Indeed, Danlo was nearly shivering. The rest of the house – his room and the hallway at least – were warmed by hot air which mysteriously gusted out of vents on the floor, but Old Father’s thinking chamber was almost as cold as a snow hut. Danlo sat with his knees pulled up to his chest and wrapped his blanket tightly around himself. He took a sip of tea. It was delicious, at once cool and hot, pungent and sweet. He sat there sipping his tea, thinking about everything Old Father had told him. From the hallway, reverberating along the winding spiral of stone, came the distant sound of voices. Old Father explained that the students were chanting in their rooms, repeating their nightly mantras, the word drugs which would soothe their minds. Danlo sipped his tea and listened to the music of the word drugs, and after a while, he began digging around in his nostril for some pieces of what the Alaloi call ‘nose ice’. According to the only customs he knew, he savoured his tea and ate the contents of his nose. The Alaloi do not like to waste food, and they will eat almost anything capable of being digested.
With a smile Old Father watched him and said, ‘There is something you should know about the men and women of the City, if you don’t know it already, ah ho, ah ha!’
‘Yes?’
‘Every society – even alien societies – prescribe behaviours which are permitted and those which are not. Do you understand?’
Danlo knew well enough what was seemly for a man to do – or so he thought. Was it possible, he asked himself, that the Song of Life told of other behaviours that the Alaloi men practised when they were not around the women and children? Behaviours that he was unaware of? Or could the men of the City have their own Song? Obviously, they did not know right from wrong, or how could they have given him food to eat and not told him the names of the eaten animals?
‘I think I understand,’ he said, as he rolled some nose ice between his fingers and popped the little green ball into his mouth.
Old Father was still for a moment, then he whistled a peculiar low tiralee out of the side of his mouth. One eye was shut, the other open, a great, golden sun shining down on Danlo. The music he made was strange, evocative, and compelling. He continued to whistle out the corner of his mouth, while his remarkably mobile lips shaped words on the other side. ‘You must understand,’ he finally said, ‘among the Civilized Worlds, in general, there is a hierarchy of disgust of orifices. So, it’s so.’ He whistled continuously, accompanying and punctuating his speech with an alien tune. ‘In sight of others, or even alone, it is less disgusting to put one’s finger in the mouth than in the ear. Ha, ha, but it is more acceptable to probe the nose than either urethra or anus. Fingernails, cut hair, callouses and such are never eaten.’
‘Civilized people do not eat nose ice, yes?’ Danlo said. He suddenly realized that the city people must be as insane as a herd of mammoths who have gorged on fermented snow apples. Insane it was to imprint false memories, if that were really possible. And to eat animals and not say a prayer for their spirits – insane. Insane people would not know halla; they might not even know it existed. He nodded his head as if all the absurdities he had seen the past days made sense.
‘And what of a woman’s yoni?’ he asked. He took a sip of tea. ‘What level does this orifice occupy in the disgust hierarchy?’
Old Father opened his eye and shut the other. He smiled and said, ‘Ahhh, that is more difficult to determine. Among some groups of humans, the yoni may never be touched with the fingers, not even in private by the woman herself. Especially not in private. Other cultures practise the art of orgy and require touching by many, in public; they may even allow one orifice, such as the mouth, to open onto the yoni.’
Danlo made a sour face. Ever since he was eleven years old, he had enjoyed love play with the girls and young women of his tribe. Even among the wanton Devaki, certain practices were uncommon. Some men liked to lick women’s slits, and they were scorned and called ‘fish eaters’, though no one would think to tell them what they should and should not eat. Of course, no one would lick a woman while she was bleeding or after she had given birth, nor would they touch her at these times. In truth, a man may not look a woman in the eyes when she is passing blood or tissue of any sort – could it be that the people of the Civilized Worlds were insane and did not know this?
‘Danlo, are you all right?’ Old Father asked. ‘You look ill.’
Danlo was not ill, but he was not quite all right. He was suddenly afraid that Fayeth and the other women of Old Father’s house would not know to turn their eyes away during their thirtyday bleedings. What if their eyes touched his and the blood of their menses coloured his vision with the power of the women’s mysteries? And then a more despairing thought: how could a sane man ever hope to live in an insane world?
‘You seem to understand these … people,’ he said to Old Father. He rubbed his belly and then stared at Old Father’s belly, or rather stared below it at his furry double membrum. And then he suddenly asked, ‘Do the Fravashi women have two yonis? Do the Fravashi also have a hierarchy of disgust of orifices?’
‘No,’ Old Father said. He finished the last of his tea and set the mug down on the carpet. ‘The answer is “no” to both of your questions.’
‘Then why do you have two membrums?’
‘Ah ha, so impatient! You see, the top membrum,’ and here he reached between his legs, hefted his membrum in his cupped fingers, and pulled the foreskin back to reveal the moist, red bulb, ‘is used only for sex. The lower membrum is for pissing.’
‘Oh.’
Old Father continued whistling and said, ‘There is no disgust hierarchy. But, oh ho, the younger Fravashi, some of them, are disgusted that human males use the same tube for both pissing and sex, much as everyone is disgusted that the Scutari use the same end of the tube for both eating and excreting.’
Danlo stared at Old Father’s membrum. He wondered how he could claim to be a man – or rather an elder of his tribe – if his membrum were uncut. He listened to Old Father’s beautiful, disturbing music for a long while before asking him about this.
‘Ahhh, different peoples,’ Old Father said. He stopped whistling and opened both eyes fully. ‘Different brains, different self-definitions, different ways, aha, aha, oh ho! A man is a man is a man – a Fravashi: so, it’s so, do you see it, Danlo, the way the mirror reflects everything you think you know, the way you think? The mirror: it binds you into the glavering.’
‘I do not understand, sir.’
‘Haven’t you wondered yet why civilized ways are so different from those of your Alaloi?’
At that moment, Danlo was wondering that very thing. He held his breath for a moment because he was afraid that this unfathomably strange alien animal could reach into his mind and pull out his thoughts one by one. Finally, he gathered his courage and looked straight at sun-eyed Old Father. ‘Can you enter my head like a man walks into a cave? Can you see my thoughts?’
‘Ahhh, of course not. But I can see your thought shadows.’
‘Thought shadows?’
Old Father lifted his face toward the wall where the colours inside the cold flame globe flickered up through the spectrum, from red to orange, orange-yellow through violet. He held his tea cup above the carpet, blocking some of the flame globe’s light. ‘As real objects cast shadows by which their shapes may be determined, so with thoughts. So, it’s so: thought shadows. Your thought shadows are as distinct as the shadow of this cup. You think that the people of the City – the Fravashi too! – must be insane.’
‘You are looking at my thoughts!’
Old Father smiled at him then, a smile of reassurance and pity, but also one of provocation and pain. ‘And you are glavering, ah ho! Glavering, and human beings are the masters of the glavering. Glavering: being deceitfully kind to yourself, needlessly flattering the prettiness of your worldview. Oh, Danlo, you assume your assumptions about the world are true solely according to your