Inner Circle

by Jerzy Peterkiewicz

  ‘His kiss lingered. And my father said he was drinking strength from the circle made by Our father on Cain’s forehead, and he thanked me for being the bearer of the circle.’

  ‘Did Adam suffer?’ I asked. ‘Did he feel the heat of sweat? did he complain of thirst!’

  ‘No, mother, he didn’t complain. He only begged forgiveness from the tree, but I couldn’t follow many of his words because he whispered them in the tree speech. And then my father saw you.’

  ‘He saw me? When!’

  ‘When you were crossing a river and the giant water birds, he said, swam on both your sides, ready to assist you, should you have stumbled into a whirlpool. And he smiled at the sight he was watching. It was a happy smile.’

  I had no words in my mouth, I felt a strange hunger under those absent words. My son spoke on:

  ‘And my father looked at death. When you see a look like that, mother, you know it belongs to death.’

  ‘Did Adam call anyone in a loud voice before he died!’

  ‘No, he didn’t cry out.’

  ‘Cain, did he whisper the Sky Man’s name?’

  ‘No, mother, he didn’t speak to Our father. He whispered your name.’

  ‘Repeat that whisper to me, Cain.’ His face grew pale and he trembled. Only the sign over his eyes burnt fearlessly, and to this sign I directed my voice:

  ‘I command you, Cain, to repeat Adam’s last sound.’

  ‘Eeeve . . .’ his whisper lingered like that kiss of the dying Adam on his brow.

  And when the whisper ended, Cain fainted and lay at his father’s feet.

  I picked up a cool stone from the ground and put it on his neck. The stone revived him, he rose and walked ahead of me, stooping in the likeness of Adam. The tower cast a shadow, half its afternoon length. Cain looked at it for a while and said as we were entering his home:

  ‘The shadow of the tree was just that length when he died.’ And my son kissed the double circle on the dark clay inside his tower.

  I stayed a few days with Cain until his wives and his children returned to the island. They didn’t know how to speak to me, and preferred to listen and watch. Even the youngest of my granddaughters who played with turtles near the water, ran away from me, afraid of my eyes which she believed could harm her and kill her pets. When Cain carried the child to me in his arms, she kept her eyes covered. And I knew then that the touch of my lips or hands would only make her weep. Perhaps these children lived in dread, hearing the beasts of prey at night. I said to Cain:

  ‘You must distrust all animals. They were once obedient, they are still playful when young, but their hunger for our flesh grows with their generations.’

  ‘Animals never come to us, mother, even between the tides, when there is no water, only slime and the stones all the way to the mainland.’

  ‘Why don’t they come?’

  ‘Because they smell a killer in me. And I have never destroyed any of them. I obey my father’s commandment.’ He had Adam’s features, he was wrinkled with age and his eyes had already seen death, twice.

  ‘You are branded with holiness, my son.’ I bowed before him in love and in reverence.

  ‘I did kill once. Do you kill holiness to bear its mark?’

  2

  Cain accompanied me through the first forest which was light and slender because of the palm-trees. It was easy to walk and I wanted my firstborn to be my guide and my comfort. His love had no childish tenderness like Amo’s love for me, but he understood Eve better than any of her sons. We didn’t talk much, we didn’t even recall the early days, seventeen children ago, when we were only five in our first human circle: the parents, two sons and a daughter. The first crime broke the first circle.

  And not once did Cain speak of Adam’s death on the tree. There was no burial.

  Neither I nor my son wished to remember why there couldn’t be any burial for Adam, himself an urn made of clay.

  Cain took upon himself some of his father’s duties. Now he was the eldest, a man in the closest image of the man. He would wander, Cain told me, from home to home, wherever the double circle marked the inner walls of Adam’s breed. He would help them to remember what was already half forgotten and what was fading, birth after birth, in the skyless eyes of the new generations.

  We were to part on the bank of the same river which I had crossed safely, watched over by the giant water birds and by Adam dying on the tree. This time there were no birds awaiting me. I had to do the crossing on my own. Suddenly, I felt emptiness in the air and above the air, between the two skies: his protection was no longer with us; the life widening in division, which he had held together with his blessing hands, would now split asunder, and we, the people of Adam, would walk the earth amidst the hostile outbursts of growth, amidst the off-shoots of the genesis.

  ‘I am afraid of the sky which hangs, unsupported by Adam, above our heads.’

  On purpose I didn’t mention the Sky Man, but the fiery sign glared at me from Cain’s forehead like the Sky Man’s single eye.

  On parting my son knelt and embraced my legs as he had done every morning during our journey, and as every morning before, I laid my hands on his large grey head.

  ‘My hands will miss the moss softness of your hair.’ I didn’t want him to look up, I knew that he was weeping, the strongest of our breed.

  ‘Mother,’ Cain said, when I was already standing in the river, ‘what words shall I take from you to your children and the ones born from their seed?’

  ‘They never come to see Eve, they never come.’ I didn’t mean it to be a reproach.

  With the expanse of water ahead of me, I saw it widening into my solitude.

  ‘My own children think you are a creature from the sky, a woman with the eyes of a giant. They have stupid fears, but they love you even through dread.’

  I wanted to believe him, and smiled. The water felt less cold on my ankles. Yes, I would tell him Eve’s thought, a thought fallen from the sky with Eve’s ancient hope, so that he could give it to the others, huddling under their little hopes.

  ‘Cain, this is my thought for Eve’s children and their generations to come.’ I raised my voice and it sounded well in the dry, windless air. ‘We are being made all the time in the image of what we were and of what we are going to be.’

  I repeated Eve’s thought from the sky, and Cain repeated it after me, twice. And he understood it: I could tell by the burning eye over his sunken eyes. Then he departed without turning his head back. This was how his father always departed from me.

  The moon counted the measures of my further journey. It grew big three times and three times it lost its roundness, looking now like a goat’s horn, now like the broken skull of a fox. And my blood had stopped flowing, against the moon’s law. I was tired with keeping the old blood, I was tired with being a moonless woman. Only my feet bled, walking.

  I could hardly shuffle my legs when I neared the southern end of my lake. A small boat was there to comfort me, a boat scooped by Amo out of black bark. I scraped the slime and filled a crack with sticky stalks, then I lay in the boat exhausted, my arms drooping into the water. Later I used them to paddle, and arrived home towards the evening.

  It was impossible at first to step onto the shore. The ground was torn and slashed with their tusks and snouts; dung, bones and heaps of broken twigs lay scattered along the lake and up over my path. As I was wading through the animal dirt, I heard their snorting, grunting and squealing. Like locusts they covered my land, like locusts they were devouring the food of my land. On four legs, with hideous tails behind, on four props for their bulging bellies, four busy hooves in their own mire.

  And I couldn’t enter my house. The big stones in the doorway were stinking with animal urine, the passage between them was befouled, ankle-deep, with excrements, the strong odour of beasts clung to the clay walls; wisps of moulting fur, feathers and bitten-off claws turned my three beddings into dishevelled lairs.

  Were the beasts hiding
from my anger, or watching me from the dark corners?

  Perhaps they were already on the run. Had I heard the last of their noises? What could I do now? Only clean a small part of the house and sleep in it, expecting strength to return after a long night.

  I worked for a whole day removing the dirt, washing the kitchen and the entrance stones; the next day I repaired Amo’s rain wall, under which the beavers and foxes had dug holes; I toiled for six days more, among the wounded trees and uprooted plants. My strength had returned, but another effort like this would spend it forever. Through my heavy work and the dread of further hardships I recognized my old age. How could I go on, resisting their intrusion, cleansing my land of their filth if my own ages were against my blood? They told Eve’s body to disobey Eve.

  With their quick snouts the animals must have smelt my weakness, as they could smell a rotting carcass from a distance. But however hard they tried, they would never sniff out Eve’s thoughts. I had prepared a few of my thoughts to catch the beasts unawares. All round the centre of my homestead I placed snares and traps, using the hunting tricks of Amo and my own guile.

  Between the traps I lit night fires so that no animal could slip through the circle.

  During the first night after setting up my sly defences I heard much howling and screaming, but I wanted to see their exhausted ferocity in the light of day. Their contorted limbs, broken tails, smears of blood and torn-off flesh satisfied my revenge. Still, I had to think beyond this satisfaction. I would leave them, each in its pit of pain, to howl and writhe, to scorch in the sun, so that their packs could hear the cries and then see, if they dared to come, Eve’s punishment.

  Before the moon changed, I got used to my imprisoned beasts, to their slow dying and their teeth bared in the moment of stillness. So far I had never ensnared a monkey.

  But after the full moon I saw one, beating the pole over the trap with both its paws.

  Instead of widening the top, the monkey loosened the lower perch, slipped and screamed on grabbing a cluster of thorns. Then it kept quiet, out of fear of dropping deeper, or it had lost much blood. I left the beast as it was, but in the morning went to observe my victim.

  The monkey had already managed to disentangle itself from the bramble of thorns, its head was visible above the ground, a large head narrow at the top. What were the eyes like? Could I surprise the beast by sneaking from behind so as to catch his eyes?

  It heard movements at once, turned its whole body and stared straight at me. Now it was I who felt drawn to his eyes, I who wanted to look into them. To test the monkey’s endurance I crouched and held his stare in mine. Then I shuddered. There was a human intelligence in front of me, not fully human perhaps, but close enough to make further pretence worthless.

  I had trapped a young treeman, but very different from the big ape who had first named himself in the likeness of man; he could face Eve because he must have been born by one of her daughters. No, not Irda’s tree man, he would have been younger, and I would have guessed without fail that he was hers. Strange how this revelation altered my next thought. I should help this creature to free himself, I was ready to hold my hand out when I recalled the earlier feeling which didn’t concern the treeman at all, but my daughter. Why then this sudden pity, I thought, could I really pity a creature so remindful of the ugliest shame I knew!

  The treeman, as if sensing my hesitation, lifted himself through the painful obstacles in the snare, didn’t utter a cry, and to my admiration clambered out, unhelped.

  Again he looked at me, this time almost with a laughing grimace and hobbled to a trap, in which a lynx cub had died during the night. With his clever paws he undid the twisted noose, removed the sticks from under the perch, the dead animal fell in, and the treeman shoved leaves over it. His movements were precise, no doubt to impress me further, and I was impressed.

  After the young treeman had stayed a few days, eating, sleeping and curing his wounds, I learnt much about his habits and would do nothing to frighten him away. I was still curious and I almost wished he would think something up to prove how spiteful ape-men could become, if you let them go free. He soon showed his manner of thinking. By night he hobbled about, doing this and that to the clay, then he flattened it to get a smooth surface, and started to draw short lines and pierce dots with a flint. I saw he wanted me to watch, because he kept turning his head towards the entrance stones.

  First the treeman drew a tree, then another, then a circle with three dots inside; after the circle came animal hooves and tails, then more trees and more dots. Once he was sure that I observed his movements, he began adding things between and above the signs.

  He nodded when I recognized a treeman and a woman, he nodded again when I said both words. The young treeman was talking to me through lines and circles on the clay.

  Whenever I gave the right word at once, he was pleased and sat up on his stump of a tail, admiring the clay surface. This small tail seemed to serve him well, it was as active as a snout, yet it could never be a killing weapon. Now he rested on his rear stump, a funny sight for a monkey, a sad stranger for Eve, and I liked the treeman for having a mere stump of a tail.

  His leg got better, and he stopped hobbling around his patch of clay speech. One afternoon he drew me a walking sign, four feet and a line of trees. He was asking me to visit the treeland. From his gestures and nods I could guess no threat or condition; on the contrary, the ape-man made me understand this was an almost humble plea. And the visit shouldn’t be postponed: he expressed the urgency by adding a few more drawings of feet, all close to one another, as if rushing on.

  I thought Eve’s lakeland was much farther away from the land of the tree-apes. It took us merely a day and part of a night to reach the enclosure which the big chieftain had chosen to be the seat of his dominion. There he was buried, like a man, under a heavy stone, so that no jackal or buzzard could attack his grave. This I learnt from a very clever sign which the young treeman had moulded for me, using clay, sticks and a little stone. It was during our second rest, and I told him too, how their ruler had died from Adam’s unspoken thought. The treeman nodded often, he understood my words or perhaps knew the story already.

  We arrived in the dark. I was led into a twig-plaited bower, smelling of mint leaves and juniper; there I found food and drink prepared for a human creature, soon a small fire was lit outside by some invisible hands. No one disturbed me, I had time to think and to sleep. My first thoughts, however, didn’t go to Irda alone; I was trying to imagine them all, half-human apes, quarter-human apes and daughters of man, there in those tall trees, ignorant of my presence in their midst, or, maybe, ordered to wait patiently until the light of day.

  On awaking I saw fresh food, a new fire, and a tree man very much like the one who had fallen into my trap, their eyes had the same glow of intelligence and understood my signs. Instead of using the other’s clay speech, this treeman could utter a few human words. The most important of them were two names, his and Irda’s. He called himself Na-ar and was married to Irda.

  Na-ar treated me with great respect, but no fear showed in his eyes. Like his brother he could stare at me without harming his beautiful human eyes. I asked him many questions, some of which he didn’t seem willing to answer, although at first I believed he had missed the sense of some words. No, he understood me perfectly. How many children had they, he and Irda, and Na-ar showed with his dark sinewy fingers: thirteen.

  Impossible, I said, for I thought immediately of the twenty births by which I counted my ages.

  This he found difficult to explain in words because he didn’t know many and the clay speech probably lacked signs for such ideas. Finally, I gathered from the animal noises he also tried on me that the mating between the tree-apes and my daughters quickened the birth of their offspring, and so they were many. They had to multiply and they did multiply to ensure their dominion over the trees.

  Irda’s husband had a word and a gesture to inform me of her illness. ‘Bad,�
�� he said and quickly squeezed his hairy temples. And then he brought to me Amo’s daughter, my last child, and some of her offspring. No questions were needed now, no speech whatsoever, whether laid on the tongue or on the clay. Irda stood empty of Irda.

  She didn’t recognize me. And I saw before me an aged woman clothed in monkey skins, her grey hair tangled into the shape of a beehive, her arms and legs thin and scratched all over. Her husband and the husband’s clever brother explained what was unnecessary to explain: that she kept falling off the trees, because her illness was bad, bad in the head, there-and again they touched their own hairy temples. Cure Irda with your fingers, they both pointed to my trembling hands, cure her.

  Then her children tugged at my tresses, my girdle, my bracelets. And they squealed and snorted, and shrieked with human sounds, the idiots of my new generation.

  I stood in their midst, invoking from within my deepest silence the power that was once named Eve.

  Yes, I did try to cure my crazy daughter. I placed the burning tip of my finger in the middle of her forehead, I pressed it hard, I mumbled something to the demons howling inside her thoughts behind her brilliant eyes, and I hoped, how I hoped then, that I would brand her with the fire of sanity, and that the mark would remain there, with the Sky Man’s will or against his will.

  Since Irda’s sickness had already triumphed in her offspring, those human apes with invisible tails, I couldn’t burn it out at the roots. She didn’t want to return with me.

  Like her mother, Irda trusted the trees; like Eve she loved them.

  3

  Now my great age and my great weakness were known to all the creatures of the earth. How could I be called the mother of the earth if I had failed to cure my own daughter? The treemen spread the news. I had no power in me, no protection from my husband, and the Sky Man was against me, as before. So the animals which he had put between Eve and her husband were now invading my land from every lair in the forests around the big lake.