The second year I had two visitors. The first was a new guard. He came as I was weeding carrots. Without a word he hit me across the cheek, took one of my chickens, and disappeared.
He was not one of the guards I met when I first arrived. I hoped I would not see him again, but he became a frequent visitor. For the next 6 years he was part of my life. He was not always violent, but he was always cruel, taunting me and kicking the animals, taking anything of mine he had a use for. I know now that this man was of great value to me.
But there were times I felt a torment so vast and so immediate, I did not know what to do.
For several years those feelings came and went, though for the most part I was able to recover myself after his visits. I would fish, tend the chickens and mind the goat. I would till and weed the garden. I took long walks on the beach and studied the sea. It’s bright glitter. Its rough, slate waves.
It was on one of these walks that I met a friend. I can still feel the depth of my astonishment. Coming over a rise in the sand, I saw him walking toward me. The guards had placed him on the other side of the island, saying nothing to either one of us about the other. Nonetheless, we spoke often after that. I still remember pieces of those conversations. He said:
“Hello, My name is Tong . . . I’m from the west. I worked off and on as a laborer before I came here, studying history the rest of the time. My interest was in the Days Before, and the time of the Great Destruction.
I asked him to tell me what he had learned in his studies. Over many days he recounted what he knew:
“The earth has a history billions of years long, and it has passed through many phases. At each phase of the human part of our history, the leading thinkers are convinced that their way of understanding things is best, and that everyone who came before them was mistaken-ignorant. They spare no effort and no expense to hold on to what they know.”
“Time is a force that destroys. But in the wake of its destruction there is always new life.These are the conditions from which all life proceeds, and these are the conditions that bring every death.”
“New epochs of history bubble up out of the ones that come before. They are the result of humanity waking up to a new capacity inside itself-an impulse that had lain dormant in all previous human beings .”
“In the Days Before, there was a great emptiness. The old knowledge, the glue that once held things together, was gone. People filled their time with distractions—music, technology, work and games.”
“Much wealth was had by a few, and the rest were kept in line by a kind of hypnosis, in which the lives of the rich were dangled before them like shiny objects on a golden chain.”
“In the great destruction, this falsified life was discovered as something that could not stand.The population dwindled almost 80 percent in a matter of decades .”
“The sorrow was so great after the destructive phase, that it was not possible for it to be absorbed. In its place is a silence that has many aspects. Those in the countryside look to the future. In the City of Sorrows people hold to the past, as their thinking is old and outdated. Outside the city the new thinking tends to be based on listening. Saying this to the council was what brought me here.”
That night the guard came and beat me harder than usual. He left with two chickens and all the milk from my pail.