Sundry Days (21 page)

I know what they think.  I know what they all must think here. I know who they thank for their good fortune.

But to me, it seems too improbable, too unimaginable, to be true.

Am I supposed to believe that The Designer—the Holy One—actually exists, and has decided to give humanity another chance, starting with New Eden?

Maybe there’s a more logical explanation. But what it is, I can’t fathom. And, as we were promised, we’re allowed to come to our own conclusions about everything here—except the sanctity of sex. Which they take seriously, but also consider laugh-out-loud funny most of the time.

Shortly after we arrive, the community has a welcoming ceremony for David and me, and officially declares us a couple.

It’s important to them. To us, too, if I’m honest.

We stand together in their Gathering Place—that’s what they call it—and face a large crowd of jolly New Edeners, who ply us with questions. These people are not in any way like the ones we encountered in Eden Falls.

“Rebekah, why do you love this man?” someone shouts out, and several others join in with a chorus of “Yes, why?”

“I don’t know,” I respond honestly. They seem to like that answer.

“Have you coupled…had sex…joined bodies...copulated…given semen…received semen…engaged in coital pleasure…boinked?”

It seems a kind of game to them, taking turns voicing an endless stream of words and phrases that all mean the same thing, and to which everyone already knows the answer.

“Yes… yes… yes…,” we say, nodding, feeling a little foolish.

“Why?” asks a man who’s seated so far back, I can’t see him. “Why did you do that, David? Why did you join your body with Rebekah’s?”

“Because I love her?” he answers hopefully.

“Ah.  And what’s love?”

“I don’t know,” David admits, which—again—turns out to be the correct answer.

Then we’re both asked more seriously, by Cynthia—a woman as old as Zora, who comes forward to face us—if we’re prepared to be with each other, and only each other, lovingly and sexually, for the rest of our lives.

“None of us is perfect,” says Cynthia, who’s in charge of this part of the ceremony. “Sometimes our bodies and our minds try to trick us into believing we want or we need union with someone who isn’t our beloved. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” we both acknowledge.

I can’t imagine ever loving or wanting a man who isn’t David. But I do realize that she’s right. We’re all animals with urges after all.

“Do you promise to be faithful to each other, to love each other, and to be sexual in mind and body only with each other for as long as you live?” asks Cynthia solemnly.

“Yes,” we respond, just as solemnly.

Again, it’s the right answer. There’s loud, boisterous cheering from the crowd.

“May the Holy One bless your union,” says Cynthia, smiling broadly now, as she concludes the ceremony. “May the Holy One embrace you both and smile upon you. May you be as fruitful as you want to be.  May you sustain and pleasure and love each other all the days and nights of your lives.”

There’s more cheering, and then we all go outside where tables of food are waiting, and there’s singing, and dancing, and the drinking of large quantities of delicious wine.

Sex is considered sacred here. It’s what bonds two people together, and is really the only sacrament there is in New Eden. There’s no sex allowed here without love—without a loving commitment that’s exclusive and supposed to last forever. Once you’re coupled, that’s supposed to be it. 

But sex is also the source of jokes, bawdy songs, and endless discussion.

And I can’t figure out how Lily and the other adolescent girls can go around with bare breasts for all to see, when they feel like it, without inciting all the pubescent boys to fits of lust. Let alone the coupled men. Not that I’m worried about David. Not really.

No one is bare breasted at our wedding ceremony. That’s not how things are here. Shedding clothes seems to be just a situational thing. Women breastfeed openly. They swim and sun bathe without tops. And although it’s not an everyday sight, when the weather is very warm you’re as likely to see a woman removing her shirt as a man. Because—and only because, I’m told—the person finds it more comfortable.

“Do you ever swim bare-breasted, or go about uncovered outside?” I ask Zora.

“No,” she sighs. “Not any more. My old girls sag quite a bit now and feel better enclosed in pretty cloth. Abraham, though, finds them lovely enough when I undress. That’s what he tells me, anyway,” she chuckles to herself, as if she’s the only one in on this joke.

“Does he find teenage tits at the pond lovely, too?” I ask bluntly.

“Well, he’s a man, isn’t he?  He’s got eyes.”

Zora thinks it’s amusing that I’m bothered by it. Admiration and lust are far from the same thing, she assures me.

“After all, don’t most women enjoy the sight of broad, strong, masculine shoulders? Or a tapering waist and a nicely molded and muscled young male behind? It doesn’t mean we’re aroused. It just means we’re appreciative of some fine design work on the part of the Holy One.”

I look at her skeptically and let it be, although the subject remains on my mind for some reason.

“Would you like it if I went around naked from the waist up?” I ask David later that night when we’re alone.

“Nope,” he says, pulling down my pants, fondling me, and doing things with his mouth that preclude carrying on a serious discussion about public nudity.

“David,” I ask afterward. “Did you get aroused that day, when Miriam first took us to the pond, and you saw Lily’s bare breasts?”

“Me? No,” he insists. “I only get hard for you. Only ever have. You know that.”

I remember how upset he got when I told him that I let Caleb touch my breast and see me naked. And I know that until recently all the women David has ever seen, except me, have been covered from head to toe in public. Even in Winnipeg, pleasure women don’t go around baring their treasures.

“This place confuses me,” I tell him. “And not just because there are plenty of girls for some mysterious reason.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”  He kisses me, tells me he loves me, and promptly falls asleep. David is a good sleeper. I tend to lay awake and think, until my thoughts wear me out.

It seems to me that sex is a basic, simple thing, really.  It’s something that all creatures engage in, all animals. And we’re animals after all. Love, on the other hand, is complicated—impossible to define. Like The Designer, or the Holy One, or whatever the deity supposedly in charge of things is called.

Sometimes, old as they are, we hear Zora and Abraham having loud, joyful sex at night. Maybe they hear us, too, although I try not to cry out with them next door.

“The Holy One only knows how much I love that man,” says Zora to me one morning at breakfast, after a particularly noisy night which obviously doesn’t embarrass her at all.

“Do you know why we call the Holy One the Holy One?”  she asks.

This is another one of her jokes, I think.

“Why?” I respond gamely.

“Because when I’m joined with the one I love, the two of us are wholly one.”

Chapter 40

David

Fruit of the Vine

Maybe it’s the wine.  It’s probably the wine.

That’s what Rebekah thinks, too.

Not that everyone here gets intoxicated on a regular basis.  But everyone past the age of 12 or so does drink wine every day. It’s the beverage of choice.  Sweet red. Dry red.  Poured liberally. As plentiful as water in New Eden.

People drink wine in other places, of course. But it’s not the same.

The grapes here come from ancient strains.  That’s what I’m told by Gordon, our neighbor, who’s a master vintner.

He can’t explain how or why ancient strains of grapes happen to flourish now in this particular pinprick of the world where grapes didn’t even grow before The Great Flood, and not for a very long time afterward.  He doesn’t know. But he’s absolutely certain that there’s something very wrong with the grapes that grow everywhere else.

“People ruined everything—everything that grows, everything good and natural—and that’s why the world turned to shit,” says Gordon. That’s his theory—although, like just about everyone else in New Eden, he credits the Holy One with the unprecedented abundance of females here.

Rebekah and I credit the wine. That’s our theory. At least, that’s our theory this week.

And who could ever imagine that wine—when properly altered—can also be used as protection against intruders?

New Eden is not really near anyplace else. It’s very secluded. Rebekah and I could never have found it on our own. But men from other places do wander sometimes. And every now and then—maybe once or twice a year—strangers wander into New Eden.

It happened a few days ago.  Two men on horses rode into the settlement.

Four or five of the more senior men here came out to greet them. Everyone else stayed behind closed doors.

There was a big community meeting afterwards, and we were all told what happened. Which was no surprise to most people.  But I thought it was pretty amazing. Rebekah, too.

The strangers, it seems, had ridden all the way from Thunder Bay.  Thunder Bay? They said they were scouts from the Coalition.

Any mention of the Coalition elicits a very negative reaction from New Edeners.  The Coalition, to most people here, represents everything they think is wrong with the outside world.  It’s more messed up even than Winnipeg in their minds. And they believe, probably correctly, that it’s doomed to oblivion, sooner rather than later.

One of the reasons they welcomed Rebekah and me so warmly is that they like the fact that we escaped from the Coalition because we love each other.

Anyway, the strangers didn’t see very much of New Eden. They were ushered into the Gathering Place by the friendly senior men, and offered wine.  Who can refuse New Eden wine?  Especially worn out Coalition scouts tired and thirsty from the road.

They drank their fill and were sent packing with extra skins of a special edition sweet red.

They’ll be hallucinating for some time to come, I’m told. They won’t remember New Eden. They may not even remember their own names or histories, and are unlikely ever to return to the Coalition.

Which is all well and good. But it only makes Rebekah and me more confused about what’s going on here.

People in Winnipeg think New Eden is just another monogamist outpost.  Like Eden Falls, only nicer.

I tend to think that The Designer—or Holy One—is conducting a little experiment here, providing grapes that yield wine, that repairs our faulty reproductive tracks, that would otherwise spit out mainly boys, just like everywhere else in the world.

Maybe it’s an experiment to see if human nature can be changed for the better if humans are given one more chance.

Or maybe it’s just a fluke. That’s what Rebekah thinks—a fluke attributable to the wine.

In any case, this is the best place we’ve ever been—strange as it is in some ways.

I’m getting used to seeing pretty young girls with their perky little tits cooling in the breeze.  Not that it’s an everyday sight.  And sometimes the sight is not so pretty. Certainly never as beautiful or as heart-poundingly sensual as the body that’s mine to fondle, mine to love.

I know that Rebekah worries about bare breasted girls being a source of excitement and/or enticement for me.

I think it’s funny that she’s jealous—although she would never admit it. I’m the one who’s always been jealous, always been determined never to share Rebekah with anyone else.

“Remember when you were maybe 14 or so, and on warm nights you’d wear your thin nightgown around the house, and sometimes I could see the shape of you underneath, your nipples…”

“You were always a horny little boy,” she says.

“Yeah. But Papa Andy used to look at you, too. He couldn’t help it. And he got in trouble over staring at you with Uncle John.  Your father was very protective of you.  He liked it when your hair was short as a boy’s and you wore my old clothes.”

“Why are you thinking about these things now?” she wants to know. “Are you telling me you’re like Uncle Andy? I hope you’re not telling me that.”

“No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. It’s just that you’re so worried about me seeing other girls’ breasts sometimes.  And it’s not really a big deal. Not here. It’s just human nature to look, and then to try not to look.”

“Yeah,” she agrees reluctantly. “You just better not ever want any to do anything but look.”

“There’s no chance of that. It’s just odd, that’s all, the way people are here. So unbothered by what would be criminal in the Coalition. It must be because women are more like men here—not physically or in the way they act so much—but more just on the same level. And men are more like women. It’s so different from the way men and women are toward each other in other places.”

“Yeah. Probably because of the wine,” Rebekah surmises.

The wine. That’s our theory this week.