Barbarians

T HE NEXT DAY, TEMPI and I moved camp while Dedan and Hespe walked back to Crosson for supplies. Marten scouted out an isolated piece of flat ground close to water. Then we packed and moved everything, dug the privy, built the firepit, and generally got everything settled.

Tempi was willing to talk as we worked, but I was nervous. I had offended him by asking about the Lethani early on, so I knew to avoid that subject. But if he was upset by a simple question about singing, how could I begin to guess what might offend him?

Again, his blank expression and refusal to make eye contact were the main problems. How could I make intelligent conversation with a person when I had no idea how he felt? It was like trying to walk blindfolded through an unfamiliar house.

So I took the safer road and simply asked for more words as we worked. Objects, for the most part, as we were both too busy with our hands to pantomime.

Best of all, Tempi got to practice his Aturan while I built up my Ademic vocabulary. I noticed the more mistakes I made in his language, the more comfortable he grew in his own attempts at expressing himself.

This meant, of course, that I made many mistakes. In fact, I was occasionally so thickheaded that Tempi was forced to explain himself several times in several different ways. All in Aturan of course.

We finished setting up camp around noon. Marten left to go hunting and Tempi stretched and began to move through his slow dance. He did it twice in a row, and I began to suspect he was somewhat bored himself. By the time he finished he was covered in a sheen of sweat and told me he was going to bathe.

With the camp to myself, I melted down the tinker’s candles to make two small wax simulacra. I’d been wanting to do this for days, but even at the University creating a mommet was questionable behavior. Here in Vintas . . . suffice to say I thought it best to be discreet.

It wasn’t elegant work. Tallow isn’t nearly as convenient as sympathy wax, but even the crudest mommet can be a devastating thing. Once I had them tucked into my travelsack, I felt much better prepared.

I was cleaning the last of the tallow off my fingers when Tempi returned from his bath, naked as a new baby. Years of stage training allowed me to keep a calm expression, but just barely.

After spreading his wet clothing over a nearby branch to dry, Tempi walked over to me without showing the least embarrassment or modesty.

He held out his right hand, thumb and forefinger pinched together. “What is this?” He spread his fingers slightly for me to see.

I looked closely, glad to have something to focus my attention on. “That’s a tick.”

This close, I couldn’t help but notice his scars again, faint lines crossing his arms and chest. I could read scars from my time in the Medica, and his didn’t show the wide, puckered pink that would indicate a deep wound cutting through the layers of skin, fat, and muscle underneath. These were shallow wounds. Dozens of them. I couldn’t help but wonder how long he had been a mercenary to have scars so old. He didn’t look much older than twenty.

Oblivious to my scrutiny, Tempi stared at the thing between his fingers. “It bites. On me. Bites and stays .” His expression was blank as always, but his tone was tinged with disgust. His left hand fidgeted.

“There are no ticks in Ademre?”

“No.” He made a point of trying to pinch it between his fingers. “It not break.”

I gestured, showing him how to crush it between his fingernails, which he did with a certain amount of relish. He threw it away and stalked back to his bedroll. Then, still naked, he proceeded to pull out all of his clothing and give it a vigorous shaking.

I kept my eyes averted, knowing deep down in my heart that this would be the moment Dedan and Hespe would return from Crosson.

Thankfully they didn’t. After a quarter hour or so, Tempi put on a pair of dry pants, carefully inspecting them first.

Shirtless, he walked back to where I sat. “I hate tick,” he declared.

When he spoke, his left hand made a sharp gesture, as if he were brushing crumbs off the front of his shirt near his hip. Except he wasn’t wearing a shirt, and there was nothing on his bare skin to brush away. What’s more, I realized he’d made the same gesture earlier.

In fact, now that I thought of it, I’d seen him make that gesture a half-dozen times in the last several days, though never so violently.

I had a sudden suspicion. “Tempi? What does this mean?” I mimicked the brushing away gesture.

He nodded. “It is this.” He scrunched his face up in an exaggerated expression of disgust.

My mind went spinning back over the last span of days, thinking of how many times I had seen Tempi fidgeting restlessly while we talked. I reeled at the thought of it.

“Tempi,” I asked. “Is all of this?” I made a gesture to my face, then smiled, frowned, rolled my eyes. “Does all this happen with hands in Ademic?”

He nodded and made a gesture at the same time.

“That!” I pointed at his hand. “What is that?”

He hesitated, then gave a forced, awkward-looking smile.

I copied the gesture, splaying my hand slightly and pressing my thumb to the inside of my middle finger.

“No,” he said. “Other hand. Left.”

“Why?”

He reached out and thumped on my chest, just left of the breastbone: Tum-tump. Tum-tump. Then he ran a finger down to my left hand. I nodded to show I understood. It was closest to the heart. He held up his right hand and made a fist. “This hand is strong.” He held up his left. “This hand is clever.”

It made sense. That is why most lutists chord with the left hand and strum with their right. The left hand is more nimble, as a rule.

I made the gesture with my left hand, fingers splayed. Tempi shook his head. “That is this.” He quirked half of his mouth up into a smirk.

The expression seemed so out of place on his face that it was all I could do to keep from gawking. I looked more closely at his hand and adjusted the position of my fingers slightly.

He nodded approval. His face was expressionless, but for the first time I understood why.

In the hours that followed, I learned that Ademic hand gestures did not actually represent facial expressions. It was nothing so simple as that. For example a smile can mean you’re amused, happy, grateful, or satisfied. You can smile to comfort someone. You can smile because you’re content or because you’re in love. A grimace or a grin look similar to a smile, but they mean entirely different things.

Imagine trying to teach someone how to smile. Imagine trying to describe what different smiles mean and when, precisely, to use them in conversation. It’s harder than learning to walk.

Suddenly so many things made sense. Of course Tempi wouldn’t look me in the eye. There was nothing to be gained by looking at the face of the person you were talking to. You listen to the voice, but you watch the hand.

I spent the next several hours attempting to learn the basics, but it was maddeningly difficult. Words are fairly simple things. You can point to a stone. You can act out running or jumping. But have you ever tried to pantomime compliance? Respect? Sarcasm? I doubt even my father could have accomplished such a thing.

Because of this my progress was frustratingly slow, but I couldn’t help but be fascinated. It was like suddenly being given a second tongue.

And it was a secret thing, of sorts. I have always had a weakness for secrets.

It took three hours to learn a handful of gestures, if you’ll pardon the pun. My progress felt glacial, but when I finally learned the hand-speak for “understatement” I felt a glow of pride that can barely be described.

I think Tempi felt it too. “Good,” he said with a flattening of the hand I was fairly certain indicated approval. He rolled his shoulders and got to his feet, stretching. He glanced at the sun through the branches overhead. “Food now?”

“Soon.” There was one question that had been bothering me. “Tempi, why make all this work?” I asked. “A smile is easy. Why smile with your hands?”

“With hands is easy too. Better. More . . .” He made a slightly modified version of the shirt-brushing gesture he’d used earlier. Not disgust, irritation? “What is the word for people living together. Roads. Right things.” He ran his thumb along his collarbone, was that frustration? “What is word for good together living? Nobody shits in the well.”

I laughed. “Civilization?”

He nodded, splaying his fingers: amusement . “Yes,” he said. “Speaking with hands is civilization.”

“But smiling is natural,” I protested. “Everyone smiles.”

“Natural is not civilization,” Tempi said. “Cooking meat is civilization. Washing off stink is civilization.”

“So in Ademre you always smile with hands?” I wished I knew the gesture for dismay.

“No. Smiling with face good with family. Good with some friend.”

“Why only family?”

Tempi repeated his thumb-on-collarbone gesture again. “When you make this.” He pressed his palm to the side of his face and blew air into it, making a great flatulent noise. “That is natural, but you do not make it near others. Rude. With family . . .” He shrugged. Amusement . “. . . civilization not important. More natural with family.”

“What about laughing?” I asked. “I have seen you laugh.” I made a ha-ha sound so he knew what I was talking about.

He shrugged. “Laughing is.”

I waited for a moment, but he didn’t seem inclined to continue. I tried again. “Why not laugh with hands?”

Tempi shook his head. “No. Laugh is different.” He stepped close and used two fingers to tap my chest over my heart. “Smile?” He ran his finger down my left arm. “Angry?” He tapped my heart again. He made a scared expression, a confused one, and poked his lip out in a ridiculous pout. Each time he tapped my chest.

“But laugh?” He pressed the flat of his hand against my stomach. “Here lives laugh.” He ran his finger straight up to my mouth and spread his fingers. “Push back laugh is not good. Not healthy.”

“Also cry?” I asked. I traced an imaginary tear down my cheek with one finger.

“Also cry.” He put his hand on his own belly. “Ha ha ha,” he said, pressing in with his hand to show me the motion of his stomach. Then his expression changed to sad. “Huh huh huh,” he heaved with exaggerated sobs, pressing his stomach again. “Same place. Not healthy to push down.”

I nodded slowly, trying to imagine what it must be like for Tempi, constantly assaulted by people too rude to keep their expressions to themselves. People whose hands constantly made gestures that were nonsense. “It must be very hard for you, out here.”

“Not so hard.” Understatement . “When I leave Ademre, I know this. Not civilization. Barbarians are rude.”

“Barbarians?”

He made a wide gesture, encompassing our clearing, the forest, all of Vintas. “Everyone here like dogs.” He made a grotesquely exaggerated expression of rage, showing all his teeth, snarling and rolling his eyes madly. “That is all you know.” He shrugged nonchalant acceptance, as if to say he didn’t hold it against us.

“What of children?” I asked. “Children smile before they talk. Is that wrong?”

Tempi shook his head. “All children barbarians. All smile with face. All children rude. But they go old. Watch. Learn.” He paused thoughtfully. Choosing his words. “Barbarians have no woman to teach them civilization. Barbarians cannot learn.”

I could tell he didn’t mean any offense, but it made me more determined than ever to learn the particulars of the Adem hand-talk.

Tempi stood and began limbering up with a number of stretches similar to those the tumblers used in my troupe when I was young. After fifteen minutes of twisting himself this way and that, he began his slow, dancelike pantomime. Though I didn’t know it at the time, it was called the Ketan.

Still nettled about Tempi’s “barbarians cannot learn” comment, I decided I would follow along. After all, I didn’t have anything better to do.

As I tried to mimic him, I became aware of how devilishly complex it was: keeping the hands cupped just so, the feet correctly positioned. Despite the fact that Tempi moved with almost glacial slowness, I found it impossible to imitate his smooth grace. Tempi never paused or looked in my direction. He never offered a word of encouragement or advice.

It was exhausting, and I was glad when it was over. Then I started the fire and lashed together a tripod. Wordlessly, Tempi brought out a hard sausage and several potatoes that he began to peel carefully using his sword.

I was surprised by this, as Tempi fussed over his sword much the same way I did with my lute. Once when Dedan had picked it up, the Adem had responded with a rather dramatic emotional outburst. Dramatic for Tempi, that is. He’d spoken two full sentences and frowned a bit.

Tempi saw me watching him and cocked his head curiously.

I pointed. “Sword?” I asked. “For cutting potatoes?”

Tempi looked down at the half-peeled potato in one hand, his sword in another. “Is sharp.” He shrugged. “Is clean.”

I returned the shrug, not wanting to make an issue of it. While working together, I learned the words for iron, knot, leaf, spark, and salt.

Waiting for the water to boil, Tempi stood, shook himself, and began his limbering stretches a second time. I followed him again. It was harder this time. The muscles of my arms and legs were loose and shaky from my previous effort. Toward the end I had to fight to keep myself from trembling, but I gleaned a few more secrets.

Tempi continued to ignore me, but I didn’t mind. I’ve always been drawn to a challenge.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 648