Green Earth. Kim Stanley Robinson
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in the evening did she see Frank again. He was sitting in the corner of the room, on the floor between the couch and the fireplace, quizzing Drepung about something or other. Drepung looked as if he was struggling to understand him. Anna was curious, and when she got a chance she sat down on the couch just above the two of them.
Frank nodded to her and then continued pressing a point, using one of his catchphrases: “But how does that work?”
“Well,” Drepung said, “I know what Rudra Cakrin says in Tibetan, obviously. His import is clear to me. Then I have to think what I know of English. The two languages are different, but so much is the same for all of us.”
“Deep grammar,” Frank suggested.
“Yes, but also just nouns. Names for things, names for actions, even for meanings. Equivalencies of one degree or another. So, I try to express my understanding of what Rudra said, but in English.”
“But how good is the correspondence?”
Drepung raised his eyebrows. “How can I know? I do the best I can.”
“You would need some kind of exterior test.”
Drepung nodded. “Have other Tibetan translators listen to the rimpoche, and then compare their English versions to mine. That would be very interesting.”
“Yes it would. Good idea.”
Drepung smiled at him. “Double-blind study, right?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Drepung intoned, reaching out for a cracker with which to dip hummus. “But I expect you would get a certain, what, range. Maybe you would not uncover many surprises with your study. Maybe just that I personally am a bad translator. Although I must say, I have a tough job. When I don’t understand the rimpoche, translating him gets harder.”
“So you make it up!” Frank laughed. His spirits were still high, Anna saw. “That’s what I’ve been saying all along.” He settled back against the side of the couch next to her.
But Drepung shook his head. “Not making things up. Re-creation, maybe.”
“Like DNA and phenotypes.”
“I don’t know.”
“A kind of code.”
“Well, but language is never just a code.”
“No. More like gene expression.”
“You must tell me.”
“From an instruction sequence, like a gene, to what the instruction creates. Language to thought. Or to meaning, or comprehension. Whatever! To some kind of living thought.”
Drepung grinned. “There are about fifty words in Tibetan that I would have to translate to the word thinking.”
“Like Eskimos with snow, if it’s true what they say about that.”
“Yes. Like Eskimos have snow, we Tibetans have thoughts.”
He laughed at the idea and Frank laughed too, shaken by that low giggle which was all he ever gave to laughter, but now emphatic and helpless with it, bubbling over with it. Anna could scarcely believe her eyes. He was as ebullient as if he were drunk, but he was still holding the same beer she had given him on his arrival. And she knew what he was high on anyway.
He pulled himself together, grew intent. “So today, when you said, ‘An excess of reason is itself a form of madness,’ what did your lama really say?”
“Just that. That’s easy, that’s an old proverb.” He said the sentence in Tibetan. “One word means ‘excess’ or ‘too much,’ you know, like that, and rig-gnas is reason, or science. Then zugs is ‘form,’ and zhe sdang is ‘madness,’ a version of hatred, from an older word that was like angry. One of the dug gsum, the Three Poisons of the Mind.”
“And the old man said that?”
“Yes. An old saying. Milarepa, I should think.”
“Was he talking about science, though?”
“The whole lecture was on science.”
“Yeah yeah. But I found that idea in particular pretty striking.”
“A good thought is one you can act on.”
“That’s what mathematicians say.”
“I’m sure.”
“So, was the lama saying that NSF is crazy? Or that Western science is crazy? Because it is pretty damned reasonable. I’m mean, that’s the point. That’s the method in a nutshell.”
“Well, I guess so. To that extent. We’re all crazy in some way or other, right? He did not mean to be critical. Nothing alive is ever quite in balance. It might be he was suggesting that science is out of balance. Feet without eyes.”
“I thought it was eyes without feet.”
Drepung waggled his hand: either way. “You should ask him.”
“But you’d be translating, so I might as well just ask you and cut out the middleman!”
“No,” laughing, “I am the middleman, I assure you.”
“But you can tell me what he would say,” teasing him now. “Cut right to the chase!”
“But he surprises me a lot.”
“Like when, give me an example.”
“Well. One time last week, he was saying to me …”
But at that point Anna was called away to the front door, and she did not get to hear Drepung’s example, but only Frank’s distinctive laughter, burbling under the clatter of conversation.
By the time she ran into Frank again he was out in the kitchen with Charlie and Sucandra, washing glasses and cleaning up. Charlie could only stand there and talk. He and Frank were discussing Great Falls, both recommending it to Sucandra. “It’s more like Tibet than any other place in town,” Charlie said, and Frank giggled again, and more so when Anna exclaimed, “Oh come on love, they aren’t the slightest bit the same!”
“No, yes! I mean they’re more alike than anywhere else around here is like Tibet.”
“What does that mean?” she demanded.
“Water! Nature!” Then: “Sky,” Frank and Charlie both said at the same time.
Sucandra nodded. “I could use some sky. Maybe even a horizon.” And then all the men were chuckling.
Anna went back out to the living room to see if anyone needed anything. She paused to watch Rudra Cakrin and Joe playing with blocks on the floor again. Joe was filled with happiness to have such company, stacking blocks and babbling. Rudra nodded and handed him more. They had been doing that off and on for much of the evening. It occurred to Anna that they were the only two people at the party who did not speak English.
She went back to the kitchen and took over Frank’s spot at the sink, and sent Frank down to the basement to get his shirt out of the dryer. He came back up wearing it, and leaned against a counter talking.
Charlie saw Anna rest against the counter and got her a beer from the fridge. “Here snooks have a drink.”
“Thanks dove.”
Sucandra asked about the kitchen’s wallpaper, which was an uncomfortably brilliant yellow, overlaid with large white birds caught in various moments of flight. When you actually looked at it it was rather bizarre. “I like it,” Charlie said. “It wakes me up. A bit itchy, but basically fine.”
Frank said he was going to go home. Anna walked him around the ground floor to the front door.
“You’ll be able to catch one of the last trains,” she said.
“Yeah