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By Root 366 0

judgments with the ease of an ox marking its path with piles of its own dung. Since my first night away from home, I have been suffer ing through a dream, sad and naked. I am standing in front of the Old Man's coffin, which has been laid out in front of his house underneath the morning sun, and I am saying, as if in a trance: "This was a man who benefited from a long life. Over the course of his many decades, he had reached a handful of conclusions about the world around him. In his hands they, the coarse sediments of his life, lost their natural complexities, became a string of pearl-like truths, a choker for the necks of those who share his name." Taking a deep breath, I then solemnly declare, "He was a coward who finally had the courage to die, knowing that in the silence that he leaves behind him, I would have the last word, would come forward to ensure that his reputation dies along with his body." In my dream, I am saying all of this in French, though I know that this is impossible. But in my dream, cruelty greases my tongue and I am undeniably fluent.

This is a temple, not a home.

The thought—growing stronger with the scent of cloves and sweet cinnamon in the air—takes me out of the past, a borderless country in which I so often find myself, and returns me to Paris, to the rue de Fleurus, where a door, joints rusted red but otherwise unadorned, is opening. A woman with the face of an owl emerges and positions herself inside of a wedge of light. The woman, I think, has the face of an "Ancient." This is not to say that her face is wrinkled or dulled. Ancients, according to Bão, my bunkmate on board the Niobe, wear faces that have not changed for centuries. To look at them, he said, is to look at a series of paintings of their ancestors and their descendants, as when two mirrors endlessly reflect each other's images. Bão said that Ancients possess features so strong and forceful that they can withstand generation after generation of new and insurgent bloodlines. Women, who are accused of adultery because the faces of their children refuse to resemble those of their husbands, are often Ancients. In a firefly moment of introspection, Bão said that these women are feared because they make a mockery out of the marriage union, that their children's preor dained faces proclaim too loudly that the man is irrelevant, that maybe he is not needed at all. Bão, of course, did not say it in exactly these words. His were more immodest, recalling with photographic details the acts performed by Serena the Soloist, a mixed-blood beauty from Pondicherry who commanded half a week of his wages, money he now thought was well spent, for a glimpse of his own irrelevancy. Money well spent, indeed. Serena and her talented fingers and toes have become for Bão a supple example, a sort of explicit device, that helps him to explain everything he knows in life, from how to bargain for a few extra slices of beef in his bowl of phỏ to the difference between serving under English ship captains and French ones. But no matter why Serena was introduced, after each encore Bão without fail would offer this advice: "Remember, as Serena the Soloist showed me, there are just some things a man can't do!" Bão's eyes would then open wide, and his body would remain perfectly still, as if he were removing all distractions so that the indelicate meaning of his words could be fully savored. Bão's own convulsive, silent laughter would then officially end the show. When we first met, I asked Bão why he became a sailor when his name meant "storm." He responded with a rhythmless shaking, an open-mouthed silence, that I would only later learn to equate with laughter.

As I slipped into the South China Sea, as water erased the shoreline, absolving it of my sins, I began to believe that conflict and strife were landlocked. Too sweat-stained and cumbersome for sea travel, I thought. So during our time together, Bão and I developed a tacit understanding that everything he said was true. A covenant easily kept because there were few on board the Niobe with the authority to