Текст книги "A Woman of the Iron People"

Автор книги: Eleanor Arnason

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“Shit.”

“My thought exactly. The particle—you might be interested in knowing—is called fred. Not in honor of Friedrich Engels. The message was very clear about that.” Eddie’s voice had the tone he used when describing obvious lunacy. “It was found—no, theorized—by two people more or less simultaneously. Everything about this particle happens in sets of two, according to the message. The person in Beijing wanted to call it a guanyonin honor of the Chinese goddess of mercy Guan Yin. Apparently the goddess came to her in a dream, standing on a lotus flower and holding the crucial equation written on a fan.

“The person in Santiago wanted to call the particle a pablonin honor of the poet Pablo Neruda. I don’t know why. Maybe he got an equation in a dream. Neither person was willing to back down. So the particle is being called a fred. It always comes as one of a pair. The other particle is named frieda.”

“I suppose this is another example of the terrible whimsy of physicists,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Why did they send the plans if we can’t use them?”

“For our information and just in case we ran into a lot of metal and a lot of silica and a modern industrial society. Always be prepared, as somebody said. Friedrich Engels maybe.”

I scratched my nose. “What is bothering you?”

“Aside from the fred?Derek has found a lump of copper. It’s a meter across, and as far as he can tell, it’s pure. It was lying on the edge of a river. Just lying there in plain sight. People are saying, maybe we can find the resources to build the new transmitter. You people are finding too much. Why don’t you shut up?”

“Come on, Eddie. We can’t do that. Secrecy is the enemy of democracy. Is there any other news?”

“Derek’s moving north as well as west. He’s only a hundred kilometers from you. He’d like to join with you. Do you think your friend would object to traveling with a man?”

“Yes.”

“I was afraid of that.”

Something moved at the edge of my vision. “I have to go.” I turned off the radio and shoved it into my pack, then looked around and saw a bipedal animal something like the one I had seen in the canyon. This was a new variety, however, as tall as I was, with a dark blue back. Its belly was cream-white, and it had a crest: a bunch of long feathers that shone bright blue in the sunlight. The animal was feeding off a tree covered with berries, reaching up its long arms and pulling the berries off, handful after handful. It crammed the berries into its mouth, then swallowed and reached for more. I got up. It twisted its long neck and stared at me, then went back to eating. There was something oddly human about its motions. It couldn’t be intelligent. Its crested head was tiny. Still and all—I watched till it finished eating and wandered off. Then I walked back to the village.

In the evening the shamaness returned. I saw her enter the village. She was wearing a blue robe and a hat made of feathers. Five women followed her. Two of them carried a litter. Nia was on it. Her eyes were closed. She seemed to be asleep.

“Don’t worry,” Eshtanabai said. “Our shamaness will cure your friend.”

“I hope so.”

The shamaness said, “Take the woman to my house. I will go and gather herbs.”

Eshtanabai touched my arm. “Come with me. The shamaness will not want visitors, except for the holy spirits. And you wouldn’t want to meet them. It isn’t safe.”

“All right.”

I spent the evening in the house of Eshtanabai. I felt restless and uneasy. What was happening to Nia? I bit my fingernails and watched the fire. Eshtanabai played with her children. After a while I went outside. The village was quiet except for the sound of a drum. Was that the shamaness? I didn’t know. I looked up. The sky was clear, and the stars shone brightly. A cool wind blew in off the plain. It was a lovely planet: pure and clean and almost empty. We had been working on our own planet for over a century when the ship left and the work had continued. Two centuries so far. There were still scars everywhere: stripped mountains, poisoned marshes, wide stretches where the land was useless, at least to humans—eroded, full of salt or dry, the water gone, pumped up and used in the twentieth century.

What had they been thinking of, those people then? They had left their descendants almost no water and great mountains of uranium. What kind of inheritance was that? How did they think we were going to survive?

We had managed with not much help from them. It was amazing how many people we had been able to save. When I thought of Earth, I thought of crowds. Only the ocean was really empty and the polar ice caps and the ruined lands.

Looking up at the starry sky I felt a terrible sense of loss.

Not that I objected to my society. It was sane, decent, humane, the best society that Earth had ever known. But it was enormously complex. Nothing was easy. Nothing was straightforward. For the first time history was a conscious process. For the first time people were shaping their lives deliberately, knowing what they did.

We argued every point. We voted. We compromised. We formed factions and coalitions. We thought—always—about justice and fairness, about the consequences of what we did, about the future.

The drum stopped. The breeze shifted. Now I could smell the cooking fires and the outhouses. I decided to go in.

In the morning I went to the house of the shamaness.

Eshtanabai led me. “O holy one,” she cried. “The hairless person has come to visit.”

The door opened. The shamaness peered out. “Your friend is sick. She burns. I can feel the heat in the places where her fur is thin. And she is weak. But I will cure her. Do not fear.”

“Can I come in?”

The shamaness frowned, then made the gesture of assent and opened the door farther.

The fire was out. The only light came in through the smoke hole: a golden beam that slanted down and lit an old basket, faded and bent out of shape. Everything else in the house was hidden by shadows. I saw heaps of stuff, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

“Nia?” I looked around.

One of the heaps moved and raised a hand. I went over. It was Nia, lying wrapped in a blanket.

“How are you?”

“I feel terrible. Sit down. Keep me company.”

I glanced at the shamaness. She made the gesture of assent. I sat down.

Nia closed her eyes. For a while she said nothing. Then she said, “Is the shamaness good? Do you know?”

“They seem to think well of her.”

“Good. Maybe I will live.” She opened her eyes. “Enshi came to me last night. It’s bad luck to dream about dead people. But he didn’t threaten me. He joked and told me what it is like to live in the sky. Not bad, he said, though he goes hungry from time to time. He was always a bad hunter. Even when the animals come to him, as they do in that land, he still misses the shot. What a useless man! But he told good stories, and his temper was wonderful. He never got angry.” She closed her eyes. I waited. She opened her eyes. “We did a shameful thing.”

I glanced around. The shamaness was at the door, talking to Eshtanabai. She was too far away to hear.

Nia lifted her head and looked at the two women. Then she lay back down. “I won’t tell you about it. Not here. I am not crazy. I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

I left her and spent the day wandering through the village, watching children as they played in the streets and talking with mothers and grandmothers. They were courteous, friendly people. A coppersmith showed me how she worked the metal. An old woman told me how the world was created out of a seed let fall by the bird who lives in the tree of the sun. In the evening I ate dinner with Eshtanabai.

“Your friend will be fine. The shamaness told me. The shamaness says your friend is a smith. She has promised her a knife.”

I made the gesture of affirmation, followed by the one for agreement.

“She is from the Iron People?”

“Yes.”

“They live to the west of us, beyond the Amber People. They are fierce, we hear.”

“I don’t know.”

“The Amber People say they quarrel a lot and when they give a gift, they always make sure the gift they get in return is just as good.”

I made the gesture that meant “maybe” or “if you say so.”

The next day I saw Nia again. A fire burned in the fire pit, and the house of the shamaness was full of aromatic smoke. My friend was sitting up, her back against a pole. I sat down. The shamaness left, closing the door behind her.

“I asked her to,” said Nia. “I had another dream. I saw Hua, the woman who raised me. She died before anyone knew what I had done. But now she knows. She is angry. She spoke sharp words. Aiya! How they cut!

“I told her it was none of her business what I did. And anyway, what I did was nothing bad. She said, ‘Everyone will agree with me. It was bad.’ I said, ‘I will tell the story to Li-sa. She is from far away. She knows how things are done in different places. Let her decide whether or not the thing I did was bad.’ Then I woke up.” Nia looked at me. I found it hard to read the expression on her face. But I thought she looked tired and unhappy.

I said, “Tell me your story, if you want to.”

Nia frowned and scratched her nose. Then she began. Up till then, I had thought she was the strong silent type. She had never said a lot. But now she spoke fluently. She must have practiced the story. I imagined her telling it—to herself, most likely. She must have gone over it again and again, trying to make sense of what had happened.

“The first mistake was this: I helped Enshi meet his mother. I don’t know why. He was always good at talking. He could always make the thing he wanted seem reasonable and right.

“I led him into the village—at night, of course, and waited outside the tent. He and his mother talked. She gave him gifts. He had lost the gifts that she had given him before. That was typical of him. When he was done, I went with him to the edge of the village. Now came the next mistake.” Nia clenched one hand and struck the ground. “He wanted to come again. He was lonely on the plain. He would die out there in the emptiness, he said, unless he had something to look forward to. The warm fire in his mother’s tent, good food, and new clothing. What a talker he was! I agreed to help him.” Nia rubbed her face. “What a fool I was!

“His mother began to complain about her neighbors. She said there was too much noise in the village. She was tired of the smell of her neighbors’ cooking. There was too much garbage. There were too many bugs. She began to pitch her tent away from all the others. They had planned this together. Now it was easy for him to find her tent, and people were not as likely to see him.

“But they still needed someone to carry messages in and out of the village. They needed someone to keep watch when he came. I did it all summer and through autumn. In the winter he could not come into the village. People would have seen the tracks in the snow. I went out to find him, taking food and a new cloak, a thick one made of fur. In the spring we met and mated. That was in the hills. The young men stay there. He had the worst possible territory. It was all stone, going up and down. There was nothing to eat there. Nonetheless, I went to him.” She hit the ground a second time. “Maybe Hua is right. Maybe I am a pervert.”

I said nothing. Nia went on. “He had nothing worth giving. He picked things up—feathers out of a bush or stones that glittered in the sunlight. He made up poetry. What kind of gift is that? He was a useless man!” She stopped for a moment. She looked puzzled. “When I was with him, I felt—I do not know what to call the feeling. I felt as if I had found a new relative, a sister or a mother. Someone to sit with in the evening, someone to gossip with. I felt contented. When the time of the lust was over, I stayed on. I liked being there. I stayed another ten days. Then I went home, and people asked me what had happened. I said my bowhorn went lame. I had to walk most of the way back, I told them. Now I was a liar.” She frowned. “What happened next? We went north and pitched our tents in the summer country. Old Hua hurt herself. She got a burn working at her forge. The burn did not heal. Her leg began to rot. In the end she died.

“Everyone said she died the way a woman ought to—without complaining or making a lot of noise. The spirits were pleased with her. That is what people said. I found it hard to bear.

“After she was in the ground, the shamaness performed ceremonies of purification and ceremonies to drive away bad luck.”

“Why?” I asked.

Nia looked surprised. “Every death is unlucky, and Hua had died unexpectedly. She was old but strong, and she had gotten burned many times before. The burns had always healed.”

I made the gesture that meant “I understand” or “I see.”

“The bad luck stayed,” said Nia. “It did not seem that way at first. The summer was good. There was just enough rain. The rivers were full of fish, and the bushes had so many berries that their branches bent down till they touched the ground. We had plenty to eat.

“At the end of the summer people came to the village out of the west. They brought tin and white fur. One of them got sick. That one died. Then our shamaness died. I got sick and so did Nuha. She was Enshi’s mother. She went crazy and cried out, ‘Enshi! Enshi!’ Then she asked the spirits to forgive her. She said it was my fault. Her son would never have done anything wrong. I had made him behave in a shameful fashion. I had made the spirits angry. She promised everyone if she died, she wouldn’t go away. Her ghost would stay in the village and find ways to get even with me.

“She died. I got well, though I thought for a while that I would die, too. When I was able to get up and move about, the old women of the village asked me to leave.

“Aiya! That was difficult! I asked them to let me stay. I pleaded with them. But they said, ‘Go.’

“I went to find Enshi, and the two of us went south until we came to the Hills of Iron. They are midway between the land of summer and the winter home. The soil is red there. The streams and rivers are as brown as rust. Every year certain women go there and mine iron. They stay till fall, digging out iron and smelting it into bars. Then they rejoin the village. By the time we got to the hills, the women were packing. We hid in the bushes. They loaded their wagons. At last they were gone.

“We found a shelter at the entrance to a mine. It was built of wood and stone, and the woman who’d built it had left some of her tools behind. We found an axe and a pick and shovel. There was an anvil as well—a big one, too heavy to carry.

“We stayed the winter there. We almost starved. There was a child in me, but it died and came out as blood. Enshi thought his mother was responsible. He begged her to go away, and then he told her, ‘Hurt me! Hurt me! I am the one who acted shamefully.’ ”

Nia stopped talking. I shifted position and rubbed my legs. They were getting numb.

“In the spring we moved farther into the hills. The women came back. We stole from them. Enshi was good at this. Or at least better than I was.

“We found a river full of fish—far back in the hills, away from everyone else. There was a cliff nearby red with iron. I made traps to catch the fish. Enshi learned how to dig out iron. We built a shelter, and I set up a forge. Nuha left us alone.” Nia frowned. “I did not feel especially ashamed. On some days it seemed to me that what we did was right. What was wrong with me?”

I made the gesture that meant “no comment.”

“That winter we had plenty of food. At the end of the winter I had a child. I gave her the name Hua. Enshi liked her. He held her and talked with her. At times she made him angry, but he didn’t yell or strike out. He put her down and went for a walk. He was crazy, without a doubt.”

I turned my hand, telling her “maybe yes and maybe no.”

“My throat is dry. Will you get me a drink?” She pointed. I went and got a jar of water. She took a big swallow. “Aiya! That is good! What was I saying?”

“You had a child.”

“Two. The other was a boy. Anasu. He was born in the third winter that we were in the hills. By then I was used to being alone, except for Enshi and the children. I liked it. I still do. There is too much talk in a village. Too much gossip. Too many arguments. But not in the hills. There it is quiet. Once in a while Enshi got restless and went off by himself. Sometimes I did the same thing. I liked those times the best, I think. I went up till there was nothing above me except the sky. Below me were red cliffs and deep red ravines. There were trees as well, tall ones with leaves the same color as the sky. I was above everything. I sat and listened to the wind. Then I felt contented.

“Afterward I had to go down and help Enshi with the children.

“This went on five winters. Then—in the spring—the crazy man came. He rode up one morning. His bowhorn was so thin that I could count every rib. As for the man, he was ragged and gray. One eye was gone. He looked terrible.

“I was in the forge, beating out a piece of iron for a pick. Enshi was hunting. And the children—I don’t remember where they were. Near me, I guess.

“I heard a voice. It was deep and harsh. ‘Are you ready, woman?’

“I looked up. He dismounted and came toward me. ‘Is it time?’ he asked.

“ ‘No,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

“He stopped and tilted his head to one side. I remember that and the look in his one eye. He was crazy. This happens to old men. They lose their territories. The younger men drive them away. But they won’t give up. They refuse to go to the village. Instead they wander by themselves. They have no place. They forget the rules and customs. They are dangerous.

“I took a tight grip on my hammer.

“He said, ‘Soon. Another day or so. I can tell. I used to have five women—six women—in a season. Aiya! The gifts they brought and the smell of their bodies.’

“ ‘Go away,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you here.’

“ ‘I can wait,’ he said. ‘I have waited a long time already. I will stay.’

“Then I saw Enshi behind the man, his bow in his hand. ‘No,’ he said. ‘This woman is mine. Get out.’

“The old man turned. ‘You scrawny little thing! Do you think you can confront me? I’ve met men twice your size. They were the ones to lower their gazes. They were the ones to turn away.’

“Enshi lifted his bow. There was an arrow ready, fitted to the string. He began to draw the bow. ‘I will kill you, old man. I will put an arrow through your gut.’

“The old man said, ‘This is outrageous. Don’t you know how these things are done? No true man ever uses an arrow on another man. A knife is the proper weapon. A club is all right, too. But nothing that kills at a distance. A true confrontation is up close.’

“Enshi spoke in reply. He said, ‘I don’t care what the rules are. This woman is mine. I will do what I must to keep her.’ ”

Nia paused for a moment. Her face looked thoughtful. “I lifted up my hammer and said, ‘I don’t care for the rules, either. If you come close to me, I will kill you, old man. Believe me. I tell the truth.’

“What else is there to say? The old man backed down and went away. A day later the lust began. Enshi and I were together for three days. I think that is right. Maybe four days. One morning I woke. Light came in the door of our shelter. Enshi was close to me. The old man was above him. I saw him drive his knife into Enshi’s throat. Anasu cried out. I got up. But it was too late. The old man was completely crazy and strong the way that crazy people sometimes are. He was much stronger than I was, and I am not weak. He pushed me down and stuck his penis into me. I tried to get free. He hit me. The knife he was holding cut my shoulder. I still have the scar. The children were crying. Both of them. The old man made grunting noises. I bit him. He hit me again.” Nia frowned. “I dream about that sometimes. There is blood in my mouth. There is blood on the ground. I feel the old man on top of me and inside me. I hear the children cry. I know—in my dream—that Enshi is dead. After a while I wake.

“But then I did not wake. The old man stayed until the lust was over. That was five or six days. We mated again and again.” She clenched her hands. “When we were not mating, he kept me tied. He was not stupid, even though he was crazy. He knew I would have taken the children and run. He said I was the crazy one. No ordinary woman would have told him to go away. No ordinary woman would have tried to fight him off.

“The children got hungry. They cried. He untied me then, so I could feed them. But he would not let me bury Enshi. He dragged Enshi out of the shelter and left him to lie in the bare place outside the door. The weather was hot. Enshi swelled up. He began to stink. Bugs came and birds. When the shelter door was open, I was able to see them feeding. Hua kept saying, ‘What is wrong? What has happened to Enshi?’

“I told her to keep quiet. She would make the old man angry.

“What else could I say? Two men had met at the time of mating. One killed the other. This did not happen often, but it wasn’t wrong. Why did I think it was wrong? Why did I hate the old man? He had the right to mate with me. He had won, though maybe not entirely fairly.

“It was wrong that Enshi was unburied. It was wrong that the children were there. It was wrong that he tied me up. But it was not wrong that he lay on top of me and stuck his penis in me. Why did I hate him for that? It was not wrong.”

Nia stopped talking. I waited. There was a sour taste in my mouth, and I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“The lust ended and he left. I buried Enshi. I fed my children and cleaned them and comforted them. Then I saddled our animals.

“I took the children with me. I could do nothing else. Anasu I held. Hua rode on Enshi’s bowhorn. I had to tie her into the saddle. We followed the old man’s trail. It took two days.

“I found him at the foot of the hills, at the edge of the plain. He had built his fire in the last grove of trees before the plain began. Aiya! I remember how it felt when I saw his smoke twisting up into the sky!

“I tethered the bowhorns. I put the children on the ground and told Hua to watch her brother. I told them not to cry—I would be back soon—and went down the hill. I had a weapon now. A bow. It was the one that had belonged to Enshi. I remember the time of day. Just after sunset. The western sky was orange. The old man’s fire shone among the trees. I crept up. I saw him hunched next to the fire.” Nia paused. “I shot him in the back. He cried out and fell over. I shot him again.

“What else is there to say? I made sure he was dead. Then I put out his fire and went back to my children. They had kept quiet—hidden in a bush, like a pair of bowhorn fawns. Aiya! How good they had been! I praised them and fed them.

“Later I went north to the village. I left the children with Angai. By this time she was the shamaness. She told me she would raise them the right way. I could not. I went east and ended up where you met me—in the village of Nahusai.”

Nia leaned back and closed her eyes. She must have lost weight in the last few days. Her face looked thinner than usual, and the bones were easy to make out, even under the fur. Her jaw was heavy. Her forehead was round and low. She had thick cheekbones, and there was no indentation where her nose met her forehead. It went straight up, wide and flat all the way. She opened her eyes and blinked. “Decide between us. Is Hua right? Am I a pervert?”

I glanced up, seeking inspiration. The smoke hole was dark. Something was up there, blocking the light.

What on earth? I stood.

The thing moved. Sunlight came in. I could see the sky. “I’ll be back,” I said to Nia. I went out and turned.

Like all the roofs in the village this one was covered with vegetation. The small round leaves shone in the sunlight, and there were orange flowers. Bugs fluttered over the flowers. They had yellow wings. Midway down the roof the shamaness stood. Her robe was kilted up, and I could see her legs. They were bony and hairy with big knees.

“You listened at the smoke hole. You heard what Nia said.”

“My eyes are bad, but my ears are the best in the village. Aiya! What a disgusting narration! I ought to make you leave today.” She went to the edge of the roof and sat down. “Help me.”

I reached up. She dropped into my arms. She was light and she stank. It was a mixture of aromas, I decided as I set her down. Fur, musk, and bad breath. The old lady needed a dentist. I took a step back.

“The Voice of the Waterfall said help you. So I must. That crazy man! Why didn’t he grow up the right way and go out to join his brothers? Not him, the lunatic! He had to hear voices and see things in his dreams. I go and talk with him. He dances around and jabbers. Naked, too. He’ll catch a bad cold some winter and die. Let me tell you, it’s hard to be a mother. Now, go away! The woman in there is weak. She needs to rest.”

I opened my mouth.

“I won’t tell her what I heard. Go! Get out!”

I turned and walked away. Behind me the shamaness was muttering. I heard the word “perversion” and the word “disgusting.” Then she said in a loud voice, “Why do these things happen to me?”

I kept going till I reached the house of Eshtanabai. She was sitting in the doorway, leaning against the door frame, looking sleepy and contented.

I stopped. She looked up. “How is your friend?”

“Better. Tell me, what is the shamaness like?”

“Old and strange. Many people say her mind isn’t what it used to be. But she still remembers the ceremonies. She talks about the past. Old women always do. And she worries about her children. Not the daughters. They are in the village. She knows how they are getting on. She worries about the sons. She had five, and they all lived long enough to go through the change. Four are up north, if they haven’t died by now. The fifth—the youngest—you know about. He came from her last mating, when she was already getting old. Maybe that’s why he became an oracle. Old women have strange children. That is well known. Why do you ask?”

I made the gesture that can mean anything or nothing, the gesture of uncertainty.

“That isn’t much of an answer.” Eshtanabai got up. “Come in. I have some bara.”

This was the native alcohol. Or—at least—the native intoxicant in a liquid form.

“We’ll get drunk. I have nothing else to do today.” She led the way into her house.

I followed. Why not? We sat down near the fire. It was a heap of coals. I saw a tiny red glow at the bottom of the heap. A wisp of smoke drifted up, twisting and coiling in the beam of light which shone through the smoke hole. Eshtanabai filled two bowls and gave one to me. I drank. The liquid was bitter, and it burned in my mouth. I coughed, then swallowed.

“Drink more,” she said. She drained her cup, then refilled it. “Listen.” She leaned forward. “I think you are worried about the shamaness. She is a good woman. Old and strange, but good. But not everything that comes out of her mouth is holy. Only an oracle is holy all the time, and it’s a terrible strain. Most oracles die young. Drink some more. It will do you good. It is hard to sit and wait for someone you love to get better.”

I drank the rest of the bara.

Eshtanabai poured out more. “The shamaness is often holy. But at times she is a foolish old woman, who talks about her sons. We try to be polite. It isn’t easy. Last year we sent a boy out, and she got drunk. She didn’t sing the proper songs, the songs that tell the boy, ‘Be brave! You are doing what is expected!’ She sang about the woman who mated with the wind. That song is not appropriate.”

“What is it about?”

“You don’t know? It’s a very old story. It took place long ago, when we lived like the Amber People. Our houses were tents. We followed the herd. There was a woman who went out at the time of mating. There was a terrible storm that year. The bowhorns stampeded, and the men went after them. As a result this woman did not find a man. Her lust ended. She returned to the village. After a while it became evident that she was pregnant. Late in the winter she had a child. It was a child of the wind. No one could see the baby, and she was hard to get hold of. When she was hungry, she would go to her mother to nurse. Then the mother learned—by touching her—that the baby was a girl and covered with soft fur. But most of the time the baby was restless. She ran in her mother’s tent. She ran through the village. One day she ran out onto the plain. She never returned. Her mother knew this would happen. She made a song for the child before she left. It goes like this:

 
“Hola!
my little one.
Hola!
my child of the wind.
“Now you whirl
in my tent.
Now you make
the hangings flutter.
“Soon you will be gone
on the wide plain
forever.
 

“This is the song the old woman sang when we sent the boy out of the village. Everyone was angry, especially the mother of the boy. A woman has many rituals in her life. A man has one: the ceremony of parting. And the old woman had ruined it. She made it a sad occasion. But what can we do? A good shamaness is hard to find. This one is excellent. She can cure almost any kind of illness. And the spirits send rain for our gardens when she asks them to. Have more to drink.”

We drank. Eshtanabai told me about the old shamaness, the one before the one they had now. She had been greedy.

“Aiya! She had a house full of things. The older she got the more she wanted. She asked for more than the ceremonies were worth. We gave it. We had to. No one wants bad luck or the anger of the spirits. But the spirits got angry, anyway. The ceremonies didn’t work.”

“Why?”

Eshtanabai frowned. “Because we gave too much. Look. I fill your cup. I’m generous. I fill it to the brim. That is a proper giving. You have enough. It makes you happy. I know you will give me something in return. That makes me happy. But if I keep pouring and the baragoes over the brim, if it gets your hand wet and spills on your clothing or the floor, that isn’t a proper giving. That is an insult and a mess.

“A giving is a binding. But only a fool ties a strong rope to a piece of string. You must tie like to like, otherwise the knot will slip or break.”