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Authors: Michael Bishop
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of her own kind? God help me if these aliens are intelligent and self-aware, base-camp buggers, because I'm walking among cannibals!
They encircle me. They ensorcel me. They fill me with a sudden dread, an awe such as the awe of one's parents that consumes the child who has just learned the secrets of conception and birth. Exactly thus, my dread of the Asadi, my awe of their intimate lives. . . .
Turnbull is missing. Do you remember him? I named him Tumbull because he was small, like the pygmies the first Turnbull wrote about, like the pygmies I worked among. . . . Now I can't find Turnbull. Little Turnbull, squat and sly, is nowhere among these indifferent, uncouth people. I'd have found him by now, I know I would. He was my pygmy, my little pygmy, and now these aloof bastards—these Asadi of greater height than Turnbull—have eaten him! Eaten him as though he were an animal! a creature of inferior status! a zero in a chain of zeroes as long as the diameter of time! IVIay God damn them for their impious rapacity!
[A lengthy pause during which only the shuffling of the Asadi can be heard.]
I think my shout unsettled some of them. A few of them flinched! But they don't look at me, these cannibals, and I don't know whether to be outraged or gratified. A cannibal may never go too far toward acknowledging the existence of another of his kind, so uncertain is his opinion of himself. A cannibal's always afraid he'll ascribe more importance to himself than he deserves. In doing so, he discovers—in a moment of hideous revelation— where his next meal is coming from. He always knows where it's
coining from, and he's therefore nearly always afraid.
Cannibals—the civilized sort—are the most inwardly warring schizophrenics in all of Nature. On the one hand, Eisen, it requires a colossal arrogance to think oneself enough better than another member of one's own species to eat him. On the other, this same act demonstrates the abject self-abasement of the cannibal in his readiness to convert the flesh of his own kind into . . . well, let's be blunt about this, into shit. Grandiose haughtiness versus the worst sort of voluntary self-degradation. Have the Asadi incorporated these polar attitudes into the structure of their daily life? Does their indifference to one another result from the individual's esteem for himself? Could it be that the individual's lack of regard for his kind precipitates the practices of pariahhood and public humiliation? A schizophrenic society? Does the pattern of indifferent association during the day and compulsive scattering at night mirror the innate dichotomy of their souls? After all, who's more deluded than the cannibal? His every attempt to achieve union with his kind results in a heightened edienation from himself.
[Chaney's microphone picks up the incessant shuffling of Asadi feet and the low sighing of a breeze in the rainforest.]
Yes, yes, I know. This is all very bad anthropology. But I'm not really speaking anthropologically. I'm speaking metaphorically, and maybe I'm not tsJking about the Asadi at all. I realize full well, gang, that among human populations there are two types of cannibalism: exocannibalism and endocannibalism. I haven't forgotten all my training.
Exocannibalism, Ben, usually occurs in a context of continuing warfare between tribes that are dependent to some extent on agriculture for their livelihoods. They war, you see, to protect their sedentary way of life or to expand their holdings into areas where the soil hasn't been depleted by overuse. Enemies eat one another to steal their adversaries' strength and to gain power over them. In such a context, cannibalism is patriotic, and human flesh is invariably kosher.
The Asadi, not being agriculturists, and having no natural
enemies here in the Synesthesia Wild, are not adherents of exocannibalism. Instead, Ben, they practice endocannibalism. Is that cleeir?
What this means, in short, is that the Asadi regularly eat
They encircle me. They ensorcel me. They fill me with a sudden dread, an awe such as the awe of one's parents that consumes the child who has just learned the secrets of conception and birth. Exactly thus, my dread of the Asadi, my awe of their intimate lives. . . .
Turnbull is missing. Do you remember him? I named him Tumbull because he was small, like the pygmies the first Turnbull wrote about, like the pygmies I worked among. . . . Now I can't find Turnbull. Little Turnbull, squat and sly, is nowhere among these indifferent, uncouth people. I'd have found him by now, I know I would. He was my pygmy, my little pygmy, and now these aloof bastards—these Asadi of greater height than Turnbull—have eaten him! Eaten him as though he were an animal! a creature of inferior status! a zero in a chain of zeroes as long as the diameter of time! IVIay God damn them for their impious rapacity!
[A lengthy pause during which only the shuffling of the Asadi can be heard.]
I think my shout unsettled some of them. A few of them flinched! But they don't look at me, these cannibals, and I don't know whether to be outraged or gratified. A cannibal may never go too far toward acknowledging the existence of another of his kind, so uncertain is his opinion of himself. A cannibal's always afraid he'll ascribe more importance to himself than he deserves. In doing so, he discovers—in a moment of hideous revelation— where his next meal is coming from. He always knows where it's
coining from, and he's therefore nearly always afraid.
Cannibals—the civilized sort—are the most inwardly warring schizophrenics in all of Nature. On the one hand, Eisen, it requires a colossal arrogance to think oneself enough better than another member of one's own species to eat him. On the other, this same act demonstrates the abject self-abasement of the cannibal in his readiness to convert the flesh of his own kind into . . . well, let's be blunt about this, into shit. Grandiose haughtiness versus the worst sort of voluntary self-degradation. Have the Asadi incorporated these polar attitudes into the structure of their daily life? Does their indifference to one another result from the individual's esteem for himself? Could it be that the individual's lack of regard for his kind precipitates the practices of pariahhood and public humiliation? A schizophrenic society? Does the pattern of indifferent association during the day and compulsive scattering at night mirror the innate dichotomy of their souls? After all, who's more deluded than the cannibal? His every attempt to achieve union with his kind results in a heightened edienation from himself.
[Chaney's microphone picks up the incessant shuffling of Asadi feet and the low sighing of a breeze in the rainforest.]
Yes, yes, I know. This is all very bad anthropology. But I'm not really speaking anthropologically. I'm speaking metaphorically, and maybe I'm not tsJking about the Asadi at all. I realize full well, gang, that among human populations there are two types of cannibalism: exocannibalism and endocannibalism. I haven't forgotten all my training.
Exocannibalism, Ben, usually occurs in a context of continuing warfare between tribes that are dependent to some extent on agriculture for their livelihoods. They war, you see, to protect their sedentary way of life or to expand their holdings into areas where the soil hasn't been depleted by overuse. Enemies eat one another to steal their adversaries' strength and to gain power over them. In such a context, cannibalism is patriotic, and human flesh is invariably kosher.
The Asadi, not being agriculturists, and having no natural
enemies here in the Synesthesia Wild, are not adherents of exocannibalism. Instead, Ben, they practice endocannibalism. Is that cleeir?
What this means, in short, is that the Asadi regularly eat
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