Folio Two, Page One (svegra mos itz)
My dear friend,
Thank you for the concern that you expressed in your last letter. The earthquake did not cause much damage here, and we had no fatalities. Thankfully, the village has complied with all of the national safety regulations. I heard that other villages were not as fortunate.
Your letter also gave me pause. The questions you raised about the historical position of the narrative have made me realize how little people must know about life then. While I cannot use many comparisons to life as it currently stands outside the deep canyons, not having seen most of your technology and not having heard much political discourse, I will try to explain as much as possible. However, I am not a historian, so if you have doubts, check with one.
It seems that beginning at that point in my life was not the best decision. I realized this several hours after I had mailed the letter; if I had had paper to spare, and if I had thought a boat would come in time, I would have mailed you a letter begging you to burn those papers. Your confusion intensified this sentiment.
Instead, we might begin with some important background. I mentioned that my mother had conceived me outside of wedlock, and that she had named no father to take charge of me. She never gave me a name before she died, but I have every reason to suspect my father was someone close to her in the government—a legacy family, I suspect, which is why she kept it such a secret. The common people does not appreciate human frailty in the ruling classes.
Salus, as you might protest, was not attracted to men—how could she have conceived me with one?—but I assure you that it did happen. Her journals prove it.
My existence hinges on a sexual favor granted because my mother lost a bet. She was fifty-three, well past childbearing age, at least for women who didn't bribe genetic laboratories. Perhaps her unfamiliarity with the opposite sex explains why neither she nor my father wore protection. I like to think that both had more common sense.
It happened in a small mountain village on a vacation with -----------------, ----, ---------------, and ----------. (Their names appear that way in her journal.) ---------- is my father. A storm had settled in the valley; for the first half of the night, everyone sat around the fire in the resort's common room with cards and tall glasses of setai, one of those sweet berry wines.
Halfway through Fourteenth Hour, my parents found themselves alone on one of the enclosed balconies watching the rain pelt against the glass. My mother had had too much setai. She held the rail for support while her vision doubled and resolved, staring at the long drop below. Her nipples hardened in the chilly air, poking through her plain blue dress, while my father told a story about the High Wilds.
They had sex twenty minutes later. As they twisted together, she grimaced and tried not to imagine someone else, a blithe young woman named Sehutannyi whose face and scent had all but faded with time. It horrified her that she couldn't remember how that woman's lips felt on her throat. Sehutannyi was an ashen corpse, but also my mother's conqueror—the reason why my mother had decided to forego marriage in favor of lust-driven affairs with women she felt nothing for but always seemed to look like the one whom she had lost——women whom she cast aside, who came pounding at her door pleading to know what was wrong with them, who in desperation confided with magazines how wrong Salus was never to love them. One woman had even called her a psychopath.
Salus described the sexual encounter with my father as a “flirtation brought about by wicked fate, the last of Tsemanok's torments.” She called it a purification, but refrained from using any words that denoted enjoyment.
---------- captivated me when I first read about him in my mother's journals. He made a wonderful scapegoat for everything that differentiated me from her, and like every object of blame, I didn't want to know his name or his favorite frozen juice flavors. He only needed to exist.
My perfect mother was enough. Even though she never mentioned me in public, she loved me.
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