The Cleft Read online

  The new people in their valley thought of Maire. They had no memories of the very first Cleft they had killed, but they remembered Maire, and with longing. Sometimes they crept along the rocky hills above the old shore to catch a glimpse of the Clefts, but were afraid of being seen by them. All their thoughts of the Clefts were dark and troubling. The Clefts had the gift of making new people: they, the newest people, did not.

  And then they were more and more troubled by their speech. The Clefts’ speech was clearer and better. They tried to remember words used by Maire, and how she put them together. But they didn’t know enough, they knew so little.

  Perhaps she would come again?

  Meanwhile, the eagles were not bringing them any new babies. This was because none had been born.

  Next, Astre gave birth. It was a baby Monster and she and Maire, without talking about it, or planning, decided to take the babe over the mountain themselves. The eagles were waiting as always on the Killing Rock but Astre wrapped the new babe in seaweed and Maire left her own new child, a Cleft, to be cared for by the others.

  The two girls walked towards the mountain, slowly because Astre had recently given birth. An eagle was with them, flying just above their heads, and with its eyes always on the bundle in Astre’s arms. The great wings were balanced there so as to make shadow that kept them shielded from the sun. Was this deliberate? It certainly seemed that the eagle was trying to protect them, or the baby. When they reached the mountain, the two sat down to rest while Astre fed the baby. This was the first and last time this babe was given its mother’s milk. The eagle settled near, closing its wings with a slide of feathers on sleek feathers: the air reached them like a puff of cool wind.

  Then, rested, Astre was ready to climb, and up they went, the eagle always just above them, to the top. There Maire put her arm round Astre, knowing what a shock it was, seeing the populated valley for the first time.

  It was after midday. The tall slanting reed huts sent hard shadows across the grass to where the boys were at their various tasks. One of them saw the girls, shouted, and they all ran to where they could watch them descend. Down, down, they went, through the sharp rocks, the eagle always overhead.

  When they had reached the level ground, the boys came crowding forward and as Maire remembered, their hungry need was in their eyes like a plea. Astre held the babe tight to her, and tried to smile as she walked forward, though she was trembling, and held tight to Maire. All around her now were the monstrous boys with their knotty bundles there in front of them. The babe was beginning to cry, inside its wraps of weeds. Astre threw away the weed and held out the baby for them all to see. This was why she and Maire had come, with the babe, but now she was about to say goodbye to it she felt bereft and alone. She did not remember before feeling this, though she had once given birth to a Monster, which had been put out on the Rock. One of these lads there, in front of her, could have been that abandoned babe. A lad came forward to take the baby, and Astre let it go. She was beginning to weep.

  [This historian is allowing Astre tears, though none was ever recorded in any document we have.]

  Because the baby was crying, milk ran from her breasts and she shielded them with her arms, feeling for the first time a need for concealment.

  The lad with the baby went to the edge of the forest and whistled. Now the baby was crying loudly. Soon a doe appeared, flicking her tail, and stood looking at them out of the trees. The lad went forward with the baby and laid it on the ground. The doe came and lay down near the babe. The doe licked the baby. He, for his part, did not know what to do. Astre, watching, cried even harder, seeing the doe’s tenderness. The lad gently knelt by the couple, doe and baby, and pushed the babe’s face close to the doe’s teats. Still the babe cried – and then stopped. He was suckling while the doe licked and licked. The tiny hands were clutching at the doe’s fur, and it was that which made Astre sink on to the great tree trunk and put her head in her hands. Maire sat by her, and held her. The babe suckled and was pleased, waving its little arms about, and the doe seemed pleased too. Then she rose, leaving the babe, and went to eat grass nearby.

  The lad who had cared for the babe’s need sat by Astre on the trunk and put his arm clumsily round her. It was noticeable that his delicacy with the baby was not repeated when he tried to caress Astre. Maire, seeing that Astre was well-supported, got up, touched one of the youths on his shoulder to turn him to her, and then held his squirt. The two copulated, standing. In the course of that afternoon and evening Maire copulated with them all. What I think we must imagine here is the flickering fast coupling of birds, which we all may see when we go to our farms and estates as the warm weather comes.

  Astre watched, her arms folded across her chest. She shook her head when one of the Squirts seemed to invite her to do as Maire was doing. She was bleeding still, after giving birth, and soon went to the river to see if there was riverweed she could use. Yes, there was, nothing like the seaweed the Clefts used, and she made herself a bandage. The boys watched, and when they saw the blood running seemed to understand.

  The doe again fed the baby and then went off into the forest, while the baby cried. Crying for its mother: so Astre understood, and did not know if she was weeping for herself or for all the little babies (who were probably here, all around her) once left without mothers, or even mothers’ milk.

  At evening the great eagle, who had been watching all this with its yellow eyes, took off back up to his nest at the top of the mountain.

  It was warm, a mild night. The girls were fed fish from the river, and river water from the big shells. They lay near the tree trunk and watched while the community of lads (and some older ones, mutilated badly, though the girls could not judge this) went into the reed shelters for the night, which shone brightly in the moonlight, frightening both girls, though Maire had seen the shelters before. They slept, close by each other. In the night lads came from the shelters to see if the girls were still there, and because of their caution, looking into the trees, looking around, the girls understood the shelters were for a purpose.

  And the doe? The babe? They were there, hidden in bushes. And if some wild animal did come down from the trees, these two creatures would not have much hope of survival.

  When the girls woke, everyone was out of the shelters, now shining in sunlight, and the babe was lying near the doe who was lying down and stretched out to feed it. Again fish and water were brought to the girls, and – what they had scarcely tasted before – fruit from the forest.

  We have accounts of the visit of the two girls, Maire and Astre, from the male records – ours – and from the Clefts’ histories. They do not disagree, and both insist that what the boys wanted now were lessons how to speak. Listening to the Clefts, they had learned of their clumsiness.

  Both sides were learning fast from the other, particularly as the more they learned, the more they knew how much there was for them to know.

  The girls looked inside the shelters and found a filthy mess of bones, fruit rinds, discarded weed bandages. They tore branches from the trees and used them as brooms. This was in itself remarkable since there were no trees near the Clefts’ shore. The rubbish was swept into a big pile and added to it were the bones and bits of flesh from the place where fish was brought to the eagles. This pile was swept to the river’s edge, then into the cleansing flow.

  The males caught fish, cut it up with knives made from shells, looked for fruit in the trees, made sure the girls, and the baby when it cried, were fed. They brought fresh grass for the doe, and petted the doe and the baby.

  The girls watched everything, just as the boys watched them. They copulated all the time, as if this was what the girls had come for. Astre too, as her birth flow stopped.

  Astre and Maire sat on the log, with the boys around them, and they spoke sentences, slowly, carefully, easy to hear and repeat. It was already evident that two languages were developing, one being learned from these new arrivals, and one high and childish
, which was how the very first community of boys had to speak. They spoke like children, even as little children, and how they did dislike what they heard from each other. Maire and Astre had to be there, to teach them language, teach them how to keep their shelters clean – and to mate with them when their tubes grew alert and pointed at the girls.

  In the records nothing much is made of this continual copulation, much more of how the young males tried to be close to the girls, nuzzling and hugging and even licking them, as they had watched the doe licking the babies – which was what their experience of mother love had been. All had been licked and nuzzled by the kindly does. None had ever been loved by a mother. They were hungry for touch and tenderness; and the girls, who on their own shore did not go in much for this kind of affection, were surprised and pleased.

  Apart from these scenes of … yes, let us call it love, were the very early Monsters, who had been badly hurt by the Clefts. They feared the females, and tried to keep away from them. The girls feared them, because of the emotions they felt. Shame? All they knew was that the hot dark stares of these damaged males, who might very well have been their own offspring, made them feel as if they were ill.

  And then, one morning, the two girls simply left. The same inner compulsion that had brought them here now took them away over the mountain and to their own shore.

  Their time for conception had come and gone – though of course they had no idea of that. This rider is often seen in our records: the males’ not the Clefts’. But when we say things like that now, ‘they did not know’, ‘they were so primitive’, ‘they were too ignorant’ – the gamut of dismissing phrases – well I, for one, wonder. How do we know what they knew, and how?

  So long ago it was, even if we do not know how long. ‘Ages’ – it will do. Ages ago, these primitive people, our ancestors, whose thoughts still live in us – we have their thoughts once spoken, now written – ages and ages ago they did this and they did that but never knew why. So we like to think now.

  We have a need to describe creatures other than us as stupid or at least as unthinking.

  The girls did not leave unnoticed. The young men stared after them, and if the girls had turned round the faces full of longing would have told them everything.

  Then the youths ran to the top of the mountain and watched how the girls went down the other side, past the Killing Rock – and then reached their shore.

  They had gone!

  When would they come again? When, oh when?

  Two young women stood at the top of a rock they had climbed so they could look down on their shore … their home … their people. They were Clefts … well, of course, but although they had been in the valley with the people they once called Monsters, their minds must have been full of like, unlike; same, other; – full of differences. Did they think of themselves as female, and other than male? Young females. They were not old, they were not Old Shes. They were of the people, at whom they were staring, impelled to do this because – precisely – their minds were full of differences. Without males, or Monsters, no need ever to think that they were Clefts; without the opposite, no need to claim what they were. When the first baby Monster was born, Male and Female was born too, because before that were simply, the people.

  Two young females stood on their rock and looked at the seashore where lolled their kin – themselves. But in those eyes of theirs (I shall make them blue because of the blue sky and blue seas that surrounded them) once so calm and unreflecting were shadows and, precisely, shadows of the young males they had just left (possibly their sons, but who knew?). Young males, but surely the people, just like the people they were looking at. How else, if the Monsters had been born of the people here, those bodies lolling about on the rocks.

  Monsters … these two had once thought like that because there was nothing else to think.

  They stood looking, contrasting what they saw with the vigour and movement of the valley over the mountain. How slow and quiet that scene down there. There was one place of movement and noise, which sounded like a protest. The babe that Maire had borne not very long before … and here was another new thought. How long ago had she given birth to that babe over there, who was, and there could be no doubt about that, half-Monster, even if she was a Cleft? What need had there ever been to define time? It was such a time ago, we did this then … when … but everybody knew the times of the moon, sometimes large and round, or like a slice of pale fingernail, with sizes between. Everyone knew the correspondence between the red flood that matched the red flow from The Cleft, and the moon being fat and bright and close. But when had that babe been born, because it was clear there was a correspondence between that and its relation with the Monsters (or people) over there in the valley.

  A slow sleepy scene, with one agitated babe, Maire’s child, and the two could see that the Cleft who held the child was annoyed and impatient. Babies did not complain and agitate and become nuisances and flail about. Who behaved like that, all movement and energy, if not a Squirt?

  The babe’s minder was sitting on a rock at the very edge of the waves, and it would be easy to let a little thing like that slide into a wave and be lost. Who would notice? If anyone did, the move to save it would be slow and lazy. Lazy and languid … and into the minds of the two females, for they were that whether they knew it or not, or felt no need to think it, came a surely new emotion. It was disgust. No, not new, for disgust was what used to be felt when they saw a newborn Monster, with his ugly parts. No, disgust was not new, but to feel it when looking at the old females, the Old Shes, yes, that was new.

  Immediately in front of the two girls was a large, flat, comfortable rock where the old Clefts lolled by the right of long use. Large, flabby Clefts, their flesh all about them in layers of fat – there they lay with their legs sprawled, and their clefts were fatty and full, with pale hair growing over tongues and pulps of pinkish flesh. Ugly, oh so ugly, thought these girls who had shuddered at the little Monsters’ pipes and bulges.

  And the general look of them … at the same moment into the minds of the two came the idea of sea slugs – there they were in the sea now. It was as if water had chosen to be enclosed by skins of jellified water, large loose shapes, that were not shapes, since they changed and with every wave and inside these sacs of transparent skin were the faint outlines of organs, of tubes and lumps of working matter. And each vast shapeless Thing had two little eyes, just like the tiny eyes of the old Clefts there, lost in the loose flesh of their faces, old Clefts sprawling and dozing on the warm rocks, and the thought in both girls’ minds now, and perhaps it was the first time it had ever been thought in that long-ago time such ages ago, came: ‘I don’t want to be like them’… the idea that had made revolutions, wars, split families, or driven the bearer of the idea mad or into new active life … ‘I won’t be like them, I won’t.’ Maire and Astre were shuddering at the horror of what they saw, horror of what they might become. And all the while the sea shushed and lolled about and lazed, murmuring its sibilants, and it was not, could never be, still, unless it whipped itself into a storm. The sound of the loving lazing sea, which had been in their ears always, all their lives, but over the mountain where the sea shores were a good way off the sound was absent. The wind beating about in the trees, yes, or the cry of the eagles, the splash of a great fish in the river, which rushed past, but never this enervating lulling, lapsing and whispering … the babe was trying to stand in the nurse’s arms. But it was not old enough yet to want to stand … what sort of a thought was that? Babes nursed and bottoms leaked, and they grew and they crawled and you had to watch them, or they crawled into the waves … some did, some always had … and then they walked and ran and were Clefts, smaller than the big Clefts but just like them. But they did not strive and try to stand so very young.

  Maire reached for her babe just as the impatient nurse was about to drop it on the crest of a wave.

  The nurse said, ‘Yes, take it, take it away. What kind of a child is tha
t?’ And went off to sulk her annoyances with the others of her kind – that is, the youngest of those Clefts who were not children.

  The babe in Maire’s arms was very strong. She could hardly hold it.

  Because Maire was pregnant, she had milk: the Clefts’ breasts were usually full of milk. They suckled any babe around that needed it, there was not then such a feeling of mine, or not mine, among these ancient people. The fierceness of mine – well, it had to come in from somewhere, since its existence is evident, and as far as we know has always been with us. Always? Those long-ago people, the first people, the Clefts, did not think, or not so much, Mine, Yours. Or so I believe.

  The two girls sat among their kind, among their kin, as always, and the others looked at them, including the Old Ones, who lay about like stranded sea slugs. Their eyes, when they did focus on the girls, were hostile.

  That night the two went to one of the empty caves, as if they had discussed and planned it. They could not share a cave with the others: and there was no reason to. There were plenty of empty caves, their possible inhabitants were over the mountain in the valley. This cave was on the edge of the cliff and looked directly down at the shore. From its opening could be seen the mouths of other caves. They could defend themselves well here. And what a sad thought that was, when nothing like it had been in their minds before.

  Two young women, both pregnant, and Maire’s first baby got from the young men: the first baby ever of the new kind, who had so nearly been allowed to drift away on the crest of a big wave.

  When the two were well swollen with the new pregnancies, they both went to the Old Ones, the Shes, and told them that these new babes, when born, would be half-Monsters, just like Maire’s first, called the New One. But the suspicious old eyes stared and peered, the old faces seemed to shiver in revulsion – but nothing was said.