The Cleft Read online

  When the boys appeared on the mountain top the girls had already begun their descent away from them. Then, taking a good look, they stopped in surprise. The boys wore their narrow aprons of feathers and leaves. If some of the girls had visited the valley before they would have seen the boys naked, perhaps just come from the river – seen them in their Monster guise. Now what they feared, or perhaps desired, was hidden. The truth was, these girls hardly recognised the Squirts, these smiling young males, decorated, and their hair combed long and sleek. Maire had given the boys combs, made from the skeletons of fish, and told them how to care for their hair. The girls were looking at handsome young men, but did not know that what they felt was admiration. So, instead of running away so the boys could follow, they stood, stunned by surprise. At last they did run off down the hill, and the boys ran after them, calling and shouting as if chasing an animal to kill it. They ran much faster than the slow girls. That they did not at once catch the girls was because they were making a game of the chase.

  What the watchers from their hill saw was girls, mostly the Old Ones’ allies, running as fast as they could, the boys after them.

  Maire and Astre and their allies took time to understand. The girls had been instructed to entice the boys – but why?

  By the time the two, pursued and pursuers, had reached the Killing Rock, the boys were just behind the girls, who stopped, stood and faced the boys. After what they had heard from the girls who visited the valley, they would know that rape would ensue, but if you have never experienced penetration, consensual or not, what then do you expect? Rape is not an accomplished skill, like eating. The girls were now undecided: they had been given instructions to lure the boys, but now what?

  Up on the hill, the watchers knew it was time for them to descend and intervene, even if they did not know why.

  The girls and boys appeared to be exchanging amiable taunts. The boys were attempting to grab hold of the girls, particularly their breasts. For the first time, the Squirts were matched with an equal number of girls.

  Then the girls freed themselves and, without running, or seeming to try to escape, they made for the path that went up the cliff at whose top was the opening of the pit. And now at last Maire and Astre and the others understood. Not all at once – and this is where we have to think that the sacrificial role of The Cleft was well in the past, a part of old history. The foul odours that the pit emitted, or the caves at the foot, were always mentioned in any story about it, but the deadly miasmas were not always mentioned. But as soon as it was put like this, the girls are luring the boys up to the pit’s edge so they can be pushed in, since the boys were stronger by far than the girls the next thought had to be: Of course, they say there are the deadly vapours.

  Now the watchers, Maire and Astre, were running as fast as they could. They could see the boys were being persuaded up the path to the top, while the girls came behind, smiling and friendly.

  It was not a cliff so tall that it must take a long time to get up it, and soon the young men would be at the top of the path. There at the edge of the great hole, or ancient volcano, was a broad ledge, flat and worn by who knows how many long ages of feet, of people, standing there to supervise the horrid rituals of sacrifice. The platform where the victims must stand to take in their paralysing dose of fatal gases was a short way down inside. The boys were delighting in the difficulties of the climb and the eminence up here, from where they could see ocean and mountain and the eagles, and they turned to admire and, seeing the girls just below, smiled and stretched out their arms. The girls saw them. They were beautiful, these very young men, these boys, these Monsters, the objects of their hate … but what had they been hating? Now the girls should have run away down the path to the foot of the climb, leaving the boys, having done their work of getting them up there. Then one girl, and then another, began to cry. They wept and stretched out their arms as if beseeching them to … well, save themselves. ‘Save yourselves,’ Maire and Astre were shouting. They knew the boys well enough to know that in a minute they would be jumping down from the lip of the pit to the platform, because it was there, because it was a challenge and difficult.

  The girls were screaming at the boys, ‘Come down, stop, stop, come back.’

  All the girls were screaming and stretching out their arms, and crying.

  One or two had yelled at them to jump down on the platform: not all the young females had seen the boys were beautiful … not a word they had ever associated with them. And there was excitement, now, in watching the boys leap. The girls were excited by the boys. They were experiencing desire, some of them.

  Maire was cilimbing up the path, Astre just behind her, and others behind them. The whole cliff face was crowded with young females. The boys knew Maire and Astre, the oldest of their visiting females, the females with their breasts full of milk, teachers, instructors – friends – and when the two yelled at them to come back they wanted to do what they were told. But one boy, unable to resist danger, had leaped down on to the platform. As Maire and Astre reached the circling ledge where the boys crowded, their pioneer, perhaps the first person ever to jump inside the cone of a volcano just for the hell of it, swayed and fell. If he had fallen one way he would have toppled into the gulf where piled bones told their story. Maire jumped down to the platform, dragged him, together with Astre, back up to the lip where the fresh air revived him. Now it was necessary to explain to the young males what the enticing females had been after – their deaths.

  Some of the youths had already slunk away down and some of the girls had too, and were off to their shore.

  Maire and Astre pulled at the boys, tugged them away from the pit’s edge. It was a scene of great confusion for them all. The boys had been seeing smiling and friendly Clefts, but had not yet taken in they had been trying to kill them, and here were their old friends, Maire and Astre and other Clefts they knew well. The boys did descend the path, because of Maire’s and Astre’s urging but all around were Clefts who were not well known to them. Which were friends? Which were their enemies?

  Reaching the Killing Rock, there was a general mêlée of friendly embraces, which then became what we call an orgy. But the very notion of an orgy implies the breaking down, the disruption, of an agreed order. How can you have an orgy – even use the word? – when there had never been even the suggestion of off limits, of partialities, of preferences, let alone customs and habits.

  A couple of the girls who had lately been enticing the boys to their deaths, now saw what was going on and returned to join in.

  An Old Female, supported by a couple of girls who had run back to their shore, came because of the noise, and saw what she thought was a scene of general violence and even murder. She began shouting encouragement at her girls to hurt the boys if they could. Her presence slowly impressed itself on the youths and then she saw faces turn towards her, the dawning of the realisation that here was the instigator of attempted murder. Her own girls knew this truth and soon told the other girls, and then the youths understood too.

  She was alone. Maire and Astre were engaged with youths whom we could accurately call the fathers of their children, and they were not able to see what was going to happen. A Squirt – he who had lost consciousness for a while up there on the platform – picked up a stone and crashed it on her head. The first murder recorded in the annals of the males (the very first was forgotten) was on that day. Probably there were others, and we are not mentioning the killing of the very early, the first-born Monsters.

  The carcass of the Old She was thrown on to the Killing Rock for the eagles.

  The boys went back to their valley: some of the girls were with them. Maire and Astre returned to their caves. Or tried to.

  In the meantime something else had happened. When Maire and Astre left their lookout point that morning, the children and infants were put in the charge of friendly Clefts, who could not have known much of what was going on. At various times they saw the Old Ones’ girls tempting the
boys down the mountain, and the boys making a game of it all. At one point it seemed the cliff of The Cleft was clustered with girls, but it was not easy to see if they were the Old Ones’ allies, or Maire’s and Astre’s. They saw what looked like a battle going on all over the Killing Rock. They did not see the death of the Old She. Girls who could have been either the Old Ones’ allies, or Maire’s and Astre’s, streamed back to their shore. Then a lot of the boys, with some girls, went past and up the mountain. Next, eagles came swooping down from the mountain to the Killing Rock.

  The infants and children in their lookout were by now complaining and fretful. No messenger had come to say what was going on. In the end this group of girls with the children left their lookout and went down to the level of the Killing Rock, where a great number of eagles had assembled, tearing with their beaks and claws at pieces of meat that certainly were not infants. The eagles frightened the children, who soon were crying loudly. This noisy band made its way back to the shore, where their way was barred by enemy girls, who threw stones at them, and even at the children. The Old Females at the sea’s edge were gesturing and threatening: it was clear they were ordering their girls to catch the children and dispose of them – the sea was very near. The girls minding the children could not run away: precisely because of the children, even when it was evident their own harm was intended. They stood at the limit of the shore and called to the Old Ones to help them. ‘Help us’ – they did not know about the plot to do away with them on the clam-gathering trip, nor of the plan to kill off the boys. The Old Ones had not been friendly to Maire and Astre and their girls for a long time, but there was no reason to suspect plans for murder.

  When these girls wanted to climb up to their caves with the children, their way was barred by the enemy Clefts – it was from this moment that there were two groups of Clefts, evident enemies, out to harm each other. The girls with the children fought their way through the hostile girls, their helplessness making them defiant and brave. They got themselves into Maire’s and Astre’s cave and stood at the entrance, with their sticks and stones. The stacked firewood now came in useful.

  Maire and Astre arrived to find their girls and the children and infants in the cave, with a crowd of the enemy girls outside, taunting and threatening the defenders, while the Old Shes, from the sea’s edge, shouted encouragement.

  The two groups were evenly matched: this we have to deduce, since this battle went on until the dark came and they could hardly see each other. Maire left the cave, making sure the children were safe, and walked through the threatening girls down to the sea’s edge and the Old Females, who knew that one of their number had apparently disappeared, but not how and where. There Maire told them the Old Shes could not expect to live for very long if there were any more killings, or even talk about killings. In the account of this scene, much is made of the arrival of the eagles, fresh from the Killing Rock, who sat along the tops of the cliff, looking down at the Old Shes. Threateningly, says the tale. By now, so the storyteller goes on, Maire and Astre were considered by the eagles as friends to the boys and therefore their friends too. The episode, both in our – males’ – records and in the Clefts’, is called ‘The Arrival of the Eagles’ – making it sound as if this cowed the Old Shes and made them at least apparently amenable.

  But Maire was thinking it would be a good thing to get the hated new children well away from this dangerous shore, at least for a time. Maire walked back to the mouth of her cave, unarmed except for the authority her nature, her being, gave her and, ignoring the hostile girls who were insulting the babes and children for their noise and ‘the trouble they gave everyone’, she called to the besieged ones to come out. Then this group, telling their friendly girls where they were going, walked off past the Killing Rock, still occupied by eagles, and up the mountain and down to the valley where they were awaited.

  The children would be safer here, provided they were well watched to stop them falling into the river, or wandering off into the trees.

  All these children had heard tales about the kindly does who fed the babes when there was no adult Cleft around and it was hard to keep them, those who were walking, away from the forest.

  This event, or events, of the Old Shes’ plot to entice the boys into the deadly airs of The Cleft, their intention to kill as many of Maire’s allies as could be done, plans to harm the children, were recorded in detail that is vivid even now, but it is the last for some time of the definite, the particular, of then dissolved into its separate moments. That so long-ago day made such an impression, not only on the storytellers but in the memories of the participants, that we can see them still. Or could, if we knew what these people, our so remote ancestors, really looked like.

  Now, reading the words that were first spoken by people who were not so far removed from the time, we came up against …

  ‘And then …’ ‘But when?’

  ‘Next …’ ‘After what?’

  ‘Soon …’ ‘How long after … ?’

  And now this historian, previous historians and all future chroniclers must find ourselves brought to a stop. The records, crabbed and cracked and faulty as they are, tell some kind of tale, with that internal logic, not always perceived at once, that seems a guarantee of verisimilitude. And then – the story stopped. Certain themes continued, for instance, the enmity of the Old Ones towards the new. The growing together in mind and cooperation of the two kinds of people, Clefts and their offspring – for the former Monsters in the valley were that. These were prosperous, easy-living, comfortable communities, and for a long time the eagles watched over them all. But then – the records ended. But we must remember what ended. If history depended on oral records, on Memory, on the Memories, then no easy process terminated. First of all, a community, a people, must decide what sort of a chronicle must be kept. We all know that in the telling and retelling of an event, or series of events, there will be as many accounts as there are tellers. An event should be recorded. Then it must be agreed by whoever’s task it is that this version rather than that must be committed to memory. The tale must be rehearsed – and we may amuse ourselves imagining how these must have been, often, acrimonious, or at least in dispute. Whose version of events is going to be committed to memory by the Memories? So, at last, the tale, the history is finished, to the point where no one will actively dispute it. Then comes the process of listening, while the history is spoken aloud. In a cave somewhere? At least well away from the sounds of the sea or of a forest when a wind is blowing. The tale is told, is lodged in the minds of the Memories, probably several of them. And at specified intervals someone – or several – asks for the history to be told again to be checked by people who had lived through it all. Is the tale still there? It has not become blurred? Nothing has been forgotten? And then this checked and verified tale is told carefully to the next in the line to hold the tribes’, the people’s, history. This is quite a process, is it not, and one that involves everyone.

  No, an oral history must, as soon as you think about it at all, be the creation and then the property of a people. Imagine, for instance, who – and how – agreed to record the contest between the Old Females and Maire, whoever she was that held that name in that time. We may be sure that Old Shes would not agree with Maire’s version of events. Who made the decision that this and that Cleft, and not another or others, should hold the history in her mind? And the same is true for our people, the boys. Our records were full of anecdotes, sharply remembered events involving the Old Females, who certainly would not agree with one single word agreed on by us.

  We have to account for the fact that both Clefts, and we, kept records, with all the attention and care it involved, for – and here I go – for ages. For a long time. And then what happened?

  Some think that the tale went on – and on – with nothing much changing, for so long that the chroniclers fell into that mode that often signals time passing, when you hear the phrases ‘They used to …’ ‘They were in the habit
of …’, ‘They would go (come, do, say, agree to …)’, those phrases signifying continuous thought or behaviour. And I, like other historians, have concurred that so much time did pass that generations of chroniclers, of Memories, died out and for some reason the attempt was not made to restart the process of activating Communal Memory.

  But we were wrong, for there was an interruption to the lives of the two communities so severe that the comfortable and unremarkable development of them both stopped.

  In both the histories the first mention of the catastrophe was the word ‘Noise’: ‘When the Noise began …’, ‘The Noise went on …’, ‘We did not know what caused the Noise and some of us even went mad …’

  The ‘Noise’ was in fact a wind, coming from what must have been the east, one so strong, so irresistible, that they all believed at first in all kinds of supernatural intervention.

  Before arriving at the Clefts’ shore, or even at the boys’ valley, this wind had to tear its way from one end of the island to the other, bringing down whole forests, and whipping up the sea into furies of destruction. The wind moaned and shrieked, it sobbed and it screamed, it was the Noise, something none of the people had ever imagined. Wind they had all known all their lives, the brisk spray off waves, the swaying and soughing of branches, but this? This Noise? And we, so long afterwards, have still to ask, what was it? What causes a wind so comprehensive that it lays flat the great forests and topples rocks off mountains, raises clouds of poisonous dust and goes on and on, moaning and screaming – and we do not know for how long. We have all, I think, lived through big storms, perhaps have even seen trees brought crashing down. What in nature could create a wind like the Noise that engulfed that island?