The Sacred Beasts

by Bev Jafek

  “Whoa, wait! Just you wait. Didn’t you once tell me that female bonobos resolved disputes with sex? Is that what you are advocating?”

  “The bonobo research does strongly suggest that we can make love and therefore not war. I don’t know of research that examines whether highly violent, domineering cultures, countries and periods of history are more sexually repressive but my guess is yes, they are. There will be a strong positive correlation. I think this is one of the most striking differences between Europe today, which is relatively permissive sexually and reluctant to engage in warfare or militaristic resolution of conflict and, on the other hand, the U.S., which is the reverse—sexually repressive, war-like, and domineering.

  “However, I am also interested in empathy and non-violent conflict resolution, intellectual and emotional skills of the bonobos. With more of these, women and liberal men may have unusual abilities in business and politics, enterprises in which women still encounter much discrimination and political liberalism is weak or non-existent. In fact, I doubt whether politics and industry can ever be responsible and ethical enough to support a long-term or higher purposes without leading roles for women and liberal men. Of course, politics and business, utilizing the best scientific information available, are the only means we have of solving the problems now endangering human civilization and the planet. Cultures that subjugate women and exclude liberal men from power, refusing to use their skills—Africa and the Islamic countries—are the least developed and most consistently violent parts of the world. That’s no coincidence. You can begin to see this working in studies of the effectiveness of foreign aid to these countries. If the money is given to women, ninety-some percent will be reinvested in the family and community. If it is given to men, only thirty-some percent is reinvested in family and community.”

  “Then you are a female supremacist, are you not?”

  “Not really. At this moment in the evolution of civilization, greater power in the hands of one gender injures the other, true enough. But this is neither necessary nor inevitable: it is an artifact of the system designed by violent early patriarchy. Strangely enough, I suspect the U.S. is close to reversing gender roles in terms of opportunity. Girls now graduate from college more frequently than boys. The higher performance male students once displayed in math on national aptitude tests has disappeared. Women also now receive more Ph.Ds in the social and natural sciences than men. There is even research demonstrating that the reason women don’t earn more Ph.Ds than men in engineering and hard science is the result of their superior range of abilities and greater number of professional alternatives rather than inferior ability or interest. Of course, business and politics lag behind academics so we are still moving rapidly toward a global catastrophe.”

  “OK, OK. Let me put it this way: why am I not living in a tree, looking for a lover—male or female—who looks like a bonobo chimpanzee? Why don’t I wish you were covered with fur?”

  “I am certainly not saying that instinct trumps learning in all cases. The most dangerous parts of our chimp genetic endowment come into play when we encounter intractable problems in which we can’t seem to learn from experience: poverty and inequity; racism and xenophobia; sexism and homophobia; war, terrorism and nuclear proliferation; and environmental destruction. The intractability of problems like these shows the presence of old ape behavior that we have not discerned and understood clearly enough to change our ways and solve our problems.”

  “OK, actually the question I really want answered is this: how can we possibly be living in the world we know, where women are still subjugated, where gay people lack civil liberties, where the texts of all major religious faiths encourage us to believe that women and gay people are morally inferior? You say we are closer to the bonobos, but how can that explain the world as it is?”

  “I have no doubt that all of our political, social and cultural institutions, to varying degrees, oppress women and gay people while promoting patriarchy and heterosexuality. Those research results on sexuality show that something very powerful and inclusive has happened, not just to a minority but to all women and men. Not only has political conservatism tried to legislate against a woman’s right to control the functioning of her own body; it seems to have succeeded in wiping out most women’s ability to discern their own sexual feelings. If a woman’s sexuality is not what patriarchal values want it to be; then presto, the offending part of it is gone. I wanted you to be aware of this scientific research because all public discussion of these issues seems to float horribly in a diseased, bacterial sludge of fear, hysteria and anger in our time. It is virtually unmentionable in public today, and even the primatologists who describe bonobo research are prone to nervous giggling when they speak to lay audiences. I favor shining a sharp, bright light on the god-awful mess. In fact, I am writing a book on it.”

  “I can tell from your voice that you think the situation is hopeless and it infuriates you.”

  “Actually, I know that, my perceptive and beautiful companion, but I am surely compelled to attempt it, as would any bonobo matriarch.”

  “I’m glad you finally said all of this. Now you can give yourself up to the sole pursuit of loving me and be otherwise incapable of thought.”

  “Said like the queen of the bonobos. I will let you resolve all of our disputes. Have you noticed what great work we’ve been doing together for months now?”

  “It’s curious about that, yes. Love with you makes me want to imagine and create.”

  “You didn’t expect that in paradise?”

  “No, the Eden version contradicts it. Adam and Eve wanted to be free of work.”

  “Here’s a new myth, just for you: think of the real Eden as arboreal. It will give you some new insights whenever you look at a tree, whenever you feel at peace in a forest or even a park. We were once up in the trees among our ancestors, creatures somewhat like the bonobos, where fruit was plentiful and most predators down below. Gentle matriarchs decreed that sex was free and violence, nil. Under such circumstances, the population exploded. We had to conquer a new environment on the forest floor. That was ‘the Fall,’ the real one. Our violence increased as did our size; our empathy cooled. Males were largest and fought most of the battles, seizing power and becoming patriarchs in the process. We have known Paradise and the Fall, so why not Heaven and Hell? We have mastered nature sufficiently to protect and enhance life on our planet and need only master ourselves. We must lose that old ape behavior or understand it well enough to control its destructiveness. The umpire must be science, not sheer mass ignorance quoting scripture all the way to our doom. The future will be a Heaven of renewable energy in a clean and peaceful environment or a Hell of environmental catastrophe that destroys civilization.”

  “You’re thinking about what you will say in your book again. Stay obsessed with my beauty.”

  “No problem there.”

  “Would you like to make love in a tree tonight?”

  “How can I refuse the bonobo queen? Since we have made love on the grass in the middle of a thunderstorm, in a cold lake at dawn, and all night in the close company of rutting deer, I see no reason why not. However, perhaps I should draw the line at the certainty of falling out of a tree onto my head. No woman has ever compelled me to make love under such uncomfortable circumstances, so take that as a measure of your beauty, power and grace. Why don’t you shock me by wanting to make love in a tent?”

  “It had better be a big strong tent!” She looks at me ferociously and laughs.

  In fact, we find the tent to be a most congenial and comfortable partner to a love more tender than any we have yet shared. We are still holding one another when we fall asleep.

  I wake up with my lips still touching her ear. Her eyes are bright and restless from the moment they open: perfect for art. We smile and kiss, knowing that we are completely renewed for our work today. What will that be? I only know that it is my favorite daily mystery in Doñana.

  The lake is cool a
nd full of sparkling light, and I decide to spend the day here, sifting through my footage and data until I am in communion with my beasts, and again they tell me what I know and then all the living truth I still must learn. I am so immersed in my work that it has become the shape of my life. I smile at the shadow I cast, sensing that my work and its truth are real and my mind, the phantom hovering over. Egolessness is one of the many pleasures of the explorer and lover of nature.

  Sylvie wants to drive the jeep all the way to the sand dunes and might even reach the shoreline. What will she see? Snakes making patterns like perpetually disappearing gusts of wind as they twine themselves over the sand, or wind making snake-like patterns that continually arch and then vanish into the sand? Nothing of this. She will conceive something utterly original, startling, perhaps shocking. She is unpredictability incarnate and for that and more, I love her. She can even annihilate the scientist in me, though fortunately it is never permanent.

  It is late sunset when she returns, very silent and serious. Her work has obviously been arduous; I have never seen her look so exhausted. Immediately and without words, she lies down on her sleeping bag and hands me her sketchbook; I see that she spent her day doing many preparatory drawings followed by just a few that are final. It is a pattern she shows when she is wrestling with a creative problem that arouses strong emotions. Instantly, I see that she stopped in the region called the corral, where vegetation slowly fades away into sand dunes that can no longer support plant life. As I page through her unfinished work, I sense that she is attempting to envision identity within boundaries and perhaps the ultimate forms of life residing in nature’s edges and extremes.

  The first completed drawing shows a tree that is nearly destroyed by sand and wind and yet, in its complex form, still clutches fiercely to life. Sand has replaced the soil and the dying tree rests on its side with all of its roots exposed to the wind. The roots, drawn in sharp and intricate profusion, twine themselves all over the tree in search of water and nutrients until they even reach up to the sky. The drawing seems to be the ultimate or archetypal form of the tree’s life cycle as it perishes with all the extraordinary force, paradoxically, of an intensely living thing. Its largest root curls convulsively upon itself and then reaches in a perfectly straight line up to the sky as though comprehending, in its form, that it must leave the life of the soil and hurl itself into the cosmic. As such, its shape is so unrecognizable that it could be an alien life form on another planet, yet it is a tree living as truly in nature as any other.

  The drawing arouses pity and awe in me. The tree has a death-like gravity, like a spiritual quest that has cost all the energy of life, yet it reveals and embodies the violent and beautiful world we have found here together. I think of Katia again. In the great extremes of her life, did she articulate this explosive vision of life or did she stop short of it?

  The answer lies in the second completed drawing. Going further into the dunes, Sylvie found the last dying tree before the land becomes purely sand. Its boughs and roots, helplessly seeking nurturance, have actually reached a point in which they fold over themselves into four knots, nearly forming a square, and then continue to grow so that a pattern forms above of intertwined figures dancing in apparent ecstasy. This powerful life force, resisting death, has left the concrete world entirely and entered the symbolic realm as passionate art. As a symbol, it suggests some of the most powerful human images of the spirit: a Hindu Shiva dancing in a circle of flames; the mudra of Buddha’s thumb and forefinger forming a circle; an American Indian Dreamcatcher. Life and death turn full circle and become eternity. The figures above that seem to burst out of the image are dancing in a passion that is immortal, perhaps angelic, yet at the very center of this world. Yes, Katia stopped well short of this.

  I smile at Sylvie in amazement and can well understand her exhaustion. Her eyes search mine with intensity. She seeks my judgement, perhaps not yet understanding what she has achieved. “It’s as though you have discovered a spirituality in nature, even one that seems to touch upon religion,” I say. “You astonish me. This work is superlative. I don’t know if I am nearly done here, but you are. We will move on to Madrid and Barcelona soon.” Still exhausted, she raises her arms to me and then I sense what she needs. I lie down with her and cover her with my body.

  “I want to sleep just like this,” she says, and her arms and legs embrace my body. Is she taking the form of her art? It is so unexpected and lovely to me that we do fall asleep in either the bliss of exhaustion or the exhaustion of bliss. When I wake up in the night, I sleepily take off my clothes. She has already done so. I remember only a shape, a push, a laugh and then, “lie on me again.” When I awaken in the dawn, my body still covers hers. I hear only a word, “now,” then a whisper, “make love to me now.” Her entire body is embracing mine, and some unknown time later, her back is arching and she is climaxing again and again. I no longer know how it happens. It is like a continuation of sleep, perfectly instinctual. Our minds are asleep and our bodies, intensely awake and alive, rising and falling, over and under and into each other, a rhythm of our own.

  Then we awaken together. “I think I could spend the rest of my life like this,” I say.

  “I could, too. Do you think we will actually be able to leave this park? Maybe we will just stay here, making love.”

  “We would join the company of the great eccentric Doñana women if we did that.” Our laughter completely wakes us up. Then we are half sitting up, resting on our elbows.

  “I just thought of something even funnier. We are actually tourists of Spain. Has that fact even entered your mind?”

  “No, good-god, no. No flamenco, no bullfighting, no Velasquez, El Greco, Picasso.”

  “We are in another reality.”

  “No, that makes it sound strange. We are . . . our story is . . . about the women, the animals, the land, in Spain. That story has never been told, so it seems like another world. But, it is not. It is a story that has not been told, one worth telling.” We are now fully awake, pensive.

  “What would Katia say to that? You never talk of her now.” She smiles mischievously at me.

  “And, you know very well why I don’t talk about her. After she died, I knew what she would say all the time. Now, I must think even to remember. She would say . . . well, she was a provocatrice. She would throw down the gauntlet in anything she said. So then, of our story . . . about the women, the animals, and the land . . . she would say that we are rewriting The Sun Also Rises.”

  “Really? So, she would think of it as a challenge, that it should be rewritten by women?”

  “It is a challenge.”

  “But should that novel be rewritten?”

  “Actually, Katia loved Hemingway’s writing. She read everything but Death in the Afternoon and The Green Hills of Africa for the obvious reason—she also loved animals. I seem to recall that she much preferred the short stories, thought the women in the novels were infantile and unreal except for The Sun Also Rises. She said that the primary female character was based on a woman Hemingway knew, and he wrote the book just after a frustrating encounter between them in Pamplona. Now I can almost hear Katia in my head; she still is one of my oldest, strangest and wisest voices. She would say that the important thing to understand, the challenge, is that all of those ‘unhurried sensations’ making up his work, that directness and simplicity of feeling that passes easily to so many readers, depends on the repression of other stories, on implicitly declaring them irrelevant. So yes, his novel must be rewritten by our story . . . of the women, the animals, and the land.”

  We are silent for a long time, holding hands. Finally Sylvie says, “I’m sorry that I seemed to make light of what you told me night before last. That research on sexuality is appalling. It is not exactly a luxury to know when you are having sexual feelings, and I am truly appalled that men have a clear sense of it and so many women apparently do not. It’s infuriating. I can see why you want to write about it and I c
an understand why you told me. What’s going on there: are women lying, or do they really not know what they’re feeling?”

  “That’s impossible to say without more research. A few women are probably lying, but it’s hard to see what could be threatening about admitting the truth anonymously. Their names would never appear in the research, so why fear telling the researcher?”

  “So it really is some kind of brainwashing?”

  “Most likely yes, carried out knowingly or obliviously by all of our institutions—from the family to the public schools to marriage, industry and the professions, to the ballot box. You name it. But more than anything else, I think it is the influence of the church. If any one institution is the root cause, it is thousands of years of religious history and oppression all over the planet. Obviously, the brainwashing did not work in your case, and it often does not. I was not afraid for you in that sense. I wanted you to know all of this because, at least in the States, the brainwashed and delusional follow you around and try to convince you of their moral superiority, and then destroy your civil rights. You feel as though you’re in one of those films where a crowd of zombies is after you. They make a lot of zombie films in the States.”

  Sylvie throws back her head, laughing. “Oh yes,” she finally says, “I do recognize that. It happened to me when I was very young in Argentina. It did give me the creeps.” Then she is silent, thinking. “Is there any other way to interpret that research? Maybe sexuality is more complex, something that isn’t limited to genitals for women. Why can’t it be simple excitement, involving the brain and the entire body? And, what would you say to a woman who thinks her love is spiritual or a woman who insists that her lover must actually be present for her to respond?”