Cretan Teat

by Brian W Aldiss

  This wave of submissions went out to leading television companies all around the world, to leading newspapers, and to Catholic journals.

  Kathi presented a third wave of reproductions and articles to ecologists and green parties everywhere, and to such groups as Baby Milk Action. Here the article was brief, and suggested that the slogan ‘Jesus Enjoyed Breast Milk’ would be neither blasphemous nor inappropriate.

  The results were more than she could have anticipated. Europe and the United States and those other countries (Japan, for instance) which comprise what is known as the ‘Western World’ were at this period untroubled by any matters other than the drunken antics of certain footballers, a few gruesome murders distributed equally among the nations, speculations on the sex life of a prominent Head of State, the crisis in Nicaragua, the cloning of a Rottweiler in Finland, the attempts of a man and a pet gorilla to circumnavigate the world in a hot-air balloon, the ever-increasing destitution of the Third World, and such trivia. Into this vacuum, the Cretan Teat dropped like a tactical nuclear weapon into a stagnant pond.

  The remarkable revelation – to some religious, to others merely hilarious – of Saint Anna’s breast in Christ’s mouth provoked a sensation on many levels. An issue of Der Sturm reproduced the ikon on its front page, under the headline ‘JESUS SUCKS!’ It was withdrawn, following protests from the Vatican.

  A headline ‘GRAN CAN!’ proved more acceptable. Many French TV stations showed an array of breasts from the developing world, which evolved into a popular Internet guessing game, ‘Beat the Teat – which was the Virgin Mary’s?’

  Such frivolity was widely deplored. Questions were debated, such as why Anna’s grandmotherly assistance was necessary; why the important fact of her assistance was omitted from the Gospels; and why the Blessed Virgin Mary’s milk had dried up: could it be because of the irregularity of the conception? The Second Century Protovangelium of James was retranslated and reprinted in all European languages, to become a bestseller in most of them. From the reproduction of the ikon on its covers, the Langstreets received royalties.

  The feast of St Anna had been observed in the tenth century in Naples. It was revived there with great ceremony. Canada, too, hotted up the Feast Day on 26th July. Breast-shaped pasties, stuffed with chopped lamb, went on sale in New York and elsewhere; initially called ‘Anne Treats’, they soon became famous as ‘Annetits’. Well, what do you expect?

  The Third World, in its less amusing way, also took to the ikon, where its significance was not lost on downtrodden motherhood.

  But it was in Greece that the ikon had its greatest impact, as we shall see.

  The day came when Kathi received a not unexpected phone call from Geneva. The WHO case had failed. Kathi was enjoying life. Every day, something fresh regarding Agia Anna came in, and more coverage arrived at her desk. She sent a large donation to Monaché Kostas. She engaged a staff of three to handle the traffic. She found she enjoyed appearing on TV news and arts programmes.

  But upon receiving the call, she packed a bag and flew to Archie’s side in their apartment in the Vielle Ville.

  Archie Langstreet wept unrestrainedly in his wife’s arms… The evidence against the Corporation, in the judgement of the presiding judge, had not proved conclusive. The sale of infant milk formulae by the Nentelstam Corporation could not be proved directly to harm babies; too many other factors were involved. The milk substitute was of benefit to those mothers whose own milk had dried. ‘Not all mothers,’ noted the judge, with a predictable attempt at topicality, ‘could rely on their mothers to provide, as we now know the Blessed Virgin Mary was able to do.’

  Kathi held her husband till his grief abated. Finally, he took out a white handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

  ‘Apologies, dear Kathi. A moment of weakness. To think that that wretched corporation should be awarded damages! After all the years of work… It’s hard to take.’

  ‘You’ve done your best, darling. They had lawyers like Schlechter on their side.’

  ‘I’m so ashamed to think that the WHO will have to pay up. And UNICEF… And I shall retire under a cloud, disgraced.’

  He broke into a fresh attack of weeping. Kathi held him in her arms, kissing his forehead.

  ‘It’s a natural reaction, my love. You have worked so hard. You are exhausted.’ She stroked his head tenderly.

  He looked with affection into her eyes. ‘Everything is part of a Greater Design. We must see the Lord’s hand in this. I cannot despair or turn away. Something more is required of me. He needs me to work his will.’

  Kathi tutted. ‘Let the Lord manage without you! His purposes will take a long time to work out; they’re so complicated, so bloody complicated. You should take it easy now.’

  With a flash of spirit, he replied, ‘I cannot take it easy. If I have failed here, then I must succeed elsewhere. It is God’s will. I know it is required of me.’

  She sighed and said that she would order the maid to make them some coffee.

  To work effectively, a novel has to have some significance, to cast a light, a glow, or maybe a shadow, beyond its narrative, after its conclusion. So I used to say, to sound a bit grand, when interviewed on TV.

  Yet in a way I believe it to be true. If only it applied to my novels! How wonderful to write like A S Byatt – real ‘literary fiction’! We should not just pass through a novel; it ought to pass through us, the way figs do. It doesn’t matter if we don’t enjoy it much. Then we can contemplate it afterwards and possibly be changed by it, if we can see it whole, embodying something fragrant with wisdom, or something hitherto unperceived: though I know I should not be saying this – and would not be, were it not for Henry Fielding.

  (But note that my sentences are beginning to twist and entangle as recommended by Virginia Woolf, so you can’t say I’m anti-feminist.)

  The means of achieving this degree of perfection is to sustain an illusion that we are talking about a real three-dimensional world that meets the demands of what we regard as psychologically acceptable – while at the same time satisfying our wish to be surprised. So we suspend disbelief while we read. Oh, I know well enough how to do the trick, even if I don’t always carry it off. But we must remain to some extent aware that we are suspending our disbelief. As I was finding with The Victor Hugo Club. Much of the pleasure lies in enjoying make-believe.

  So you think all this expanse of pages is make-believe? You think I spoil the make-believe by strutting about in my own fiction? Then let me tell you this: I have the very ikon, the ikon that Monaché Kostas painted, hanging right here on the wall of my study.

  Reader, I commissioned him!

  Pandering to your wish to be surprised, I may say I am able to talk about literature while resting with Ingrid beside me, in a small hotel in Kastrup. You remember Ingrid? She and I met in Paleohora. Since I had failed to climb onto her balcony, she cannot have had very high hopes for me. Nevertheless, being of an amiable nature, she invited me to stay with her in Kastrup, a pleasant town near the Copenhagen airport.

  Her invitation came just in time. I had given up on the Cotswolds and my false moustache, and returned to my flat in London. My finances were at a low ebb. In the late seventies, I had had great success with From the Enchanter Fleeing. But the royalties had slowly dwindled, and none of my books since then had met with the same acclaim.

  Which does not mean that they were no good. It’s all a matter of pot luck. What do you expect?

  In the chapter of The Victor Hugo Club I was reading, mention is made of the great fortunes amassed by many of the painters of the Renaissance. Raphael, for instance, left on his death a house in Urbino, together with a palace, vineyards, and land near Rome, after a life led in luxury and splendour. Here was I, behind with the rent on my apartment and, like Rembrandt, long past the zenith of renown.

  Fortunately, I am of a cheerful disposition, and would not have changed my life with anyone. Though I would not have minded being a woman for a day, to find ou
t some of their secrets.

  Pushing open the door of my flat, I found threatening letters from solicitors who were lying in wait for me.

  More cheering was a letter from Boris on lined notepaper. He had settled down on a smallholding in a Norfolk village called Upwell. He was radiantly happy. With him was his partner, Robin. Robin was good with pigs.

  I had my forebodings about this. There was the name of the village, for one thing. I rang the number he gave me. After a long wait, a woman’s voice answered. ‘Robin here,’ she said. So that was okay. Evidently his problem with premature ejaculation in the days of Lucia had not soured his relations with the female sex. When you are a kid, the first experience of getting it in is so exciting that you immediately yield an offering to whatever gods there be. After all, what do you expect?

  The very next morning, while I was still in bed, the doorbell rang. I flung on a dressing-gown and went to see who it was.

  It was the postman. He made me sign for a registered letter from Sylvia Beltrau’s lawyers. The letter summoned me to appear at Number Two Court in the Old Bailey, on such-and-such a date, a week ahead.

  ‘Bugger!’ I said.

  Providentially, there was this other letter from Denmark, my address written in Ingrid’s elegant hand.

  After showering, I dressed, grabbed a cup of coffee, and went to see the nearest travel agent. At least I had the price of a flight. Or rather, I charged it to my Visa card.

  Ingrid met me at Kastrup airport. She was a pleasantly sturdy figure of medium height, with dark eyes set behind her high rosy cheeks. She was an unusual-looking woman of considerable beauty; a well-preserved fifty-five, I thought. The glow of seeing her again was somewhat diminished by the presence of her daughter, Lisa. Ingrid kissed me affectionately and we bundled into her small car.

  ‘What happened about that funny wall-painting you found, darling?’ Ingrid asked, as we drove along. I liked the ‘darling’. ‘The woman with her little tits feeding baby Jesus Christ? I told so many people about that painting. Everyone laughs always. It must have been a forgery, don’t you think?’

  ‘I hope not! I am writing a novel about it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, you are a writer. I had forgotten. You wrote such a nice letter to me. How can you imagine the life of that woman, Jesus’ granny? Is anything known about her? Are you then a Roman Catholic?’

  ‘The novel’s not about her.’

  ‘No? That’s disappointing. You must tell us all about it. My husband will be interested.’

  Her husband? I hadn’t come all this way just to interest her bloody husband in my novel!

  ‘I don’t want to be a burden to you, Ingrid. I can put up at a nearby hotel.’

  ‘No way. You are our guest. Sven wants to talk with you. We have a nice summerhouse where you can stay.’ The car swerved wildly as she flashed a smile at me. Oh, that smile! Suddenly, I remembered it, and all my doubts faded away. That smile, those parted lips, those white teeth: together they were like a beaker full of the warm north. Yet they were flavoured with something less confident than the lady perhaps intended to convey, something pleading? Or apologetic? Its beauty and mystery, the secrecy behind its openness, invited one to know Ingrid better.

  We turned down a side street, and then into a more open one, where small shops clustered and people strolled about in a leisurely way. Ingrid turned the car into a car park. We climbed out.

  ‘It’s all pedestrians here,’ said Lisa. We walked up a side avenue and turned into a close, where apartment blocks were mixed with small scale housing. Number nine was where Ingrid lived.

  From a narrow hallway, we went into a large open room which was living-room and kitchen, with a lot of chrome and blonde wood on view. A sister of Lisa’s appeared, looking like a miniature version of Ingrid, but with dark hair. Ignoring her, Ingrid poured us two vodkas saying, as she handed me my glass, ‘I don’t suppose you want to be English and have tea, do you?’

  We sat and chatted. Sven was nowhere to be seen. He kept irregular hours in a nearby electronics firm. He was working on a new semi-conductor.

  The younger child was standing gazing at us.

  ‘Dotta, can’t you find something to do? Where’s Sigbrit? Why don’t you go and do one of your lovely mazes?’

  The child, thus dismissed, moved away without leaving the room.

  ‘It’s their holidays,’ said Ingrid. She sighed. ‘Come on, I’ll show you my artist’s studio where I work when I’m not teaching.’

  We climbed two flights of stairs to a fine light room under the roof, with windows front and rear. Ingrid’s bright blobby paintings were ranged round the walls at ground level. I paid them some attention while checking the view from the windows. The south-facing window, looking away from the close, revealed a small, neat, paved garden with a summerhouse and a garage at the end of it. A rather faint road, resembling to my eyes a hedgeless English country lane, led from the garage away across country.

  ‘It’s yet quite a nice open view,’ said Ingrid. She came up to me and put an arm round my waist. ‘Of course it’s not like Greece, but one might be happy here. If only… I am so miserable, though I seek not to show it. I have such anxiety. I must tell you, that my bloody husband has done – ’

  At that moment, the third of Ingrid’s children, Sigbrit, a slightly smaller version of Dorothea, appeared. She wore a shirt and socks and nothing between.

  ‘Mama, I can’t find my jeans. I know – ’

  Ingrid rounded on her. ‘You are not to walk about like that! How many times do you have to be told? Really, you’ll have to be – ’

  She disappeared from the room, driving the child ahead of her. I stood at the window, feeling uncomfortable in the midst of this unsought domesticity, and disappointed, because any display of animosity towards Sven worked on my behalf in my role as female-comforter – I wished to hear more. Also, Ingrid had seemed so calm in Paleohora; here in her own house she appeared slightly neurotic. I thought of the great tribe of women, so attractive in the main to look at, so obliging in the main to be with, and yet – what folly to pursue a particular one of the tribe. They lived their own busy lives under their own laws; looking after, dressing, feeding, the dumb progeny their males had fathered on them. How could sex possibly be so constantly on their minds as on male minds? What do you expect?

  Really, I would have been better off hiding out at home, continuing the story of Archie Langstreet’s increasing obsession, and letting Ingrid sort out her own problems.

  When I went downstairs, Ingrid was by the hotplate, cooking fish fingers in olive oil for her girls. A radio was playing cool jazz too loudly. I thought how neat her behind looked in her jeans.

  The three girls were huddling together by their computer, tracing a maze on the monitor. This was achieved with plenty of shrieking, laughing, jostling, and shouts of ‘That’s not fair!’

  ‘Do you want a fish finger?’ Ingrid asked. ‘We can have some Chardonnay to help wash it downwards.’

  As I was pouring two glasses of Chardonnay, she said, ‘My brother Jannick has his birthday today. We will go to his party tonight to celebrate. It’s not far off. I think you will like that, will you?’

  When I glanced enquiringly at the girls, she said, ‘They think their Uncle Jannick is too strict. They will stay here and Kisa will look after them. Sven can come later if he would like. I’ll leave him a note to remind him. We two will go alone at eight in the car.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  Before we left, she escorted me down the garden to the summerhouse, which proved better equipped than anticipated. I took a shower and changed my clothes for the evening.

  In the car at eight, she said, ‘You are not too pleased, are you? Did you expect me to be alone? When we were down in Paleohora, then I was alone. I threatened to divorce Sven. The little kids stayed with Jannick and Jannick’s wife. I don’t know why I do not leave Sven for good. He’s a Swede, you know. I made a big big mistake there. He earns good m
oney, but it goes to drink and women. And he did a vile thing. If I was on my own, I could work more and earn enough to survive, just about. But the girls need so much money. So I stay with Sven for security. The pig! God, I hate him. Fortunately, sex is quite good with him.’

  I was sorry to hear that, but merely asked, ‘What vile thing did he do?’

  As the car swerved round a corner, so it seemed did the course of her soliloquy. ‘What I most like is to be penetrated from behind. I mean with the prick in the proper place where it belongs, but from behind, so that the man can hold my tits and rub my clitoris, while the prick goes right up inside of me. It’s such a good feeling. I come almost at once. The other way round, facing – well, it’s okay, but not quite the same, somehow. I read somewhere in an anatomy article that it was from behind that early peoples always did it. Maybe it came from our ancestry with the apes. Apes still do it from behind, I believe?’

  ‘They have to look out for danger, even when on the job. So it is the best position for them. But since bedrooms were invented, and door locks, then we don’t have to look out for danger, and can stare into each other’s eyes instead. And we can take longer about it.’

  She waggled a finger. ‘But there may be danger if it’s a case of adultery.’ She added, reflectively, ‘Of course, that’s when we want to take longest about it.’

  The road outside Jannick’s house was full of cars. Ingrid simply wedged her car onto the pavement between two others, and we squeezed out. More squeezing was required to get into the house. Jannick had invited in all his neighbours as well as his relations. We pushed our way through a great babble of Danish issuing from grinning faces. We took glasses of champagne from a proffered tray, and plunged on.

  Ingrid met some long-lost cousins and began talking to them.