‘What if I sent you first as an emissary, to tell them I was coming and gave myself up freely?’
‘They would put you in a cage so everyone could examine you. You’d be an icon of otherness, like a talking beast or a piece of meteorite.’
‘If the lion could speak, we would not understand it,’ said Donally.
‘What if I cunningly revealed my extreme intelligence and excellent though unorthodox education?’
‘The Barbarians are Yahoos but the Professors are Laputans,’ she said. ‘And you haven’t been educated according to their requirements.’
‘Don’t equivocate, answer his question,’ said Donally.
‘They’d walk around you carefully in case you bit them and clip off your hair and take photographs of the picture on your back, a relic of the survival of Judaeo-Christian iconography, they’d find that very interesting. They’d take away your coat of fur and dress you in a dark suit and set you intelligence tests where you had to match squares with circles and circles with squares. And give you aptitude tests. And manual dexterity tests. And Rorschach blot tests. And introversion/extroversion tests. And blood tests. And many other tests. And everything you did or said would be observed and judged, sleeping and waking, everything, to see how you revealed your differences, every word and gesture studied and annotated until you were nothing but a mass of footnotes with a tiny trickle of text at the top of a page. You would be pressed inside a book. And you’d be lodged probably with psychologists and all the time you’d be a perfect stranger.’
And though all she said was true and would prove quite inimical to the hostile and aggressive sources of his mysterious beauty, still she felt nostalgic for peace and quiet, now she was so ill.
‘And you, would you come and visit me in my room or cage, to give me a little charity?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not if you were not this thing you are outside.’
‘Pass her the flask,’ said Donally, well pleased with her.
‘But I never really proposed to immolate myself among her people, not in reality,’ said Jewel, watching her drink. ‘Though what would I become if I made all those concessions for the sake of the child?’
‘What will become of you, anyway? You’ll get shot on some raid or else in some attack and your remarkable carcass slung into a pit taking my masterpieces with it, more’s the pity.’
‘Everywhere I go, I’m doomed to be nothing but an exhibit,’ said Jewel.
‘I am an intellectual myself, what else do you expect from intellectuals; we are accustomed to examine things and scarcely bother ourselves about the hurt feelings of the things we examine, why should we? She’s passing out.’
‘No, she’s still kissing me. Have a bit of dignity, girl, pull yourself together. Embrace your destiny with style, that’s the important thing. Pretend you’re Eve at the end of the world.’
‘Lilith,’ said Donally, pedantically. ‘Call her Lilith.’
‘That’s a bad heredity. Besides, I always thought of Lilith as kind of mature.’
‘She’s a little Lilith.’
She said to Jewel: ‘You are so beautiful, I think you must be true.’
‘That’s a fallacy,’ snapped Donally.
‘But I think that, in the long run, I shall be forced to trust appearances. When I was a little girl, we played at heroes and villains but now I don’t know which is which any more, nor who is who, and what can I trust if not appearances? Because nobody can teach me which is which nor who is who because my father is dead.’
‘You’ll have to learn for yourself, then,’ said Jewel. ‘Don’t we all.’
‘Give me your son and I’ll turn him into the Tiger Boy.’
‘He wouldn’t survive it.’
‘I’ve perfected my technique since then, through the years; I wouldn’t harm him. Tattooing is the first of the post-apocalyptic arts, its materials are flesh and blood.’
He gave his lecture theatre cough but Jewel interrupted him.
‘It’s going to be a little girl, anyway. It’s going to be a small, black, spiteful little girl and I’ll cut my heart out for her to play with, if she wants it. Why did you try to poison her and me, that time? Was it another example of your diabolical artistry? Like when you killed my father?’
‘He was an old man who wanted to live for ever but he had a cancer. You don’t want to understand anything.’
‘Do something for me,’ said Jewel slowly.
‘Yes. All right,’ said Donally suspiciously.
‘Set your son free and throw away his chains.’
‘Why?’
‘To show me you didn’t mean to kill my father and you mixed up the drugs.’
‘How illogical,’ said Donally. He stood up, mounted on a box and urinated over the side of the cart. Then he resumed his position beside Jewel and slid his arm about him.
‘I regard you as my proper son.’
‘Did you become my father when you killed my father? What, did you eat him?’
‘I assumed responsibility for you.’
‘What, trying to kill me, too, on and off for ten years?’
‘I taught you all I knew.’
‘Caution, you certainly taught me caution. And genetics, metaphysics, some conjuring tricks and a few quotations from old books in dead languages.’
‘It’s not too late to learn from me. I’ll give you a future, if you’d only listen. I could make you so terrifying the bends of the road would straighten out with fright as you rode down. I’ll make you a politician and you could become the King of all the Yahoos and all the Professors, too; they need a myth as passionately as anyone else, they need a hero. Tamburlaine the Scourge of Asia conquered half the world by the time he reached your age but you can quickly make up for lost time.’
‘Set him free.’
‘Who?’
‘Your son. My brother, if you are my father.’
‘I’m frightened of him,’ said Donally after a long silence.
A shivering howl rose through the dark air and Marianne raised her head from Jewel’s breast to listen.
‘Set him free and I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll even learn to play the conquering hero, if you set him free.’
‘But what would happen then?’
‘If you refuse, you’d better take him to the Professors so they can cage him and give him blood tests.’
Donally shook the flask and heard no liquid rattle within. He dropped it on the floor of the cart.
‘Take him and leave him?’
‘No. Take him away but never come back yourself. Go home. I’m tired of you.’
‘Don’t be hasty. Consider.’
‘How can I possibly trust you if you’re frightened of something? Take your spells and prayers elsewhere and take away that bloody snake which signifies nothing. I don’t want you any more.’
‘But you still need me.’
‘Set your son free and you can stay.’
‘What will you do if I go away? Will you continue to rob and plunder or do you propose to settle and plant gardens?’
‘She’s clever. She’ll think of something.’
‘I’ll leave you,’ she said furiously. ‘As soon as the baby is born.’
‘You’ll never,’ said Jewel contemptuously. ‘You’re creaming for me now, this very minute.’
He thrust his hand between her legs but she said: ‘That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t leave you.’
‘Neither does it,’ he agreed. ‘But it suggests you might find going more difficult than coming.’
‘The candle is dying,’ observed Donally. ‘I’ll go to bed.’
‘I do believe we’ve come to the parting of the ways, at last.’
‘Do you?’ said Donally. He stood up and stretched. He appeared to reach to the top of the sky and the young man and woman cowered at his feet but this impression lasted only for a moment. He swung over the side of the cart and was gone, leaving only a burned-out candle lantern and an empty flask. Now only th
e stars and the cold, pale, crescent moon gave out a phantom light.
‘Everybody is asleep,’ said Jewel. ‘But my poor brother has his back on fire. Was it his son or Precious howling, do you think?’
Her fingers were all twisted in his golden leaves; suddenly he wrenched them away from her and said, in as cool and rational a voice as she had ever heard: ‘I am desperate; I am at the end of my tether.’
‘Don’t leave me by myself!’
But he had already shoved her against the sacks and was gone so she was quite alone with no protection at all, under the sky. Under the sky, the villagers slept sweetly behind barbed wire and armed watch towers which kept those on the outside from getting inside and those on the inside from getting out, except for this one female renegade who now stayed wide awake while the travellers slept rough upon the open heath and the Out People in subterranean dens slept, wild beasts slept in acrid dens and birds slept upon the sleeping trees so the ball of the world spinning in space was wholly possessed by a trustful sleep which rendered everything defenceless, a communal defencelessness which obliterated the differences between them all under the sky, which pressed down inexorably on the fragile, mutable structures beneath it like a heavy cover crushing all to extinction. The idea of the round world became flat as the palm of Marianne’s hand and shook itself, shrank and changed until it became no more than the splintered wood beneath her, some textures of coarse wool and fur and the little world of herself which contained all that it was possible for her to know. As she gathered herself together, the sky returned to its proper place and Jewel came back. She was surprised; she thought he had gone for good.
‘I’ve brought you a present, a necklace, what you wanted.’
He carried several coils of cold metal; it was the boy’s chain. He fell down and feverishly tried to bind her up with it but she easily disengaged her arms.
‘Jewel Lee Bradley, you scabby robber, you’re drunk again.’
He asked her her own question of earlier in the evening, though with far greater intensity than she.
‘What do you see when you see me?’
‘I see your face when I close my eyes though I would much rather not.’
‘I thought as much,’ he said and let the chain slide to the ground. Then they went to sleep, for they were both exhausted. The next morning, he sent her to Mrs Green, who left off stirring the porridge, took her into the relative privacy of the ruined barn, undressed her and examined her.
‘You’re about three months gone, I reckon,’ she said.
Green juicy weeds flourished shoulder high around them and cast delicate green shadows on Marianne’s breasts.
‘Have you been missing your periods and all? Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t notice.’
Mrs Green hugged her, kissed her and allowed her to dress herself. The chips of mirror on Marianne’s shirt shone with the refreshed light of morning like many small eyes opened after sleep.
‘You must take care of yourself, now; you can’t go trudging along in the dust and muck, it’s not right.’
‘I shall go wherever he goes,’ said Marianne composedly.
‘Is it as bad as that, dear?’ said Mrs Green with melancholy satisfaction and kissed her again. Marianne realized the woman had quite misinterpreted her and thought she meant she wanted to be Jewel’s shadow for ever; she was about to correct her when she saw a flash of scarlet through the doorway.
It was the boy, unchained, dressed up in Jewel Lee Bradley’s wedding coat of rotten scarlet silk which reached down stiffly to his bare feet. He was eating the meat off a chop bone. He wandered past the door, kicking the hem of the coat in front of him at each step, followed by a lean, balding brown dog who curiously sniffed the hem of his robe. He looked extremely happy, he beamed like the sun, which that morning shone with the tremulous light of the end of the year.
7
While Mrs Green was examining Marianne, Jewel went down to the stream and threw the boy’s chain into the water. When he returned to the camp, the Doctor sought him out and attempted to shoot him with a pearl-handled revolver but he missed. Jewel knocked him down. When Mrs Green and Marianne came out of the barn, they found Donally lying on his back in the grass beside the apple tree where Precious had been whipped. Jewel stood beside him, running his thumb down the edge of his knife and the entire tribe had gathered in a wide, wonder-struck and apprehensive circle round the fallen figure of the shaman.
‘I’ve not killed him yet,’ said Jewel to Marianne. ‘I wanted to ask your opinion.’
‘The porridge is burning,’ said Mrs Green and retreated to her cooking fire.
‘Your foster-mother has deserted you,’ said Dr Donally. His dark glasses lay in smashed fragments beside him and he blinked a little in the cool light of morning.
‘A public evisceration?’ said Jewel to Marianne but she knocked the knife out of his hand.
‘Look at them all, watching. Be careful, they respect him.’
‘You listen to her,’ said Donally approvingly. ‘She’s no fool.’
‘Keep quiet, you.’
It was like a parody of the performance of justice, only the audience had not the least idea what was happening or who was to be feared.
‘Let him go,’ said Marianne. ‘Put him on his donkey and send him away. Best not to murder him.’
‘Is it wise to let him loose?’
‘The wild beasts might eat him and do our job for us, in the natural state.’
‘You’ll be all alone without me,’ said the Doctor to Jewel. ‘All alone for ever and ever.’
Jewel kicked him. The boy appeared, red as a rose, with his arms full of old man’s beard and the feathery seeding heads of purple loosestrife; he took in the situation at a glance and, convulsed with mirth, scattered the soft, grey fruits over his father.
‘I see you ironically covered his nakedness with your wedding coat, Jewel,’ said Donally appreciatively.
‘I won’t have you using that name which was given me out of affection.’ He put away the knife with an air of decision. ‘But you can go, so then you won’t need to name me by anything.’
The boy danced backwards as Donally reared up, shedding a drifting cloud of purple blossom.
‘See how he treats his oldest friend!’ he declaimed to the wild gathering.
‘They’ll think what I tell them to think. That’s my privilege.’
‘Once I’m gone, no doubt you’ll start taking my advice; but you’ll be like an Eskimo trying to drive a train, you’ll be impotent.’
‘There’s mud all over you but I won’t let you clean yourself; go as you are.’
‘Am I allowed to take my books?’
‘I’ll burn them.’
‘My drugs?’
‘I’ll poison the nearest stream with them and all the fish will die.’
‘My son?’
‘If he wants to go, he can go. Otherwise, he can stay.’
‘That’s magnanimous,’ said Donally unpleasantly.
Johnny brought the donkey, ready saddled, and the Doctor mounted it with all his former élan. He bent down and pronounced his farewell in such loud and oracular tones everyone in the camp would hear it.
‘She shall have a vile childbed culminating in a monstrous birth and ultimately she will betray you in circumstances of unbelievable horror.’
Lightning should have flashed but did not.
‘Get going,’ said Jewel. He was battered and unkempt. He had neglected to duly braid the locks that hung in jags and dags down his shoulders and he was barefoot and ragged, though shining as always with glass, gold and precious stones, the Prince of Darkness but no gentleman and surrounded by silence. Donally’s donkey lowered its head and cropped the grass; Donally abandoned his prophetic manner and instead childishly implored, in an intimate whisper:
‘Give me one last look at my masterpiece.’
‘I think not,’ said Jewel.
Marianne was afraid one or oth
er of the company would break forward in defence of the magician, that a man would raise a rifle and shoot Jewel or a woman throw a stone at him, but nobody moved. Donally took his flute from an inner pocket and began to play sweet and penetrating music as if this were his last card and irresistible. Jewel snatched the flute from his lips and broke it across his knee. Donally petulantly threw up his hands and sighed.
‘Take me away,’ he said. ‘Throw me out. Throw out art, throw out culture, throw out wit and humour.’
Johnny’s eyes were fixed on Jewel, perhaps trying to learn some secret formula of expulsion. Marianne thought: ‘I will never trust Johnny.’ A smell of scorched porridge hung in the air; Mrs Green, watching nervously from beside her fire, neglected to stir.
‘Watch out nobody shoots me in the back,’ said Jewel to Johnny. After a moment, Johnny took his rifle and covered the crowd. Jewel slapped the donkey’s rump and took hold of its bridle; Marianne went with them but Donally’s son had lost interest in whatever was happening and now wandered off without a backward glance. The donkey stepped daintily between the sprawling briars on the ground, batting its spoon-shaped ears.
‘I shall burn the snake, alive or dead, and your mask and feather cloak,’ said Jewel. ‘It will be as if you never existed.’
‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’ve made my mark. And shall you really settle and plant gardens? You’ll be an idiot slave of nature, you’ll farm poisons, you’ll never be free.’
‘I am perfectly indifferent as regards the future. She can do a bit of thinking from time to time, perhaps.’
They arrived at the green road and stood looking at one another, in a sudden last uncertainty as to where their three allegiances lay, for the young man and his tutor had the strange attachment of years between them, the girl and her husband the bemused attraction of a sense of fatality and the girl and the magician the bond of a common language. And the girl and the young man, also, each suffered from the loss of a father.
‘Come with me, both of you,’ said Donally. ‘I shall take both of you under my protection. I shall go to the Professors and tell them you are my son and daughter-in-law, snatched from the arboreal innocence of the forest. Then they will treat you with that awed respect, tinged with circumspection, which the savants of eighteenth-century France reserved for the Hurons and the Iroquois.’
Heroes and Villains Page 17