The Cleft (5 page)

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.

And the girls: organs they did not know they had drove them across the mountain to the boys, and even when they knew that mating meant later births, they did not know why. Or for a long time they didn't.

It was because of my observations in the nursery wing that I decided to attempt this history, despite the difficulties. I am sure that certain exchanges between the males and the females would not have altered all that much, in spite of the long ages (and ages – etc.). That scene I saw in the nursery was enacted then, or something like it. Must have been.

And how about the scene I saw when the boy Titus, waking in the morning with an erection, slowly stood up, grasping the sides of his bed, looking down, and
shouting, ‘Mine! It's mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine …'

So much I believe has not changed. But if those old people could come back, and observe, and see, and find so much unchanged, then other things they would not understand at all.

My account of my marriage, my Julia, my first and second families, they would not recognise. The old senator and his young wife? No. Why not? A very simple reason: they did not live long. It was a hard and dangerous time and not even the ‘Old Shes', the ‘Old Ones', could have been very old. An ‘old female' we hear and what do we see? Some grey-haired, wrinkled, bent old crone. Nothing in any of the records describes an aged person.

No one I have ever met, or have heard of, would
not
at once understand ‘The old senator and his very young wife'. They might smile, or grimace, or look condemning, but they would know what is involved here. And so I begin this history, this present history, even when I was daily in the nursery, watching the children, and while Julia was off, mostly with her new friends.

She never lied to me, except by omission. It was assumed she had a lover, and she encouraged me to think that. What need did I have of more information when the material was at my disposal of Rome's secret services? She was now an intimate of some very highly placed circles: parties that can only be called orgies went on every night. She was friends with infamous women, and with others who did not survive into the next emperor's reign.

I did say to her, when she was sitting there after some great party or other, watching me, as if she expected me to reprimand her, ‘Julia, you are flying too high.' I waited for her to defend herself but she didn't. Perhaps she was herself troubled. ‘The higher you fly the further you fall,' I said, smiling, so as not to seem judgemental. ‘Be careful, Julia.'