Treason

"Then why aren't you undressing? " she asked, puzzled.

"Because in my nation we don't undress to sleep."

She laughed aloud. "You mean you wear clothing even in front of other women?"

I pretended to speak as if I were from a nation whose customs exactly coincided with my present need, though in fact at that time I did not yet know of any such place. "The body is one's most private possession," I said, "and the most important. Do you wear all your jewels all the time?"

She shook her head, still amused. "Well, at least I hope you'll take it off to drop."

"Drop?"

She laughed again (that damned superior laugh) and said, "I guess a soiler would have a different word for it, wouldn't you? Well, you might as well watch the technique-- it's easier to show it than to explain."

I followed her to the corner of the room. She grasped the corner pole and then swung out through the curtain. I gasped at the sudde

So I opened and watched as she defecated over empty space. Then she swung back in and walked over to another water bucket-- not the one she had drunk out of-- and cleaned herself.

"You've got to learn quickly which bucket is which," she said with a smile. "And also, don't ever drop in a wind, especially in a wind with rain. There's nobody directly below us, but there are plenty of houses off at an angle below my home, and they have strong opinions about feces on their roofs and urine in their drinking water." Then she lay down on a pile of cushions on the floor.

I hitched up my robe until the skirt was very short, and then grasped the pole tightly and delicately tiptoed through the curtain. I began to tremble as I glanced down and saw how far below me the few torches still burning seemed to be. But I bowed-- or rather squatted-- to the inevitable, trying to pretend that I was not where I was.

It took a long time to convince my sphincters that they should relax, not clench up in terror. When at last I finished, I came back and walked awkwardly to the water barrel. For a difficult moment, I wondered if I was at the wrong one.

"That's the one," came Mwabao Mawa's voice fzom the cushions on the floor. I inwardly winced to think she had been watching me, though I hope I showed nothing on my face. I cleaned myself and lay down on another pile of cushions. They were too soft, and soon I pushed them aside and slept on the wooden floor, which was more comfortable, though something in between would have been nicer.

Before I slept, though, Mwabao Mawa asked me sleepily, "If you don't undress to sleep, and you don't undress to drop, do you undress for sex?"

To which I just as drowsily replied, "That I will tell to those who have a practical reason for such knowledge." Her laughter this time told me that I had a friend, and I slept peacefully all night.

I awoke because of a sound. In a building where there is not only a north, south, east, and west, but also an up and down, I couldn't tell where the sound was coming from. But it was, I realized, music.

Singing, and the voice, which was distant, was soon joined by another, which was closer. The words were not clear. There may have been no real words. But I found myself listening, pleased by the sound of it. There was no harmony, at least nothing that I could recognize. Instead, each voice seemed to seek its own pleasure, without relation to the other. But there was still some interaction, on some subtleor perhaps merely rhythmic level, and as more voices joined in, the music became very full and lovely.

I noticed a motion, and turned to see Mwabao Mawa looking at me.

"Morningsong," she whispered. "Do you like it?"

I nodded. She nodded back, beckoned to me and walked to a curtain. She drew it aside and stood on the edge of the platform, naked, as the song continued. I held on to the corner pole and watched where she was watching.

It was the east; the hymn was to the imminent sun. As I watched, Mwabao Mawa opened her mouth and began to sing. Not softly, as she had yesterday, but with full voice, a voice that rang among the trees, that seemed to find the same mellow chord that had originally been tuned into the wood, and after awhile I noticed that silence had fallen except for her music. And as she sang an intricate series of rapid notes, which seemed to bear no pattern but which, nevertheless, imprinted themselves indelibly in my memory and in my dreams ever since, the sun topped a horizon somewhere, and though I couldn't see it because of the leaves above me, I knew from the sudden brightening of the green ceiling that the sun had risen.

Then all the voices arose again, singing together for a few moments. And then, as if by a signal, silence.

I stood, leaning on the pole. It occurred to me that once I had shared Mueller's delusion that people with black skins were fit only to be slaves. One thing, at least, I'd learned from my embassy here, and one thing I would take away: a memory of music unlike any other ever known in this world. I leaned there, unmoving, until Mwabao Mawa closed the curtains.

"Morningsong," she said, smiling. "It was too good an evening last night not to celebrate today."

She cooked breakfast-- the meat of a small bird, and a thin-sliced fruit of some kind.

I asked; she told me that the fruit was the fruit of the trees the Nkumai lived in. "We eat it as soilers eat bread or potatoes." It had a strange tang. I didn't like it, but it was edible.

"How do you catch birds?" I asked. "Do you use hawks? If you shot a bird, it would fall forever to the ground."

She shook her head, waiting to answer until her mouth was empty. "I'll have Teacher take you to where the birdnets are."

"Teacher?" I asked.

As if my question had been his cue, a moment later he was standing outside the house, calling softly, "From the earth to the air."

"And to the nest, Teacher," Mwabao Mawa answered. She walked out of the room, on to the next room where Teacher would be waiting. Reluctantly I followed, making the short jump to the other room, and then, without even a good-bye, followed Teacher away from Mwabao Mawa's house. No good-bye, at first because I had no idea how women who barely knew each other should say it, and then because she was already gone from the curtain before I finally decided to turn and say something.

Up was terrible, but down was infinitely worse. Coming up a rope ladder, you reach the platforms with your hands first, pulling yourself to security. But going down you have to lie on your stomach and extend your feet downward, hunting for a rung with your toes, knowing that if you go too far you won't be able to pull yourself up.

I knew that achieving my purpose in Nkumai depended on my ability to get from place to place, and so I refused to let my fear rule me. If I fall, I fall, I told myself. Then I ignored my peripheral vision and trotted along after Teacher.

He, for his part, didn't try to show off as much today as yesterday, so the going was easier. I discovered that maneuvers that were difficult and frightening when done slowly were much easier-- and much less frightening-- when done quickly. A rope bridge is steady enough when you lightly run across it-- but when you walk timidly it sways at every step.

When Teacher took a suspended rope with a knot in the end and swung easily from one platform to another, across an abyss that no one in his right mind would ever cross, I simply laughed, caught the rope he threw at me, and swung across just as quickly. At the other end, I pretended that I had jumped no farther than across a small stream, and let go, landing on the platform on my feet. It wasn't hard after all, and I said so.