Tremble

by Tobsha Learner

  Why wasn’t she frightened? Was this sense of contentment hormonal? Or was she under some strange influence that dulled all normal emotional reactions? Still groggy, she tried analyzing the events. She remembered years ago she’d read that there had been one or two reported cases of so-called virgin birth. One was the rare occurrence of the embryo of an identical twin becoming trapped inside the body of her sister, and when fully grown the sister had given birth to her twin.

  It seemed ridiculous to attempt to apply any scientific rationale to the birth or the acceleration of every natural process in and around the cave. It seemed she had only one choice: to accept the phenomenon. But that would require the faith she knew she still lacked.

  The baby smiled at her. At least he seems happy, she thought, gathering the child into her arms. The clean milky smell of his hair made her heart clench. She carried him over to the bowl. There she washed him carefully, examining every inch of his flesh for any faults. He was flawless.

  “You’re beautiful, however you came to me,” she told him, then realized that she hadn’t given him a name. She tried to think of all the biblical names that would fit and decided to call the boy Joseph, because it felt as if he had come to her from a dream.

  “Joseph,” she said out loud and the baby reached up and touched her cheek with his hand. As he touched her his fingers extended another quarter of a centimeter. Impulse made her place the baby’s hand in her mouth. She could feel the flesh growing, millimeter by millimeter, with each beat of the child’s heart. It was an astonishing sensation. She pulled his hand out of her mouth and stared at his body. It was like time-lapse photography. She could see his arms and legs lengthening, the muscles developing, unfurling beneath the skin like roses. She checked her watch, timing his development: he grew two centimeters in less than three minutes. Clarissa was stunned. Suddenly the baby starting urinating, his pee shooting up like a miniature fountain. That was real enough, even for her. Laughing, she wiped him clean.

  As she washed him down Joseph stared up at her. “You know exactly what’s going on, don’t you?” she asked him, and to her fascination the child seemed to nod. He was now the size of a one year old, his beauty blinding.

  She cleaned herself and put on a fresh white tunic she found in the cupboard. Her breasts were heavy again with milk. Amazingly she felt better than ever; the birth seemed to have renewed her health, not depleted it.

  Joseph crawled across the floor of the cave. It was hard even to believe that he actually existed. She needed concrete proof, evidence that he wasn’t just a projection of her own mind. Suddenly she remembered that she had packed a digital camera. She ran to the bed and pulled out her suitcase. Throwing clothes around she searched frantically and found it buried under a pile of stockings. Joseph pulled himself up by the table leg and took his first steps. As he walked clumsily toward the door she aimed the camera at him.

  She sat down on the floor and stared at the image. The background was crisp and in focus, but the child’s outline was blurred, as if the speed of his growth kept his molecules in constant motion. But he was there in the image, evidence that something extraordinary had happened.

  You’re real, she thought, her eyes welling up with tears.

  The child smiled and, wobbly on his feet, walked over. He rested his little torso against her then reached up and grabbed one of her full breasts. With a knowing look, he fastened his mouth on her nipple and began to suck. Her pleasure was disconcerting and intense. She sat back and let him take his fill. She felt his gums grow hard as he literally began to teethe while still on the nipple.

  “Ow!” she exclaimed as he nipped her. She pulled him away and wiped the milk off his mouth. “How am I ever going to explain you?” she pondered as Joseph played with her hair. “No one would believe me if I told them I was a virgin. They’d think you were the result of a secret love affair and accuse me of breaking my vows.”

  She imagined the headline in the Adelaide Advertiser: LOCAL NUN GIVES BIRTH TO MIRACLE BABY! It made her smile. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how her father would react, but one thing was for sure: he would never believe her. Perhaps no one need know the truth.

  “Come on, time to be introduced to the world.” She picked up a blanket, tucked the struggling child under one arm, then walked outside.

  He sat next to her in the shade. Fascinated, he watched the sky and then the sea. He now seemed about five years old. His loveliness enthralled her. She couldn’t help running her hand across the smooth softness of his back and buttocks. He was perfect. His hair had thickened and fell down to his shoulders. His face had lengthened and he now had the look of a boy rather than a baby. His mouth had become fuller and more pronounced as his cheekbones had sharpened. His skin tone had darkened giving him a Middle Eastern appearance. Clarissa could see none of her genes in him. It was as if he had sprung up biologically independent of her.

  “I may have given birth to you, but you’re nothing to do with me, are you?” she asked, expecting nothing but the seagulls to answer. To her immense shock he replied, but in a tongue she couldn’t understand.

  “Speak again,” she demanded, and he did, this time with a longer sentence but still in a completely incomprehensible language. She pointed to the sky and he replied with one word. It sounded vaguely familiar.

  “Wait!” She got up and ran into the cave, her heart pounding. She grabbed her English dictionary and a reference book on biblical languages. She returned and, panting, flung herself down beside the child who had grown another inch in her absence. She flicked through the book, then pointed at the sky. “Again,” she demanded.

  Joseph gave her a glance that could only be described as both ironic and patient. He repeated the word. She looked at the open page. Yes, she was right! He was saying “sky” in Aramaic. She ran her finger down and found the word for “sun.” Carefully wrapping her tongue around the complicated sounds, she pronounced the word slowly. Joseph clapped in delight and pointed to the sun, then leaned over and kissed her.

  She sat back stunned at the sensation that had shot through her body at the touch of his lips. It hadn’t been the kiss of a child, nor of a son, but of a lover. She looked at him and he smiled, a slow, wicked grin, then reached for the English dictionary. Could it be possible that his mind is fully formed? she wondered, uncertain whether she had just imagined the kiss.

  She watched as he read, his features blurring ever so slightly as he continued to grow. It was like watching wind rippling through the leaves of a tree, the changes so infinitesimal that it was hard to pinpoint them exactly. The child flicked through the pages of the dictionary, his eyes greedily darting from one entry to the next, drinking in the book.

  All of a sudden she was petrified about what this child would reveal as soon as he could communicate with her. What happens if he has been sent here by evil forces? she thought as all kinds of horrible scenarios began to crowd into her mind. What if he’s here to destroy? Maybe even to kill me? She had never had a strong belief in the devil per se, but had seen enough inexplicable violence in her working life to believe that there was an essence of evil that existed beyond analysis, beyond judgment—it just was. Could he be of this essence? Medieval archetypes of Satan floated through her head: the horned grinning death mask carved into the stone at the entrance to the church, a warning to all sinners. Had she sinned? Could this child be a manifestation of Lucifer? She panicked; there was nowhere to escape to, they were marooned in the tiny bay together.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he suddenly said in perfect English.

  Clarissa screamed and ran into the cave. She slammed the door behind her and stood there, heart pounding. Through the window she could see the child’s perplexed face as he ran across the sand after her. He stumbled and Clarissa gasped, all her motherly impulses on alert. To her confusion and relief he got back to his feet and continued toward the cave. Clarissa closed her eyes, torn between her maternal instincts and self-preservation.

  Ther
e was a knock on the wooden door. “Clarissa?” Joseph’s voice was barely audible.

  How does he know my name? Her thoughts whirled around madly.

  “Clarissa,” he said again. “I read your name inside the book you gave me.”

  He read my mind! He’s telepathic! Terror rattled her throat as the world fell away.

  “I’m not here to harm you,” he whispered, knocking again, his hand pressed against the glass.

  Not here to harm me. So he has been sent—but by whom? For what? She pressed herself against the wall.

  “Please…” He spoke through a crack under the pane, his voice sounding weaker.

  She slid across and peered through the window. He was already taller but he was still a child; she could overpower him if she had to.

  “Who are you?” she said, speaking through a small crack.

  “Open the door. I need you.”

  His plea made her melt. Before she had a chance to think rationally she found herself opening the door. Joseph was already ten years old.

  “This was ordained. Tomorrow we shall talk.” He took her hand and led her back down to the sea.

  They sat in silence watching the waves.

  “I know everything about you, without words,” Joseph said eventually, his voice still a child’s but the intonation adult. The intimacy between them inexplicably deepened. He stood up, as if to deliberately break the spell.

  Clarissa, who had never experienced male nudity, couldn’t help but be fascinated by the changing shape of his sex, which hung like a ripening fruit, thickening and growing against the now muscular length of his thigh. The shadow of hair was already visible across his belly. He caught her looking at him and arched his back, extending to his full glory.

  “Am I beautiful to you?” he said, without a trace of arrogance, almost as if referring to himself in the third person. Clarissa, blushing, was shamed into silence.

  Again Joseph reached for her breast. Not knowing how to react she froze as he bent down and began to drink hungrily. He nestled his head against her other breast and began to toy with that nipple, teasing it between his fingers. As she slowly came out of the hormonal fog of breast-feeding, she was shocked to realize that he was playing her nipple with his tongue. It was not the action of a child.

  “Enough.” She pushed him off her, trying unsuccessfully to adopt the authoritarian tone of a mother. “I’ll get you something to wear, you can’t run around like that.”

  She gave him a pair of shorts and a loose T-shirt. They were her size but she calculated that he would grow into them in a couple of hours. He laughed and twisted around as she pulled the clothes over his head. Dressed, he leaped out of her arms and ran into the shallows, splashing joyfully and taking delight in both the coordination of his limbs and the foaming water.

  Clarissa watched from the beach, trying to convince herself that he would be safe. To her relief he swam like a fish, singing some haunting song in Aramaic as he floated on his back, rolling with the incoming waves. He is like a mythical figure, she thought. It seemed to her that he was a being more archaic than Jesus. Indeed, if he did come from God, which God? Her own, she assumed, since he had been formed in her, but why her of all women?

  Joseph suddenly tilted his head as if he had heard something.

  “What is it?” she shouted, but he gestured to her to be quiet. He stood, lifted his hands up to his mouth, and made a curious clicking sound out to sea. Silence. He called out again. Suddenly the spine of a humpback whale rippled out of a swelling wave, a spout of water following as the whale returned the call. Joseph clapped his hands with joy and called out again. And again the whale threw a great spurt of water up into the sky, the majestic barnacled head emerging for a second, one beady eye cocked toward the dancing boy. Slowly it turned and dived back down again. The surface of the ocean closed and it was as if the creature had never been there. Clarissa looked back at Joseph. He stood there staring at the horizon and for a moment she saw sorrow break across his face.

  At dusk she fed him spaghetti, olives, and feta cheese followed by figs and honey. He paused before the huge plate of food, then grabbed handfuls of the pasta to stuff it into his mouth. She had to teach him how to use a fork and knife. He learned at lightning speed and she realized that he only needed to see anything once to master it.

  After dinner he picked up a wooden flute lying on the mantelpiece and began to play. It was a complex melody embellished with sudden flourishes. As he played he danced, rotating his hips uninhibitedly as his feet drummed against the stone floor. He was dancing for her and Clarissa found the seductiveness of his movements both exciting and excruciatingly embarrassing. She covered her confusion by clapping along as he whirled, getting wilder and wilder with the exuberance of an adolescent.

  He finished playing and threw himself down on the rug at her feet. There was the shadow of a mustache on his upper lip. His eyebrows had thickened, his cheeks had hollowed out, and despite having the skin of a boy he already had the bones of a man. A devastatingly handsome man. For a moment he watched her watching him, the fierce green of his eyes a beautiful but startling contrast to his olive skin.

  “Clarissa?” he said, his voice now cracking with the hormones that were pumping through his body.

  “What?” she answered softly, not wanting to destroy the moment.

  “Lyrical, your name is lyrical,” he said, reaching across for her foot. “Which comes from the Greek meaning senses, as in lyric, having the form and manner of a song.” He started to caress her foot. His touch was delicious; his massaging fingers sent a multitude of sensations up her leg to her groin. She involuntarily groaned; it was hard to pull her foot away but she managed.

  “Remember, I am your mother,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. Joseph looked mystified. “Mother love is not the same as love between a man and a woman,” she tried to explain.

  Then why did she feel so furtive, she asked herself. Was it because she desired him, or was it because she felt on some strange level that she was denying him? And why did she feel lust now? She never had before.

  She covered up her leg. It was getting dark and she was very conscious that there was only one bed. Joseph rolled onto his back and stretched luxuriously. He had all the physical splendor of a young colt, his narrow shoulders not quite a man’s, his hips too narrow to cradle the bulge of his manhood.

  “Why is mother love not the same?” He grinned.

  Clarissa tried to ignore his erection clearly outlined under the thin material of his shorts. She was torn between intense curiosity and the terror of committing an unnatural act. His sensuality was so completely natural and without guile that she couldn’t help but be swept up by it.

  “It’s late. We should sleep. If I give you a blanket will you be all right by the fire?”

  He nodded reluctantly. He was now about fourteen, his hands dangling awkwardly at the end of his long wrists. She handed him the blanket and turned her back on him as she changed into her nightgown. But she felt him watching her undress, his gaze sweeping across her back like beams from a lighthouse. She played up to him, turning slightly, knowing that he would see the curve of a breast, the glimmer of pubic hair. Clarissa was appalled at herself; she was actually enjoying the tease. It excited her in a way she’d never experienced before.

  Dressed in her flannel nightdress she spun around. He was already curled up in front of the dying embers of the fire. He studied her solemnly and the poignancy of his glance sobered her immediately. It was that terrible look of first love, of adolescent torment.

  “Look, you can lie down next to me if you like, but that’s all,” she said curtly and got into bed. Joseph leaped to his feet and dragged the blanket over. His breath was a sweet perfume drifting across her cheek.

  The next morning she was woken by the sharp scent of rosemary. Joseph was squatting by the side of the bed. His white teeth gleamed as he held up a fish still thrashing the air with its tail. For a moment Clarissa
didn’t recognize the handsome man who leaned over her, then she remembered the bizarre events of the last two days. Struggling with the pervasive sense of disbelief that had never entirely left her, she sat up.

  “Get up, it’s breakfast time,” he said. He looked about twenty years old and had a short beard covering his face.

  “I will prepare the food,” he called out as she dressed. She noticed that his English was now perfect without a hint of an accent.

  “How did you catch the fish?” she asked as she pulled her dress on.

  “I didn’t have to catch them, they offered up their lives. They told me they would be honored to serve me,” he replied without a hint of irony.

  He placed the platter of fresh fish, bread, and olives in front of her.

  “Tell me, who are you?” she asked.

  He sucked a bone clean and placed it carefully on the plate. He looked up, lines forming around his eyes.

  “I am centuries old. I manifest only when I have been summoned.”

  “But I didn’t summon you. All I did was touch a withered piece of flesh!” she protested, trying not to respond to the curious tightening in her loins she felt every time she looked at him.

  “Don’t you believe I exist?” He reached out and caught her hand, holding it tightly.

  “Yes,” she murmured, not certain at all.

  “Clarissa, you summoned me—maybe not consciously, but part of you wanted me, wanted a sign.”

  Surprised by his verbal sophistication, Clarissa glanced across to the fireplace. Lying next to the blanket was a pile of books he had obviously consumed during the night. One of them was Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols. He’s probably got a complete grasp of psychoanalysis as well as contemporary philosophy by now, she thought, daunted by the prospect of dealing with a superior intelligence.

  “Were you here before, with the other woman, Maria?” Clarissa pointed to the initials carved into the wall.