by Donna Callea
“May the Holy One bless your union,” says Cynthia, smiling broadly now, as she concludes the ceremony. “May the Holy One embrace you both and smile upon you. May you be as fruitful as you want to be. May you sustain and pleasure and love each other all the days and nights of your lives.”
There’s more cheering, and then we all go outside where tables of food are waiting, and there’s singing, and dancing, and the drinking of large quantities of delicious wine.
Sex is considered sacred here. It’s what bonds two people together, and is really the only sacrament there is in New Eden. There’s no sex allowed here without love—without a loving commitment that’s exclusive and supposed to last forever. Once you’re coupled, that’s supposed to be it.
But sex is also the source of jokes, bawdy songs, and endless discussion.
And I can’t figure out how Lily and the other adolescent girls can go around with bare breasts for all to see, when they feel like it, without inciting all the pubescent boys to fits of lust. Let alone the coupled men. Not that I’m worried about David. Not really.
No one is bare breasted at our wedding ceremony. That’s not how things are here. Shedding clothes seems to be just a situational thing. Women breastfeed openly. They swim and sun bathe without tops. And although it’s not an everyday sight, when the weather is very warm you’re as likely to see a woman removing her shirt as a man. Because—and only because, I’m told—the person finds it more comfortable.
“Do you ever swim bare-breasted, or go about uncovered outside?” I ask Zora.
“No,” she sighs. “Not any more. My old girls sag quite a bit now and feel better enclosed in pretty cloth. Abraham, though, finds them lovely enough when I undress. That’s what he tells me, anyway,” she chuckles to herself, as if she’s the only one in on this joke.
“Does he find teenage tits at the pond lovely, too?” I ask bluntly.
“Well, he’s a man, isn’t he? He’s got eyes.”
Zora thinks it’s amusing that I’m bothered by it. Admiration and lust are far from the same thing, she assures me.
“After all, don’t most women enjoy the sight of broad, strong, masculine shoulders? Or a tapering waist and a nicely molded and muscled young male behind? It doesn’t mean we’re aroused. It just means we’re appreciative of some fine design work on the part of the Holy One.”
I look at her skeptically and let it be, although the subject remains on my mind for some reason.
“Would you like it if I went around naked from the waist up?” I ask David later that night when we’re alone.
“Nope,” he says, pulling down my pants, fondling me, and doing things with his mouth that preclude carrying on a serious discussion about public nudity.
“David,” I ask afterward. “Did you get aroused that day, when Miriam first took us to the pond, and you saw Lily’s bare breasts?”
“Me? No,” he insists. “I only get hard for you. Only ever have. You know that.”
I remember how upset he got when I told him that I let Caleb touch my breast and see me naked. And I know that until recently all the women David has ever seen, except me, have been covered from head to toe in public. Even in Winnipeg, pleasure women don’t go around baring their treasures.
“This place confuses me,” I tell him. “And not just because there are plenty of girls for some mysterious reason.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” He kisses me, tells me he loves me, and promptly falls asleep. David is a good sleeper. I tend to lay awake and think, until my thoughts wear me out.
It seems to me that sex is a basic, simple thing, really. It’s something that all creatures engage in, all animals. And we’re animals after all. Love, on the other hand, is complicated—impossible to define. Like The Designer, or the Holy One, or whatever the deity supposedly in charge of things is called.
Sometimes, old as they are, we hear Zora and Abraham having loud, joyful sex at night. Maybe they hear us, too, although I try not to cry out with them next door.
“The Holy One only knows how much I love that man,” says Zora to me one morning at breakfast, after a particularly noisy night which obviously doesn’t embarrass her at all.
“Do you know why we call the Holy One the Holy One?” she asks.
This is another one of her jokes, I think.
“Why?” I respond gamely.
“Because when I’m joined with the one I love, the two of us are wholly one.”
Chapter 40
David
Fruit of the Vine
Maybe it’s the wine. It’s probably the wine.
That’s what Rebekah thinks, too.
Not that everyone here gets intoxicated on a regular basis. But everyone past the age of 12 or so does drink wine every day. It’s the beverage of choice. Sweet red. Dry red. Poured liberally. As plentiful as water in New Eden.
People drink wine in other places, of course. But it’s not the same.
The grapes here come from ancient strains. That’s what I’m told by Gordon, our neighbor, who’s a master vintner.
He can’t explain how or why ancient strains of grapes happen to flourish now in this particular pinprick of the world where grapes didn’t even grow before The Great Flood, and not for a very long time afterward. He doesn’t know. But he’s absolutely certain that there’s something very wrong with the grapes that grow everywhere else.
“People ruined everything—everything that grows, everything good and natural—and that’s why the world turned to shit,” says Gordon. That’s his theory—although, like just about everyone else in New Eden, he credits the Holy One with the unprecedented abundance of females here.
Rebekah and I credit the wine. That’s our theory. At least, that’s our theory this week.
And who could ever imagine that wine—when properly altered—can also be used as protection against intruders?
New Eden is not really near anyplace else. It’s very secluded. Rebekah and I could never have found it on our own. But men from other places do wander sometimes. And every now and then—maybe once or twice a year—strangers wander into New Eden.
It happened a few days ago. Two men on horses rode into the settlement.
Four or five of the more senior men here came out to greet them. Everyone else stayed behind closed doors.
There was a big community meeting afterwards, and we were all told what happened. Which was no surprise to most people. But I thought it was pretty amazing. Rebekah, too.
The strangers, it seems, had ridden all the way from Thunder Bay. Thunder Bay? They said they were scouts from the Coalition.
Any mention of the Coalition elicits a very negative reaction from New Edeners. The Coalition, to most people here, represents everything they think is wrong with the outside world. It’s more messed up even than Winnipeg in their minds. And they believe, probably correctly, that it’s doomed to oblivion, sooner rather than later.
One of the reasons they welcomed Rebekah and me so warmly is that they like the fact that we escaped from the Coalition because we love each other.
Anyway, the strangers didn’t see very much of New Eden. They were ushered into the Gathering Place by the friendly senior men, and offered wine. Who can refuse New Eden wine? Especially worn out Coalition scouts tired and thirsty from the road.
They drank their fill and were sent packing with extra skins of a special edition sweet red.
They’ll be hallucinating for some time to come, I’m told. They won’t remember New Eden. They may not even remember their own names or histories, and are unlikely ever to return to the Coalition.
Which is all well and good. But it only makes Rebekah and me more confused about what’s going on here.
People in Winnipeg think New Eden is just another monogamist outpost. Like Eden Falls, only nicer.
I tend to think that The Designer—or Holy One—is conducting a little experiment here, providing grapes that yield wine, that repairs our faulty reproductive tracks, that would otherwise spi
t out mainly boys, just like everywhere else in the world.
Maybe it’s an experiment to see if human nature can be changed for the better if humans are given one more chance.
Or maybe it’s just a fluke. That’s what Rebekah thinks—a fluke attributable to the wine.
In any case, this is the best place we’ve ever been—strange as it is in some ways.
I’m getting used to seeing pretty young girls with their perky little tits cooling in the breeze. Not that it’s an everyday sight. And sometimes the sight is not so pretty. Certainly never as beautiful or as heart-poundingly sensual as the body that’s mine to fondle, mine to love.
I know that Rebekah worries about bare breasted girls being a source of excitement and/or enticement for me.
I think it’s funny that she’s jealous—although she would never admit it. I’m the one who’s always been jealous, always been determined never to share Rebekah with anyone else.
“Remember when you were maybe 14 or so, and on warm nights you’d wear your thin nightgown around the house, and sometimes I could see the shape of you underneath, your nipples…”
“You were always a horny little boy,” she says.
“Yeah. But Papa Andy used to look at you, too. He couldn’t help it. And he got in trouble over staring at you with Uncle John. Your father was very protective of you. He liked it when your hair was short as a boy’s and you wore my old clothes.”
“Why are you thinking about these things now?” she wants to know. “Are you telling me you’re like Uncle Andy? I hope you’re not telling me that.”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. It’s just that you’re so worried about me seeing other girls’ breasts sometimes. And it’s not really a big deal. Not here. It’s just human nature to look, and then to try not to look.”
“Yeah,” she agrees reluctantly. “You just better not ever want any to do anything but look.”
“There’s no chance of that. It’s just odd, that’s all, the way people are here. So unbothered by what would be criminal in the Coalition. It must be because women are more like men here—not physically or in the way they act so much—but more just on the same level. And men are more like women. It’s so different from the way men and women are toward each other in other places.”
“Yeah. Probably because of the wine,” Rebekah surmises.
The wine. That’s our theory this week.
Chapter 41
Rebekah
An Evening’s Entertainment
The people here like to be entertained. By their spouses privately—they like that the best—and by each other. Especially in winter when the days are short, the nights are long, snow blankets the vineyards and gardens, and most outdoor work comes to a halt.
Not that we don’t work in winter.
I go to the infirmary, as usual. Someone is always breaking or spraining a body part, major or minor. There are all the usual illnesses, although most people here tend to be pretty healthy. And babies get planted, grow inside their mothers, and get born. Sometimes easily, sometimes with great difficulty.
There’s not much of a distinction here between nurses and doctors, physicians and surgeons. We just all pitch in and do what we’re capable of doing. Skills and knowledge are informally passed on and shared. People become tenders and menders—which is what health care workers are called here—because they’re naturally drawn to this kind of work.
I don’t know if I’m naturally drawn. Nursing was the career I chose in the Coalition because everyone had to choose something. Then I got more training in Kitchener, and worked with Marjorie in Winnipeg. I like what I do here, and I’m learning a lot, especially from Alex, the chief tender and mender—although he’d never call himself chief.
Alex, who’s in his 60s now, has been a fixture at the infirmary since he was a boy. Tending and mending runs in his family. He says his late mother was sewing people up, setting bones, and catching babies until she died a few years ago. And his oldest daughter, Janine, knows more about medicinals than anyone.
I asked Alex once why he thought girls were being born at the same rate here as boys.
He says a better question to ask is why girls aren’t being born at a normal rate everywhere else.
“So why?” I ask.
“That’s a good question,” he says, and laughs. “Damned if I know.”
There are six of us who work in the infirmary, plus a handful of adolescent trainees who mostly look but don’t touch. We all work on a rotating basis, and help whenever we’re needed.
David also stays busy, no matter what the season. He’s part of a team of engineers and mechanics—men and women who keep the power generators going, the plumbing operational. They build, tinker with and fix everything mechanical that needs to be built, tinkered with or fixed.
Mostly though, in the winter, people have more time on their hands, so finding ways to keep us entertained also becomes a job for someone.
“Please don’t make us do that,” I tell Miriam. “It was bad enough when we had to stand up in front of everyone at our wedding ceremony and answer endless questions about our sex lives.”
“Oh, you enjoyed it,” she insists. “And this will be educational.”
Miriam is in charge of organizing entertainments this month. Usually they consist of plays, readings, song fests, talent contests—things like that. She thinks it will be a nice change, and very entertaining, for David and me to give a community lecture on what life is really like in the Coalition.
David is as appalled as I am. But in the end, we reluctantly agree to do it.
We’ve been curiosities of sort ever since we came here. We’ve been welcomed and made some good friends—especially Zora and Abraham—and have always tried to be open and honest when people ask us about our former lives. It’s a whole other thing, though, to stand in front of an audience and ramble on about the Coalition as if we were some kind of experts on that particular doomed and dying civilization.
The funny thing is, I feel as if I have to defend it.
“It’s really not the fault of our families, or any of the people where we come from, for having to live that the way they do,” I begin. “They haven’t been able to fix the birth rate. They’re just stuck.”
I look at David to help me.
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s not their fault, personally, that humans ruined the planet more than 600 years ago, and The Great Flood washed just about everything away, and now girls aren’t being born like they’re supposed to be.”
“Everyone has had to figure out a way to live,” I continue. “And in my opinion, the people in the Coalition are handling things in a much better way than say, the nasty old men in Eden Falls, whose ancestors came from right here in New Eden.”
There are some murmurs from the crowd.
Someone stands up. I don’t know his name.
“We realize that,” he says. “Please don’t get the wrong idea. We’re not interested in finding fault or feeling superior. Well, maybe a little.”
Everyone laughs.
“We’re just very curious,” he says. “Most of us can’t figure out how one woman could possibly handle a whole bunch of husbands. How do they do that? And why do the men put up with it? Why haven’t they all become mean, selfish old farts like our former kinsmen in Eden Falls?”
“Well, I guess it’s because mean and selfish men aren’t considered suitable for marriage where we’re from,” I explain. “Men who don’t get married have to be satisfied with pleasure women, like in Winnipeg. And men who do get married have to have the right kind of dispositions, so that sharing a wife isn’t a problem.”
Several people in the audience ask specific questions about sex. They want to know how it’s handled in polyandrous households. They want details.
“You’ve got to understand that David and I were very young when we left. The adults talked about sex to us sometimes, but mostly it was to warn us not to have it with each other.”
> Someone asks David if he was considered suitable for marriage, just not with me.
He answers honestly. He explains that women are required to marry at 18, but men not until they’re at least 25. So he wasn’t yet evaluated.
“But it’s doubtful anyone would have had me,” he says. “I’m possessive, at least I was when it came to Rebekah. I’m competitive. I’m jealous. And I tend to act rashly. Those traits should have been bred out of me.”
“Bred out of you?”
“What do you mean?”
David looks at me sheepishly.
Fine. Now I have to tell everyone here how Coalition women are trying to build better men.
Susannah insisted that it was something that should always remain a secret. Unfortunately, being a compliant and obedient girl was never bred out of me. So I let the New Edeners in on the trick with sponges.
Alex stands up and points out that it would take countless generations before that kind of selective procreation could possibly result in a more peaceable population.
“No doubt you’re right,” I say.
“Still, you have to give those women credit for at least trying,” opines Zora, who’s sitting near the front.
Then we talk for a while about other aspects of life in the Coalition—the cover-all cloaks for women, the increasingly oppressive ordinances—although everything seems to revolve, in some way, around sex.
Finally, we’re done. Everyone has been sufficiently entertained.
“Did you know that before The Great Flood people got almost all their entertainment by staring at little hand-held screens?” asks David after we get home.
“Wish they had them now,” I say. “No matter what Miriam says, there’s no way the two of us should ever be considered entertainment for the masses.”
“Yes. But privately, I do find you extremely entertaining. Especially when no talking is involved.” David thinks he’s becoming quite the wit.
We do talk some, though.
I tell David, as we get undressed, that I think maybe we shouldn’t use sponges for a while, and see what happens.