– ‘radiate’ was not quite the right word – her face revealed the grain of her character and her life’s experiences as if it were a piece of ivory painstakingly and beautifully carved by time.
He rubbed his temple slowly and said, ‘What I mean is … she has her own face.’ Then, realizing that he had fallen back on an Alaloi expression, he began thinking of the many conceptions and words for beauty. There were the new words: sabi, awarei and hozhik. And wabi: the unique beauty of a flawed object, such as a teapot with a crack; the beautiful, distinctive, aesthetic flaw that distinguishes the spirit of the moment in which an object was created from all other moments in eternity. And always, there was halla. If halla was the beauty, the harmony and balance of life, then the other words for beauty were lesser words, though they were connected to halla in many ways. In truth, each of the new words revealed hidden aspects of halla and helped him to see it more clearly.
‘O, blessed beauty! I never knew … that there were so many ways of looking at beauty.’
For a while, the three of them talked about beauty. Danlo spoke haltingly because he was unsure of himself. Suddenly to have a new language inside was the strangest of feelings. It was like entering a dark cave, like climbing toward the faint sound of falling water, and all the while being possessed of an eerie sense that there were many pretty pebbles to be found but not quite knowing where to look. He had to search for the right words, and he struggled to put them together.
‘So much to … comprehend,’ he said. ‘In this blessed Language, there is so much … passion. So many powerful ideas.’
‘Oh ho!’ Old Father said. ‘The Language is sick with ideas.’
Danlo looked at the many rows of heaumes and tapped the heaume that Drisana was still holding in her hand. ‘The whole of the Language is inside here, yes?’
‘Certainly,’ she said, and she nodded at him.
‘And other languages, you say? How many … languages?’
Drisana, who was bad with numbers, said, ‘More than ten thousand but certainly less than fifty thousand.’
‘So many,’ he mused. His eyes took on a faraway look, as of ice glazing over the dark blue sea. ‘So many … how could human beings ever learn so many?’
‘He’s beginning to see it,’ Old Father said.
Drisana put the heaume down atop the inactive hologram stand and smiled at Danlo. Her face was warm and kind. ‘I think you’ve had enough conversation for one day. Now you should go home and sleep. Then you’ll dream of what you’ve learned and tomorrow your speech will come more easily.’
‘No,’ Old Father said sharply. He directed a few quick whistles at her, then said, ‘Imprinting is like giving a newborn the ability to walk without strengthening the leg muscles. Let him use the Language a little more, lest he stumble later when he can least afford to.’
‘But he’s too tired!’
‘No, look at his eyes, look how he sees; now he is liminal, oh ho!’
Liminal, Danlo thought, to be on the threshold of a new concept or way of viewing things. Yes, he was certainly liminal; his heart pounded and his eyes ached because he was beginning to see too much. He stood up and began pacing around the room. To Drisana, he said, ‘Besides languages, there are many … categories of knowledge, yes? History, and what Fayeth calls eschatology, and many others. And all may be imprinted?’
‘Most of them.’
‘How many?’
Drisana was silent as she looked at Old Father. He gave forth a long, low whistle, then said, ‘Oh, oh, if you learned all of a heaume’s forty thousand languages, it would be like standing alone on a beach with a drop of water in your hand while an ocean roared beyond you.’
‘That’s quite enough!’ Drisana snapped. ‘Such a sadist you are.’
‘Oh ho!’
Danlo threw his hand over his eyes and rubbed them. Then he stared up at the ceiling for a long time. At last he was seeing the great ocean of knowledge and truth as it opened before him. The ocean was as deep and bottomless as space, and he could see no end to the depths. He was drowning in deepness; the air in the room was so thick and close that he could hardly catch his breath. If he must learn all the truths of the universe, then he would never know halla. ‘Never,’ he said. And then, cursing for the first time in his life: ‘There is … too damn much to know!’
Drisana sat him down in the velvet chair and pressed her wine glass into his hand. ‘Here, take a sip of wine. It will calm you. Certainly, no one can know everything. But why would you want to?’
With a humming sound that was two thirds of a laugh, Old Father said, ‘There’s a word that will help you. You must know what this word is.’
‘A word?’
Old Father began whistling in fugue, and he said, ‘A word. Think of it as a culling word. So, it’s so: those who grasp the intricacies and implications of this word are culled, chosen to swim in a sea of knowledge where others must drown. Search your memory; you know this word.’
Danlo closed his eyes, and there in the darkness, like a star falling out of the night, was the word. ‘Do you mean “shih”, sir?’ he asked. ‘I must learn shih, yes?’
Shih was the opposite of facts and raw information; shih was the elegance of knowledge, the insight and skill to organize knowledge into meaningful patterns. As an artist chooses colours of paint or light to make her pictures, so a master of shih chooses textures of knowledge – various ideas, myths, abstractions, and theories – to create a way of seeing the world. The aesthetics and beauty of knowledge – this was shih.
‘Just so, shih,’ Old Father said. ‘An old word for an old, old art.’
He explained that the etymon of shih was a simple word in Old Chinese; the Fravashi had fallen in love with this word, and they had borrowed and adapted it when they invented Moksha. From Moksha, the concept of shih had entered into the Language – along with thousands of other concepts and words. Those who fear the Fravashi regard this invasion of the Language with alien (or ancient) words as the most subtle of stratagems to conquer the human race.
Danlo rubbed his eyes as he listened. ‘You say that shih … is a word of Moksha, yes?’
‘So, it’s so: In Moksha, shih is used only as a verb. In the Language, shih becomes corrupted as a noun.’
‘But why haven’t I been taught this word, sir?’
‘Ah, ah, I’ve been saving it for the proper time,’ Old Father said. ‘In the Language, shih is elegance in using one’s knowledge. But in Moksha, this broader meaning: Shih is recognizing and making sense of different kinds of knowledge. It’s the most brilliant art, this ability to gauge the beauties and weaknesses of different worldviews. Oh ho, now that you have the Language in your head, you will badly need this art. If you are to keep the civilized worldview from overwhelming you, you must become a man of shih.’
In a gulp, Danlo downed the rest of the wine. The tartness and the sugars tasted good. As Drisana had said it would, it calmed him. He talked with Drisana and Old Father about shih, or rather, he listened while
