The Sacred Beasts

by Bev Jafek

  SYLVIE AND ALEX returned to the house and were watching the women talking with great excitement. The atmosphere was very festive and many women were obviously celebrating Gay Pride Day early. The house was packed with women, too, since the word had gone out that the previous night was something very special and the women would continue telling the stories of their mothers.

  “We’re sure to hear more heroic stories, and no one will ask us questions about our embarrassing mothers,” Alex said in excited anticipation.

  Sylvie kissed Alex’s shoulder and said, “You’re so funny about that! I’d never apologize for my deadbeat mother.” She saw Pilar and Libre and remembered the paintings she wanted to do of her and Malena, one of the very most charismatic mothers, Sylvie was certain. She began to think about the project and saw an impediment. “I’m going to paint Pilar and Malena, but I can’t visualize Pilar’s body,” she said. “She wears bulky clothing all the time. I want to see her nude, but I can’t imagine how to ask her to pose. I don’t know her at all. The easiest way to do it would be to just sleep with her.”

  “What!” Alex nearly shouted. “I can’t believe you said that! I don’t know what to say! Well, holy shitty pie, for starts. No, you’re not going to sleep with her and me, too! I don’t want you sleeping with anyone but me! How could you have thought that? How have you been living? Hell, forget about it if you want me, because that’s just not in sync at all!”

  “I . . . I’m so sorry,” Sylvie said.

  “That’s just not good enough!”

  “I didn’t realize you would respond this way . . . I keep forgetting that women are so different from men. Please accept my apology because I don’t think I’ve ever apologized to anyone before in my life, certainly not to a man who was my lover.” She looked up at Alex in great distress, took her hand, and kissed it. “I’ve never done that before, either. Forgive me.”

  Alex suddenly burst out laughing. “Your apology just keeps getting worse and worse!” She began to laugh uncontrollably. “This is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard a woman say! I must praise your utter lack of humility in this life. No wonder your mother is a wimp. How else could she get along with you? You just astonish me!” Her voice ended in a sigh of relief and she hugged Sylvie. “I forget, too, what an utterly bad-assed woman you’ve been all your life and gotten away with it. No one else does, let me tell you!”

  Sylvie threw her arms around Alex’s neck and whispered, “Thank you! Thank you! I thought that I’d have to get down on my knees.”

  “That would be worse than death for someone like you!” Alex said, still roaring with laughter. When they grew quiet again, she said, “It’s so noisy here that I don’t think anyone heard us, which is good. I’d like to keep this a secret.” She held Sylvie very tight and stroked her great mane of hair. I’m holding her, but she could be a wild animal, Alex thought. I’m right beside a wild animal, and it’s not safe, but here I am, doing it. She looked into Sylvie’s eyes. This is not the first time I’ve thought this. It’s not safe, but I won’t let go of her, no. Finally, Alex said, “Pilar is a very powerful woman, too, not someone to play with, ever. I’ll go ask her to pose for you. I’ll do it. I know her.”

  Sylvie watched Alex make her way through the crowd, find Pilar, and begin talking to her. They spoke for some time, and Alex was obviously making small talk so that her request would not sound shocking. Suddenly, Pilar looked startled, then angry, then proud, angry, and bellicose. Alex had evidently just made her request. Pilar’s face was brilliantly alive with rage. She elbowed her way directly over to Sylvie and stared at her, finally staring her down.

  “You know,” Pilar said, “some people look at me and think ‘here comes trouble.’ Sometimes they even tell me that. I’ve seen you here, and you know what I thought? I thought, ‘here’s trouble coming at you like a bull.’ There are some idiots following you around, all of which goes to show that people never learn what’s good for them.” Pilar looked up at Alex, who had joined them and heard the last few words, which caused a look of agony to pass over her face.

  “Alex, you are one of the women I most respect here, so I will not tell this unmentionable exactly what I think of her. I will pose for you, Sylvie, since Alex says you are a very serious artist. Whether you are serious in other ways, I don’t know. So, here’s what will happen. When I pose naked for you, you will be naked as you paint me. It will not happen any other way, I assure you.” Again, Pilar took a long, severe look at Sylvie in perfect silence and then walked away. It was clear that the sitting might or might not occur, but no hanky-panky would ever follow.

  Sylvie and Alex were silent for a long time and then looked intently at one another. “If you laugh in this room, with her seeing you, she might kill you, I warn you,” Alex said. “She carries a knife.” Sylvie nodded with a completely serious expression on her face. “I warned you about her,” Alex continued. “It’s no small thing that she grew up in a gypsy camp and made it here with a college education.”

  “You did warn me. And, I’ve just seen what may be the greatest painting I will ever do.” She was magnificent, a wild animal! Sylvie thought. I was standing right beside a wild animal, and it wasn’t safe; yet I was glued to the spot and didn’t want to be anywhere else. “Thank you for introducing me to that force of nature. I hope that I can win her respect one day, and I envy you that you have it.”

  A loud voice called out to the room from a member of the Mujeres Libres group. “OK, everybody, we’re going to sit down now and tell the story of our mothers, who they were, how they lived their lives, just as we did last night. Who wants to start?” The women sat down, settled themselves and were soon looking from one face to another with great interest.

  The first woman who spoke was from the writer’s group, a poet who supported herself through various part-time positions—fellowships at the university, teaching, and journalism. “My mother and I are from the Basque country, another region that is matriarchal. My mother has always been a cyclone of energy and creativity. Our village is full of competitions in Basque games and arts, most of which are held in the village tavern, as well as outdoor competitions in sports. My mother is the village’s finest bertsolariak, or spontaneous reciter of original poetry. In this Basque artform, you are given a lead for a poem from a previous reciter as well as a particular meter, and then you must continue or even complete the poem. There is applause and cheering after my mother’s performances because she always completes the poem brilliantly, dramatically and resoundingly. She has no equal, not even me. The poems are never written down or published, and my mother has scorned my attempts to do this for her. She loves the pure lawless fire of her imagination and doesn’t want it to be limited in any way, even by a printed page that she will never read.

  “Poetry is by no means her only skill. She is also one of the village’s best gamblers, for which there are tavern competitions, and she is the finest and most dramatic player of the alboka, a Basque bull horn that makes a sound similar to that of bagpipes. As though that weren’t enough, she is one of the village’s best hill walkers as well, for which there are outdoor competitions. The villages of the Basque region are often very poor, and paid employment is difficult to find. Our village would be impossibly dull without these competitions, which are an important part of our culture and economy.

  “When I graduated from the university and became a well-published poet, my mother was very proud of me. But, she also believes that spontaneous poetry is the larger share of poetic greatness and has a more direct relationship to the spirit, which she thinks of as a kind of creative fountain. My mother is surely a fountain, but I wouldn’t say that for the rest of humanity and its inspiration. I, on the other hand, believe that the finished poem is greater, since it is the final and cumulative act of a spirit or self that must be tested and harshly trained to channel and understand its inspiration and the universe that has formed it. Because of this, many poets think of themselves as people who must wait patie
ntly in a thunderstorm for the whole of their lives—and are only struck by the lightning of brilliant creativity a few times. Similarly, others think of themselves as cosmic interlopers—perhaps half-human and half-divine—who receive the visit of an angel only a few times in their lives and must create their own inspiration and poetry from such strange, marvelous and ambiguous material. These are ways of metaphorically speaking about inspiration on the one hand (and those are only metaphors poets use, not real angels or lightning), and on the other hand the long hard toil that at last becomes great poetry. That’s my belief, anyway.

  “One night when I was very young, my mother and I got a bit too drunk in the village tavern and decided to compete as poets. I gave her a lead from a published poem of mine in a certain meter, and we compared her spontaneous completion of the poem with my own labored one. We did this several times and then defended our poems passionately until at last we began to cast original and elaborate curses at one another, which is a precursor to poetry and also done in our village. Soon, we were competing through both curses and poems. The whole village gathered around us in astonishment for the poem after poem and curse after curse that poured from us. I must say that it was one of my life’s most utterly magnificent moments, and I treasure it for both its absurdity and its strange splendor.

  “Eventually, we were too drunk to remember who had won, and the villagers said they could not possibly decide between us. The next morning, we could hardly stop laughing as we remembered what we had done, but we both silently decided that any attempt to compare ourselves was impossible and that we could never know what form of poetry was greatest. Only the metaphorical angel would know, and there was nothing but silence from her. I think all poets are conversant with metaphorical angels and devils, since poetry is in some ways a truce between the two. So, we had no more discussions about the greatest poetry or further escapades in the tavern that no doubt gave the village such a great entertainment.

  “My mother is profoundly apolitical, as you might guess. Both ETA and the fascists much earlier as well as the resistance—anarchists, socialists, and communists—have tried repeatedly to recruit her, since all could see her unsurpassed energy and creativity. No one has ever succeeded, however. My mother accepts no master—be it political, cultural or artistic. She says that she honestly has no idea who my father was. But, she is certain it was an itinerant poet, a group for which she has a secret relish. The perfect man is one who will please her for an extended poetic moment and then depart for good.

  “My mother has been poor for most of her life, as have the other villagers. She inherited our house from my grandmother and has lived on the money won in many competitions as well as government handouts that are common among those who live in the Basque region. As soon as I graduated from the university, I tried to give her money, but she was too proud to accept it. However, she does keep the money I leave behind in the house after a visit, ‘gifts’ that seem to be the work of providence or the supernatural. Her ‘logic’ is probably as original and complex as everything else in her mind. She values herself greatly, and perhaps it strikes her as natural that ultimate reality should do so as well. Too, her spirit is so much that of a creator and gambler with life, and there may be a certain logic to the notion that she ‘wins’ an unknown and inscrutable ‘lottery’ from time to time. I do know that she does not believe the money comes from me; she would throw it into the street behind me if she thought so.

  “I must say that my mother is the most complex and difficult person I have ever known, though I love and admire her very much. I am always grateful to have escaped from my Basque village, however, and to have found my true freedom here in Barcelona. I’ve tried to convince my mother to come here, if only for a visit; but she refuses, claiming that she, like the other Basques, is of the original wild, historical stock from which the civilized world evolved. She says that she is part savage and can’t stay in a truly civilized place comfortably. I find this argument very disconcerting because, though wild and strange, it has a certain truth to it. I have also read some scientific studies—in archaeology, genetics and linguistics—that give some credence to her claim. And, I can’t deny that she is happy in her ‘wild’ state.

  “I have a lot in common with my mother. I, too, accept no master, and I treasure individuality and human beings as they naturally are. This infuses my poetry, and it is my personal answer to the question of my life’s meaning, recognizing that all answers to such a complex question are incomplete. Though my mother and I have sparred with one another like enemies, she is a big part of who I am. That is the simple truth, and perhaps the only simple one in the wonderful conundrum that is my mother.”

  The room was now full of the sounds of many women commenting to one another in soft voices. They were becoming more comfortable with the ebb and flow of the stories, which individually were very dramatic and created a room of complete silence around the storyteller. Slowly, they began to look around themselves again, and the expectation of another story was clearly present.

  The next woman to tell her mother’s story was a member of the lawyer’s group, and she spoke in a voice of great gravity that could rise spectacularly in a courtroom but was soft and gentle here. “My mother was born in a small Andalusian village to a family of bakers and stone masons. During the Spanish Civil War, she and my future father joined the Communist youth group when they were fourteen years old and fought in the resistance. In 1936, a junta formed that was headed by a traitor, Colonel Casada, who sold out his followers to Franco. Among them was my mother, who told me everything that happened to her, and when you hear it, you will know why I could never forget it. She was taken away by Franco’s mercenaries, Africans who were covered with stench and scabies. They took a train to the terrible prison at Guadalajara, and she was placed in what was called the ‘scabies room,’ where everyone was initially held since all had caught scabies from the mercenaries. This was a room big enough to hold ten people, but at least sixty women were placed there. No one could move unless everyone else moved, and it was a stark reminder of how interdependent their fates were. Instantly, the women became very protective of one another. This was the system they followed: during the day, they gave bedding and space to the women with children since they needed to feed them and rest from their special exertions. The other women stood. The nighttime was so cramped that a woman even slept on the toilet bowl in spite of all the interruptions to her sleep.

  “Eventually, they were moved into a patio that was larger, but their living conditions remained terrible. They received no more than a glass of water every three days, and they were given only sulfur to clean themselves. They were always hungry since they could eat nothing more than a bowl of soup every day. In it was an onion alternating occasionally with lentils, but the soup was also full of bugs and stones. My mother and the other communists had their heads shaved and the letters UPB, for Union of Proletarian Brothers, smeared on their scalps with tar. Everyone was close to starvation, of course, and many did die, particularly the children.

  “The women who had been clandestine agents were horribly beaten and kicked in their kidneys to make them name their contacts and comrades. My mother was proud to have given them only one name, and it was a man already known to them. The response of the children to their mothers after torture was utterly pathetic, since the women were thrown out of the torture rooms like bags bent over double. For hours, they could only creep while bent double because of the kicking, and some children couldn’t recognize them. One woman had two young sons—a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. The younger child cried and said this woman was not his mother, but the older son could make out her features and said it was their mother. All three held one another and cried.

  “My mother, who eventually got a thirty-year sentence, went to prisons all over Spain and knew women prisoners of all kinds. Convents, schools and any other large public buildings were confiscated by Franco and used as prisons. There were thousands of women in t
he prison at Durango. Some prisons officials—including nuns and priests—were sadistic and others compassionate. The latter gave more food to the women and saved many lives. When women were slated for execution by firing squad at midnight, they intervened at the last minute by formally verifying that no trial had been held, thus preventing the execution on legal grounds. Among the lives saved by this method was my mother’s.

  “Nonetheless, the women’s stories were heart-breaking. Even old women of eighty-five and girls of nine and ten were imprisoned as members of the resistance. Many were not clandestine agents at all. Some had done nothing more than cooking a meal for a soldier who knocked on their doors or doing a laundry for a few of them. Some women prisoners had brothers who were resistance fighters and had no other relationship to the resistance than that. Some had done nothing more than curse when bombs fell on their villages and were denounced by their neighbors.

  “One woman was beaten twice a day for three months and went mad. She spent the rest of her life in bed, nursed by her husband. One old woman in her eighties was the grandmother of three resistance fighters. The Falangists found her, beat her donkey to death in front of her, and dragged her to prison, where she was given castor oil until her intestines were permanently damaged. My mother had been an eldest born and was very close to her father. He moved whenever she was transferred to another prison, since he felt that he had to be near her. When he heard the length of her sentence, he had a stroke and had to be hospitalized. He said her name over and over and asked about her until he died.