The Cleft (20 page)

Horsa, being told by one of the girls that from a little hill you could see right across the tops of trees to a stretch of sea where
his
shores gleamed, climbed up. They seemed so close, the pink-pearl streaks like the inside of a shell, that seemed always to carry a marker of a dark-blue cloud. He sat up there and dreamed, but the others became restless, and he descended the hill and joined the little boys, who were recovering fast, so that some were even ready to venture down into the caves again.

Then some hunters came back to report a deep well or pit, full of bones … yes, they had thought of the bones that filled The Cleft. It took them some time to admit they had flung stones down into the pit, and there had been an explosion: the stones had disturbed some pocket or store of bad air that had
been waiting to explode. They were a little shamefaced, but not much, though Horsa was angry, and said there must not be more provocations of this kind. The noise of the explosion must have disturbed animals and birds. He was always telling them they were noisy and disruptive of the forest's ways.

Sometimes the hunters would be gone more than a day before finding game. And that was part of another difficulty. They all of them depended on the hunters for their food, to bring in animals to cook over the fires. But the young men did not hunt enough: they preferred the exploration of the caves and hills where they always found new systems of caves. The girls fetched fruit from the forest, a task which the boys found too tame, so there was always fruit. But there were not enough girls to feed them all, even though none was pregnant now and there were no babes to hinder them.

Horsa ordered a big hunt and again the carcasses dripped their fat into the fires and the flames licked up into the branches and in the morning the leaves hung brittle and pale.

The chroniclers did remark that if the women ever wanted to catch up with the men, they could easily follow them by the ashes of the fires, the bones, and the trees whose branches hung down marked by the flames.

They were talking about soon reaching the women's
shore, but this was because they were all hoping it would be soon. Hungers, not merely for sex but for the women themselves, were making them restless, impatient, and full of optimism. Did they miss the scoldings, the nagging? ‘Maronna would say this, would say that,' Horsa might remark. She certainly would not have approved of their setting off the explosion in the pit which was like the real Cleft.

They decided to split again into two parties, one travelling through the forest, one in the caves beneath, if there were caves. And so they set off, Horsa again in command, though he was slow and awkward on his stick.

This part of their great journey is poorly recorded. One day must have been much like another. The initial confidence that set them off from the beach, where Horsa's tempting land could be seen, left them. And Horsa seemed to feel that every day on this last leg of their journey took him away from the pearly gleam of the horizon he longed for. He did not find a hill again from whence he could see the place, though he did see from an eminence a glitter and shine from a waterfall, so that he wondered if the flashes he had seen, that might have been lightning, had been in fact sun dazzling off water.

And meanwhile, what of the female shore, the women, of whom the men thought and spoke more and more? The women waited … and waited. For
the return of … well, for one thing it was their children they wanted. Every one of the absent males was, after all, brother or son … but I don't dare use the word lover. We have to assume that the words ‘I love you' were not likely to have been spoken, or heard – yet. ‘I like you better than the others' – yes, permissible, I think. As we may hear one of our children, far from their men's or women's shape, say shyly to another, perhaps with a childish and even clumsy kiss on the cheek. I am not saying these so far-away and long-ago people were childish. I simply cannot ‘hear', as I delve back into the past, ‘I love you.'

‘I miss you' … ‘We miss them' … yes, I can hear that, easily.

Since Maronna had left Horsa at the start of his escapade … yes, I may hear
that
word easily enough – do I ‘hear' ‘Men are just grown-up children', which I am sure every male reader of this work has had thrown at him at moments of dissension with his wife – or lover? How easily I can write ‘lover' here, of us … Since Maronna had seen Horsa last, apart from the occasional girls returning home because they found the men's ways too rough, not a word had been heard from the travellers. They might have walked off the edge of the world … but wait, there was no edge or limit to their world and it is so hard for us to imagine that, for us, who are so used to thinking of the boundaries of our great empire, which
we know covers most of the world. Not a word. Surely the expedition could have spared someone to venture back and reassure the women? None of the women knew how far the men had gone, and had had no idea of how they had lingered on that distant beach where Horsa had dreamed of his pearly golden shore – and had become a cripple. The messenger would have to report Horsa's broken leg, and some casualties of boys lost to swamps and rivers; and, later, said that quite a few little boys were lost. Better, perhaps, that the women did not know.

Meanwhile the little boys, rejected for the adventure because they were too small, were growing up, and if far from their grown-up shapes, they were not really little children now. They were strong, taught by the waves, their playground. They complained a great deal, deprived of their playground in their forest and their right to run away from the women and find the men in the trees and grow up with them. They knew they could not do this: knew ‘their place' was not theirs, and could not be until the men returned and fought the great dangerous pigs and cats and reclaimed their rightful home, the men's place. Without the hunters, the big boys, nothing could happen, and so the little boys, who were no longer so little, waited for the men, just as the women did, for their lives to become whole.

It was uncomfortable on the women's shores,
which had been tolerable when the boys took themselves off to the men in the trees. There were far too many in that space, and had been for a long time. One thing was slowly driving them all rather mad – there were no babies, and no prospect of any, for there were no pregnant women. The youngest infant was already walking. No crying babies, though little boys made enough noise. People were remembering old myths: surely things had been better when males had not been needed to make children? The moon, or the ocean, or even great fish had impregnated females, or even the spirit of The Cleft itself. Now women over-ready for mating sat around uselessly on the rocks and talked about the men. They waited, that was all.

When they talked of the men, and the missing boys, there was foreboding. They knew what a careless lot the men were. ‘If they had to carry the babes swelling in their wombs, and then give birth in pain they wouldn't be so careless, risking life …' ‘
Don't you
care about us, Horsa, don't you care
?'

They talked sometimes of specific boys, vulnerable in different ways. One was subject to bad coughs, another was not as strong as others, yet another slept badly and had nightmares. In the minds of these females were images or mental maps of these boys, their boys, and ghostly maternal hands slid over ghostly limbs, testing, measuring; though the bodies
in question had grown beyond permitting others to handle already fiercely touch-me-not limbs – grown beyond their mothers, and far beyond babyhood. Perhaps some were dead? Premonitions darkened the thoughts of the women, who would weep for no reason, or wake suddenly from bad dreams. Of Brian, Big Bear, Runner, White Crow.

The littlest boys, who were no longer so little, bored and rebellious, took to swimming too dangerously, and to climbing the cliffs, so as to test themselves, and then some sneaked off in the old way to find adventure in the trees. Lookouts had to be set, half-grown girls who could run as fast as any boy, and could keep up with the boys. They had to intercept, catch the boys, and this became a game in its own right. This was to everybody's relief, for it used up a lot of energy, which otherwise would be put into dangerous games. Then these young girls, often perched in high places, able to see everything, not merely some venturesome little boys trying to dash past her, reported strange events. A mountain, not so far away, seemed to explode, in a way that left its summit jagged. One girl said she had actually seen, though from a distance that made it hard to be accurate, shapes in the trees not animal, and probably one of the men.

This set up a ferment and an impatience.

Impatience was becoming bad temper. A girl accused
another of sneaking off by herself to an assignment with one of the hunters, and then accusations became general. Yet no one had been sure of seeing one of the males. The shapes seen in the trees could have been bears, or cats, or any one of the big animals who went up trees. Maronna, usually at a distance from the women's arguments, now took a stand. What was going on was simply ridiculous. So she said. It was dangerous too. Quarrelling, and to the point of blows, surely this kind of thing was done by men, who enjoyed arguments and even fighting. Why, they even set up fights among themselves for the fun of it. Surely, she insisted – but her own voice was too high, was querulous – they knew that what was making them all so edgy and so ready to take offence was simply that their wombs had not been filled.

She stood on a rock that gave her height over the women and the boys and said, ‘Look at us. There is not a filled womb among the lot of us. Look at our flat stomachs and our empty breasts. Surely we understand what is really speaking when we raise our voices and accuse others? This has never happened before: or there is no record of it. We need our men to return and fill our wombs. That is all. Surely we can wait patiently without behaving like little children …' And she wept. Of course, the boys did not understand this. Women had stomachs which grew in size, and then there
was a crying baby and a flat stomach … they had known all this, had taken it for granted, but never thought about it.

‘The girls can't have babies without us,' they concluded, and then were observed inspecting that part of their anatomy which had once, so very long ago now, made them Monsters.

Maronna, as bad-tempered and empty of purpose as any of them, swam far into the waves and thought that once long ago a wave could deposit a babe into a womb – or, at least, so the old tales said; and she swam around and among the rocks and thought: perhaps it could happen again.

And they all – the females – sat around under a full moon and told each other the ancient stories of how babes had once come into being because of strong moonlight. And perhaps, if they sat there long enough and stared long enough at the moon, then perhaps …

To put an end to the accusations of secret assignations with the men, Maronna told them that it was extremely unlikely the shapes they had seen were their men. If they were really so close, then they would have come running to them. Of course the men would be missing them as much as they longed for the men. The women knew that hunger for them ruled the men's lives, even if when they had achieved a mating they forget the women – until next time. There were
many jokes made. Surely these were the earliest jokes on this subject ever made? I believe that we, living so long after, may safely transpose our jokes back to that past. After all, then as now, a male cannot hide it when a certain part of his anatomy hungers. Our togas and our robes are a great help, but those people could not conceal much under their skins and fish skins, their feathers and leafy aprons. Our bawdy plays in every bar or tavern rely a great deal on that part of our male anatomy. How could things have been different then? I believe the source of that laughter ringing down so many ages is simply this: the women nag and chide and criticise but they have to rely on a certain restlessness of what, long before then, made males be called Monsters. But … I digress. It is simply that I cannot believe that a certain type of joke, men's and women's, never existed, or could ever die out.

The boys, waiting for the men, having learned of their importance, examined themselves, drew conclusions, and began boasting – and joking – which added to the women's irritability.

Not far away, in fact so near the distance between Maronna and Horsa could have been covered in half a day's walking, the young men were going off in groups in all directions, returning at intervals only because Horsa insisted. Some hunters recognised a certain configuration of the trees and ran off to inves
tigate. They might not have recognised The Cleft, which was close, or the shore, which continued from the women's shore and was like it, but as soon as they stood together in the glade which they all remembered, there was nothing hazardous in their planning. They had remembered the dangerous beasts, and had their weapons to hand. They stood silent under the trees which had looked over their childhood and there was nothing to spoil their memories but the three women they had brought with them, and who had protested at the men's insistence that they must come. The men wanted sex, and while it was time, so their natures told them, to mate, the women were reluctant and, to use our terms (and probably our ideas), coquettish. After all, none knew the end of their expedition would be so soon; they probably believed this journeying would go on and on, as it had done until now. Which meant that babies would be born as they travelled, and might die. Did they think like this? All the chronicles say is that the women ‘denied the men their ease'.

In all the records we have there is never a complaint about the sexual demands of the boys, not even when there were many more males than females, even when occurred what we would call gang rape. We may interpret this as we like, and it seemed they may have made the attempt. The explanations all reflect bias. For instance, some of our stricter matrons think to refuse sex while pregnant
is only right and proper. Some religious sects have fanciful reasons we need not go into here.