People From Oetimu by Felix K. Nesi Lara Norgaard (translator)

Author:Felix K. Nesi, Lara Norgaard (translator) [Felix K. Nesi, Lara Norgaard (translator)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Political, Satire, World Literature, Asia (General)
ISBN: 9781953861986
Google: J58bEQAAQBAJ
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2025-02-10T12:00:00+00:00

* * *

After vanishing from the halls of Saint Helena for four days, Father Yosef reemerged on school grounds, disheveled and unshaven. His face was weathered, as though he were coming home after liberating a nation. He threw himself onto his bed in the rectory and closed the door.

Ten hours later, Tanta Yuli knocked on the door to the reading room.

“Mister Father still hasn’t gotten out of bed,” she reported when Silvy opened the door. “He hasn’t eaten a thing. He left his plate untouched.”

Silvy glanced at the clock. It was just past four in the afternoon. She heard the faint sound of children playing on the field outside. A sea breeze drifted in through the hallway, ruffling the curtains.

The girl walked to Father Yosef’s door and pressed her ear against the wood. She couldn’t hear anything. Stepping away, she wanted to say that everything was probably fine, but Tanta Yuli looked as moody as a fisherman’s wife waiting for her husband to return home after a storm.

“Try knocking,” the old woman suggested.

Silvy knocked. Once. Twice.

She heard Father Yosef weakly tell her to open the door.

“Get Tanta Yuli,” Yosef said when he saw Silvy. The girl stepped aside, and Tanta Yuli rushed into the room.

The bedroom was dim and stuffy. A small ray of bright light spilled through a crack between black curtains. Tanta Yuli went over and sat on the edge of the bed. From the other side of the threshold, Silvy could just barely see Father Yosef’s pale face, coated in sweat. The old woman held her hand to the pastor’s forehead, and the two whispered to one another for a few minutes. Then, Tanta Yuli left the room. Silvy’s eyes begged her to explain what was going on.

“Mister Father is sick,” she explained. “His forehead is burning up.”

Silvy closed the door.

“He should eat some porridge,” Silvy said.

Tanta Yuli headed to the kitchen with Silvy trailing behind. The girl lit the stove while the older woman cleaned a pot and rinsed rice. Tanta Yuli griped about how concerned she was for Father Yosef.

“Mister Father never complains, he never asks for help. No matter what difficulties he faces, he simply finds a way to manage on his own.”

Silvy stayed quiet and kept her hands busy. She found herself preoccupied with a poem by Fanu Tki’un, a Timorese writer accused of being a communist, and later killed in Hue’buni. Silvy had found a copy of one of his poetry collections in the reading room, and Tanta Yuli had knocked on the door while she was immersed in his words. The poems were dark, composed during a period of scarcity when the only food the poet and his comrades had were tamarind seeds soaked in water. Fanu Tki’un fell in love with an older woman who gave him half of a rotten papaya. Silvy wanted to keep thinking about the poet, but the sound of Tanta Yuli’s voice intermingling with rice grains being winnowed was enough to shake her out of

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