The Man with the Compound Eyes Read Free Page A

they’re up there, I’ll find them,” Dahu reassured her.
    Thom Jakobsen was from Denmark, a country without any true mountains. He was a flatlander who became a climbing fanatic soon after arriving in Taiwan. After finishing all the local trails with Dahu, he went abroad to train himself in traditional alpine climbing techniques. He wanted to prepare for an ascent on a mountain of over seven thousand meters, three thousand meters higher than the highest peak in Taiwan. Taiwan became a place he only visited on occasion. Alice, feeling herself getting older day by day, was almost no longer able to handle not knowing if or when Thom would return. But even when he was by her side his expression would wander far away.
    Maybe that was why lately Alice tended to think first of Toto, then of Dahu, and only then of Thom. No, she hardly ever thought of Thom. He thought he knew everything there was to know about mountains, forgetting there were none back where he was from. And how could he? How could he take their son climbing and not bring him back? What if he had gotten sick that day or forgotten to charge the battery or even slept in a bit longer? Everything would have turned out different, Alice often thought.
    “Don’t worry, we’re only going insect hunting! I won’t take him anywhere dangerous. We’ll be fine. Everyone knows the route we’re going on.” Thom had tried to reassure her but she heard a hint of impatience in his voice.
    Most people could not believe that at ten years old Toto was already a skilled rock climber and mountaineer who knew more about alpine forests than the average forestry graduate. Alice understood Toto belonged to the mountains and tried not to stand in his way. Maybe Dahu was right thatfate is fate, and that when the time comes, fate can fly like the shaft that finds the wild boar.
    Dahu was a close friend of Alice and Thom’s. He was many things: a taxi driver, a mountaineer, an amateur sculptor, a forest conservationist and a volunteer for some east-coast NGOs. He had a typically stocky Bunun build. He also had a charming gleam in his eyes; best not gaze right at him or you might think he has fallen in love with you, or that you have gone and fallen for him.
    A few years before, his wife had abandoned him, leaving behind their daughter Umav and a note. She just wrote how much money she had withdrawn from the account and what she had taken from the house as well as the words THESE ARE MINE, without offering an explanation. Like a relinquished pet, Umav was just another item on that list of possessions left behind for Dahu. At first, Dahu would send Umav to stay at Alice’s place for a few days at a time. He had the best of intentions, but the truth was he had no idea how to cheer up his daughter, and Umav and Alice only ended up making each other even more depressed. Alice would realize she had not said anything to Umav all afternoon. The girl would have spent the whole time looking bleakly out to sea, clipping and unclipping her bangs, unable to get her hair right. So Alice bluntly asked Dahu not to bring his daughter over anymore. Later, after the rescue mission failed to find any trace of Thom and Toto, she also stopped answering his regular sympathy calls.
    Alice resolved to wall herself in. The only thing she looked forward to was sleep. Though sleep was just closing her eyes, at times she could see more clearly then. In the beginning she made a point of meditating before bed so that Toto would visit her in her dreams. Later she tried not to dream about Toto, only to discover that not dreaming about him was more painful than dreaming about him. Better to dream of him and bear the pain of waking up and realizing he was gone. Now and then, lying awake late at night, she would pick up the flashlight and tread into Toto’s room to check on a boy who was not there, wanting to see whether his breathing was regular. Memory confronted her like a boxer whose power punches weretoo quick to