The Tale-Teller Read Free

crossing one silk-clad knee over the other, then fidgeting with his embroidered waistcoat, until he was forced to acknowledge that the others were waiting for him.
    â€œBegin,” he said. “Unlike the Intendant here, I don’t have all day to waste.”
    The girl took a step forward, clasping her hands together in front of her and closing her eyes as though retrieving a distant memory, and in a surprisingly musical voice, pausing only occasionally while searching for the right words to describe a scene more accurately, told her audience the following tale.

TWO
    â€œNo me llores por ser prove, sino por ser solo.”
(Weep not for my poverty, but for my loneliness.)
    ONCE THERE WAS A green island in a blue sea: the greenest island, the bluest sea. At dawn the sun rose, a blaze of gold, over the horizon; at dusk white egrets stained themselves red as they flew through the sunset, dipping their beaks for the day’s last catch. Quick fish darted through the water, playing hide and seek; crabs wrote mysterious names in the sand; apes frolicked in the trees. Each stone hunched around its secrets, each palm tree translated the wind, each flower held one creature or another. The entire island was alive with voices singing praise to the power that sustained them.
    And then one night there was a terrible storm, with clamorous thunder and lightning brighter than the sun. The island creatures hid, for there was something out there they had not seen before — a structure of wood, with tall broken trees standing at its centre and enormous white wings flapping in the tempest. The thing rose and fell in the madly churning water. And from it came helpless cries, strangled by the wind and waves.
    They understood the cries. And they were afraid.
    Morning came, and with it the friendly sun shone on a beach made unfamiliar by a veil of wreckage. Tangled nets of seaweed, dead fish, a pulpy mass of octopus; tubes and ropes and the lid of a chest; a hat, a broken telescope, oranges and lemons. A Bible swirled face-down in the shallows, its cover two gilded fins, flapping. And something else: a tightly woven basket resembling the bottom half of a giant clam. From it came soft mewing sounds and a flutter of movement that enticed the apes from shelter. Slowly and fearfully they crept along the sand, still wary of hidden dangers.
    The matriarch led them. Having lost her newborn two days previously, she was reckless with her own life. The tribe held back as she approached the object, then watched in amazement as she reached into it and brought out a small creature. Oddly hairless, it was yet remarkably like them: two round eyes on either side of the nose, lips sucking at the thumb on a clever primate hand. The creature seemed to recognize them too, giving the matriarch a toothless grin of welcome. Her lips curled in an answering smile as she placed the creature in her lap and began to search its head for lice.
    In a few minutes, it was nursing contentedly at the matriarch’s breast. The other apes gathered around, stroking the baby’s cheeks with their long fingers; the young ones examined its toes, pale thighs, and dimpled knees and compared them to their own. Different yet the same, the way egrets differed from herons; it was not hard to understand. Though they had never seen another animal similar to themselves before, they could accept that such a thing might exist in this world of grace and abundance. For who knew what lay beyond their island? Water and sky stretched away infinitely in all directions and yet there were stories, passed on for generations, that their ancestors had come from another place, a place far away, and that one day the whole tribe would return to their home across the sea.
    The child from the sea was a girl, so she was instructed in female ritual. Days had a steady rhythm: wake, forage for food, play, groom each other; nap, forage for food, play, groom each other. Each day was both like and