The Cleft (7 page)

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 that?' 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.

The next thing that happened was sudden and violent. Two of the young Clefts gave birth, to Monsters, at the same time. They were on the rocks near to the sea. The Old Clefts called to them to throw the new babes into the sea, but at once Astre and Maire were there, just as the babies were being cut free from their mothers, who were shouting their repulsion and their fear of their infants. Maire, her own New One in one arm, held a new baby Monster in the other; Astre snatched up a babe, and the two went as fast as they could – remember that running was not something they were used to – to the Killing Rock. Two eagles were floating down from their mountain. Some of the young Clefts came crowding up from their shore, to watch how the eagles took off with the new Monsters.