The People in the Trees

by Hanya Yanagihara

I was a little surprised when he began, less than a month into his term, to complain of crippling boredom. It had always been one of Norton’s fondest dreams—the dream, I think, of many brilliant and overextended men—that one month, or one year, he’d find himself in a warm place with absolutely no commitments. There would be no speeches to give, no articles to edit or write, no students to instruct, no children to look after, no research to conduct; only a blank, flat expanse of open time, which he would be free to clutter with whatever he wished.

“It is not relevant whether he did or not,” I said. “Norton is a great mind, and that is all that matters to me and I should say to history as well.”

I explained that I would be honored to type and, if he might let me, lightly edit his writing, as I had done before for various papers he had submitted to journals. It would be, I wrote, a fascinating project for me, and one that might keep him entertained.

The U’ivuans were known (and to some extent still are known) for the brevity of their lifespans. But while on Ivu’ivu, Norton encountered a group of islanders who were living far beyond a normal lifespan: twenty, fifty, even a hundred years longer. There were two other components that made this discovery even more remarkable: first, that while the affected persons did not physically age, they did mentally deteriorate; and second, that their condition was not congenital but acquired.

Also, I have cut—judiciously—passages that I felt did not enrich the narrative or were not otherwise of any particular relevance; such deletions will not detract from the overall portrait Norton has painted of himself here.)

We were young, but we both knew (from books, from our peers) what a mother was expected to do—to chastise, to teach, to instruct, to discipline if necessary—and furthermore, we both knew our mother was not fit for those tasks.

It disappointed me when I discerned as an adolescent that my father had married my mother only for her beauty, but this was before I realized that parents disappoint us in many ways and it is best not to expect anything of them at all, for chances are that they won’t be able to deliver it.

This was because to me, language had no native intelligence of its own—it was created by man and was given meaning by man, and therefore clever writing often seemed to me little more than a Chinese puzzle box of contrivances. Writers are praised for having a facility with something man-made, something that can be changed or manipulated at will; but why is augmenting a man-made construction considered an act of brilliance?

Even then, I knew I would not be satisfied with imperfect explanations. I was simply too impatient.

Arrogant even as a child.

but I can remember my sense, from my very early years, that life was not Indiana, and certainly not Lindon, and possibly not even America. Life was elsewhere, and it was frightening and vast and mountainous and uncomfortable.

I suspected even then that the strangest details were the most mundane, and that what we tell others to shock will only inure them to realizing what is truly remarkable. And in this perception I was not to be proven wrong.

it was easy then to believe that my life until this point had been only a long, tedious rehearsal, a thing to be impatiently endured and withstood: a simulacrum of a life, not a life itself.

So there I was, a scientist (presumably), a doctor (allegedly), and a colleague (regrettably) of two people who were convinced that a man who appeared to be 65 was actually 131.

just because civilized society stumbles upon a group of Amazonian people does not mean that those people are unknown to dozens of other, better-documented, neighboring tribes.

would always think that they should have concentrated instead on isolating whatever gene endowed these people with such an expansive, unshakeable calm, with their ability to absorb (and in many cases simply ignore) whatever was new or disagreeable or even unfathomable.

Over the months we remained in the village, I witnessed a sort of pervasive sexual freedom and openness that I was surprised at not having noticed before: I saw couples (men and women, but other permutations as well) rutting in huts and in the woods, and children of all ages nuzzling other children, of course, but adults too. It had never occurred to me before Ivu’ivu that children might enjoy sexual relations, but in the village it seemed wholly natural, as indeed it was. But

because the dreamers were, by their nature and limitations, boring specimens to work with. They were in fact not dissimilar to those dim white mice I had spent all those mornings killing: necessary, but not engaging in the least. All of us knew there was something about them that was singular and important, but none of us could determine what that thing was, or even how to frame the question that might lead us to an answer. Here,

especially hated Mua and the chief, who I suspected could resolve the whole situation for us at once if they chose and yet for some reason—boredom? playfulness? who knew?—had chosen not to. But most of all I hated the smallness of life here, and how even though it was so small, I was unable to solve the mystery whose central question I could still not determine. And

felt the unhappiness and loneliness of the past few days, the past four months, the past twenty-five years, press upon me like a great, bony mass.

I was working from the assumption that the opa’ivu’eke caused some sort of … what? A disease? A condition? A state that led to an unnaturally long life—an immortal life. But it was a parody of immortality, because while the afflicted did in fact remain physically frozen at the age at which she had eaten the turtle, her mind did not. Bit by bit, it disintegrated—first the memory, then the social nuances, then the senses, and then finally speech—until all that was left was the body. The mind was gone, worn down by the years, its fissures and byways exhausted by having to perform for far more decades than it was organically equipped to do.

There is a point—for me, it arrived perhaps a few years ago—when, without even realizing it, you switch over from craving more life to being resigned to its end. It happens so abruptly that you cannot help but recall the moment itself, and yet so gently that it is as if it comes to you in a dream.

Throughout the day I would intermittently be struck by the courage and resolve I had exhibited the previous night, as well as by my resourcefulness, although there was no one with whom I could share my story.

knew then that he would never reveal to the others what he had witnessed that night; to do so would mean having to confront his own stain, his own ruination.

I had the sudden fanciful thought that perhaps the reason the villagers lived so long was that no one had ever thought to tell them they couldn’t.

my presence was the consequence not of luck but of the school trying to get rid of one of its least promising students by sending him off on an absurd mission that was doomed to failure.

Later I would be asked how and why I had decided not to reveal these findings. But it was hardly a decision that was mine to make. As I have said, no one was exactly clamoring for my thoughts on anything, much less mice with extended lifetimes who were displaying progressive dementia. Even if I had wanted to say something, no one would have listened. However, I must admit that something else—I hate to use such a term as precognition, but there it is—also kept me silent. I knew even then that one day soon my discoveries would be legitimized and appreciated for what they were, and that in the mice’s behavioral deterioration was not only the next step in the narrative but my next challenge.

It was no wonder that schools and companies were willing to spend anything, do anything, to get to the island first. It was no wonder that they thought I was working on isolating the element myself. But I knew what they did not, and so it was easy to remain silent in the face of their questioning and suspicions: I knew that this form of eternal life was horribly compromised. I knew that if it were to be pursued, a solution, an antidote, would have to be found first.

I did what any scientist would have done. And if I had to—even knowing what would become of Ivu’ivu and all its people—I would probably do so again. Well, that is not wholly true: I would do so again. I would not even have to consider it for a moment.

remembered from the past removed. Indeed, the whole field had been razed and was now just a great acreage of emptiness: no grass, no little white flowers, just dirt so flat and clean it looked swept. I could feel something shift deep inside me: the first stirrings of dread.

And then I knew—this was the worst thing of all. Worse than the turtles, who had learned not to trust the new humans too late and were now much reduced in number. Worse than seeing the boy, my young friend who had slept leaning against me just a short while before and who seeing me now turned from me, his too-long pant legs sweeping behind him like a bride’s gown. I could not believe, could not accept, the fact that Tallent might be gone from me, from us, forever. By

The Ivu’ivuans had a saying for such events—“Ka ololu mumua ko,” The jungle devoured him.

I wonder sometimes, if he had remained in our world, how I might be different, how I might ultimately have found satisfaction other than in the ways I eventually did.

Shall I tell you how with each new child I acquired, I would irrationally think, This is the one. This is the one who will make me happy. This is the one who will complete my life. This is the one who will be able to repay me for years of looking. Shall I tell you how I was always wrong—eighteen, nineteen, twenty times wrong—and how although I was always wrong, I didn’t stop, I couldn’t stop, I was searching, searching, searching.

his presence would seem a punishment, and a reminder of how I would never escape what I had seen and been and done on that island.

began to think of him, with his masklike mien and terrible smile and graceless, stiff-limbed walk, as a golem, something I had unfairly and unreasonably awakened and let loose to totter through my household, wrecking it with its inhuman, robotic, indecipherable movements, its impulses ungovernable by man. Indeed, he was difficult not because the problems that he presented were so insurmountable but simply because I was unsure how to go about addressing them.

Indeed, it seemed a far more plausible explanation than the truth: that I had, for some inexplicable set of reasons I could not quite articulate to myself, repopulated my life with a dozen new existences, all of whom I would have to witness trundling through the multitudinous steps of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

In 1984 I turned sixty, and the lab threw me a small birthday party, something that, given my frequent and sustained absences, I had been able to avoid every year previously.

Age 60--significant

was able to understand how stealthy and cruel age’s progress was, how noticeable and irreversible the decay. Oh

And I could not forget that were I somewhere else, I would have been feted not with cake but with an opa’ivu’eke of my own, and I imagined myself at the fire’s edge, Tallent beside me, the turtle’s mounded back being slowly dragged into view, moving ever closer to me. I

gave you a name because you were nameless when I found you, I thought. A dog. Less than a dog. It took some effort not to say this, and had I been more perturbed, I might not have been able to stop myself.

And at any rate, most of them recognized at one point or another (usually in their twenties, or when they had children of their own) the opportunities I had provided them, after which they came to me tearfully, sweetly apologizing for their behavior and for the terrible things they had shouted at me over the years, and then confessed (sheepishly, but a little proudly as well) that they had long considered me a colonialist, a eugenicist, and an enemy of native cultures (the terms Hitlerian, white man’s privilege, and racial holocaust usually made an appearance). And then it was my turn to pat them on the back and kiss them on the cheek and thank them sincerely for their maturity, and to let them know that their gratitude was more than I had ever expected but I was of course happy to receive it.

And yet with each one, the feeling of pleasure I craved was ever-briefer, more elusive, more difficult to conjure, and I was lonelier and lonelier, and finally they were evidence only of my losses, of my unanswerable sorrows. Sometimes I wondered—had I adopted them to punish myself? And if so, for what? For Ivu’ivu? For Tallent? It was not a happy speculation, but it was at least logical in its way.