The Cleft Page 4
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.