“No one but you,” she had said.
And he had nodded and smiled. “The people I learned it from stole me away into slavery when I was only a boy. Now they’re all dead. Their descendants have forgotten the old wisdom, the old writing, the old gods. Only I remember.”
She had not known whether she heard bitterness or satisfaction in his voice then. He was very strange when he talked about his youth. He made Anyanwu want to touch him and tell him that he was not alone in outliving so many things. But he also roused her fear of him, reminded her of his deadly difference. Thus, she said nothing.
Now, as she lay still, analyzing, learning not only which food had made her ill, but which ingredient in that food, she was comfortably aware of Doro nearby. If he had left the room in complete silence, she would have known, would have missed him. The room would have become colder.
It was milk that had sickened her. Animal milk! These people cooked many things with animal milk! She covered her mouth with her hand. Did Doro know? But of course he did. How could he not? These were his people!
Again it required all her control to prevent herself from vomiting—this time from sheer revulsion.
“Anyanwu?”
She realized that Doro was standing over her between the long cloths that could be closed to conceal the bed. And she realized that this was not the first time he had said her name. Still, it surprised her that she had heard him without his shouting or touching her. He had only spoken quietly.
She opened her eyes, looked up at him. He was beautiful standing there with the light of candles behind him. He had stripped to the cloth he still wore sometimes when they were alone together. But she noticed this with only part of her mind. Her main thoughts were still of the loathsome thing she had been tricked into doing—the consumption of animal milk.
“Why didn’t you tell me!” she demanded.
“What?” He frowned, confused. “Tell you what?”
“That these people were feeding me animal milk!”
He burst into laughter.
She drew back as though he had hit her. “Is it a joke then? Are the others laughing too now that I cannot hear?”
“Anyanwu …” He managed to stop his laughter. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I was thinking of something else or I wouldn’t have laughed. But, Anyanwu, we all ate the same food.”
“But why was some of it cooked with—”
“Listen. I know the custom among your people not to drink animal milk. I should have warned you—would have, if I had been thinking. No one else who ate with us knew the milk would offend you. I assure you, they’re not laughing.”
She hesitated. He was sincere; she was certain of that. It was a mistake then. But still … “These people cook with animal milk all the time?”
“All the time,” Doro said. “And they drink milk. It’s their custom. They keep some cattle especially for milking.”
“Abomination!” Anyanwu said with disgust.
“Not to them,” Doro told her. “And you will not insult them by telling them they are committing abomination.”
She looked at him. He did not seem to give many orders but she had no doubt that this was one. She said nothing.
“You can become an animal whenever you wish,” he said. “You know there’s nothing evil about animal milk.”
“It is for animals!” she said. “I am not an animal now! I did not just eat a meal with animals!”
He sighed. “You know you must change to suit the customs here. You have not lived three hundred years without learning to accept new customs.”
“I will not have any more milk!”
“You need not. But let others have theirs in peace.”
She turned away from him. She had never in her long life lived among people who violated this prohibition.
“Anyanwu!”
“I will obey,” she muttered, then faced him defiantly. “When will I have my own house? My own cooking fire?”
“When you’ve learned what to do with them. What kind of meal could you cook now with foods you’ve never seen before? Sarah Cutler will teach you what you need to know. Tell her milk makes you sick and she’ll leave it out of what she teaches you.” His voice softened a little, and he sat down beside her on the bed. “It did make you sick, didn’t it?”
“It did. Even my flesh knows abomination.”
“It didn’t make anyone else sick.”
She only glared at him.
He reached under the blanket, rubbed her stomach gently. Her body was almost buried in the too-soft feather mattress. “Have you healed yourself?” he asked.
“Yes. But with so much food, it took me a long time to learn what was making me sick.”
“Do you have to know?”
“Of course. How can I know what to do for healing until I know what healing is needed and why? I think I knew all the diseases and poisons of my people. I must learn the ones here.”
“Does it hurt you—the learning?”
“Oh yes. But only at first. Once I learn it, it does not hurt again.” Her voice became bantering. “Now, give me your hand again. You can touch me even though I am well.”
He smiled and there was no more tension between them. His touches became more intimate.
“That is good,” she whispered. “I healed myself just in time. Now lie down here and show me why all those women were looking at you.”
He laughed quietly, untied his cloth, and joined her in the too-soft bed.
“We must talk tonight,” he said later when both were satiated and lying side by side.
“Do you still have strength for talking, husband?” she said drowsily. “I thought you would go to sleep and not awaken until sunrise.”
“No.” There was no humor in his voice now. She had laid her head on his shoulder because he had shown her in the past that he wanted her near him, touching him until he fell asleep. Now, though, she lifted her head and looked at him.
“You’ve come to your new home, Anyanwu.”
“I know that.” She did not like the flat strangeness of his tone. This was the voice he used to frighten people—the voice that reminded her to think of him as something other than a man.
“You are home, but I will be leaving again in a few weeks.”
“But—”
“I will be leaving. I have other people who need me to rid them of enemies or who need to see me to know they still belong to me. I have a fragmented people to hunt and reassemble. I have women in three different towns who could bear powerful children if I give them the right mates. And more. Much more.”
She sighed and burrowed deeper into the mattress. He was going to leave her here among strangers. He had made up his mind. “When you come back,” she said resignedly, “there will be a son for you here.”
“Are you pregnant now?”
“I can be now. Your seed still lives inside me.”
“No!”
She jumped, startled at his vehemence.
“This is not the body I want to beget your first children here,” he said.
She made herself shrug, speak casually. “All right. I’ll wait until you have … become another man.”
“You need not. I have another plan for you.”
The hairs at the back of her neck began to prickle and itch. “What plan?”
“I want you to marry,” he said. “You’ll do it in the way of the people here with a license and a wedding.”
“It makes no difference. I will follow your custom.”
“Yes. But not with me.”
She stared at him, speechless. He lay on his back staring at one of the great beams that held up the ceiling.
“You’ll marry Isaac,” he said. “I want children from the two of you. And I want you to have a husband who does more than visit you now and then. Living here, you could go for a year, two years, without seeing me. I don’t want you to be that alone.”
“Isaac?” she whispered. “Your son?”
“My s
on. He’s a good man. He wants you, and I want you with him.”
“He’s a boy! He’s …”
“What man is not a boy to you, except me? Isaac is more a man than you think.”
“But … he’s your son! How can I have the son when his father, my husband, still lives? That is abomination!”
“Not if I command it.”
“You cannot! It is abomination!”
“You have left your village, Anyanwu, and your town and your land and your people. You are here where I rule. Here, there is only one abomination: disobedience. You will obey.”
“I will not! Wrong is wrong! Some things change from place to place, but not this. If your people wish to debase themselves by drinking the milk of animals, I will turn my head. Their shame is their own. But now you want me to shame myself, make myself even worse than they. How can you ask it of me, Doro? The land itself will be offended! Your crops will wither and die!”
He made a sound of disgust. “That’s foolishness! I thought I had found a woman too wise to believe such nonsense.”
“You have found a woman who will not soil herself! How is it here? Do sons lie with their mothers also? Do sisters and brothers lie down together?”
“Woman, if I command it, they lie down together gladly.”
Anyanwu moved away from him so that no part of her body touched his. He had spoken of this before. Of incest, of mating her own children together with doglike disregard for kinship. And in revulsion, she had led him quickly from her land. She had saved her children, but now … who would save her?
“I want children of your body and his,” Doro repeated. He stopped, raised himself to his elbow so that he leaned over her. “Sun woman, would I tell you to do something that would hurt my people? The land is different here. It is my land! Most of the people here exist because I caused their ancestors to marry in ways your people would not accept. Yet everyone lives well here. No angry god punishes them. Their crops grow and their harvests are rich every year.”
“And some of them hear so much of the thoughts of others that they cannot think their own thoughts. Some of them hang themselves.”
“Some of your own people hang themselves.”
“Not for such terrible reasons.”
“Nevertheless, they die. Anyanwu, obey me. Life can be very good for you here. And you will not find a better husband than my son.”
She closed her eyes, dismissed his pleading as she had his commands. She strove to dismiss her budding fear also, but she could not. She knew that when both commanding and pleading failed, he would begin to threaten.
Within her body, she killed his seed. She disconnected the two small tubes through which her own seed traveled to her womb. She had done this many times when she thought she had given a man enough children. Now she did it to avoid giving any children at all, to avoid being used. When it was done, she sat up and looked down at him. “You have been telling me lies from the day we met,” she said softly.
He shook his head against the pillow. “I have not lied to you.”
“‘Let me give you children who will live,’ you said. ‘I promise that if you come with me, I will give you children of your own kind,’ you said. And now, you send me away to another man. You give me nothing at all.”
“You will bear my children as well as Isaac’s.”
She cried out as though with pain, and climbed out of his bed. “Get me another room!” she hissed. “I will not lie there with you. I would rather sleep on the bare floor. I would rather sleep on the ground!”
He lay still, as though he had not heard her. “Sleep wherever you wish,” he said after a while.
She stared at him, her body shaking with fear and anger. “What is it you would make of me, Doro? Your dog? I cared for you. It has been lifetimes since I cared as much for a man.”
He said nothing.
She stepped nearer to the bed, looked down into his expressionless face, pleading herself now. She did not think it was possible to move him by pleading once he had made up his mind, but so much was at stake. She had to try.
“I came here to be a wife to you,” she said. “But there were always others to cook for you, others to serve you in nearly all the ways of a wife. And if there had not been others, I know so little of this place that I would have performed my duties poorly. You knew it would be this way for me, but still you wanted me—and I wanted you enough to begin again like a child, completely ignorant.” She sighed and looked around the room, feeling as though she were hunting for the words that would reach him. There was only the alien furniture: the desk, the bed, the great wooden cabinet beside the door—a kas, it was called, a Dutch thing for storing clothing. There were two chairs and several mats—rugs—of heavy, colorful cloth. It was all as alien as Doro himself. It gave her a feeling of hopelessness—as though she had come to this strange place only to die. She stared into the fire in the fireplace—the only familiar thing in the room—and spoke softly:
“Husband, it may be a good thing that you’re going away. A year is not so long, or two years. Not to us. I have been alone before for many times that long. When you come back, I will know how to be a wife to you here. I will give you strong sons.” She turned her eyes back to him, saw that he was watching her. “Do not cast me aside before I show you what a good wife I can be.”
He sat up, put his feet on the floor. “You don’t understand,” he said softly. He pulled her down to sit beside him on the bed. “Haven’t I told you what I’m building? Over the years, I’ve taken people with so little power they were almost ordinary, and bred them together again and again until in their descendants, small abilities grew large, and a man like Isaac could be born.”
“And a man like Lale.”
“Lale wasn’t as bad as he seemed. He handled what ability he had very well. And I’ve created others of his kind who had more ability and a better temperament.”
“Did you create him, then? From what? Mounds of clay?”
“Anyanwu!”
“Isaac tells me the whites believe their god made the first people of clay. You talk as though you think you were that god!”
He drew a deep breath, looked at her sadly. “What I am or think I am need not concern you at all. I’ve told you what you must do—no, be quiet. Hear me.”
She closed her mouth, swallowed a new protest.
“I said you didn’t understand,” he continued. “Now I think you’re deliberately misunderstanding. Do you truly believe I mean to cast you aside because you’ve been a poor wife?”
She looked away. No, of course she did not believe that. She had only hoped to reach him, make him stop his impossible demands. No, he was not casting her aside for any reason at all. He was merely breeding her as one bred cattle and goats. He had said it: “I want children of your body and his.” What she wanted meant nothing. Did one ask a cow or a nanny goat whether it wished to be bred?
“I am giving you the very best of my sons,” he told her. “I expect you to be a good wife to him. I would never send you to him if I thought you couldn’t.”
She shook her head slowly. “It is you who have not understood me.” She gazed at him—at his very ordinary eyes, at his long, handsome face. Until now, she had managed to avoid a confrontation like this by giving in a little, obeying. Now she could not obey.
“You are my husband,” she said quietly, “or I have no husband. If I need another man, I will find one. My father and all my other husbands are long dead. You gave no gifts for me. You can send me away, but you cannot tell me where I must go.”
“Of course I can.” His quiet calm matched her own, but in him it was clearly resignation. “You know you must obey, Anyanwu. Must I take your body and get the children I want from it myself?”
“You cannot.” Within herself, she altered her reproductive organs further, made herself literally no longer a woman, but not quite a man—just to be certain. “You may be able to push my spirit from my body,” she said. “I think you can, though I
have never felt your power. But my body will give you no satisfaction. It would take too long for you to learn to repair all the things I have done to it—if you can learn. It will not conceive a child now. It will not live much longer itself without me to keep watch on it.”
She could not have missed the anger in his voice when he spoke again. “You know I will collect your children if I cannot have you.”
She turned her back on him, not wanting him to see her fear and pain, not wanting her own eyes to see him. He was a loathsome thing.
He came to stand behind her, put his hands on her shoulders. She struck them away violently. “Kill me!” she hissed. “Kill me now, but never touch me that way again!”
“And your children?” he said unmoved.
“No child of mine would commit the abominations you want,” she whispered.
“Now who’s lying?” he said. “You know your children don’t have your strength. I’ll get what I want from them, and their children will be as much mine as the people here.”
She said nothing. He was right, of course. Even her own strength was mere bravado, a facade covering utter terror. It was only her anger that kept her neck straight. And what good was anger or defiance? He would consume her very spirit; there would be no next life for her. Then he would use and pervert her children. She felt near to weeping.
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