The Cleft
Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, invites us to imagine a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, free from jealousy, free from petty rivalries: a society free from men.An old Roman senator embarks on what may be his last endeavour: the retelling of the story of human creation. He recounts the history of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic, coastal wilderness, in the valley of an overshadowing mountain. The Clefts have no need, or knowledge, of men – childbirth is controlled through the cycles of the moon, and their children are always female. But with the birth of a strange, new child – a boy – the harmony of their community is thrown into jeopardy.At first, the Clefts are awestruck by this seemingly malformed child, but as more and more of these threateningly unfamiliar males appear, they are rejected, and are exposed on the nearby mountainside, sacrificed to the patrolling eagles overhead. Unbeknownst to the Clefts, however, these baby males survive, aided by the eagles, and thrive on the other side of the mountain. It is not until a curious young Cleft named Maire goes beyond the geographical, and emotional, divide of the mountain that this disquieting fact is uncovered – forcing the Clefts to accept the prospect of a now shared world, and the possible vengeance of the wronged males.In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing confronts head-on the themes that inspired much of her early writing: how men and women, two similar and yet thoroughly distinct creatures, manage to live side by side in the world, and how the specifics of gender affect every aspect of our existence.
DORIS LESSING
The Cleft
FOURTH ESTATE • London
Contents
Title Page (#u700ce0ec-0d12-5afa-b336-7a4b232b74c5)In a recent scientific article (#u01c56b5d-9ed0-57fa-8372-87aee9626426)I saw this today (#u680fbe33-c28c-5e0a-aafa-90f5dce7ca1f)This account, by this Maire (#ud92c389b-03c2-569d-b17e-f9a4414bface)You may be thinking that (#u094d3e74-7bb3-5654-a512-970b2e212a14)And now this chronicler (#litres_trial_promo)And now, dear Roman reader (#litres_trial_promo)Now, reading the words (#litres_trial_promo)Some events this summer (#litres_trial_promo)This is to the point (#litres_trial_promo)Well, eagles still hold (#litres_trial_promo)Once again I have to intervene (#litres_trial_promo)What did it mean (#litres_trial_promo)And now I really cannot stop myself (#litres_trial_promo)Also By Doris Lessing (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
In a recent scientific article it was remarked that the basic and primal human stock was probably female, and that males came along later, as a kind of cosmic afterthought. I cannot believe that this was a trouble-free advent. The idea was grist to an already active mill, for I had been wondering if men were not a younger type, a junior variation. They lack the solidity of women, who seem to have been endowed with a natural harmony with the ways of the world. I think most people would agree with this, even if a definition would be hard to come by. Men in comparison are unstable, and erratic. Is Nature trying something out?
Brooding about this whole question sparked off speculation and then that spinning of the imagination that can lead to the birth of stories. Here is one of the tales about what might have happened when Clefts first gave birth to a baby boy.
Man does, woman is.
ROBERT GRAVES
Merchant
We travel not for trafficking alone: By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned: For lust of knowing what should not be known We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
The Master of the Caravan
Open the gate, O watchman of the night.
The Watchman
Ho, travellers I open. For what land Leave you the dim-moon city of delight?
The Merchants (WITH A SHOUT)
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
(The caravan passes through the gate)
The Watchman (CONSOLING THE WOMEN)
What would you, ladies? It was ever thus. Men are unwise and curiously planned.
A Woman
They have their dreams, and do not think of us.
Voices of the Caravan (IN THE DISTANCE, SINGING)
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
JAMES ELROY FLECKER
THE CLEFT
I saw this today.
When the carts come in from the estate farm as the summer ends, bringing the wine, the olives, the fruits, there is a festive air in the house, and I share in it. I watch from my windows like the house slaves, for the arrival of the oxen as they turn from the road, listen for the creak of the cart. Today the oxen were wild-eyed and anxious, because of the noisy overfull road to the west. Their whiteness was reddened, just like the slave Marcus’s tunic, and his hair was full of dust. The watching girls ran out to the cart, not only because of all the delicious produce they would now put away into the storerooms, but because of Marcus, who had in the last year become a handsome youth. His throat was too full of dust to let him return their greetings, and he ran to the pump, snatched up the pitcher there, drank – and drank – poured water over his head, which emerged from this libation a mass of black curls – and dropped the pitcher, through haste, on the tile surround, where it shattered. At this, Lolla, whose mother my father had bought during a trip to Sicily, an excitable explosive girl, rushed at Marcus screaming reproaches and accusations. He shouted back, defending himself. The other servants were already lifting down the jars of wine and oil, and the grape harvest, black and gold, and it was a busy, loud scene. The oxen began lowing and now, and with an ostentatiously impatient air, Lolla took up a second pitcher, dipped it in the water and ran with it to the oxen, where she filled their troughs, which were nearly empty. It was Marcus’s responsibility to make sure the oxen got their water as soon as they arrived. They lowered their great heads and drank, while Lolla again turned on Marcus, scolding and apparently angry. Marcus was the son of a house slave in the estate house and these two had known each other all their lives. Sometimes he had worked here in our town house, sometimes she had gone for the summer to the estate. Lolla was known for her quick temper, and if Marcus had not been hot and dusty after the long slow journey he would probably have laughed at her, teased her out of her fit of impatience. But these two were no longer children: it was enough only to see them together to know her crossness, his sullenness, were not the result only of a very hot afternoon.
He went to the oxen, avoiding their great tossing horns, and began soothing them. He freed them from their traces, and led them to the shade of the big fig tree, where he slipped the traces over a branch. For some reason Marcus’s tenderness with the oxen annoyed Lolla even more. She stood, watching, while the other girls were carrying past her the produce from the cart, and her cheeks were scarlet and her eyes reproached and accused the boy. He took no notice of her. He walked past her as if she were not there, to the veranda, where he pulled out another tunic from his bundle and, stripping off the dusty tunic, he again sluiced himself with water, and without drying himself – the heat would do that in a moment – he slipped on the fresh one.
Lolla seemed calmer. She stood with her hand on the veranda wall, and now she was penitent, or ready to be. Again he took no notice of her, but stood at the end of the veranda, staring at the oxen, his charges. She said, ‘Marcus …’ in her normal voice, and he shrugged, repudiating her. By now the last of the jars and the fruit had gone inside. The two were alone on the veranda. ‘Marcus,’ said Lolla again, and this time coaxingly. He turned his head to look at her, and I would not have liked to earn that look. Contemptuous, angry – and very far from the complaisance she was hoping for. He went to the gate to shut it, and turned from it, and from her. The slaves’ quarters were at the end of the garden. He took up his bundle and began walking – fast, to where he would lodge that night. ‘Marcus,’ she pleaded. She seemed ready to cry. He was about to go into the men’s quarters and she ran across and reached him as he disappeared into the door.
I did not need to watch any longer. I knew she would find an excuse to hang about the courtyard – perhaps petting and patting the oxen, giving them figs, or pretend the well needed attention. She would be waiting for him. I knew that he would want to go off into the streets with the other boys, for an evening’s fun – he was not often here in this house in Rome itself. But I knew too that these two would spend tonight together, no matter what he would have preferred.
This little scene seems to me to sum up a truth in the relations between men and women.
Often seeing something as revealing, when observing the life of the house, I was impelled to go into the room where it was kept, the great pack of material which I was supposed to be working on. I had had it now for years. Others before me had said they would try to make something of it.
What was it? A mass of material accumulated over ages, originating as oral history, some of it the same but written down later, all purporting to deal with the earliest record of us, the peoples of our earth.
It was a cumbersome, unwieldy mass and more than one hopeful historian had been defeated by it, and not only because of its difficulty, but because of its nature. Anyone working on it must know that if it ever reached a stage of completion where it could have a name, and be known as a product of scholarship, it would be attacked, challenged, and perhaps be described as spurious.
I am not a person who enjoys the quarrels of scholars. What kind of a man I am is not really of importance in this debate – there has already been disputation about allowing this tale to exist away from the dusty shelves it has always been kept on. ‘The Cleft’ – I did not choose this title – had at various times been regarded as so inflammatory it had been put with other ‘Strictly Secret’ documents.
As I have said, the history I am relating is based on ancient documents, which are based on even earlier oral records. Some of the reported events are abrasive and may upset certain people. I tried out selected bits of the chronicle on my sister Marcella and she was shocked. She would not believe that decent females would be unkind to dear little baby boys. My sister is ever ready to ascribe to herself the more delicate of female attributes – a not uncommon trait, I think. But as I remind her, anyone who has watched her screaming her head off as the blood flows in the arena is not likely easily to be persuaded of female fastidiousness. People wishing to avoid offence to their sensibilities may start the story on p.29.
The following is not the earliest bit of history we have, but it is informative and so I am putting it first.
Yes, I know, you keep saying, but what you don’t understand is that what I say now can’t be true because I am telling you how I see it all now, but it was all different then. Even words I use are new, I don’t know where they came from, sometimes it seems that most of the words in our mouths are this new talk. I say I, and again I, I do this and I think that, but then we wouldn’t say I, it was we. We thought we.
I say think but did we think? Perhaps a new kind of thinking began like everything else when the Monsters started being born. I am sorry, you keep saying the truth, you want the truth, and that is how we saw you, all of you, at first. Monsters. The deformed ones, the freaks, the cripples.
When was then? I don’t know. Then was a very long time ago, that’s all I know.
The caves are old. You have seen them. They are old caves. They are high in the rocks, well above any waves, even big ones, even the biggest. In stormy seas you can stand on the cliffs and look down and think that water is everything, is everywhere, but then the storm stops and the sea sinks back into its place. We are not afraid of the sea. We are sea people. The sea made us. Our caves are warm, with sandy floors, and dry, and the fires outside each cave burn sea-brush and dry seaweed and wood from the cliffs, and these fires have never gone out, not since we first had them. There was a time we didn’t have fire. That is in our records. Our story is known. It is told to chosen youngsters and they have to remember it and tell it when they are old to new youngsters. They have to be sure they remember every word, as it was told to them.
What I am saying now is not part of this kind of recording. When the story is told to the young ones – they have a name, they are called the Memories – it is told first among ourselves, and one will say, ‘No, it was not like that,’ or another, ‘Yes, it was like that,’ and by the time everyone is agreed we can be sure there is nothing in the story that is untrue.
You want to know about me? Very well, then. My name is Maire. There is always someone called Maire. I was born into the family of Cleft Watchers, like my mother and like her mother – these words are new. If everyone gives birth, as soon as they are old enough, everyone is a mother, and you don’t have to say Mother. The Cleft Watchers are the most important family. We have to watch The Cleft. When the moon is at its biggest and brightest we climb up to above The Cleft where the red flowers grow, and we cut them, so there is a lot of red, and we let the water flow from the spring up there, and the water flushes the flowers down through The Cleft, from top to bottom, and we all have our blood flow. That is, all who are not going to give birth. Very well, have it your way, the moon’s rays make the blood flow, not the red running down through The Cleft. But we know that if we don’t cut the red flowers – they are small and soft like the blisters on seaweed, and they bleed red if you crush them – if we don’t do that, we will not have our flow.
The Cleft is that rock there, which isn’t the entrance to a cave, it is blind, and it is the most important thing in our lives. It has always been so. We are The Cleft, The Cleft is us, and we have always made sure it is kept free of saplings that might grow into trees, free of bushes. It is a clean cut down through the rock and under it is a deep hole. Every year, when the sun touches the top of that mountain there, it is always the cold time, and we have killed one of us, and thrown the body down from the top of The Cleft into the hole. You say you have counted the bones, but I don’t see how you can have, when some of the bones are dust by now. You say if a body and its bones has been thrown down every year, it is not so difficult to work out how long it has been going on. Well, if that is what you think is important …
No, I cannot say how it started. That isn’t in our story.
The Old Shes must have known something.
We never called them that before the Monsters began being born. Why should we? We only had Shes, didn’t we, only Clefts, and as for old, we didn’t think like that. People were born, they lived for a time, unless they drowned swimming or had an accident or were chosen to be thrown into The Cleft. When they died they were put out on the Killing Rock.
No, I don’t know how many of us there were then. Whenever then was. There are these caves, as many as I have fingers and toes, and they are big and they go back a long way into the cliffs. Each cave has the same kind of people in it, a family, the Cleft Watchers, the Fish Catchers, the Net Makers, the Fish Skin Curers, the Seaweed Collectors. And that is what we were called. My name was Cleft Watcher. No, why did it matter if several people had the same name? You can always tell by looking at someone, can’t you?
My name Maire is one of the new words.
We didn’t think like that, no, we didn’t, that every person had to have a name separate from all the others. Sometimes I think we lived in a kind of dream, a sleep, everything slow and easy and nothing ever happening but the moon being bright and big, and the red flowers washing down The Cleft.
And, of course, the babies being born. They were just born, that’s all, no one did anything to make them. I think we thought the moon made them, or a big fish, but it is hard to remember what we thought, it was such a dream. How we thought has never been part of our story, only what happened.
You get angry when I say Monsters, but just look at yourself. Look at yourself – and look at me. Go on, look. I am not wearing the red flower belt so you can see how I am. Now look at The Cleft, we are the same, The Cleft and the Clefts. No wonder you cover yourselves there, but we don’t have to. We are nice to look at, like one of those shells we can pick off a rock after a storm. Beautiful – you taught us that word and I like to use it. I am beautiful, just like The Cleft with its pretty red flowers. But you are all bumps and lumps and the thing like a pipe which is sometimes like a sea squirt. Can you wonder that when the first babes like you were born we put them out for the eagles?
We always used to throw deformed babies there, on that rock, the sloping rock just past The Cleft itself. One side of The Cleft rises out of the Killing Rock, yes, that’s what we call it. We didn’t keep damaged babies, and we didn’t keep twins. We were careful to limit our numbers because it was better that way. Why was it? Because that’s how it has always been, and we never thought to change things. We did not have a lot of births, perhaps two or three to a cave in a long time, and sometimes a cave had no babies at all in it. Of course we are pleased when a baby is born, but if we kept all the babes born there would be no room for us all. Yes, I know you say we should find a bit of shore where there is more room, but we have always been here, and how could we move from The Cleft? This is our place, it has always been ours.
When we put out deformed babies the eagles came for them. We did not kill the babes, the eagles did it. An eagle keeps watch on that peak over there – can you see it? That little speck there, it is a great big eagle, the size of a person. We put out all the newborn Monsters and watched as the eagles carried them off to their nests. That time went on, we believe, and it went on, because the Old Shes (your name for them) were worried because there were so many fewer in the caves, so many Monsters had been born, more than babes like us, the females.
Males, females. New words, new people.
And it went on, instead of waiting for a birth with pleasure, we were afraid, and when one of us saw that the babe was a Monster, she was ashamed and the others hated her. Not for ever, of course, but it was a terrible thing, the moment when a Monster appeared at the moment of giving birth. There were fewer of us catching fish and gathering seafood. The Old Shes were complaining they were not getting enough to eat. Yes, we always fed them and gave them the nicest bits to eat. I don’t know why, we just did. Suddenly there were only half the number in the Fish Catchers’ cave, and some of the others who were not Fish Catchers had to become Catchers.
I agree, it was strange we never thought to wonder what was happening on the other side of the Eagles’ Hills. You always talk as if we are stupid, but if we are so stupid how is it we have lived for so long, safely and well, so much longer than you, the Monsters, have. Our story goes back and back, you tell us so, but your story is much shorter. But why should we have moved about and looked for new things, or wondered about the eagles? What for? We have everything we want on this part of the island – your word for it, you tell us it is a large island. Well, good for you, but what difference does that make to us? We live in the part of the island where we watch the sun drop into the sea every night, and watch the moon grow pale as day comes.
A long time after the first Monster was born, we saw down on that part of the seashore nearest to the Eagles’ Hills one of the Monsters, one of you. It had tied around its waist one of the fish-skin cloths we wear at the time of the red flower. We could see that under the skin was the lumpy swelling thing we thought was so ugly. This was a Monster we had given birth to, grown up. How had that happened? The Old Shes said we should lie in wait and kill that Monster next time it appeared on the shore. Then there was disagreement among the Old Shes, and some said we should climb up to the hills where the eagles lived next time we put out a Monster to die, and watch where the eagles took it. And some of us did that. They were very afraid, that is in the story we make the youngsters learn. We were not in the habit of roaming about and certainly never as far as the Eagles’ Hills. No one had gone so far before. Yes, I know it is not more than a comfortable walk.
They saw the eagle carry the Monster in its claws up to the hills where the nests are but instead of dropping the baby in a nest the eagle went on and carried the baby down into a valley where there are huts. We had never seen a hut or any shelter because we had always had our caves. The huts seemed like some kind of strange animal, and very nearly frightened us into running back home. The eagle took the baby down, and then some Monsters took it and gave the bird a big lump of food. We know now it was a fish. The babe was taken into a hut. Everything they saw frightened the Watchers, and they did run home and told the Old Shes what they had seen. It was a terrible, frightening story they told. Over the Eagles’ Hills were living Monsters, grown people, not Clefts like us. They were able to live though they were so deformed and ugly. That is how we thought then. Everyone was afraid, and shocked, and didn’t know what to think or what to do.
Then another Monster was born and the Old Shes told us to throw it over that cliff there into the sea. A group of us took the babe to the clifftop. They did not want to kill it, because they knew now it could grow up and live and if they threw it into the waves that would kill it. All of us swim and float and are happy in the sea, but our babes have to be taught. They were crying and wailing and the babe was yelling, because they were out of earshot of the Old Shes there and they were so divided about what they were doing. They hated the Monsters, and now they were afraid, too, since they knew about the Monsters living over the hills … look, you asked me to tell you what happened, so why get angry when I do? How do you know, if some of us Clefts had been born into your community, you might have thought we were Monsters because we are different. Yes, I know you can’t give birth, only we Clefts can give birth, and you despise us, yes, you do, but without us there would be no Monsters, there would be no one atall. Have you ever thought of that? We Clefts make all the people, Clefts and Monsters. If there were no Clefts, what would happen – have you really thought about that?
They were standing on the cliff with the yelling baby Monster when one of the big eagles appeared floating just above them, and it screamed and screamed at them, and now they were really afraid. The eagles are so big they can carry a grown person – not very far, but it could have lifted one of those of us on the cliff, perhaps the one holding the babe, up and over and into the sea. Or those great wings could knock them one by one into the waves that were crashing and jumping in the sharp rocks. But what happened was not that. The eagle let itself down from the sky and took the baby in its claws and went off with it back in the direction of the Eagles’ Hills.
The Clefts didn’t know what to do. They were afraid to tell the Old Shes what had happened. I don’t remember anyone saying anything about being afraid before.
Then a new thing began. When a Monster was born, the young ones pretended to throw it away into the waves, but they went far away so they could not be seen, and knew that the babe’s crying would fetch an eagle. Then they laid the babe down on the cliff and watched while the eagle swept down and took it. By then as many Monsters were being born as Clefts, the ones like us, the ones like you.
Have you ever thought how strange it is that you have nipples on those flat places in front there? You can’t call them breasts, can you? Why have nipples at all when they aren’t good for anything? You can’t feed a babe with them, they are useless.
Yes, I am sure you have thought, because you are always noticing things and asking questions. Well, what is your reply, then?
Next, an Old She said we should keep one of the Monsters, one of you, and let it grow and see if it was fit for anything.
It was hard to do because the eagles watched us all the time, and we had to keep the baby Monster out of their sight.
I don’t really like to think of what happened to that babe. Of course I only heard about it all, it was part of the story, it was told again and again by the Memories, and what I am telling you now is only some of what we called the story.
There is a bad feeling about that part of our story. There were disagreements, worse, bad quarrels. It is in the story that there had never been that kind of quarrel before. Some Old Shes wanted not to tell about the first monstrous babe and how it was treated. Others said what was the point of the story if it left bits out? I believe a lot was left out. What we all know is that, first of all, no one wanted to feed the Monster. It was never fed enough and it was always hungry and crying. That meant that the eagles were always hovering about trying to see where we kept the babe. It did get fed, but the one feeding it would tease and torment it as it fed. That first Monster babe had a bad time.
Then one of the Shes said it must stop, either we decided to let it live and look after it, or not, but what was happening now would kill the babe. What did we do to it? The thing you all have in front, the lumps and the tube was what everyone wanted to play with. The little Monster screamed and screamed and its lumps were swollen and became sick and full of matter and bad-smelling water. Then one of the Old Shes said that the Monsters were really like us, except for your thing in front, and your flat breasts. It was like one of our babies. Cut off the thing in front and see what happens – well, they did cut it off and it died. All the time it screamed and howled and when another Monster was born and it was kept, it was a little better treated but I don’t want to tell you everything about how these little Monsters were treated. And I think that some of us became ashamed. We are not cruel people. There is no record of any of us doing cruel things – not until the Monsters were born. The Monster we were trying to bring up strayed outside the cave we kept it in and a watching eagle swept down at once and took it over the hill to the others. How they survived, those babes, we have no idea.
Then there were quite a few Monsters born all at once. Some of the Old Shes wanted us to keep another for a plaything, others not. But the story goes that quite a few of the babes were put out on the Killing Rock at the same time and instead of one eagle, or two, as many came as there were little Monsters, and we watched as the babes were carried off and over the hills. How did those babes live? Babies need milk. There is a tale that one of our young Clefts became sorry for the hungry babes, and went by herself over the hills and found the new babes crawling about and crying, and she fed as many as she could. There is always milk in our breasts. Our breasts are useful. Not like yours.
And she stayed there with the Monsters, but no one knows now what really happened. We want to believe it, I think, because we are ashamed of the rest of the story, but there is also the question, how did those babies live when they were not fed?
There is a tale that two of us were sitting by the sea, watching the waves and sometimes sliding in for a little swim, then they saw two of the fish we call breast fish, because that is what they look like, big puffy jellies, and they have tubes sticking out, like the Monsters, and one of them stuck his tube into the other, and there were little eggs scattering through the water.
That was when the idea first happened to us that the Monsters’ tubes were for making eggs, and if so why and what for?
This tale, I think, is fanciful, but something like that, I suppose, happened.
The Old Shes began to talk about it, because we told them – by ‘we’ there I mean the young ones, who found something intriguing about those tubes and the eggs. Some of the young ones went over the hill and when the Monsters saw them, they grabbed them and put their tubes into them, and that is how we became Hes and Shes, and learned to say I as well as we – but after that there are several stories, not one. Yes, I know what I am telling you doesn’t add up to sense but I told you, there are many stories and who knows which one is true? And some time after that, we, the Clefts, lost the power to give birth without them, the Monsters – without you.
This account, by this Maire, was later than the first document we have. Much later – ages. Ages is a word to be distrusted: it means there is no real knowledge. It is a smooth tale, told many times and even the remorse for cruelty has something well-used about it. No, it’s not untrue, it is useful, as far as it goes, but a lot has been left out. What that is, is in the first document, or fragment, which is probably the very first attempt at ‘the story’. It is crude, unaccomplished, and told by someone in shock. Before the birth of the first ‘Monsters’ nothing had ever happened – not in ages – to this community of first humans. The first Monster was seen as an unfortunate birth fault. But then there was another, and another … and the realisation that it was all going to continue. And the Old Females were in a panic, raging, screaming, punishing the young females who were producing the Monsters, and their treatment of the Monsters themselves – well, it does not make for pleasant reading, Maire’s account, but I cannot bring myself to reproduce that other fragment here. It is too unpleasant. I am a Monster and cannot help identifying with those long-ago tortured infants, the first baby boys. The ingenuity of the cruelties thought up by the Old Females is sickening. Even now, the period of putting the newborn out to die, then keeping a few, and mutilating them – well, it went on much longer than the account above suggests. Very much longer.
Something like a war developed between the eagles and the first females, who could not possibly win. Not only were they unused to fighting, or even aggression, they were unused to physical activity. They lay around on their rocks and they swam. That was their life, had been for – ages. And suddenly here were these great angry birds, who watched every move they made, and tried to wrest the Monsters from them as they were born. Some of the females, the young ones attending to the Monsters, were killed – swept into the sea and then kept from climbing out because the eagles hovered above them and pushed them under until they drowned. This war could not go on for long but it created the females’ first enemy. They hated the eagles, and for a time tried to hurt them by throwing stones, or beating at them with sticks. Not only fear, but elementary forms of attack and defence began in this sleepy (Maire’s word) community of the very first humans, the very first females. And this was in itself enough to throw the Old Females, who ruled them, off balance. They became almost as much to be feared as the eagles, and the young women banded together and threatened their elders with harm. After all, it was they who gave birth to the Monsters, had to feed them, if it was decided this one or that would be kept, or whether to get rid of them. It was they who were given that nasty task. The Old Females lay shrieking or moaning on the rocks, railing at anything and everything.
The coming of the Monsters not only shocked the first females out of their long dream, but nearly ended it. They had to stop fighting each other, because not every young mother hated the Monsters enough to destroy them. There was a churning and wallowing and upheaving of emotions, and that nearly did for them, in a kind of civil war.
I am writing this, feeling some of those ancient long-ago emotions. I note that Maire in her account said ‘we’ and ‘us’ identifying with the first Clefts, just as I cannot help identifying with the very first males. It is sickening to read the fragment that tells of the little Monsters. Even now, to read how the old ones ordered the young to cut off the ‘tubes and lumps’ of the babes, which of course killed them, and how they exulted – even now, it is painful. I shall spare you, I shall not reproduce the fragment. After all they, the females, decided not to include it in their official story, the one they taught to their Memories. Why then do we have this fragment? We have to deduce that there was a minority opinion, which did not approve of the truth being suppressed – the revolting, sickening truth. Someone, or a group, kept the fragment, and someone, or several, taught words to a Memory. A long time passed, while this sickening little tale was told, ‘mouth to ear’, our name for our oral histories, to generation after generation, and it was never incorporated into the main story. And then?
And then there was a point when all the verbal preserved tales were written down, in an ancient language which only recently has been deciphered. The seditious damaging addendum to the official story was always written separately, and that is why the earlier decipherers believed it to be a fraud, something written by males to discredit the whole female sex. But there is something too raw and bleeding about the account of the cruelties to be a fake. There are details that I don’t think it would have been easy to fake.
And who is this historian? I am a scribe and researcher, known for my interest in the unusual, the out of the way. My name for this book is ‘Transit’. What my real name is I shall keep dark. This parcel or packet of scrolls containing the story of the Clefts and the Monsters has been on the back shelves of libraries, or languishing in scholars’ shelves, for a long time. A good many people have read the story and no one has been unmoved by it. There have been copies made, for that kind of person who sees everything as pornography.
Shameful history preserved on ancient shards is by no means the only dangerous information kept locked up.
This is the place for an explanation. All this locking up and smoothing over and the suppression of the truth took place when it was agreed all hostilities were over and we were One – one Race, or People. With so much unhappy history in our memories, and much of it preserved in the Official Memories, it was agreed – this formulation always signals the smoothing over of disagreement – that as much of the inflammatory material as could be got together must be put in a safe place, and made inaccessible to anyone but the trusted custodians.
Of whom I am – I was – one. And this is the next part of the explanation. Why am I in a position to tell you about this material? It is because I have preserved, guarded and watched over it now for a long time.
I am establishing my credentials here, right at the beginning of my story. What I am about to relate may be – must be – speculative, but it is solidly based on fact. I have put right at the beginning fragments of what has been locked up, to give a flavour of the material I have had to work with. You may say that the account is not consistent. But we are talking about events so long ago, no one now can say how long. And this has an interesting aspect. It is a record of an interrogation by one of us – that is, the males (or Monsters, to make use of a still current joke) – of a She, or Cleft. This is in itself enough to make one stop and wonder. No doubt at all that the interrogator is in a position of power, and that locates the event late in our long history. But it was preserved by the method used by the females, the memorising of a history, an account, preserved in the memories of the Memory, and passed on down to the succeeding generations of Memories. So we are talking about very early events indeed, when we look at a later preserved, but still very early, tale which has little in common with what is taught our children as the truth. Which is, of course, that we males were first in the story and in some remarkable way brought forth the females. We are the senior, they our creation. Interesting indeed when you look at the anatomies, male and female. How, in our official story, is it explained that males have no apparatus for bringing forth and nurturing? It is not explained. We have attractive and hazy fables, created at the same time as the great Locking Up – and, I am afraid, often destroying – of documents.
But you cannot destroy what is preserved in people’s minds. The method used by the females, the careful repetition, word by word, and then the handing down to the next generation, every word compared and checked, by a method of parallel Lines of Memories, is a very efficient preserver of history. For as long as the checking and comparing continues. You would be surprised at the mass of material in our – I jokingly called them prisons. Yes, this, I am afraid, is the joke used by us official warders of the forbidden truth. Nearly all of it came from the female Memories, though, when we began to use the same process, from our Memories too. Though, officially, they took the process from us. Absurd. It is the sheer absurdity of our official version that has become such a heavy burden on us, the historians.
No one has undertaken the task of studying the material as a serious record, and then attempting to make a coherent history. Myths and legends are more the province of the Greeks, and this could be presented as a legend, but no Greek has taken on the task. That is probably because this is not a legend, but some kind of factual story. Our own history does not go back so very far, does it? And it too bursts forth out of myth, with Aeneas, and the flames from burning Troy illuminating our earliest time, just as they do the Greeks’.
Perhaps it has been felt that an account of our beginnings that makes females the first and founding stock is unacceptable. In Rome now, a sect – the Christians – insist that the first female was brought forth from the body of a male. Very suspect stuff, I think. Some male invented that – the exact opposite of the truth.
I have always found it entertaining that females are worshipped as goddesses, while in ordinary life they are kept secondary and thought inferior. Perhaps this tendency of mine to scepticism has made me able to take on the task of telling the tale of our real origins which, as you will see, does have elements of legend. Those eagles, for instance, the persecutors of the first females, the saviours of the first males. Well, we in Rome cannot criticise a tendency to make a fetish of eagles – even if ours are so much smaller than the great eagles of the Clefts and the Monsters.
We are the Eagles, the Eagle, the Children of the Eagle. The Eagles bore us on their wings, they bear us on their breath, they are the wings of the wind, the Great Eagle watches us, he knows us, he is our Father, he hates our enemies, he fights for us against the Clefts.
Note by Historian: This is the dancing song of the Very First Men, and it may be heard even now, its origins long forgotten, sung in remote places. The Eagle people continue the strongest clan, the rulers. Even now anyone killing an eagle must be punished: once they were immediately put to death.
Here is a war chant of the Very First Men:
Kill the Clefts,
Kill them, kill them,
They are our enemies
Kill them all.
On ceramics as old as anything we have are pictures of genital mutilation, by no means only of males by females, but of females by males. These are not the sophisticated jars and vessels of an era considered to be of artistic merit. They are clumsy and rough. Depictions of torture are kept locked up and most people don’t know of their existence. Some ruler of an optimistic cast of temperament decreed all depictions of tortures of any kind must be destroyed or kept locked up: apparently believing that we humans would be incapable of cruelty if the ideas weren’t first put into our heads. I wonder who he was. Or, perhaps it was a She. A long time ago. The hoard of pottery was found in a cave that it is suspected was a dwelling place for primitives.
So, I shall end the explanations and come to my attempt at a history; one that both Clefts and Monsters, males and females, would agree to. Immediately I confront a problem. I wrote there ‘males and females’. Males are always put first, in our practice. They are first in our society, despite the influence of certain great ladies of the noble Houses. Yet I suspect this priority was a later invention.
THE HISTORY
Compiled from ancient verbal records, written down many ages after their collection.
They lay on rocks, the waves splashing them, like seals, like sick seals, because they are pale and seals are mostly black. At first we thought they were seals. Singing seals? We had never heard seals sing, though some say they have heard them. Then we knew they were the Clefts. There were three of us boys. We knew we hated the Clefts though we did not remember anything of our earliest days, of being put out on the Killing Rock, or being carried over the mountain by the eagles. What we were seeing had to surprise, no matter what we had been told. More, we were disgusted. Those large pale things rolling in the waves, with their disgusting clefts, which we saw for the first time, and as we looked, from the cleft of one of those slow lolling creatures emerged a bloody small-sized thing. We saw it was a tiny Cleft. Only later did we reason that it might just as well have been a Squirt – one of us. We ran back, past the big Cleft in the cliffs, with its reddish stains and fuzzy growths. We ran and we vomited and we went back up the mountain and over down to our place.
This above is the earliest account we have of how we ‘Monsters’ saw the ‘Clefts’. There is no way of proving it but I would say it is a memory of something well in the past of the speaker. It has the smoothed-over much-repeated quality of a tale from long ago. There is nothing here like the raw angry fragment (which I did not copy out because of its relishing vindictive cruelty) which is the very first we hear from the Clefts.
To make a history from this kind of material is not easy, but I have to say in justification that seldom did the Memories of the Clefts and Monsters differ very much. Often the tone was different, and once it was believed that different events were being recorded. But on the whole Clefts and Monsters (or Squirts) lived the same story. Now I again begin my tale.
They lived on the shore of a warm sea on an island that was in fact very large, but they never went far from home shore. They were of the sea, sea creatures, eating fish and seaweeds and some shore-growing fruits. They used tall caves with sandy floors but they might as easily sleep out on the rocks as under the cave roofs. How long had they lived there? And at once we come to a main difficulty – indeed, this historian’s main problem. The Clefts did not know when their kind had first crawled from the waves to breathe air on the rocks, and they were incurious. They did not think to wonder or ask questions. They met the query – but this came much later – ‘How old are you, as a people?’ with bland, blind enquiry: ‘What do you mean?’ Their minds were not set for questions, even a mild interest. They believed – but it was not a belief they would defend or contest – that a Fish brought them from the Moon. When was that? Long, slow, puzzled stares. They were hatched from the moon’s eggs. The moon laid eggs into the sea, it lost a part of itself, and that was why it was sometimes large and glowing and sometimes pale and thin. As for their own capacity to give birth, they had never questioned it. That was how things had always been. Nothing changed, could change, would change – but this was more a feeling than something they could or would enlarge on or even mention. They lived in an eternal present. For howlong? Useless to ask. When the first ‘Monster’ was born it was seen merely as one of the deformed babes that had sometimes to occur, and then there was another ‘Monster’ all shaped in the same horrid and disturbing way. They were put out on the Killing Rock, not fed to the fishes, perhaps, because of a superstitious feeling that in the sea the Monsters might proliferate and even crawl back to the shore. Can we use the word ‘superstition’ about creatures who did not live in any kind of reality we would recognise?
I believe the birth of the Monsters was the first bad or even disturbing thing to have happened to them.
Yes, there were high water-line marks on their cave walls, big waves must at some time have come rushing up, more than once, but these were creatures of the sea. There is no way of finding out what they felt about monster waves – their songs are not histories or stories but a kind of keening, sounding like the wind when it sighs and murmurs.
It was not the first Monster that shocked them out of their dream. A twisted arm or leg, a deformed hand, even blurred features or a misshapen head – that kind of thing was sad but not threatening, as when they saw the second or third or succeeding babes with the clutch of protruding flesh there in front where they had smooth flesh, a neat slit, fringed with soft hair. A horror … and then another … and then another … they could not wait to get these misborn babes out on to the Killing Rock. Those squirting protruding things there in front, which changed shape all the time, oh horrid, ugly, there was something about them that …
Well, the eagles carried them off and ate them, took them out of sight.
But everything had changed. It must have been the same as when you poke with a stick one of those torpid stranded beach creatures, which squirms as it feels the stick.
Shock after shock was felt by this community of dreaming creatures and it was their helpless panic that caused their cruelty.
And when it became evident that the Monsters were not going to stop appearing there was this new threat, that the numbers of the community were always reducing.
And there was fear that some female who had given birth to a Monster would then have another. How would she have been viewed? There is no record anywhere of early animosity among these creatures. Was she feared? Did she fear herself? Did a female who had given birth to more than one Monster procure for herself an abortion when finding again that she was pregnant? We have no answers to these questions.
How long did that early time last?
There is no help for us in the Memories.
There is a way of not measuring, but getting a feel of the long process. The deep grave or pit where the girls were sacrificed was crammed with bones, and it was a deep hole. At its bottom were cracks and apertures where rocks had fallen outwards, and through these could be glimpsed the lower layers of bones, not fresh and whole, like the top layers, but fractured and fragmented, and lower down still, on the floor of this great hole was a layer of whitish stuff, the dust of bones. It was a deep layer. It must have taken a long time for these bones to turn to dust, even though winds and salty wet blew into the holes and gaps, hastening the process.
It was not likely that these people who seemed to live in a dream were regular in their sacrificing, or regular in anything; impulses and rhythms we may hardly guess at governed their lives. But while there was no way of counting the skeletons or making an estimate of what the dust layers meant in terms of time, we may confidently say that we are talking of long periods of time – ages.
Of changelessness, of an existence like those fish that wash back and forth on the tides, responding to the moon’s changes. And then the real change, the defining change, the birth of the deformed ones, the Squirts, the Monsters. The beginning of squirming emotional discomfort, unrest, discontent: the start of awareness of themselves, their lives. The start only, like the affront the stranded fish must feel at the probing stick.
There is a part of this tale that has to remain dark. Yes, yes, previous attempts at solving the mystery have offered solutions more like myths than probabilities. How did the community of males begin? We cannot believe that the eagles fed the infants regurgitated raw meat and kept them warm in their feathers. No, there is a solution and this is it.
The defective infants put out on the Killing Rock were for – how long? – food for the eagles. And the very first Monsters must have been too. But then – but when we don’t know – boys kept as ‘pets’ and playthings by the Clefts escaped. We know that small boys as young as four, certainly aged five, six, seven, can achieve feats of endurance and even of strength. Two, three, four little boys ran away from the caves above the sea. The eagles, though they were very big, many times the size of the eagles we know, could not have carried children that size, not for fair distances. The children saw where the eagles flew back, to their nests, past the Killing Rock, over the valley, up the mountain – and they followed. Up on the ridge, where the eagles’ nests were, they did not linger. How terrifying those enormous birds must have been. Down the other side and into the valley where the great river was. The children had been reared on fish, and here were fish again, though different ones. They had been kept warm in the caves. But they were still little children, and how very large the valley they found themselves in must have seemed. How can we not admire them for their daring and their cleverness? The river was wide, deep, and rushed along. Yet they had to catch fish in it. How did they shelter? It did not at once become possible to make huts and sheds: they had never seen anything like them. They had seen the eagles’ nests and they dragged sticks and then larger sticks and made piles of them, and crept into them when dark came. Then they grew bigger and stronger and they began leaning fallen branches together to make shelters. This was an easy climate; they did not have to fear cold. But let us not forget the beasts in the forests that stood at a distance on either side of the great river. How they escaped the beasts has to remain a bit of a marvel. Did some god or goddess aid the little things? But in their records is never the mention of divine intervention. Yes, they were the children of the Eagle, but that is as far as divinity went, for them.
We must remember the first little males were badly mutilated, in ways I for one would rather not dwell on. Their ‘squirts’ had been so mishandled, pulled and played with, and their sacs had sometimes been cut off for the game of extracting the stones, and above all, they had never known tenderness or maternal care. Their mothers had fed them, on the orders of the Old Shes, but reluctantly, and never enough. We may like to soften this painful story by imagining a Cleft who did feel some affection for her misbegotten babe, but she would have had to hide what she felt, and any caresses or care must have been sketchy. And they were tough, and hardy and skilful at avoiding attention. Skinny little boys, but strong and fearless, improbably surviving, but at least they were away from their tormentors, the Clefts.
Then something remarkable happened. The eagles brought them some boy babies, left out on the Killing Rock. Hungry yelling babies, but not mutilated; and how were the little boys to feed them?
Not only dangerous wild animals lived in the forests, friendly ones did too. The little boys saw deer, with fawns and probably had their first lessons in parental love, watching does with their fawns. They crept close, to watch. A doe stood its ground, unafraid: there was no reason yet for any animal to fear our kind. And besides, this was a child, and needy. The boy stood fondling the doe’s soft fur, while the fawn butted or licked his legs. Then the fawn began to suckle. And the boy, kneeling, did the same. The doe stood, and turned her head and licked the child. And so that was how began the intimacy between the children and the deer.
There was a song, ‘We are the children of the deer’, but it was never as compelling as the songs about the eagles.
When the new babies howled and screamed and the little boys knew they had to be fed, what could have been more natural than for the babes to be taken to the does, who had soon to learn to lie down, the babes beside them. And what did the does gain from this? We may speculate. It is my belief that animals are more intelligent than we ever give them credit for. After all, it was a she wolf who suckled our forefathers, Romulus and Remus. Her statue and the two babes are much loved by us. Probably the beginning of this bond was the terrible need of the babes, who were dying for lack of what the deer – and the she wolf – had in plenty. Need calls forth its response.
And why did the eagles take to saving the babes and bringing them over the mountain to the lads, instead of devouring them? For one thing, the boys caught fish for the eagles, and laid them on the grass, and the great birds, having delivered their burden of screaming babies, would stand over the fish, enormous fish, and feed there, and often they came between deliveries of babes, for their meals. Or they would take a fish or part of one – there were very large fish in the river – up into the mountain for their nestlings.
And the second wave of Monsters, or Squirts, were not mother-deprived, but were licked and nuzzled and fed by the kindly deer, who sometimes played with the fawns as if they were fawns themselves.
The feeding babies and deer would have to lie down together. There were no vessels or containers then. Soon, though, shells from the river became utensils, and gourds. There was not nearly as much weed in the river as there was in the sea, but these boys grew into strong lads, and the seashore was not far for hardy boys. This shore was a distance from the Clefts’ shore, but continuous with it. The boys did not know for a long time that if they had journeyed in one direction along their beaches – they had beaches, the Clefts only had smooth warm rocks – they would encounter the Clefts, their persecutors.
They brought varieties of weed from the sea, and shellfish, and some sea fish, and the new babes were fed very well, as soon as they outgrew milk. And the friendly deer were offered weed, which they liked, and flesh of the fish and shellfish, but this they did not like.
But it must have been hard for the boys, keeping the babes fed, even with the aid of the deer. The eagles were always bringing more of the Monsters and these were not mutilated now. The eagles were perched on high rocks from where they could see the Clefts and their rocks, and as soon as there was a new little boy, they swooped and saved it and brought it over the mountain.
Some Squirts, we believe, were still hidden in the caves, but you cannot easily keep prisoner energetic boys, unless they are tied. Some Squirts were tied, but they made such a noise, yelling and screaming, that when they escaped, running away, guided by the great birds, the old Clefts were relieved. No more little boys were kept as ‘pets’, and the Clefts reverted to their earlier practice: any babe not snatched away by the eagles as they came out of the womb were put out on the Killing Rock and instantly carried off by the eagles.
Soon there was a community of young males, we do not know how many. The chroniclers did not go in for exactitude. And time was passing, the very first arrivals were now strong young men, and troubled with all kinds of questions about their equipment of tubes and bumps and lumps. Yes, they knew now the tube was for passing urine.
The males could not expect to live till old age, not when they were in and out of that dangerous rushing river, and the wild animals were so close in the trees. One died, of an illness, or of an accident, and the chroniclers did not specify; what they recorded was that this death raised a question … they saw that they could expect to die, and then what would they do to replace themselves? The Clefts had the power of birth, but they did not.
As for the Squirts – and I like that term better than the Monsters: at least it is accurate – they began to be anxious about the supply of babes brought by the eagles. Suppose the eagles decided not to bring the boy babies over the mountain? Once the question had arisen it would not go away. Over there on their shore – and some of the boys remembered it well – the Clefts gave birth. Without the Clefts there would be no new arrivals in the eagles’ claws, there would be no Squirts.
And how long did the period of questioning and doubt go on? We have no idea. The songs of the early men were histories, of a kind. They sang of their times with the Clefts, and the cruelties were well recorded. There were songs that told of escape from pain and fear to this valley where the eagles were their friends, the deer gave them milk, and there were fish in the river and in the sea. They had shelter, better than the early heaps of sticks. They were brave and strong and healthy, and their numbers were growing … but they did not have the knack of giving life.
They were wild and restless, those first males, our so distant ancestors, and their nature took them long distances into the forests, and they began to know at least one part of their island, which was large, though they had no idea of that. They found great airy forests, deep and swift rivers and their tributaries, the little streams, pleasant hills, peaceful shores – this was what those earlier explorers found. They learned the ways of the wild animals and how to avoid them, and then, soon, how to kill them for food. They never killed the deer, their friends, whom they associated with gentleness and kindness, and with nourishment. They knew themselves to be better off, better fed, with much more space to move in, than the Clefts who never left their shore.
They were always tormented by the demands of their maleness, but did not know what it was they yearned for. All the tricks and devices for allaying sexual hunger were theirs, including the use of a certain animal – not a deer, they could not have brought themselves to use their milk donors, their mothers, in fact. But they did not use the words for mother, father. How could they? They did not know they were, or could be, fathers. And they were not deer, though they loved the deer. Did they know the word ‘love’, or think it? I believe not.
They thought often and with increasing urgency and curiosity about the Clefts, who lived exactly as they had always done, and not so far away. What had been an impossible distance for small boys was now nothing much. For the Clefts the walk to the Eagles’ Hills was impossible because they had never thought of doing it. The idea of simply walking there, climbing, and seeing what was on the other side had never occurred to them. They did not know that on the other side of the mountain was the wonderful valley where the Monsters were living. It had never come into their heads to wonder. Out of sight, out of mind; and never has this been better exemplified.
Yet they were full of doubts now, and fearful. Their numbers were falling fast. They had never been very numerous, their instinctive inner regulator had seen to that. Some caves were half full, and then soon there were empty caves. Only half a dozen caves were occupied, and the old distinctions of Fish Catcher, Seaweed Gatherer and so on were blurring. The babies born Cleft were watched over, fretted over, were precious, while the Squirts were born to even stronger dislike, because it would have been better had they been born Clefts.
Two girls, young things, lying half in and half out of the waves on a favourite rock, watched as a certain sea creature inserted a tube into another of its kind, and emitted a cloud of milky eggs. They felt they had been granted a revelation – perhaps from the Great Fish himself – and they went to the Old Shes and told them what they had seen, and what they now thought likely to be the truth.
They were met by the slow tranquil gaze of eyes that had never been troubled by thought, even if they had learned anxiety, and no matter how these young Clefts persisted, saying that the Monsters might have a use, nothing would convince the old ones, if they had properly heard what was said.
Next time a Monster was born, these two snatched it away from the mother, and shielded it from the eagles, and examined the ugly thing that made it a Monster. They saw the tube was not unlike the one on the fish. Rubbed, it became stiff, but there was no emissions of cloudy eggs. The babe screamed, the eagle, waiting there behind a rock, rose up and broke its great wings into the girls’ faces, and with its claws gently snatched the babe and carried it off. But it left behind questions and doubts.
So the two communities were thinking about each other, though the Clefts did not even dream of walking past the Killing Rock, to the mountain and over it.
As for the young lads, who were ranging further every day over their part of the island, fear of the Clefts kept them well away from those rocks and caves they had escaped from. Some did go up to the mountain where the eagles were, and stare towards the shore where they could see a rash of little pale splodges on the dark rocks – the Clefts, as usual lying half in, half out of the waves. But the boys did not go down that side of the mountain, they were too afraid.
Some did run along the rocky hills behind the shore where, if they persisted, they would reach the Clefts, but they did not persist, but always stopped where they could hide themselves, close enough to see what the females were doing. But they did not do much, only lazed and yawned, and swam a little and shook their long hair out over their shoulders to dry, and then swam again.
[The long hair is my invention, based on a mention of long hair from ages after this time. Perhaps the earliest Clefts were as smooth as seals, but then grew
long hair in obedience to some imperative they were hardly conscious of. Historian]
The Clefts spent all day, days, many days in this way of doing nothing – as the boys saw it. They got tired of watching, but sometimes did go back, irresistibly pulled, their hungers pulling them, and one day saw a young Cleft walking alone by the waves not far from them. She stopped, turned her back on the watchers, and leaned her head back into her hands and stared out across the waves. This description of the girl, alone – the Clefts did not like being alone – taking her time to dawdle along the beach, hints that she was already one of the new Clefts where some kind of developmental yeast was brewing.
There were four boys (or Squirts) that day, on the higher rocks. An impulse took them and they crept down behind her, quiet, not really knowing what they intended to do. Then her nearness, and their hungers, defeated their fear of her and they ran forward and in a moment had her arms down by her sides, and were running her back towards their home valley. She let out short angry cries, her voice constricted by terror. She was not in the habit of panic, of alarm, and probably had never ever screamed or yelled. She was shocked into compliance. Taller than they were, much larger, but she was not stronger than four tough, well-muscled boys. They kept her running, while they cried out in triumph, which was fear, too. This was a Cleft they had there – and they had most thoroughly been taught fear of them. It was a good run from the part of the beach where they had found her, along the shoreline, then over the rocky hills to where the great river ran, before it burst in foam into the seas. Up the edge of this river they went, always running. She had begun to scream, roughly, in her unused voice. They stuffed handfuls of seaweed into her mouth.
Now, exhausted with running, half stifled with the weed, she moaned and gasped and then at last they were in the valley where the males lived. They were on the wrong side of the river. They swam her across it at a place where the waves ran less fiercely: that was no hardship to a girl who had swum and played in water since she was born. Then she was standing in the middle of a large group of Monsters, whom she had seen as babes, mutilated, or in the few moments between birth and being snatched away by the eagles. They were of all sizes, some children, some already past middle age, and these were the ones worst damaged, when they had been ‘pets’. All of them naked, and seeing them there, the monsters, with their squirts pointed at her, she spat the weed out of her mouth and screamed, and this time it was a real scream, as if she had been doing it all her life. One of her captors stuffed the weed back, and another tied her hands with strands of weed – all this clumsily and slowly, because this was the first time hands had been tied, and never had there been a captive, or prisoner.
And now instincts that had ranged free and untrammelled and often unrecognised spoke all at once in this crowd of males, and one of the captors threw down this soft, squirming female, and in a moment had his squirt inside her. In a moment he was off her and another had taken his place. The mass rape went on, it went on, they were feeding hungers it seemed they could never sate. Some lads who had gone off into the forest to find fruit came back, saw what was going on, and soon enough understood it and joined in. Then she no longer squirmed and kicked and moaned but lay still, and they understood, but not at once, that she was dead. And then, but not at once, that they had killed her. They dispersed then, not looking at each other, feeling shame, though they did not know what it was, and they left her there. The night was long and fearful and they were by now sickened by what had happened. If questions that had been tormenting them in some cases for years were being answered, by their flaccid squirts, their feelings of rest, relaxation and assuagement, they had killed, and they had never killed purposelessly.
In the morning light she lay there on the grass by the river – dirty, smeared, smelling bad of their ex cretions, the wide empty eyes accusing them.
What were they to do?
Carry her to where the eagles would find her? But something forbade them to do this.
In the end they carried her stiff soiled body to the river bank where the water ran faster and pushed her in, and watched her being swirled away downstream towards the sea.
This was the first murder committed by our kind (I except the exposing of crippled newborn infants) and it taught them in that act what they were capable of; they learned what their natures could be.
This murder was not recorded in their recitals of their history and they tried to forget it, and in the end did, just as the Clefts, when they did remember how they had tortured and tormented the Squirts, softened the tale and made it less, and then soon chose to believe there had been one monstrous babe they had hurt – just one.
We would not know about this murder if a very old dying man had not become obsessed with his memories, with this terrible day of rape and killing, so long ago – he had been a boy – and he could not stop repeating and repeating what he knew. Not possible to ignore what he was saying, and some young ones, hearing, shocked, distressed, preserved the tale, which they could not forget, and in their old age told it to the younger ones. This was, I believe, the beginning of the Squirts’ oral annals, their Memories, at first coming into being almost by accident, but then valued and preserved. The female kept records – and I cannot bring myself to write down all that is there; and the male kept records: and I do bring myself to write down what is there.
Over among the Clefts, they noticed the absence of one of their own, wondered, fretted, in their soft lazy way, mentioned her absence, looked to see if she had fallen into one of the near pools, wondered again …
When the Squirts’ distress had subsided, there remained a doubt which did not get less. Though the murdered girl had not been able to say much that was coherent, from the words she did say they knew that the language they used was poor compared with hers and, forced to worry over the question, find a reason, they at last understood that all they said had developed from the speech of small children who had made that first brave quest over the eagles’ mountain. Their language was a child’s, and it was even pitched high, like children’s talk. Yes, they had new words, for the tools and utensils they had invented, but they talked together like children.
How were they to learn more, and better? Their dread of the Clefts, their fear of themselves and what they had done, made it impossible to go back to the shore, and find another Cleft and learn from her.
What were they to do?
It was a Cleft who did something. We do have to ask why it happened. After a period of time so long it is not possible to measure it, when no Cleft had had the curiosity to leave their maternal shore, one did just that. She walked towards the mountain where she knew the eagles took the Monsters, climbed the mountain, passed the eagles’ nests, stood there on the height, and looked down and saw … we know what she saw, it is recorded.
Down there in the valley were a company of Monsters, moving about in activities she could not understand, or at the edge of the great river, and she had never seen a river, only the little rivulets that seeped down the cliffs. She was shocked into a fear that nearly took her running back to her shore. She could not see from where she stood the horrid bundles that made a Squirt what he was. They were at ease down there, those terrible creatures, and their voices floated up to her, talking as the Clefts did, but in high childish tones. Why was she there at all? We do not know. Something in the stuff and substance of life had been agitated – by what? For ages – we use this dubious definition of time – no one had wanted to walk to the place that she could see down there … Just as not so very long ago the Clefts had – for no reason they could conjecture – begun to give birth to these Monsters, so now a Cleft was doing what not once one of them had done before: left her kind, driven by something that was no part of old Cleft nature.
She walked further, down the side of the mountain, and stopped. What were those strange pointed shapes down there? She thought at first they were alive, a kind of creature. They were the reed shelters the Squirts had evolved, a kind of reed that grew thick in the marsh that was the mouth of a river not far from here. The reeds were pale, and shone in the sunlight, and she saw that in their entrances sat Squirts, at their ease.
She made herself go forward, but slowly, but did not know how to signal that she did not mean harm. These were the creatures the Clefts had tormented and tortured and even mutilated. She herself had taken part in the work. They had seen her now, and were crowding together, facing her; she could see their faces turned upwards, staring, frightened.
She went on down. Two enormous eagles were sitting apart from the crowding Squirts, and they were as tall as she was. Each was teasing at a great fish. As she watched, a boy came out of the river with a fish, which he deposited in front of the eagles, and he saw her and ran to his fellows.
They were not threatening her, but now they were smiling nervously, uncertain, as she was. She stood there in front of them, not knowing what to do, and they stood looking at her.
She was staring at their fronts, where the protuberances were. They did not seem so horrible now. She had seen baby Monsters, with their enormous swellings: out of proportion to the rest of them, as she realised.
She saw that some of the older ones were deformed, unlike the others, and did not at once know that these were the Cleft victims, grown and for ever disfigured.
A tree trunk had been dragged by them, or had fallen – and her tiredness, for it had been a long way for a Cleft, made her subside on it to rest. As she sat there, slowly they came crowding up, staring, and it was at her middle, which was naked, because this was halfway between full moon and full moon, and no blood flowed then.
She could see everything of their differences from her; they could see little of hers from them.
One, grown, sat by her on the trunk, staring always at her face, her breasts, the large loose lolling breasts, at her middle. Driven as she was, she put out a hand to touch his protuberance, the terrifying thing that for all her life had been horrible to her, and at once it rose up into her hand and she felt it throb and pulse. What had driven her here was an imperative, and in a moment she and this alien were together, and his tube was inside her and behaved as its name suggested.
They stared at each other, serious – and separated.
They resumed sitting near each other, looking. She curiously handled his new flaccid tube; and he was feeling and probing her.
Parents interested enough in their children’s development to drop in on nursery games will be able to say what was happening now: they will have seen it all.
Naked, because of an imminent bath, or change of clothes, the two little children are standing looking at each other. This is not of course the first time brother and sister have seen each other nude, but for some reason both have been alerted to the other’s differences.
‘Why have you got that thing,’ somewhat petulantly enquires the girl – but we have to imagine that what the tones of their voices suggest refers to far in the future adulthood.
‘Because I am a boy,’ announces the child, and what he is saying dictates a whole series of postures. He thrusts out his pelvis, and makes some jerky movements which he seems to associate with some game. He holds the tip of his penis down and releases it in a springing gesture. All the time he frowns belligerently, not at his sister, but probably at some imaginary male antagonist.
The little girl, seeing all these achievements, none of which are possible to her, frowns, looks down at her centre and says, ‘But I am nicer than you.’
The boy, frowning at her cleft, which no one could say is threatening or even assertive, now adds to his repertoire of cocky tricks with some others, rolling his balls about in their sac.
‘I like me much better than I like you,’ says the little girl, but she approaches her brother and says, ‘Let me feel.’
He shuts his eyes, holds his breath, endures her pulling and rolling, and says, ‘Now, let me feel you.’
At which he inexpertly probes the crevices and announces, ‘Your pee-thing is not as nice as my pee-thing.’
‘My pee-thing is better than your pee-thing,’ she insists.
There are two slave girls in the room, their nurses. They have been watching this play (foreplay) with knowing worldly smiles, which relate to one’s husband and the other’s lover.
At the little boy’s thrusting and showing off, they exchange what-do-you-expect-from-a-male smiles, and both show signs of wanting to shield the girl, who after all has a hymen to protect.
One says, ‘Your mother’ll be cross if she sees you,’ making a ritual close to the play.
They do not immediately separate but the boy gives a little tug at the girl’s hair and then kisses her shyly on the cheek. She, for her part, gives him a hug. The slave girls put on appropriate smiles, oh-what-dear-little-things.
This particular little play is for now, the girl about five, the boy a little younger. The children wouldn’t want to repeat it, let’s say, next year.
She will be into maternal and nurturing games, he already a legionnaire – a soldier.
You may be thinking that I write of these scenes with too much assurance? But I feel more certainly about them than about many I have attempted to describe. And now I must explain why by way of what may seem a diversion, even an irrelevance.
I married young a girl approved by my parents, and we had two children – boys. I was ambitious, planning to become a senator, worked hard, cultivated the suitable connections, and had very little time for my wife and less for my boys. She was an admirable mother; they had for me a distant regard. I did everything I could for them in the way of easing their way into the army, where they did well. But both were killed fighting against the German tribes. When they were dead I regretted how little I had known these young men whom everyone commended. I think it is not uncommon for a man in his second marriage to regret what he had omitted in his first. I thought a good deal about my two sons when this could do no good to them at all. My first wife died. I lived alone for years. I became ill and took a long time to recover. Friends came to see me, and I was recommended to marry again. I thought of my first wife and knew that we could have loved each other, if I had had the time for it.
When I was convalescing, a girl from a junior branch of the family, Julia, arrived to look after me. I knew what was happening: the mother had of course hoped that her well-off relative would ‘do something’ for her, her children. But there were so many of them. I had observed that if a man takes an interest in one member of a too abundant family, it will not be long before he is taking on the whole tribe. Julia was pleasant, pretty, attentive, and did not talk about her needy sisters and brothers. I enjoyed her, her genuine simplicity, the fresh observations of a clever little provincial girl, who watched everything that went on, so as to model herself on the ways of the elite. I am sure I can truthfully say she liked me, though I was always aware – and made myself remain wary – that an old man should not expect too much of a very attractive woman a third his age. Young relatives and young men who thought of me as a patron were suddenly often in my house, and I thought it would not be long before she married one of them, causing me a little pang or two: and this was – contradictorily – because I thought so much of my first wife and what I had missed. And those boys, those wonderful young men, whose childhood I had scarcely been conscious of.
I asked Julia to marry me, saying that we must agree on a deal. She would give me two children, and I would ask nothing of her beyond that, and she and the children would be well provided for. She agreed, but not without hesitation, having learned that young men were desiring her in plenty. But they weren’t rich, like me. And she did like me, as a friend. Or perhaps as a tutor? She told me she enjoyed talking with me and listening to me because ‘I learn such a lot, you see’. She was almost completely ignorant.
And now something unexpected. I had taken it for granted that this fresh, plump girl (‘my little partridge’) would bring forth children easily, but her first pregnancy was difficult and the birth worse. She told me it was because she had bad illnesses as a child, and sometimes the family didn’t get enough to eat. If she had asked me to let her renege on the second half of our bargain – the second child – I would have been ready to forgive her. I had not enjoyed seeing her discomfort, and then the difficult birth. But she was an honest girl, the partridge, and she went ahead for the second child, though she had a bad enough time with that one, too.
The two infants once born were handed into the care of the slave girls working in the children’s wing – and I don’t think she thereafter ever thought of them. It had not occurred to me to make part of our bargain ‘Give me two babes and be a mother to them’. But when I did tax her about her indifference to her children she said, ‘Bad enough having to be a child without having to look after them too.’ I learned that she was the eldest of the children, with a sickly and worn-out mother, and she had had to be a mother to her siblings, with the help of one inadequate slave girl, a runaway slave from some great estate, where they treated slaves badly. Julia’s helper could hardly speak our language – she was Greek. Julia had sworn that when she got to maturity she would refuse to marry a man who could not provide her with slaves. A pretty big oath to swear, if you are very poor, from a small country town. But that explained why she agreed with her mother to come and offer her services to me.
Her delay in agreeing to ‘make a deal’ with me was explained. I could not have asked her to do anything more difficult than to have a child, let alone two.
She said, too, that she did not have motherly feelings, she never had them. She had asked her mother why she was always ordered to feed and wash the babies but her brothers were not. Her mother simply said that this was how things were. It is not recorded what the Greek slave thought about it all, but no one would be interested in her.
Julia’s uninhibited remarks were thought most original and daring, but she did not understand why people laughed at them and commended her. At first I am sure she did not intend to shock or surprise, though she was acquiring a reputation for her wit and boldness. Soon she was in circles whose prevailing tone was a world-weary cynicism, and then she did play up to it: what had been fresh and natural to her became a style; she fitted in with people I didn’t like, and there was not much left in her of the small-town girl with her own view on life.
I did say to her that her generation struck people of mine as selfish, self-indulgent, amoral, compared with the women like my mother, who were virtuous and famed for their piety and strength of character. Julia seemed interested in my strictures, but as if they could have nothing at all to do with her; as if I had said, ‘Did you know that in Britain there are tribes who paint themselves blue?’ ‘Fancy that,’ she could have said, as a cloud of doubt crossed her face. But she knew I did tell her the truth, so decided to believe me. ‘Blue, eh? They must look funny, then.’ Her characteristic expression was open and frank, and she smiled her appreciation of this brave new world. When, soon, she became notorious for her immorality, her self-indulgence, like all the women of her circle, I would imagine her, with her honest face, her look of friendly interest in everything, hearing from some fellow accomplice in an orgy that now she must try this or that, saying, ‘Oh, really? People do this, do they? Well, fancy that. Let’s have a go.’
If Julia never went near the nursery wing, I could hardly be got away from it. I have never been more intrigued, not even by some great affair of state.
Even when the babes were infants, I found plenty to astonish me and when they became three, four, five, every day was a revelation. I never interfered with the management by the nursery slaves, took no part unless some little thing came up for an embrace or to be noticed. I heard one girl say to the other, ‘They don’t have a mother, but their grandfather makes up for it.’
While I was being daily amazed by what I was observing, the thick package of the history of the Clefts and Monsters, of the very early birth of the male from the female, was given to me by a scholar who had before suggested I might tackle this or that topic. I had had things published, had been noticed, but never under my own name – which might astonish you, did you hear it. This enterprise quite simply frightened me. First, the material, ancient scrolls and fragments of scrolls, loose and disordered scraps of paper, in the old scripts that were the first receptacles of the transfer of ‘the mouth to ear’ mode of the first histories. A great pack of the stuff, and while there was some kind of order in it, it was not necessarily how I would have arranged it. Every time I took it up to consider my place in the story I was dismayed, not only by the scale of the task but because this tale was so far from me that I did not know how to interpret it.
And then I watched, in the nursery, this little scene. The girl, Lydia, was about four, the boy younger, perhaps two. Lydia must have observed a hundred times the protuberances in front of her brother, Titus, but on this day she stared at him and said, ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ Her face! She was intrigued, shocked, envious, repelled – she was gripped by strong contradictory emotions. I watched, and so did the slave girls. We knew that this was a momentous event.
At this Titus pushed forward his equipment, and began wagging his penis up and down, looking at her with lordly air. ‘It’s mine, it’s mine,’ he chanted and said, ‘And what have you got? You haven’t got anything.’
Lydia was standing looking down at her smooth front with the little pink cleft. ‘Why?’ she demanded of the girls, of me, of her brother. ‘Why have you got that, and I haven’t?’
‘It’s because you are a girl,’ says the little lord and master. ‘I am a boy and you are a girl.’
‘I think it’s ugly, you are horrible,’ she states, comes nearer to him, and says, ‘I want it.’
He swings his hips about, evading her probing hand, singing, ‘You can’t, you can’t, and so that’s that.’
‘I want to touch,’ she demands, and this time he leaves his protuberances just within reach, but withdraws them suddenly as her hand approaches.
‘Then I won’t let you look at mine,’ she says and turns herself round, hiding herself.
At which he sings, ‘I don’t care, why should I care, you’re just silly.’
‘I’m not silly,’ she half screams, and runs to the girls. ‘Why, why, why?’ she demands, as one whisks her up in her arms.
‘Don’t cry,’ says this nurse. ‘Don’t give him that satisfaction.’ ‘It’s not fair,’ sobs the child, and the other girl says, ‘But if you had that you wouldn’t know what to do with it,’ sending me a great wink, and a laugh. (But I have never been that kind of Master: perhaps she wished I were.)
And at that moment I knew I would at least try and take on this task, my history of that ancient, long-ago time. Scenes I had pondered over, thinking, but after these ages, how can you really understand what it meant when females and the males were together in that valley, while the eagles watched them, not knowing anything – and we Romans know so much – about why the girls were shaped like this, and the boys like that, let alone what it all meant.
They were driven by powerful instincts – and we do know how strong they are, nothing has changed there – but I keep coming back to a thought: that the boys seemed to be hungering for something, wanting something, needing – but did not know what it was their squirts wanted – forcing all the rest of themselves to want, to need.
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