Another day Tong asked me how I had come to the island. I told him that I too said something to the Council. I told them I had heard the music in the Garden of Painted Stones.
I told him about the man I had met on the road, and of the woman who spoke with the dead. I told of the town of pink, white and blue buildings, and of the woman I had loved. I spoke of the older couple who had decided to read through the great destruction. I mentioned their heroism--that they had put knowledge ahead of their fear of death. I told him of the man on the council who had helped me, and of the guards who had laughed while letting me drive.
He said: “ Perhaps this woman you loved was right: Such a strange group of people suggests an unusual fate.”
I never told him of the guard who had become my greatest enemy, though a few years after we met, I asked him if he had met anyone else on the island. He said he had not, that the guards had not even come to check up on him. He attributed their lack of interest to a lack of concern for whether he lived or died.
For several years our lives played out in this way. We met several times a week, always in the same place. We talked and traded items we had an excess of. Tong would smoke cigarettes made from tobacco he found growing wild. I tried smoking once, but could not stop coughing. That was just one of the many times we laughed, though in this instance Tong laughed much more than I, at least until l had finished coughing After five years on the island, the guard’s visit’s became more frequent. His anger grew and he became more violent. Once I was able to see him coming from across the beach, so I left before he arrived.
From a long way off I watched him carefully. He was furious that I wasn't there. He tore down the pen I had made for the goat. He trampled my garden, then kicked open the door to my hut. After that I decided it was better if I were there when he came.
Th next time he came to visit he was more angry than ever. I can’t help but remember his harsh voice as he said:
“We gave these things to you and we can take them away. You are an enemy of the City, and as far as I’m concerned you deserve nothing.”
I told him I had no objection to the City or its people. For this he kicked me and beat me with his fists until I bled, I convulsed in the sand as it began to rain.
I considered going to the other guards to complain. But in the end I kept away from them, unsure of whether they or someone higher might have sent him.
I will always be grateful for my friendship with Tong. Because of him I was able to keep myself from a sorrow so deep it would have ended in despair. But after several years of the guard’s beatings and mistreatment, I began to withdraw somewhat, looking for solitude more than ever before.
In my isolation the silence began to speak to me. It taught me many things and they were beautiful to learn:
If we are quiet enough, the blue sky will teach us honesty.
The animals will teach us innocence, the plants, purity.
The summer expands us. In the winter we contract. In that contraction we are more able to sense ourselves. In the expansion of summer, we have a harder time thinking.
I was grateful to know these things, but they did not take away the brutality of the guard, or the sense of isolation and helplessness I felt after his visits.
For the next year I vacillated between the lessons of the silence and the guard that taught me about pain and rage.
At the end of that year-my sixth on the island-I sensed something powerful growing inside me, though I was not yet ready to admit to myself what it was.