Changing Planes

I finally realised that some of the pieces of jewelry were sentences, or lines of poems. Maybe they all were.

There was a village school under a nut tree. The climate is very mild and dull, it never varies, so you can live outdoors. It seemed to be all right with everybody if I sat in at school and listened. Children would gather under that tree daily and play, until one or another of the villagers showed up and taught them one thing or another. Most of it seemed to be language practice, by way of storytelling. The teacher would start a story and then a child would carry it on a way, and then another would pick it up, and so on, everybody listening very intently, alert, ready to take over. The subjects were just village doings, as far as I could tell, pretty dull stuff, but there were twists and jokes, and an unexpected or inventive usage or connection caused a lot of pleasure and praise—”A jewel!” they’d all say. Now and then a regular teacher would wander by, doing a round of the villages, and have a session for a day or two or three, teaching writing and reading. Adolescents and some adults would come to hear the teacher, along with the children. That’s how I learned to read a few characters in certain texts.

The villagers never tried to ask me about myself or where I came from. They had no curiosity ofthat kind at all. They were kind, patient, generous, sharing food, giving me a house, letting me work with them, but they were not interested in me. Or in anything, as far as I could tell, except their daily pursuits—gardening, preparing food, making jewelry, writing, and conversation. But conversation only with one another.

Like everybody else, I found their language so difficult that they probably thought me retarded. I made the usual attempts to learn by exchanging words—you hit your chest and say your name and look inquiringly at the person facing you—you hold up a leaf and say “leaf” and look hopefully at the person facing you… They simply did not respond. Not even the young children.

As far as I can tell, a Nna Mmoy does not have a name. They address one another by ever-varying phrases which seem to signify both permanent and temporary relationships of consanguinity, of responsibility and dependence, of contingent status, of a thousand social and emotional connections. I could point to myself and say “Laure,” but what relationship would that signify?

I suspect they heard my language as a noise made by an idiot.

Nothing else in their world speaks. Nothing else has sentience, let alone intelligence. In their world there is only one language. They recognised me as a human being, but as a defective one. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t make the connections.

I had with me a magazine, a publication of an American conservation organisation, which I’d been reading in the airport. I brought it out one day and offered it to the conversation group. They didn’t ask about the text or look at it with any interest. I’m sure they didn’t recognise it as writing—a couple of dozen black characters, repeated endlessly in straight lines— nothing remotely like their marvelous swirls and fern fronds and interlocking superimplicated patterns. But they did look at the pictures. The magazine was full of color photographs of animals, endangered species—coral reefs and their fish, Florida panthers, manatees, California condors. It passed around the village, and people from other villages asked to look at it when they came visiting and bartering and conversing.

They showed it to the schoolteacher when she came on her rounds, and she asked me about the pictures, the only time any Nna Mmoy tried to ask me a question. I think what she was asking was Who are these people?

In their world, you know, there are no animals but themselves. Except for little, harmless bees and flies, that pollinate plants or break down dead matter. All the plants are edible. The grass is a nourishing grain. Five kinds of trees, that all bear fruit or nuts. One kind of evergreen, used for wood, and it has edible nuts too. One ubiquitous shrub, a cotton bush which produces fiber to spin, edible roots, and leaves for tea. Aside from the necessary bacteria there aren’t more than twenty or thirty species of animal or plant in the world. All of them, including the bacteria, are “useful” and “harmless”—to human beings.

Life there is a product of engineering. It was designed. Utopia indeed. Everything human beings need and nothing they don’t need. Panthers, condors, manatees—who needs them?

Roman’s Planary Guide says the Nna Mmoy are “degenerate remnants of a great ancient culture.” Roman has things backward. What is degenerate on their plane is the web of life. The “great ancient culture” took a vast, rich, incalculably complex tapestry, like the life that clothes our world, and reduced it to a miserable scrap.