Pilun

Pilun, the small and trusting daughter of Takver and Shevek, is a child whose vulnerability changes how Bedap understands both cruelty and parental feeling. Though she appears in a brief domestic scene, her presence makes abstract questions of strength, care, and social connection immediate and bodily.

Identity and Family

Takver had miscarried twice before Pilun arrived, later than expected and very welcome. She was small at birth and remained small as she approached the age of two, with thin arms and legs. The narration gives her fragility particular weight: Bedap feels that a twist of his hand could break her arms, a realization that unsettles him even as he grows fond of her.

Pilun lives with Takver and Shevek in their room in the Pekesh Block. The room has two platforms, a matted floor, and little furniture; a movable fence marks out a play space or screens the child’s bed. In this spare domestic setting, care is visible not as possession but as the repeated work of making room for a child.

Bedap’s Encounter with Pilun

When Bedap visits, Takver is sorting papers from a long drawer and asks him to hold Pilun, who is making her way toward him. He encourages the child to walk to him and catches her when she reaches him. The moment is playful, but it also exposes his discomfort with her physical weakness. He is fascinated by her cloudy grey eyes and won by her trustfulness, yet touching her makes him consciously recognize the attraction of cruelty: why the strong torment the weak.

That recognition leads Bedap, without his being able to explain the connection, to understand parental feeling, which had previously meant little to him. Pilun’s affection gives this new understanding a name and a small, personal reward when she calls him “tadde.” As she sits on his knees and studies his hand, he first hides his deformed nails, still marked by his former habit of biting them, then feels ashamed of that shame and opens his hand. Pilun pats it. The gesture turns his self-consciousness into a quiet encounter with unjudging trust.

Daily Life and Significance

Pilun’s presence continues to shape the scene through ordinary family routines. When the adults prepare to go to dinner, Shevek makes a growling sound for her to hear; she answers with an imperative “Hup!” He lifts her onto his shoulder. Above them, a mobile of flattened wires and glass bubbles moves in interwoven ellipsoid orbits. Takver calls it the Inhabitation of Time, placing the child’s everyday world beneath an image of motion that is at once shared and never quite joined.

The family then goes to the Pekesh commons, where a computer-coordinated sign-out system must show an opening before Bedap can enter as their guest. Pilun’s domestic scene thus sits within the practical arrangements of communal life, while its emotional center remains intimate: a child’s trust lets Bedap feel the power that comes with strength and recognize the care that can answer it. The text offers no later account of Pilun’s life; her importance here lies in this brief but consequential effect on Bedap and in the tenderness of her place in the household.