him from the death-by-ice. And is it not said that many try to die too late but few too soon? We are obliged, are we not, to die at the right time? Well, this man did not die at the right time. He was born a
marasika
without legs, and when the midwife tried to smother him, his father beat her and stole his son back to life."

   Yuri's story seemed achingly familiar. I tried to ignore the shouts of all the happy people kicking up the snow and swarming around the meat, and I asked, "What is this man's name?"

   And he covered his eyes with his scarred hand as he said, "His name is Shanidar, son of Goshevan. Goshevan, who killed my grandfather, Lokni, for trying to prevent this crime. Goshevan came to the Devaki to live, but when his son was born without legs, he stole Shanidar away across the eastern ice to the Unreal City where the shadow-men made him new legs. And when Shanidar had grown to be a man, he returned and said, 'I am Shanidar, and I have come to live with my people" But everyone knew it was too late for him to live, and so my father, Nuri, told him he could spend the rest of his days in the chamber off the side of the cave."

   We walked into the cave and he pointed at a long, dark gash in the cave's wall behind the huts of the Sharailina family. I assumed it was a side vent leading to Shanidar's chamber. He blinked his eye and said, "Now he is an old man who cannot kill his own meat. And who can blame him? He is a little crazy from the hell of the living-death, this poor, lonely man named Shanidar."

   I nodded my head as if it all made sense.

   "Meat must be taken to Shanidar so that he does not make the double crime of dying too soon."

   I nodded my head that this was so.

   "Shanidar would be eager to hear the story of your journey across the southern ice because he himself has made a long journey."

   I nodded my head very slowly and asked, "There is no one else to fetch his meat?" I did not want to see this old man who had once known the cutting shops - and other sights - of the City.

   Yuri sighed. "The honor usually falls to Choclo. But tonight, I must ask you: Will you take Shanidar his portion of this beautiful meat?"

   I tried looking through the side vent into Shanidar's chamber, but I saw nothing except blackness. "Yes," I said, "I will take Shanidar his meat."

   I piled some hunks of meat together and wrapped them in a skin. Through the side vent of the cave I climbed, stumbling against blocks of rock projecting from the upward-sloping, black floor. The walls were cold and close around me. I bumped my head on a blade of rock and cursed. Ahead of me and above was a faint yellow glow, as of coldflame lighting a distant window. Somewhere water was dripping; the plip-plop was too loud and very near. I smelled wet rock and a sickly, sweet aroma that made my throat gag and clutch. From the walls of rock surrounding me reverberated a moaning that was at once full of irony and sorrow, pity and pain. Occasionally the moaning would break into a high-pitched ululation and then soften to a sing-song gurgle. I drove myself upward towards this pitiful, demented wailing, dreading what I would find. I wondered that the fabulous Shanidar should still be alive. He must be very old, I thought, very old.

   But what can a young man understand of old age? How to understand the aches and fears, the nostalgic looking backward to the days of youth? Although I had been among many old men - Soli and the timeless Timekeeper came immediately to mind - their oldness had been transmuted by the arts of civilization; they were old souls brought back to young, vital flesh, men who had tasted little of decrepitude or helplessness. And I, too, was a civilized man - of the slow death of shaking limbs and cankers and sudden lapses of memory I had no wish to know.

   I had never before seen a truly old man.

   He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of a stone chamber so small that two men would have had trouble lying lengthwise, toe to head. In front of him burned a small, wood fire, which sent plumes of smoke curling up toward a crack in the ceiling high above. I could see him plainly, holding his frail, bony hands in front of the fire, watching me approach. "Mallory Sealkiller," he said. He smiled at me nicely, but he had no teeth. "Ni luria, ni luria. I am Shanidar."

   "_Ni luria_," I said, and I dumped the meat onto a slab of rock next to the fire. "How did you know my name?"

   "Choclo, my little near-grandson, visits me often, you know. Yesterday morning, before the hunt, he told me that men had come across the ice. Such a tale he told me. Of course, he himself likes to hear tales of the Unreal City, even though he doesn't believe me when I say the shadow-men build boats that sail among the stars. Who could believe such a thing, hmmm? Nevertheless, it's true. I have seen it with my eyes."

   He carefully touched his temples and smiled again. The skin around his eyes was inelastic and heavy, drooping so much that he seemed sleepy. The eyes themselves were of some indeterminate bluish color and milky with cataracts - I did not think he could have appreciated the silvery lines of a lightship with those eyes, though perhaps they were still sensitive to the rhythms of light and dark. He was an old, old man whose wasted lower jaw met the upper without the interference of teeth. The effect of this mutilation was to foreshorten his face so that his chin nearly touched his nose. It was an ugly thing. His cheek skin, I noticed, hung from his face bones in loose, white, wrinkled sheets; his skin was thin and delicate and shot with a webwork of ruptured blood vessels. I did not like to look at him, but the sheer grandeur of his ugliness made me stare.

   He saw at once - if "saw" is the right word - he detected my horror and fascination, and he said, "The shadow-men of the Unreal City trap their spirits inside young flesh, you know, you know, and so their animas are very old when they make the journey to the other side of day. Did you bring me meat? I'm sorry: too old, you know. It's said that there is a barren island on the other side where these spirits howl with outrage because they are so old - old, old, old, old - they have been cheated of their enlightenment. Seal meat isn't it? They won't be redeemed from time, of course you know that listen I must interrupt myself often because I'm afraid if I don't then I'll forget something important - they won't be redeemed so they'll wander their lifeless island stuck in the eternal Then-moment. The pity - that's the real hell. We must grow old, and we must die at the right time. That's the key, did you know?" And then, "Seal meat is full of life, hmmm? Will you be kind and cut me a small piece of blubber?"

   I did as he asked and he popped the cube of fat into his mouth. I did not like it that he spoke so often of the Unreal City, and so I repeated the skeptical (and wishful) saying of the Devaki: "I had a dream that shadow-men live in a city under the silver fog of dawn, unreal, unreal. I had a nightmare and when I awoke the city was gone, unreal, unreal."

   He ate another piece of blubber while he stared in my direction with his cloudy eyes. "That is good," he said. "Will you cut me some meat? Cut the pieces small, you know, I have to swallow them whole. This is good meat - did you know the meat in the Unreal City grows in ponds? I have seen it with my eyes. But this meat tastes better - careful, you know, cut the pieces smaller or I'll choke." He laughed and said, "And that would be an undignified way to go over, you know, choking with a throat full of seal meat. Of course, there are some who will tell you I should have gone over long ago, when I was a baby born without legs. But my father had a dream and brought me to the Unreal City which I have seen with my own eyes. My father, whom I loved, had a dream."

   As he rambled on about his father's dream of escaping the nightmare of civilization, I cut tiny cubes of seal meat and glanced about the chamber. I was surprised that the grooved and rippled walls were covered with paintings. How he had acquired the magenta, pink and green pigments to Color his paints I could not guess. Along one wall, the silvers and reds and purples flowed together in a brilliant fusion of colors. I had the impression he had tried to capture a vision of his Unreal City. It was beautiful, if inelegant work. The paintings on the other wall were quite different; the other wall ran with ochres and dark greens and puce. The light in the chamber was poor, but I saw that Shanidar had daubed red splotches everywhere, seemingly at random. They could have been anything: a predator's eyes peering from behind a mottled curtain of vegetation or expanding red giant stars gone nova - or drops of blood. The splotches - indeed, all the rest of the paintings - were very disturbing. He must have known what I was looking at because he said, "You see my glories? You see? You see?"

   I saw that this old man was neither truly civilized nor savage. I thought his paintings were mirrors for both the terrors of the primitive world and the (to him) marvels of civilization. Here, in a dark crack in the ground, he lived apart from other men, an outsider who had no home. (I did not consider his stinking chamber, with its piss-soaked furs and neat, conical piles of dung, to be a home.) I pitied him, but as we talked it became clear that he had little pity for himself. "How I love the taste of seal meat!" he exclaimed. "It was better, you know, when I had teeth to release the juices, but it is still very good. Mallory Sealkiller - it is said that Nunki is your doffel and you killed him, is that true?"

   "Yuri believes the seal is my doffel."

   "He is a wise man, it is said."

   "My grandfather told me Ayeye, the thallow, is my doffel."

   "And who was your grandfather?"

   I recited my fake lineage, and he confided, "When I was a boy I had no grandfather to name my doffel. So I had to discover it for myself. Could you cut me more meat, hmmm? Cut the pieces small, you know. That way you release more juice. Ah, that's good! Such a taste - I love the taste of Nunki, who doesn't?"

   "Would you like some more blubber?"

   "When I was a young man I crossed the eastern ice from the Unreal City - yes, blubber tastes good, hmmm? - I crossed the ice. Why do I remember every crevasse and snowstorm of that journey when I cannot remember young Choclo's birth, which happened only thirteen winters ago? Or was it twelve? But I remember my doffel." He grinned and looked at me expectantly.

   "And who is your doffel, then?"

   I cut him a handful of diced meat and gave it to him. He rolled the meat around in his mouth, swallowed, and said, "I've lived such a life. There is nothing like the taste of seal meat, is there? I've lived alone and apart but I've lived a rich life, no man richer. Sometimes a man must live apart from his brothers, outside of his family's cave. It is a hard life then, you know, but rich and beautiful because living apart is like being a mountain above hills, like being a god among men. The glories! On the top of a mountain there is loneliness and terror, but there are glories, too. The drop is terrible, but the view, oh, the glorious view! And you know this, so why listen to an old man? Because you are kind - Mallory the Kind I will call you. It will be our secret, you know. Now will you cut me some of this delicious seal meat? It is delicious, isn't it, this meat of Nunki's, who is my doffel, too. Did Yuri tell you that? When I was younger, one time I killed a seal just to see if I could. Yuri thought I would be too afraid, but I killed him just the same."

   I cut him slices of meat, all the while wondering how I could run from his chamber without offending him. I did not want to agree that the seal was my doffel. I hated that there should be a correspondence of any sort between us. I did not want to share the infamy of having killed our mutual doffel, nor did I desire the lonely kinship of men who must stand apart from other men. What I wanted, simply, was to discover the secret of life so I could live it more fully in the company of other women and men.

   The Old Man of the Cave ate as he waited for my reply. He slurped his meat into his toothless mouth and swallowed it unchewed. He consumed so much meat I thought his old, shrunken belly would burst. As I watched, his skin took on ugly sallow tones as if his bile were poisoning him. He began to cough. His stomach rumbled and he farted so loudly even Bardo would have been impressed. "It is too much, you know. Oh, the pain, it cuts like ice through my bowels." He hunched forward on his hands and knees, gasping, trying to stand. "A man should not eat his meat like a dog," he said. And then, "Help me."

   I helped him to his feet. I hated touching him; I hated the frailness of his thin, birdlike bones, the obscene feel of the hump between his shoulders where the spine had cracked and bent with age. He opened his lips to thank me, and I could not help looking into his mouth. His mouth was a horror. The tongue was coated and thickened, and his gums were bleeding, covered with sores. The odor was like nothing I had ever smelled before. He hobbled to the end of the chamber where he carefully vomited over one of the piles of excreta. When he returned to the fire, his skin seemed white, almost translucent like glacier ice. He took my arm in his cold, wilted hands. "Nunki's meat is good but it is tough, you know? Oh, I think you are smiling because you still have all your teeth. They are strong, aren't they, hmmm? Will you be kind enough to chew my meat for me with your strong teeth?"

   I did not want to chew his meat for him. I was full of meat; the thought of chewing more meat made me sick.

   "Choclo sometimes chews my meat, you know. Such a kind boy."