熊兒悄聲對我說
From The Bear Whispers to Me
(fiction)

Chang Ying-Tai 張瀛太. Excerpts from熊兒悄聲對我說. Taipei: 九歌, 2010. English translation The Bear Whispers to Me. © Balestier Press, 2015.

Chapter 4

A Manifest Mystery

Oazmu—nowadays people call it white-eyed thrush—is the reincarnation of a great warrior of our people. We augur by the oazmu. For hunting parties, a magnificent call of an oazmu is auspicious, but a sorrowful call is inauspicious; an oazmu that flies left to right is a bad sign, but one that flies from right to left is a good sign...

I head west, down the mountain.

On the way down, my whole body feels light, carried along on currents of air, with superlative grace. And the cool breezes, butterfly shadows, bird calls and insect cries make me feel wide open and care- free. But further down the sun appears from behind the clouds and its rays start burning my head. To keep from fainting, I duck into a grove of jelly fig trees.

It is refreshing and cool inside, but the turquoise of the trees, the smell of rot and mold and the light milky mist give me a bad feeling. I feel like a formless force is leading me by the arm. I want to resist but I can’t.

Underfoot there are moss, fallen leaves and hister beetles crawling all over the ground. There is also a pulsating buzzing or humming sound. In the dim light, I can still make out some green grasshoppers darting here and there. I drag my foot over the ground to brush aside the thick layer of moss and leaves. Underneath this layer is the trace of a trail.

Has someone been here lately?

Maybe there is someone here now, but I haven’t seen anyone on the way. Inside the grove are several pieces of coral. Washed colorless by corroding time, these pitted hunks are thickly covered by a layer of decaying leaves, through which ants, hoppers, centipedes and spiders crawl. I walk past the coral and brush aside snakelike threads of beard lichen blocking the way. A ray of sunlight penetrates the canopy and shines on a big beautiful conch shell, like a burst of silver in a crypt. It’s as if someone has brushed aside a camouflage of lichen and leaves to reveal a mystery to me.

Gingerly, I dig out the shell. The texture of the surface is rough, and there are round holes the size of needles that form a weird pattern, like a secret sign. I press my lips close and blow. The sound is remote, like a syllable in an ancient spell that I heard in a dream and have followed here.

Outside the grove, the path continues to the left. I soon come to a cliff.

Here, its roots gnarled right into the rock, grows a giant cypresstree. This is actually a platform jutting out halfway up a cliff, the way a shoulder juts out from a neck. Down below is Devil’s Gulch. I have to be careful, lest I fall into the canyon, which is tortuous, fathomless and dark. There are always weird sounds coming from it: one time I was startled by the thunderous sound of beating wings as thousands of bats gushed out of the chasm and flooded the sky.

Even though Devil’s Gulch is scary, I come here to the shoulder of the cliff every couple of days, because of an elfinwood called the Enchanted Thicket. The cypress is one of the trees in the Enchanted Thicket.

I named it myself. There are lots of bizarrely shaped trees, some with large lumps covering their roots, some extending claw-like branches, some with roots like octopus tentacles and even some like centipedes, spiders and crabs.

Among them is a tree like a bat with wings outspread. This particular tree contains a secret of mine and Cub’s. Whenever I come, I always put something to eat in a box which I have placed in the hollow in the bat tree: sweets, cakes or breadmen Father hasn’t been able to sell. On the box I have carved the likeness of a bear.

The opening to the hollow wasn’t originally so big, but one time Cub widened it considerably with her claws while yanking out a beehive. Putting the wooden box in there was an idea I had later—I was sure Cub would smell the treats inside when she came near.

I get out the box and open it, discovering the treats I left last time are untouched. In the past few months, the stuff in the box has often gone stale or rotten or been nibbled by ants. I am disappointed every time, of course, but I keep cleaning it out and leaving fresh treats inside.

Once today’s treats are safely stored, I put the box back and lean on a gravestone by the tree, speaking silently to Grandpa, who lies beneath.

Whether it is really my grandfather I don’t know, but I feel he is there. When I pray for things, he appears and presents me with what I’ve asked for. Like last year I wished for a bear cub, and he arranged for that trap to be set, for Cub to step in it, and for me to find her...

Grandpa was sent up the mountains late in the Japanese occupation, in the 1930s or 1940s, to be a camphorman. At the time, camphor wood was an important commodity, so the Japanese ordered the Taiwanese people, especially the aborigines, to log it. Grandpa didn’t want to go to the Philippines to serve as a military porter in the war against the Americans, and working as a camphor logger was the only other option.

My grandmother was the daughter of a shaman. Too bad I never saw her. I heard that before she died she said she wanted to climb the mountain to where the moon shone brightest and meet her husband, my grandfather, who had become the Guardian of the Celestial Spirit. According to shamanic lore, the Celestial Spirit is a glowing giant clothed in bearskin, while its Guardian is a giant bear. Grandmother’s ashes were scattered at the brightest spot on the mountain—right here in the Enchanted Thicket—as she instructed. But nobody is sure if Grandpa is really buried here, only that a lot of camphormen were killed near here during a B29 air raid. The villagers dug a pit and threw all the charred remains into it. There was nothing they could do for those who had died deeper or higher in the mountains. But even so I am sure that Grandpa can really hear me praying to him. Cub’s appearance in my life was proof of that. Even if I only got to keep Cub for a short time, I still believe Grandpa is here.

“Grandpa! Grandpa!” I murmur. “I’ve brought you another shell.

Look how big it is! What spirit does it represent?”

I turn the shell over and put my ear close to the gravestone. “Evil Dispeller?”

What? Evil Dispeller? No... It’s Hunting Companion.

I quickly dig into the ground beside the gravestone, find the urn buried there, open it up and put the shell inside. Then I return the urn to the ground.

“It’s hidden now, Grandpa.”

Even when he doesn’t say anything, I can feel his response.

Maybe Grandpa is everywhere, sometimes just a beam of light, a gust of wind, at other times a moonshadow or a leaf. Sometimes he lies inside the grave sleeping soundly —I need to call several times to wake him. Sometimes he appears unannounced before me.

Lately his voice has been muffled, probably because his beard has grown too long. I pick up a rock and scrape the moss off the grave- stone. Now Grandpa’s face is clean. No words are etched on the stone, but it is by no means unmarked. I always draw something on it by scraping with a stone or by dipping my finger into the mud. When my drawings get washed off I just draw them on again. I always draw the same thing: scenes from the story of a bear, which is Grandpa’s story

I am sure it’s Grandpa’s story. It is a mystery into which I have been initiated and which I draw to make it real. When I bury a shell or draw the pictures on the gravestone, the melody of a ritual song sung by a chorus of many warriors starts coming from the center of the grove. The words sound like this:

Somehow, though I don’t speak this language, I understand what the words mean:

And then I hear Grandpa chanting.

A mystery has been made manifest. I have undergone a rite of passage.