The Seventh Day

by Joy Dettman

  ‘You speak my name. What do I call you, girl of the mountain?’

  ‘I like . . . I like the name . . . as you said it then. Girl of the mountain.’ I turn my face to the sky and breath deeply of the scent of earth and morning, then shrug. ‘My mother once gave to me a name, but nobody spoke it. It is forgotten.’

  ‘Mother? It is a word from the archives.’

  ‘She is a memory from the . . . the mind’s archives.’

  ‘Tell me of Mother. The word has a softness to it.’

  ‘There is no softness in the memory. There is blood on dust and yellow hair, and a hand and few words.’ I offer a sip of weak cordial. He turns his face away.

  ‘Talk to me of the hands and the hair. Say the Mother’s words.’

  Why does each move he makes, each word he speaks, awaken a place that was sleeping? As I look at him I see her for an instant, her hair spread in the dust, and the word. Honey. Honeybee.

  ‘Perhaps her name was Honey,’ I say. ‘I believe her hair was as yours, for on the day I saw you, I knew you.’ I touch his hair and wish I had brought my fine city brush so I might brush it, cleanse its gold. ‘Her hair is . . . is an image that lives on the brink of memory.’

  I remove his arms from his overall, wash his limbs, his chest. There is memory too in this thing I do. I think I am like a mother cleansing her child, so I sing to him my memory song.

  ‘Oh honour her, Oh honour her,

  Oh sleep and dream of day.

  Oh honour her, Oh honour her,

  tomorrow you may play.’

  ‘What is the meaning of the words?’ he says.

  ‘They are . . . they are also from the archives of the memory.’ I shrug. ‘If there was once meaning, it is lost.’ He is so thin. His bones show through his golden skin, and I discover an old wound in his side, in the flesh above his waist. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Your men. An arrow. It went through. I pulled it out and thanked them for it. It killed small pigs and rabbits. I lost it to a very small pig, and when I pursued it, I fell.’

  ‘The wound has healed well.’

  ‘I am of the class that has the immunisation. It assists the healing.’

  I do not understand ‘the class’ but I have heard the grey men speak often of immunisation. This is why they stick me with their pins – to assist the healing. Certainly they plan to take me to the city when they have stuck enough of their pins into me. I lift him away from the rock so I might wash his back, and I find the smaller exit wound of the dart above his waist. It has left an arrow-shaped scar.

  ‘I found blood in the barn and in the cellar,’ I say.

  ‘I hid in your cellar until the copter left.’

  ‘Copter?’

  ‘The laboratories’ machine. I had crept to the shed of the generator where I plunged the night into darkness so I might escape, but the copter came with its brighter light.’

  ‘You speak of the grey men’s giant flying machine?’ He coughs and it jars his injured limb. I lift his shoulders higher, hold him forward until he removes the irritation from his lungs. ‘I must try to bind your leg more firmly and get you up to the cave. It is only this first climb that is hard. The path beyond it is –’

  He is not interested in caves, but copters. ‘I know that copter, and those who ride in it. It is the property of the Seelongs. Are you also their property?’

  ‘You waste air with that question. I do not know many answers.’ I shrug, reach for my cordial but he rises on his elbow and his voice has much strength.

  ‘You drink their poison like an infant drinking V-cola. They control the city with their poison. It is our prison that has no bars.’

  ‘It brings . . . it brings me comfort.’

  ‘It brings only acceptance of that which is unacceptable.’

  I think I can not deny his words, so I guide his arms back into the sleeves of his overall, fasten it, lift him and fold the blanket for his shoulders to rest against.

  ‘You should sleep and grow strong.’

  ‘What age are you? You work as one trained in their medical laboratories. Have they trained you?’

  ‘They have trained me only in obedience, Jonjan.’

  ‘You speak like the old ones. I have seen tapes of their speeches at the meetings.’

  ‘I can make many voices,’ I say, mimicking his voice. I make him smile – and his poor lips crack and bleed again.

  The buzzing insects are bad. Though it is too hot for blankets, I place it over his leg, wishing to discourage the things, and he reaches for a thigh pocket. I find what he seeks, a plasti-tube.

  ‘Sectfree,’ he says, and with a twisting of the tube, raises an odd-smelling gel.

  I wipe a little of it on the splint, and certainly it is a good thing. The insects fly. I steal a little for my face and his. This is a fine salve, and I wonder why the grey men have not thought to bring it with their supplies.

  He is looking at the blanket, studying it. ‘I have seen such as this in the Old World Museum.’

  ‘Granny had many blankets. Before the grey men came we wore them for warmth.’

  ‘What business do you have with the Seelongs?’

  ‘I do not know the Seelong. Rest now. Grow strong.’

  ‘The laboratories. Those who fly that craft. They are the Seelong three. I know them well.’

  ‘Why did you then not run to them?’

  ‘There are those of us who run from them.’ He does not speak for some time. Then he coughs. I lift him, hold him. How I want to hold him, to be close to his warmth. I sigh, so deeply. I do not wish to speak of my use to the grey men, yet there is within me a weight of words wanting their freedom. I sigh again. ‘You ask my age. I am of the age the three have made me, Jonjan. That is all I know. You ask my use to these Seelongs. I swallow their city pills, and when my heat is just so, they Implant me, and I become their sow. In my belly I make for them fine big litters of immature foetus.’

  He looks at me with disbelief. ‘They Harvest from you?’

  ‘Is that not what I have said to you?’

  ‘The Seelongs, they Implant you? Here they Implant you and leave you free?’

  ‘If it is freedom. I think you mock me as Granny mocked me.’

  His hand touches my wrist. ‘I do not mock, nor do I blame.’ I shake his hand from me, but it returns. ‘The blame is theirs and I know them well. Sidley, Salter and Stanley Seelong. The lower order are powerless against them and their laboratories, and the few females more so than the males.’ The touch of his hand sends his warmth rush-rushing in my blood. It weakens me. I can not look at him so I look at his shoes and at the plaited cords of colour that tie them. ‘The three are the sons of Henry Seelong, one of the High Chosen, who accrued both fortune and respect with his cloning of the labouring class. When he no longer struts the earth, the three will take his place amongst the High Chosen. Then we will see the end of humanity.’

  ‘I think there is no more Stanley,’ I say. ‘The last night when they came to Implant me there were only two. I hope the blood plague took Stanley and that he died in a pool of his own grey blood.’

  ‘And that he now nourishes the Godsent,’ he adds. ‘Your wish is my wish, and the wish of many in the city.’

  ‘God did not send that black weed. Granny named it blacrap.’

  ‘Would that I had known Granny.’

  I allow his hand to draw me close, but I think of the house and those within it. ‘The grey men were to come on the night I found you. I was not waiting for them. Perhaps today Lenny and Pa are dead by their companion’s light-guns.’

  ‘Who are your men?’

  ‘Have I not said their names before? They are Lenny and Pa.’

  ‘They are followers of the Chosen?’

  ‘You confuse me.’

  ‘They are . . . they belong to the Seelongs?’

  ‘They belong to this place, but they take care of me and receive good supplies for my care from the . . . the Seelongs. You ate their supplies.
I drink their supplies.’ I pour a little water into the bottle before drinking directly from it. It is strong, but not so thick now.

  ‘The old man and his son are of your blood, and they sell you to the laboratories for supplies.’

  Are his words an accusation? I sip a little cordial but can not look at his eyes; they will accuse now because I drink the cordial.

  He reaches for the bottle. ‘Perhaps your men do not sell you. Perhaps you sell yourself willingly for this . . . this shit of the black demon.’

  ‘It is a calming cordial –’

  ‘It is their tomorrow juice, made from the Godsent plant . . . from your Granny’s blacrap, which is eating all of the earth and all hope of a better tomorrow.’

  ‘I do not understand you. I do not know of many city things.’

  ‘My father also does not understand me.’ He sighs, looks at the sky. ‘Which of them . . . which of the two men fathered you?’

  ‘I do not know “father”. I came not from this place but to this place in the time when I was already a walking infant.’

  ‘You were brought here by the Seelongs? As an infant? You are from the city?’

  I shrug, shake my head. ‘If this is so, I remember nothing of it. Only a garden. Only my mother’s blood. And . . . and fear, and running. I remember the flying machine’s silver wings. I remember hunger and a cold hand that would not hold me, though I tried to make it hold me.’ I glance at him, shrug. ‘I do not remember the thought which led to my leaving of her. She was there but I was alone and feeling great hunger. I remember it as a dream . . . a dream of a crying infant who saw a light and walked and fell and crawled to the light. And she was there. Granny. She gave me food and water.’ I look at his eyes. ‘I know that her name and Lenny and Pa’s names I learned as an infant, as I learned dog and cow. I know only that there is, buried deep within the memory archives of me, a time when these names were not known. A time when the name of Honey was known.’

  ‘And the one you call Granny?’

  ‘She was very old. She left the earth before the grey men came. If she had not left, they would not have come.’

  ‘Her name? Do you remember her name?’

  ‘It is burned on wood over her grave. She was Monique Morgan.’

  ‘Moni has been dead for fifty years!’

  ‘Moni was a child who Granny knew of. She played in the fields with Moni, wove garlands of dandelions with her.’

  ‘Moni was Monique Morgan. In the city she was known as Moni.’

  ‘Then your city Moni has not been dead to me for fifty years.’ He watches me with wide eyes now. ‘Monique Morgan died in the year she named my twelfth. She understood time and recorded each day until her ending. She is buried in the graveyard.’

  ‘Moni escaped the city in a copter and knew only two years of freedom before she died,’ he argues with me. ‘The great escape has been well documented in the history books. Many searchers pursued her, and when they took her, they burned her alive as the ancient ones had burned witches, but her death did not end the movement she had begun.’

  ‘Then your history book is a lie, Jonjan. I know the truth of her death. She lived for one hundred years and two more, and as I have washed you, fed you, I washed and fed her in her last days. And like you, she talked at me. But before she left the earth she taught me much, from the great kings who cut off heads to the rabbits who hide from the hounds. I know of that time when all were freeborn.’ He does not reply. ‘Who wrote this lie that she was burned as a witch?’

  ‘Jacob, the writer of history. The one I call father. He is of the High Chosen and thus was rewarded with a son of the stored embryo.’

  ‘Then I do not like Jacob, the one you call father who was rewarded with a son. And I do not like his lying history either. Does the printed word make a lie into a truth? Can the printed word alter that which was into that which was not?’

  He shakes his head, and I take the bathing cloth from the fruitjell can and with it moisten his bleeding lip.

  ‘Your words are harsh, but your touch is gentle,’ he says, his hand taking mine, stilling the cloth.

  ‘Your touch is disturbing, as it was on that day in the barn, as was the happening in the barn.’ I return the cloth to the fruitjell container, and count three long breaths before I continue. ‘And . . . and the result of that happening, and the illness it has brought to me, has disturbed my life. And that is truth. And there is no changing of it.’

  ‘I have remembered that happening well and on many nights I crept down to the house to find you.’

  I think of Lenny and shake my head, shake it hard, trying to wash away the image of him in my bed and my dear Jonjan looking for me. I shake my head again, for I do not wish to think of Lenny. And I do not wish to wish what I am wishing.

  Lord!

  If I had taken my basket and run to the cave I would have found Jonjan, and I would not have done that thing with Lenny.

  Lord! Why did I not take my basket and run then? Jonjan would not now be injured. I could have quietened the dogs for him while he took his flying machine from the barn and together we could have flown far away.

  ‘Lord,’ I say, for there is nothing else I can think to say. Then I wash my hands with water, wash them well, but I can not wash away that thing with Lenny, as I had allowed his grunting to near erase the sweet memory of Jonjan.

  ‘I stole eggs and supplies, and hoped each night when I went there that I might steal you. It was the old loving we shared, and a wondrous thing as no other.’ His hand is on my hand. Such warmth. Such fine gentle warmth.

  I sigh in a deep, deep breath. ‘It was as no other before, and as you say, of the old world, Jonjan. Granny had many books from the time before. They speak often of that love between the male and female that comes fast and sweet and free.’

  ‘I would like to read these books. In the city we do not have such things.’

  ‘And . . . and she had a doctoring book also.’ I breath deeply then and, my head bowed low, I take my hand from his and unplait my hair so it may hide my face from his eyes. ‘It tells of many things, of the parts of us inside the flesh. It does not lie, Jonjan.’

  ‘I have seen these things. There is much doctoring in the city, and great knowledge of that art in many of our books.’

  ‘Have you seen . . . there are pages in it that tell of that love game we shared, and it is then that the male seed is planted within the female.’

  He makes no reply but I feel his eyes watching me, and suddenly I think I am older than he and more knowledgeable. ‘From our love game, which is as with the animals mating, your seed was implanted by nature’s way, and it has taken root in my womb and is growing well. And I shall give birth to a living child, Jonjan, and it will be freeborn. Sidley and Salter will not Harvest it before it is ready. They will not.’

  His eyes are wide. I read more questions in them, but while his mouth opens, closes, I do not think his tongue will make the words, thus I speak the answers before the questions come.

  ‘That is the reason I came to the hills, Jonjan, and the reason I found you, and the reason you live – because of the foetus which grows in me.’

  I think I have silenced him forever. He stares at me for the longest time, then he says, ‘There is a book which speaks of such a one that shall be born, and She shall be recognised. It is written that the child shall be born on Moni’s land where there grow only the pure strains of ancient fruit, where the potato lives beneath the soil and the cobs of corn are sweet and grow no larger than my hand.’

  ‘Perhaps this was so in the time before. I have seen the tomato, though we grow only pumpkins now. They feed us and the stock.’

  His hand moves up to touch my face, to touch my hair.

  He has such strength, but much pain. As we speak of his escape from Lenny, and of the spring cave, of the flier food and energy pellets he had carried in the box of his flying machine, of the young pigs he had cooked, of his fall, his pain grows greater and his strength
ebbs. I encourage him to sip a little cordial and soon he sleeps.

  Freed from his talking and his eyes I am able to see to his wound, which weeps but is clean. Safe from his questions I am able to ask my own.

  I had believed him dead. I had believed that Lenny or the city gun had killed him, and that night I drank too well of the cordial; the days beyond it were lost in the mist. But certainly it is as he said. When we had parted, he had mounted his machine but could not spread its wings in the barn, and could not move it from the barn for the dogs were tied in the doorway. He had gone to the generator shed and plunged the night into darkness, but Lenny’s dart gun had found its mark; he is very certain with that gun, as was Granny.

  The arrival of the grey men’s copter had saved Jonjan, and by the time Lenny freed the dogs, Jonjan had found the cellar window and scrambled through. He had removed the dart and ransacked the old trunk for fabric to bind his side.

  It was he who had taken the green blanket, which he used as a basket in which to carry supplies, for it was his intention to hide in the woods until he could return for his machine. And he had returned for his food packets and his pellets and to fill his water container from our tank. The following day he found the animal track and the spring cave and water, and he ate of the animals who came to drink at the water. Three times he had crept down to the barn in the dead of night, but each time the dogs were tied there so he had stolen Pa’s pumpkins and the stock’s corn, which the city men bring in great plasti-sacks. I have chewed on that corn. Tough it is, and without flavour. Is it any wonder his bones try to creep from his skin?

  As I attempt to make his position more comfortable, he wakes, smiles at me. ‘I dreamed of you,’ he says. ‘Such a strange and moving dream. I did not wish to wake.’

  ‘Tell me your strange dream.’

  ‘You were the golden one, the Messiah who will come.’

  ‘Granny had a Bible. She knew the many names and stories from it, of Messiah and Mary; I have not bothered much with its fine print and fragile pages.’

  The rock is hard against his back and the blanket is no pillow. I think to cut the grey growth, wrap it in the blanket and so make a pillow of it for him.