Glorious Boy. Aimee Liu

events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch . . . In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude.

      She said, “I am deaf and dumb.”

1937

      Mosquito boots. Bush trousers. Topi with netting. Field tent. Binoculars. Insect repellant. Snakebite kit. Sulfa, tablets and powder. “What did R-B take?” Shep asked.

      Claire had no idea. There was no field manual for ethnographers. But then, their first weekend exploration would hardly qualify as a professional field study.

      They’d secured a naval launch to take them up the coast. With Leyo leading, this would shave the two-day trek to two or three hours from the point where they landed. So easy, it seemed like cheating.

      “Excited?” Shep asked as they crossed the empty parade ground to the pier. It was that sinister hour before dawn when trees looked black and water red, and the sky seemed at war with itself.

      “I’m glad we’re doing this together,” Claire said.

      “You all right?” He examined her with concern.

      For a moment, she wondered if he saw through her. She’d lost weight and often complained that the Atabrine he insisted they take against malaria made her feel as sickly as it made them both look. The warning signs screamed, yet she’d admitted nothing, and he’d promised to support her in this work. Now—January—was the coolest month, the safest and most bearable for trekking. The duration was what really worried her.

      Three days was nothing, she scolded herself and gestured toward the sky. “It’s going to be a scorcher.”

      Reynold, the naval lieutenant in charge of the boat, had a Cockney accent, sun-bleached hair, and a tan that Cesar Romero would envy. He’d charted every inch of the Andaman coastline, he told them. No one knew the islands better. Then, with a sidelong glance as Leyo secured their packs, he muttered that he’d seen enough of the blacks up north to know never to trust one of them.

      Claire beat a quick retreat with Leyo to the canopied bow while Shep stayed aft to occupy Reynold. Fortunately, the lieutenant was a punctual man who obeyed his orders, and as soon as they were off, the noise of the outboard muffled his further remarks.

      The sun broke through as the launch sped north past the tricorn bulge of Mount Harriet—as Shep said, a drumlin that only homesick Europeans would think of upgrading to mountain status—and in minutes the lighthouses on Ross and North Point were behind them. The coastline thickened with mangroves and towering ficus trees, the water turning from celadon to cobalt, and the sand burned so white it seemed to percolate under the brooding sky.

      Coconut palms lined the beach like sentries as their Indian pilot spouted British names: Kyd Island. Napier Bay. Neil. Havelock. The Union Jack snapped in the sea spray.

      An hour later they entered the forest, Leyo in his element. Even under their largest pack, his bare feet skipped over vines the size of pythons, shoulders swooped beneath fallen trunks. His close-cropped hair escaped the nettles, twigs, thorns, and creepers that bedeviled Claire and Shep as they stumbled along single-file, struggling for footing on the bottomless sponge that passed for ground, for breath in the gaseous heat of decay that seemed to envelop them.

      A hornbill, like some prehistoric aviator, sailed beneath the canopy. A stream materialized to their right. Emerald green monitor lizards followed their progress, and toads the size of rabbits scuttled between the fern fronds.

      Gradually, as their eyes adjusted to the viscous light, they began to spot the orchids high in the branches or clinging to trunks, trailing plumes or shooting small explosions of color. Once Shep and Claire got the hang of it, as if mastering a child’s game of hidden pictures, they saw them everywhere.

      A field guide from the settlement library having served as Shep’s primer, he managed to identify even from afar the basic contours of lady’s slippers, Dendrobium, giant Vanda, and the delicate winged grace of Phalaenopsis. But these were altogether different species from those that grew near the port. Some blooms here were the size of helmets. Some transparent as ghosts. A few moved as if breathing, though eventually they realized this was because the stems were covered with ants. Some, even at a distance of several yards, gave off powerful fragrances or stinks. And many, suspended from their host trees by nearly invisible threads, appeared to float in mid-air.

      Mesmerized to distraction, Claire tripped and went down. Shep was on her in an instant, but she waved him off.

      “I’m fine. These damned boots!”

      She smelled the change before she understood it. Still prone in the decaying leaves, she caught a whiff of oil and sweat, a shift in atmospheric tempo. In her periphery she had the impression that Leyo’s feet had multiplied and wondered if she was hallucinating. Then two pairs of hands gripped her arms, hauled her up, and she saw that the new feet belonged to two small young men—or boys—who looked just like the pictures in Radcliffe-Brown, except for their lively movements. One had tonsured his scalp. The other wore two conical tufts, like horns of hair, rising from his otherwise shaved head. Their eyes seemed huge and wet and black in their lean faces.

      The newcomers laughed, bantering with Leyo in the language he’d begun to teach her, except that in their throats the phrases seemed to twitch. They plucked at her hair and clothing, and she and Shep both stood speechless. Fascinated. Confounded. Only when the Biyas’ two yellow dogs found them and, tongues in a lather, leapt toward Claire, did Shep snap back into himself. He stepped to shield her and pulled her behind him, away from the others.

      “Hang on, old girl,” he whispered, and this time she did.

      The Biya camp consisted of a narrow clearing with thatched shed-like structures that housed fewer than a dozen people, most clad only in a belt of leaves or shells. The Biyas decorated their skin with dried yellow clay. A few wore twine necklaces, women bare-breasted, and all but the youngest were scarred in distinctive patterns up and down their torsos. None stood taller than five feet.

      Claire glanced at Shep, whose delighted expression mirrored her feelings exactly. They had done it. They had entered a time capsule by leaving almost everything familiar behind and discovered a reality so strange and new yet ancient that it made every nerve in her body quiver. Except, of course, that they hadn’t actually discovered anything. The Biya had been living here all along. She and Shep were simply catching up.

      They needed to appear at ease. She must keep clear mental notes until she could get to her field journal. She had to become what Professor Benedict called an inconspicuous observer. But how?

      “Just act natural,” Shep breathed as they followed Leyo to the center of the clearing.

      “Natural to who?” It was an honest question. Everything from their ground cloths and netting to mosquito boots must seem preposterous to the Biya. As would her desire to study this clan.

      Then something released in her. How would she feel if some stranger from an alien world asked to watch her every move? The Biya were no different. No different. Treat them with respect and compassion, not condescension. Trust that they know what they’re doing, even if you don’t. Show the genuine interest of a friend, not the intrusiveness of a voyeur.

      An older woman with a frizz of gray hair and a man’s blue necktie looped around her broad belly stepped from one of the huts. Leyo embraced himself, then hugged the woman, who responded by patting his face and tugging at his singlet with amused disapproval. He’d told them he had just one living relative, an auntie named Mam Golat. “Umimi,” he called her now. Aunt, or great aunt, or adoptive aunt—Claire wasn’t sure which, and Leyo didn’t immediately introduce them.

      Instead he motioned them toward a male elder with pronounced lips and eyes. Kuli was the smallest of the adults, with slender limbs and a sequence of horizontal scars forming a ghostly ladder from right to left