Content warnings: None
Translated by Jiang Caterina, with minor abridgments, from the recorded audio of the interview conducted by Bell Thea.
Yesterday, the morning meal was not sumptuous. No, it was no feast. The fruits of the cloud tree, floating in their bowl, were wilted. The mash cakes were frail and brittle, more salt than stuff. Father placed the pieces on our plates, and we three sat in circle. My baby sister was dead, she lay under a cloth in the center. She will be stillborn tonight.
“Today we must work,” my father told me. “We must complete everything today. We must rise to our tasks.”
“And also today—” His voice went wavery, his blow-pieces were all wrong. But from the click-pieces, I could understand what he said. “We must bury your sister.” He attempted to say it again, and his talking turned into one long, high scream, like an alarm. My mother put her left hand on his, she unbalanced the circle to move closer to him. They two, my parents, were enormous together, their head-ends held up high.
Also, my mother was telling me to eat up. “The harvest is good,” she said. She took one sip of water, then one bite of her mash cake. “Eat up, eat up and you’ll grow big and strong to work the fields and make the harvest good for your daughters and sons.”
And one of her daughters lay dead under a cloth in the middle of the room.
And she took one more sip of water, and she turned the mash cake to its unbitten side and bit off more. “The harvest is good,” she said. And she took one more sip of water, and she turned the mash cake to another unbitten side. And this continued.
And the mash cake in my right hand was salty and crumbly, and it did not fill me up.
Yesterday, at the end of the morning meal, we buried my sister. We were eating the cloud fruits. A ritual woman came into our house, and cast a die across the ground.
The die was a metal object, it shone in the light from the vents. Silver and white. It had twelve sides, each side a pentagon, like the stage where the players performed. It was perfectly symmetrical in all ways, except that on each side was a different symbol. A crazy thing, with no pattern, no order. I could see the symbols all whirling atop one another as the die spun across the swept stone floor. It made high-pitched sounds as it bounced.
The die stopped, and a pentagon marked with a circle and a line faced up.
“The die turns,” the ritual woman announced. “It turns and tells us what we will do. We will bury her in the southwest corner of your home, between the hearth and the children’s bedding.”
Also, we were eating the cloud fruits. These were wilted, these were not plump and tart. They tasted of water.
My father lifted the stone in the floor, and the ritual woman dug into the dirt beneath with a one-sided shovel. My mother held my sister’s body in the cloth.
“Maybe!” I said, and all my hairs bristled. “Maybe! Maybe she’s still alive! Maybe she’s sleeping!”
The ritual woman dug deeper.
My father whistled the same as he had before, a shrill, wavering alarm whistle, the same way he will whistle tonight.
I ate more fruit.
My mother laid my sister into the hole, and the ritual woman reversed her movements, spilling the dirt back on top of the dead sister.
“Maybe!” I said. “Maybe she’s sleeping! Maybe! Maybe! Maybe! Maybe! Maybe!”
“Maybe!” I said. “Maybe! Maybe! Maybe! Maybe!”
“Stop it! No more of this!” my mother shouted. “Eat your fruit and be quiet!”
“Today we must work,” my father said. “We must complete everything today.”
“We must,” my mother agreed.
My father replaced the stone in the floor. The ritual woman collected her die, she picked it up and put it in a small box, so that a pentagon with no mark on it faced up, and she closed the box and held the box steady, and steadily she walked out with her two hind limbs, her forelimbs holding the box and the one-sided spade.
We went out to bathe.
Yesterday when we went out to bathe, my mother said, “Time to wash off from yesterday.”
My father said, “I wish I could wash off from today, too.”
My mother laughed, and I laughed.
I went to my place in the sand pit, not far from my parents. The other families of our village were out as well. Ii!uu* and his parents were the closest [*Translator’s note: I have rendered all untranslated words and names using I!aua-II transliteration for ease of reading. I!au||a***-I transliterations can be read on the second layer, or requested as a separate document from ISR-Ext.]. I plunged my head into the sand, the cold sand, and looked up at Ii!uu. He was plunging his head into the sand. I plunged my head down again and shook the sand onto myself. I looked up at Ii!uu. I plunged my head down again and shook the sand onto myself, my old skin came off with the sand, and my new skin felt the air. I looked up at Ii!uu and I saw the sky, because something was in the sky.
It was a black object, it was no cloud, it was no sun. It was no dirt in my eyelashes, I knew this because it was moving south.
I kept staring and not plunging and shaking and bathing the skin off me. The object was triangular, with a long spike extending from the southmost point of the triangle.
“That’s the humans!” I said, and I pointed.
“What?” my mother asked.
“That’s the humans!” I said. “That’s the humans.”
She and my father, and a few others, turned to watch the object move across the sky.
“It’s going down there, to where the humans are, in the south!” I said.
“She’s talkative!” Ii!uu’s mother said.
“How do you—how do you know?” my mother asked.
“That sky object is the same as the one that will come tonight!” I said. “Tonight, you will only see the lights, and the lights look like two lines, and a third line extending from them.”
I drew the symbol in the sand with my right hand. My father whistled low, and some others did too, as they looked at the symbol I’d drawn.
“But now, this morning, you can’t see the lights. You can only see the object, which has this shape.” I drew on the symbol again, with my right hand, so that it was a triangle and a line. “See!”
“My, my daughter is, my daughter is so smart!” my mother said. “She’s smart, she’s, she’s so smart. She knows how tonight is from knowing this morning, she knows how they join. You are, !uau, you, you are so so smart.”
“She is, she is, she is, yes, she is,” my father said. They weren’t bathing.
“Do—you think—an aptitude test?” my mother asked. She said the word carefully.
“Yes, yes, we must. We must tell the dispatch man, we must now, we now we must now, we must tell the dispatch man now.”
I laughed and also shook sand on me and also watched the object flying south, and also my parents weren’t bathing, they left to see the dispatch man to bring a coordinator for my aptitude test, which will be tonight. The object descended to the hill on the horizon, where a black tower rose. The black object disappeared into the black tower.
Yesterday we set out to our work as the sun rose. We worked in the fields of aa!!aa berries, which the people of the mill will hull and mill in the afternoon, and the hulled pulp they will give to the cooks, and the milled seeds they will also give to the cooks, but give most of it to all the families, to take home and mix with water and salt to make mash, which we ate at morning meal.
I went down my furrow and pulled weeds.
As I reached for a shiny, fat-leafed weed, I put my right hand into vermin shit. “Noo!” I shouted. I hated the vermin. I could smell it a little on my right side, the shit. It was foul.
I went down my furrow and pulled weeds quickly. I heaped them onto the top of the compost pile. I took my bucket and scooped out compost from the bottom.
The vermin were overhead. The sun was high.
I went down my furrow and dumped out the compost at the base of the berry bushes. I patted it down in a circle, from south to north to south, around each bush I patted it down in a circle, and I did this down my furrow on the north side, and then I did this down my furrow on the south side.
And also above me the vermin circled, and I saw one seated on a bush and gobbling the berries off. It was disgusting to see up close, like the humans, although it looked very different from them. The vermin’s eye was black, and its mouth was flat, on its chest. It pushed its chest onto a berry, and the mouth expanded around it, and ate it. Its whole body wriggled when it chewed.
“Nooo!” I shout. The vermin expanded its wings, and hopped to another bush. “No! No! No! Go away!” I ran and swung the compost bucket at it. The vermin jumped off and flapped its wings, and flew away. Compost was everywhere, it was not patted down in circles. I was still patting it down in neat circles. Compost was in my bristles, compost was all over my fresh skin.
I went down my furrow and dumped out the compost at the base of the berry bushes.
And the vermin were picking them clean, and at the harvest, I collected few berries in my harvest basket. We all brought our harvest baskets together, and there were few berries.
Yesterday, as we gathered all our harvested berries together into a cart, and the people of the mill took the cart over with the harvests of the other fields and vineyards, the coordinator arrived. He was the coordinator who will give me the aptitude test tonight.
He arrived with two assistants. His skin was deep green, he had a white blemish on his stomach. I saw the white blemish when he reared up very tall to announce himself. His assistants gathered in all the people of the village. The sun was high and it was the time of rest, so we were gathered for that, in the shade of the dead orchard. The trees were enormous and did not produce fruit. So we were gathered to rest, and we were resting, and the coordinator gathered us, and told us this:
“I observed this village through three yesterdays.” And he held up a piece of gray cloth with three black lines marked on it. “I heard the dispatch man talk about famine this morning, so I came here to see what may be done. I observed this village through three yesterdays, and I found that there is no famine.”
I heard several low whistles. I crawled up closer to where the coordinator stood at the base of a tree with his two assistants on either side.
“The morning meal is eaten; the afternoon meal is full,” the coordinator said. “There is no famine. The vermin are the same that I saw this morning in another village further south. They are not a threat.”
“I was hungry at night,” a player said. She was the one who performs the lazy farmer tonight. “Is that … is that no threat?”
“Hunger is normal,” the coordinator said. “It happens today and yesterday and tomorrow. Hunger is not famine.”
“Yes, yes, you are right coordinator,” the player said. “Yes, yes.”
“I was, at night too, at night too I was hungry at night, too,” my mother said. “I was hungry after the meal, I was hungry after I ate the meal, soon after the meal I was hungry.”
The coordinator reared up and I saw the white blemish. “You are pregnant. Pregnancy brings hunger. This is normal. You will be hungry after eating, because your child is not hungry. And tomorrow when your child is born, you will not be hungry after eating.”
“Yes, yes, you are right coordinator,” my mother said. “Yes, yes.”
“What about the humans?” I asked. I was very close to the coordinator now, only two body-lengths between us.
“What about what?” he asked. “Please repeat yourself, girl.”
“What about the humans?” I asked.
“What about what?” he asked. “Please, repeat yourself, girl.”
“She is asking about the tall-beasts-water-water,” the assistant to my right said. “They call them humans* [*Translator’s note: In !uau’s dialect, the term I am translating as “human” is literally wet-beast-sky-sky].”
“The tall-beasts-water-water do not effect anything. They are like the vermin. I saw them just a few minutes ago in another village in the north. They also go to the utmost-coordinators. They do not effect anything.”
“Can they help?” I asked.
“!uau,” my mother said. “Say the—say what is said to coordinators, say that, do not, do not, just say what is said to coordinators.”
“Yes, yes, you are right coordinator,” I said. “Yes, yes. Can they help? The tall-beasts-water-water?”
“I do not know that. But they should not be approached. If one approaches tomorrow, do not talk to it. Tell the dispatch man, and a coordinator will be sent tomorrow. But do not talk to it yourself. They are not … they they … they … that is all.”
We rested.
“We are pregnant again!” my mother told her mother, and my father’s father and mother. “We are pregnant again! !uau will have a sister or brother, and we will be a whole family, two and two!”
“There is famine,” one of the cooks walked by our space near the edge of the orchard. “There is famine,” he said. “We must summon a coordinator, there is famine.”
“Good news,” my mother’s mother said. “The coordinator said there is no famine. Your daughter and her new sister or brother will have full bellies. Good news!”
The cook was gone. Others mentioned the famine being over. There was no famine. We were all well. My mother’s brother came by, and my father’s brother. My father’s nephew was marrying, and will be out of the house tomorrow. The coordinator said there was no famine. There was lots of laughter in the shade of the old orchard.
I rested.
My stomach hurt a lot. “There is no famine,” my father told me. “Your mother said, and your grandmother said, and the coordinator said, there is no famine. We will be a whole family, two and two.”
“There is no famine,” I repeated. My stomach hurt. I watched the vermin flying south.
Yesterday afternoon, as we made the mash and soaked the cloud fruits in spring water, I went to the humans. I walked across the open plain, which smelled rank and was rough and crazy, I walked out to the hill, the biggest hill, with a tower on it, which I’ll use to find south tonight.
Vermin flew in circles around the tower. Lots and lots clung to big metal tree trunks coming out of the left side of the tower. Clouds came out of the tree trunks, white and thin.
The tower was unbalanced. The door was on the right side.
I heard loud, short noises. A human stood on a ledge beside the metal tree trunks, and held a pole out toward the vermin. Two vermin fell down, the others flew away. I heard the loud, short noises. The vermin clung there, and the human chased them away with the loud pole.
I went to the door on the right side of the tower, and a human opened it. I went inside and the human took me to a house made of shiny cloth. Lots of humans were in this room. They sat on skinny, metal altars. They were not in circle, or crazy. They sat in line, like players.
One human sat down on an altar right in front of me. It said, “!uau, welcome. I am,” and it made a laugh sound. “You may call me Iaa!!aa. May I ask you some questions?”
“Hello, Iaa!!aa,” I said. “I am !uau. We are starving. Yes, you may.”
The human asked me questions. It asked, “What is your name?”
“I am !uau.”
“Are you a coordinator?”
“No.”
“What is a coordinator?”
“They connect tomorrow and yesterday.”
“Do you remember yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“You only remember yesterday?”
“Yes, what else can I remember?”
This the human asked me, it asked me if I could remember more than yesterday, as if there was more to remember than that.
“What do you grow?” the human asked.
“I grow aa!!aa berries.”
“What do you grow?”
“I grow aa!!aa berries.
“When was the harvest ruined?”
“This morning.”
“What yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“But which yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
“One yesterday before.”
“Yes, yesterday.”
“Do you remember yesterday? Do you only remember yesterday?”
“We only remember yesterday.”
“Do you remember the yesterday of yesterday?”
“No … I remember yesterday. Yesterday is only yesterday. There is only one, like there is only one today.”
“Who is it?”
“He is called the coordinator; I don’t know what Grandmother named him.”
“Do you have a coordinator we can talk to?”
“No, but he did come at noon. And he is giving me my aptitude test at night.”
“Do you only remember yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“What happened in two yesterdays?”
“I … don’t understand.”
“What do you do when it rains?”
“I sleep.”
“We have seen calendars though.”
“I … cannot understand those.”
“Calendar?”
“I know the word. The coordinator tells me tonight, when I fail my aptitude test. I am not smart enough to understand them.”
“Why are you starving?”
“The harvest is ruined.”
“So you do the same thing every today?”
“We do what we do.”
“Every today?”
“There’s only one today.”
“You will do the same thing today that you did yesterday?”
This the human asked, as if there was more to be done than all that we do. As if we could do two things at once, or make an entire new today that would be different from yesterday.
“You do the same thing every yesterday, and every today?” it asked.
“Yes.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow we will do what we do today, and more, and then we will die.”
“Do coordinators do the same thing every today?”
“I do not know much about coordinators. I failed my aptitude test at night.”
“Where do you live?
“In the village.”
“Can you tell us your …” The human stopped and made a low humming noise like an instrument. “Can you tell us your yesterday? All that you can remember?”
“Yes.”
And I am doing this now.
Yesterday, I returned from the human tower. A thorn stuck in my belly, and I had to roll on my side to pick it out. I returned across the plain. We were mixing the seed flour with salt and water, stirring one turn each and counting each time, until my mother counted 48. We were laying the mash into cakes all around the stones by our house. They dried in the sun.
The bell tolled. Its sound was the loudest I heard, louder than the pole.
“It is the time of the great meal, and the play,” my mother said. “It is your father’s favorite time.”
“It is,” my father agreed.
“Pay attention to the farmers. I learned from them yesterday, and you must learn from them too.”
“Don’t be like the lazy farmer!” my father said.
We walked the long path past the fields, past the other farmers’ houses, past the people of the mill and their houses, and past the old orchard where we lay in the shade at rest time, and where the coordinator had told us there was no famine, we walked past it along the long path and down a slope to where the water ran. Down by the water was the stage, and the ringing bell. Up on the slope we went to our place.
“The food! Yes! The food! The food!” my father said.
“I love the food,” I said.
“That’s why it’s his favorite time,” my mother said. “But pay attention! Eat up, but pay attention to the stage, and learn from the stage.”
A cook walked across the slope to us on her hind limbs, her forelimbs holding two trays full of small plates. She placed the tray before us on a flat space of ground.
“Good evening, people of the farms,” the cook said. “We have prepared the food you harvested today into a feast to nourish your bodies and give you the energy to harvest again in the morning.”
She moved behind the tray and held out both hands to indicate the first dish. “The leaves of the sun trees, in warm water.”
She held out her hands to the second dish. “The flesh of the berries of the aa!aa bush, mixed with salt and the bitter bark of the tree of the iiui root.”
She held her hands out to the third dish. “Slices of the fruits of the cloud tree, dried through twelve shelves.”
She held her hands out to the fourth dish. “A baked mash cake, sweetened with seeds of the ia!a grass through three shelves.”
She held her hands out to the fifth dish. “Sour porridge of the iiui root.”
But the bowl was empty. The dark brown porridge was not in the bowl. I did not smell its sour smell in my bristles.
“It’s empty!” I said.
The cook held out her hands to the sixth dish on the tray.
“It’s empty, where is it!” I shouted.
“Mash porridge with fresh slices of the fruit of the cloud tree.”
“Where is it?” I picked the empty bowl up off the tray. And the other dishes, too, were meager. “I’m hungry! This is famine!”
“!uau!” my father shouted my name at me.
The cook held out her hands to the seventh dish. “Ia!a grass reeds in warm, salted water.”
I threw down the bowl. It shattered.
The cook held her hands out to the eighth and final dish. “Mash porridge with young fruits of the sun tree, finished with juice of the ripe fruit of the sun tree, aged through the great shelves of the sun orchard, which are 144 shelves.”
“Thank you! Thank you for perfecting what we have harvested,” my father said. The cook kissed the tray, and left us.
“Eat up,” my mother said. “Like the cook said, eat up for the harvest in the morning.”
I took the first dish and ate my fill, and passed it to my father, and took the second dish. And we ate like this, and below the players began to perform.
And my father passed the third dish to my mother without eating of it. and she said, “But—but—but you should eat.”
And he said, “There is little of it. Eat for yourself and our child, who will be born tomorrow.”
I held the fourth dish in my right hand. The baked mash cake. It was small, and my stomach hurt. I wanted to eat all of it, not just one third. But I wanted my mother to eat all of it, and I wanted my sister to eat all of it, and my sister was dead.
“She is dead!” my mother shouted.
And below they were performing the song of the woman who spins the sun and the stars.
“Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Eat, I don’t need to eat, you eat, stop giving me your food, she is dead! She is dead!”
My sister was born dead at night.
I devoured the whole mash cake.
I picked up the fifth plate, which was the smashed one, the empty one. I remembered the revelation I will have soon, during the evening drink. I remembered that I vowed to go to the humans “tomorrow.” I thought, it was not tomorrow yet. But everything had to happen sometime, and I was hungry. I looked to the south horizon, and I saw the tower. And I cast down the fifth plate, which was empty again and shattered again. I ran away from the play. I ran on all fours across the crazy, rough plain. Thorns stuck in me. Two thorns stuck in my left side. Blades of wild grass caught in my whiskers. I ran, and the sun was lowering, and the players were performing the song of the people of the orchard.
I arrived at the tower. I saw the vermin, they clung to metal tree trunks. My revelation was right. The vermin were here in connection with the humans.
And down by the water, the players were enacting the scene of the mill worker and the coordinator.
I walked around the tower seeking a door. The tower was made of dark stone and shiny black rock. The shiny rock was pushed into the dark stone. I walked around the tower and started shouting. “Help! Help! Help! Help! Help!” I did this five times.
A human emerged. It was covered in cloth, or was made of cloth. The cloth was covered in markings, and most of the markings were not symmetrical. It held a metal box in its right hand. The box was also covered in crazy asymmetrical markings. It was like an enormous die. Everything the humans wore, and inhabited, and were, was like enormous dice.
The box made a noise. I slowly approached the human, and the box made the same noise, which was words: “Hello. Who are you?”
“I’m !uau,” I said. “You humans brought the famine! The coordinator was wrong, you are important. At night, my parents don’t remember you, because you brought the famine and you brought the vermin!”
The human held the box with both hands. The box said: “Please repeat.”
“You humans brought the vermin because you brought the famine!” I said.
The box said, “What are the vermin?”
“They are the vermin,” I said, pointing to the vermin, which were dozens and dozens, clinging to the metal tree trunks.
The human held the box with both hands again. It didn’t cast it on the ground like a die. It held it.
The box said, “We did not bring the vermin. The vermin were here.”
“You did!” I said. “You brought the vermin because you brought the famine. You came because the vermin came. They were in connection with you.”
And down by the water, the players were singing the song of love, which was my favorite.
The human held the box with both hands again. The box said, “You brought the vermin because of the famine. You came because the vermin came. They are in connection with you.” This is what I just said. Again the box said, “You came because the vermin came.” The box then said, “Do you remember yesterday?”
I said, “Yes.”
The box said, “But we came before yesterday. You cannot remember before that.”
“Yesterday is before,” I said.
The human scratched on the box with its right hand for a while. Then the box said, “But how do you remember our arrival? You can only remember yesterday.”
“You arrived in the morning,” I said. “And you arrived at night.” I thought very hard to say what I meant. The grass prickled all around me, and I thought about the thorns in my left side. I looked at the box. I remembered what my parents will say tonight, and the revelation I will have. “My parents have a different yesterday than mine,” I said. “They are like a yesterday, and I am a today. In their yesterday, there was no famine, and there was no humans. But in mine, there were both. You came because the vermin came. The vermin came because you came. And look there, the vermin are living where you are living.”
The human scratched the box for a while, again. The box repeated words that I said, and I repeated words the box said.
Then the box said, “We will discuss about the vermin. They are here before us, but maybe they are more today. Are you a coordinator? Some coordinators know multiple yesterdays before.”
“No. I do not have the aptitude,” I said. “But the coordinator was wrong about the famine. My sister is dead and I am not. My sister is younger than me. And I am younger than the humans and the vermin and the famine. So the famine and the vermin and the humans killed her.”
And down by the water they were performing the story of the three farmers, and my mother told me to pay close attention.
The human asked if I will return tomorrow.
I looked at its box, which was like a die. I could not read the markings, I’m not a ritual woman.
But still, I decided. I decided about my tomorrow, and made my yesterday. “I will come here during the afternoon, while we make the mash cakes and soak the fruits of the cloud tree.”
“Good,” the box said. “We will ask you more questions this afternoon. Go away.”
“Yes, coordinator,” I said. “Yes, yes.”
Yesterday in the evening drink, we gathered into our house and sat in circle. My mother poured water into three white cups, and drink into three black cups. My cups were smaller.
“How is your day?” my mother asked. “Are you well? Are you full? Are you strong?”
“Yes, Mother,” I said. “I am well, and I am full, and I am strong.” And also I asked, “Will my brother or sister be born tonight?”
“No, no, no,” my mother said. “But, but tomorrow, but tomorrow your brother or sister, they will be born tomorrow.”
And my father said, “How is your day, my love?” And my mother said her day is well, and my father said his day is well too.
We all sipped our drink. It was the sweetest thing, and it tickled my mouth.
“What do you wish to know, !uau?” my mother asked.
“Tell me your yesterday,” I said.
My mother told me her yesterday. She did not say that in the morning we buried her daughter, but she did say that in the morning I was born. She said how she ate her morning meal, and she said how she went out to bathe in the sand pit, and she said how she went out for the harvest. And she said how at midday, on the plain, she wed her love, my father. She said how when the ritual man asked her to speak her love for him, for so long she could not speak at all. And after she did not speak for so long, she said, “I love you, I!uuau. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.”
And when the ritual man asked my father to speak his love to her, he said, “I cannot! I cannot! Oh, my words! My words!” And she said that the two ran away to the biggest hill, and ran around it in circles, and the ritual man reached them and told them to go back to the village and make their home there.
And I said, “There is no tower on the hill!”
My mother kept telling me her yesterday, and I said again and again, “There is no tower on the hill! The humans are not on the hill, and the vermin are not in the harvest! There is no tower on the hill in your yesterday, but there is in mine!”
My mother stopped her telling and she said, “Stop. Stop, do not. Stop. The humans, do not think of them, you are not a coordinator, you will not pass your aptitude test. Stop.”
“There is a tower on the hill, and there is vermin, and there is famine,” I said. “It is not in your yesterday, but it is in mine, because I am younger. The coordinator was wrong—the humans are important! They are change, they aren’t like the dirt or the river, or a baby, or a storm. They are a crazy new thing!”
My mother and father watched me in silence.
“I will go to the humans and tell them,” I said.
“No, you won’t,” my mother said. “You did not yesterday. You will not tonight.”
She was right. I did not remember going to tell them that morning, or in the day, or later in the night.
I said, “Then I will go to them tomorrow.”
Yesterday night, I was bedding down, and the coordinator entered our house. He was the same coordinator from earlier, the same who said there was no famine in the afternoon. I saw the white blemish on his underbelly.
He said, “Come with me, !uau. We will perform your aptitude test.”
I followed him outside, and the stars were in the sky. There were more of them than there were of anything. They were all white and the sky was all black. Some of them disappeared and some of them appeared. The stars were in the sky.
“Your mother requested you take an aptitude test, !uau. The test is in three parts. First, we will talk, because coordinators must know to talk. Do you know what a coordinator is?”
“Those are the stars,” I said.
“!uau, do you know what a coordinator is?”
“Yes, you are a coordinator.”
“Explain what a coordinator is. Explain to me.”
“The stars,” I said. I looked at the ground, where there weren’t stars, just dark, still sand. “A coordinator is someone whose today is very different from their yesterday.”
“That is a good description. Why are you looking down?”
I looked up to face the coordinator, and saw the many stars in the sky behind his raised head. “The stars. I didn’t see them at night. They are. Talking makes it difficult to look at the stars.”
“Yes, that is why the aptitude test is at night. Stars are dice in the sky. They are crazy. A coordinator must not be stopped by what is crazy. Try to look up as we talk.”
“Yes, yes, you are right coordinator,” I said. “Yes, yes.”
“What is the role of a coordinator?” the coordinator asked.
“Please repeat,” I said.
“What is the role of a coordinator?” the coordinator asked.
I said, “Please repeat.”
“The farmer harvests food, the players instruct, the millers prepare food. And there are many other roles which help us all live from yesterday to tomorrow. There are people who build hammers, and people who harvest rocks to make dice. What is the role of a coordinator?”
“To cross villages,” I said. I stared at the ground to try and bring out my thought, but thought about what the coordinator said about looking up, and I did not want him to think I did not have aptitude. I looked up. “A coordinator is like when we rest in the old orchard. A coordinator goes between villages and connects everyone.”
“That is good. We will move to the second part.” The coordinator moved to sit beside me, to my left. We were unbalanced. He held up a hand, and closed all but one finger. The one finger he extended, and held in front of my face. He said, “What is to the left of my finger?” I looked, and to the left of his finger was the mill. I told him, “The mill.”
“Which is closer to you, my finger or the mill?”
“Your finger,” I said.
“Beside the mill are the houses of the people of the mill. Which is closer to the mill, the houses or my finger?”
“Your finger,” I said.
“Which is closer to the mill, the houses or my finger.”
“Your finger,” I said. It was right next to the mill. Then I said, “No, no, no no no. You don’t want me to say that. No. The houses are closer, they are closer. The houses are closer, because to walk to the mill from your finger is far, but to walk from the mill to the houses is short.”
“That is good,” the coordinator said.
“But to move my eyes between them, the houses are further,” I said.
“That is good,” the coordinator said. “We will now perform the third part of the aptitude test.”
And also, I awoke. I heard my mother screaming.
And the coordinator stayed at my left side, although he put down his finger. “I will tell you a performed yesterday, like a song, and I will ask you a question about it. It is not my yesterday, but listen to it as you listen to your mother or father’s yesterday.
“In the morning, I gave birth to my daughter. In the afternoon, I married my husband. In the evening, I saw my daughter married. Which happened first: my daughter’s birth, my marriage, or my daughter’s marriage?”
“Your daughter’s birth,” I said. “It happened in the morning.”
“Which happened first: my daughter’s birth, my marriage, or my daughter’s marriage.”
I knew I had the question wrong. “Your daughter’s birth,” I told the coordinator.
“Which happened first: my daughter’s birth, my marriage, or my daughter’s marriage.”
“Your daughter’s birth!” I said. “It happened in the morning, it is first.”
And also my mother was screaming, and she was in her bed, and my father unbalanced the room by crawling over to her.
“No,” the coordinator said. “You have failed the aptitude test. You are smart, but you cannot be a coordinator.”
“No, no, no no no! I am smart!” I said.
“Yes, but you cannot be a coordinator.”
“Tell me! Tell me the right answer! Tell me and I can learn like I learned to be a farmer from the players.”
“You will not understand it,” the coordinator said. “You should sleep, now, I think farmers are asleep tonight.”
“Just tell me!” I shouted.
And I walked across the house to my mother’s bed so that it was all unbalanced, we were all together, and my mother was screaming. Her arms were not fat, and her whiskers were not long and shiny. And she held a thing in her right hand.
“It is like my finger and the mill,” the coordinator said. “We walk through many yesterdays, and many todays. So that in my yesterday, the birth of my daughter seems to come before my marriage. But when I walked through the yesterdays, I started at the marriage, then walked to my daughter’s birth, then walked to my daughter’s marriage. Do you understand?”
“No. No, no.”
And also I saw, in the right hand of my mother, my sister. She was very small. She did not move. She was not fat.
“Starved! Starved! Starved!” my mother cried.
“Go to sleep,” the coordinator told me. He had earlier said there was no famine.
Earlier yesterday, I did understand. I understood when I heard there was no tower in my mother’s yesterday, and when I saw the vermin were in connection with the humans. But tonight, I did not understand.
I went to sleep.
And my father took the thing from my mother’s right hand. He took my sister. He laid her in the middle of the house, and walked around the walls many times. He walked around them six times. He picked up a cloth and put it on my sister.
My mother cried, “Starved, starved. Starved, starved.”
Then I slept, and that is the end of it.
!uau: Do you understand it now? We don’t have words to explain it in a way you would understand. You ask if we only remember yesterday as if yesterday is so meager, when yesterday is everything.
Bell: But it is only one day. It has only one sunrise, and only one sunset. And it happens in order.
!uau: Yes. Does your today not happen in order? Do you not see the sun rise before the sun sets?
Bell: Yes. But we also understand everything in that order. All of life. A person is buried after they are born, not before. That is the only order it can happen.
!uau<: This is what the coordinator wanted me to understand.
Bell: Do you understand now?
!uau: I do. Because I understand that the vermin arrived after the humans arrived, although I remember it happening all at once. Just like when I look at a group of trees, I can see that they are all next to each other, although I may know that one is very far away from the others.
Bell: I think I understand. We come from a planet which is crazy. The sun rises and sets every yesterday, but nothing else is so constant. Every yesterday is crazy. So we remember yesterdays in order, like individual shelves in a set of great shelves. But for you, each yesterday is the same, so there is really only one yesterday.
!uau: Yes. I think … I have a toy which looks like a die, but it is not, because all the faces have the same circle symbol. It cannot be a die because it can only show the same symbol every time. It would not make sense. The sides are different, because they must be, because there are multiple of them, but they are all the same, so they are all one side. So you can say that the die has twelve sides, and you can also say that the die only has one side. I remember a one-sided die.
