Ursula K. LeGuin - Ekumen 07 - Four Ways to Forgiveness

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Betrayals

"On the planet 0 there has not been a war for five thou-

sand years," she read, "and on Gethen there has

never been a war." She stopped reading, to rest her

eyes and because she was trying to train herself to

read slowly, not gobble words down in chunks the

way Tikuli gulped his food. "There has never been a

war": in her mind the words stood clear and bright,

surrounded by and sinking into an infinite, dark,

soft incredulity. What would that world be, a world

without war? It would be the real world- Peace was

the true life, the life of working and learning and

bringing up children to work and learn. War, which

devoured work, learning, and children, was the

denial of reality. But my people, she thought, know

only how to deny. Bom in the dark shadow of power

misused, we set peace outside our world, a guiding

and unattainable light. All we know to do is fight.

Any peace one of us can make in our life is only a

FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS

denial that the war is going on, a shadow of the

shadow, a doubled unbelief.

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So as the cloud-shadows swept over the marshes

and the page of the book open on her lap, she

sighed and closed her eyes, thinking, "I am a liar."

Then she opened her eyes and read more about the

other worlds, the far realities.

Tikuli, sleeping curled up around his tail in the

weak sunshine, sighed as if imitating her, and

scratched a dreamflea. Gubu was out in the reeds,

hunting; she could not see him, but now and then

the plume of a reed quivered, and once a marsh hen

flew up cackling in indignation.

Absorbed in a description of the peculiar social

customs of the Ithsh, she did not see Wada till he

was at the gate letting himself in. "Oh, you're here

already," she said, taken by surprise and feeling

unready, incompetent, old, as she always felt with

other people. Alone, she only felt old when she was

overtired or ill. Maybe living alone was the right

thing for her after all. "Come on in," she said, get-

ting up and dropping her book and picking it up

and feeling her back hair where the knot was com-

ing loose. "I'll just get my bag and be off, then."

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"No hurry," the young man said in his soft

voice. "Eyid won't be here for a while yet."

Very kind of you to tell me I don't have to hurry

to leave my own house, Yoss thought, but said noth-

ing. obedient to the insufferable, adorable selfish-

ness of the young. She went in and got her shopping

bag, reknotted her hair, tied a scarf over it, and came

out onto the little open porch. Wada had sat down

in her chair; he jumped up when she came out. He

was a shy boy, the gentler, she thought, of the two

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Betrayals

lovers. "Have fun," she said with a smile, knowing

she embarrassed him. "I'll be back in a couple of

hours — before sunset." She went down to her gate,

let herself out, and set off the way Wada had come,

along the path up to the winding wooden causeway

across the marshes to the village.

She would not meet Eyid on the way. The girl

would be coming from the north on one of the bog-

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paths, having left the village at a different time and

in a different direction than Wada, so that nobody

would notice that for a few hours every week or so

the two young people were gone at the same time.

They were madly in love, had been in love for three

years, and would have lived in partnership long since

if Wada's father and Eyid's father's brother hadn't

quarreled over a piece of reallocated Corporation

land and set up a feud between the families that had

so far stopped short of bloodshed, but put a love

match out of the question. The land was valuable;

the families, though poor, each aspired to be leaders

of the village. Nothing would heal the grudge. The

whole village took sides in it. Eyid and Wada had

nowhere to go, no skills to keep them alive in the

cities, no tribal relations in another village who

might take them in. Their passion was trapped in

the hatred of the old. Yoss had come on them, a year

ago now, in each other's arms on the cold ground of

an island in the marshes — blundering onto them

as once she had blundered onto a pair of fendeer

fawns holding utterly still in the nest of grass where

the doe had left them. This pair had been as fright-

ened, as beautiful and vulnerable as the fawns, and

they had begged her "not to tell" so humbly, what

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could she do? They were shivering with cold, Eyid's

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FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS

bare legs were muddy, they clung to each other like

children. "Come to my house," she said sternly. "For

mercy sake!" She stalked off. Timidly, they followed

her. "I will be back in an hour or so," she said when

she had got them indoors, into her one room with

the bed alcove right beside the chimney. "Don't get

things muddy!"

That time she had roamed the paths keeping

watch, in case anybody was out looking for them.

Nowadays she mostly went into the village while "the

fawns" were in her house having their sweet hour.

They were too ignorant to think of any way to

thank her. Wada, a peat-cutter, might have supplied

her fire without anyone being suspicious, but they

never left so much as a flower, though they always

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made up the bed very neat and tight. Perhaps

indeed they were not very grateful. Why should

they be? She gave them only what was their due:

a bed, an hour of pleasure, a moment of peace. It

wasn't their fault, or her virtue, that nobody else

would give it to them.

Her errand today took her in to Eyid's uncle's

shop. He was the village sweets-seller. All the holy

abstinence she had intended when she came here two

years ago, the single bowl of unflavored grain, the

draft of pure water, she'd given that up in no time.

She got diarrhea from a cereal diet, and the water of

the marshes was undrinkable. She ate every fresh veg-

etable she could buy or grow, drank wine or bottled

water or fruit juice from the city, and kept a large sup-

ply of sweets — dried fruits, raisins, sugar-brittle,

even the cakes Eyid's mother and aunts made, fat

disks with a nutmeat squashed onto the top, dry,

greasy, tasteless, but curiously satisfying. She bought

3-*Hg> 4 1~»tS

Betrayals

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a bagful of them and a brown wheel of sugar-brittle,

and gossiped with the aunts, dark, darting-eyed little

women who had been at old Uad's wake last night

and wanted to talk about it. "Those people" —

Wada's family, indicated by a glance, a shrug, a sneer

— had misbehaved as usual, got drunk, picked fights,

boasted, got sick, and vomited all over the place,

greedy upstart louts that they were. When she

stopped by the newsstand to pick up a paper (anoth-

er vow long since broken; she had been going to read

only the Arkamye and learn it by heart), Wada's moth-

er was there, and she heard how "those people" —

Eyid's family — had boasted and picked fights and

vomited all over the place at the wake last night. She

did not merely hear; she asked for details, she drew

the gossip out; she loved it.

What a fool, she thought, starting slowly home

on the causeway path, what a fool I was to think I

could ever drink water and be silent! I'll never, never

be able to let anything go, anything at all. I'll never

be free, never be worthy of freedom. Even old age

can't make me let go. Even losing Safnan can't make

me let go.

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Before the Five Armies they stood. Holding up his

sword, Enar said to Kamye: My hands hold your death,

my Lord! Kamye answered: Brother, it is your death they

hold.

She knew those lines, anyway. Everybody knew

those lines. And so then Enar dropped his sword,

because he was a hero and a holy man, the Lord's

younger brother. But I can't drop my death. I'll hold

it to the end, I'll cherish it. hate it, eat it, drink it, lis-

ten to it. give it my bed, mourn it, everything but let

it go.

VMS 5 c-'-a*

FOUR WAYS TO FORGIVENESS

She looked up out of her thoughts into the

afternoon on the marshes: the sky a cloudless misty

blue, reflected in one distant curving channel of

water, and the sunlight golden over the dun levels

of the reedbeds and among the stems of the reeds.

The rare, soft west wind blew. A perfect day. The

beauty of the world, the beauty of the world! A

sword in my hand, turned against me. Why do you

make beauty to kill us, my Lord?

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She trudged on, pulling her headscarf tighter

with a little dissatisfied jerk. At this rate she would

soon be wandering around the marshes shouting

aloud, like Abberkam.

And there he was, the thought had summoned

him: lurching along in the blind way he had as if he

never saw anything but his thoughts, striking at the

roadway with his big stick as if he was killing a snake.

Long grey hair blowing around his face. He wasn't

shouting, he only shouted at night, and not for a long

time now, but he was talking, she saw his lips move;

then he saw her, and shut his mouth, and drew him-

self into himself, wary as a wild animal. They

approached each other on the narrow causeway path,

not another human being in all the wilderness of

reeds and mud and water and wind.

"Good evening. Chief Abberkam," Yoss said

when there were only a few paces between them.

What a big man he was; she never could believe

how tall and broad and heavy he was till she saw

him again, his dark skin still smooth as a young

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man's, but his head stooped and his hair grey and

wild. A huge hook nose and the mistrustful, unsee-

ing eyes. He muttered some kind of greeting, hardly

slowing his gait.

ff*SB 6 S-*-®

Betrayals

The mischief was in Yoss today; she was sick of

her own thoughts and sorrows and shortcomings.

She stopped, so that he had to stop or else run right

into her, and said, "Were you at the wake last

night?"

He stared down at her; she felt he was getting

her into focus, or part of her; he finally said,

"Wake?"

"They buried old Uad last night. Alt the men got

drunk, and it's a mercy the feud didn't finally break

out."

"Feud?" he repeated in his deep voice.

Maybe he wasn't capable of focusing any more,

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摘要：

Betrayals "Ontheplanet0therehasnotbeenawarforfivethou-sandyears,"sheread,"andonGethentherehasneverbeenawar."Shestoppedreading,toresthereyesandbecauseshewastryingtotrainherselftoreadslowly,notgobblewordsdowninchunksthewayTikuligulpedhisfood."Therehasneverbeenawar":inhermindthewordsstoodclearandbright...

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Ursula K. LeGuin - Ekumen 07 - Four Ways to Forgiveness

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