The Cleft

by Doris Lessing

  The next thing that happened was sudden and violent. Two of the young Clefts gave birth, to Monsters, at the same time. They were on the rocks near to the sea. The Old Clefts called to them to throw the new babes into the sea, but at once Astre and Maire were there, just as the babies were being cut free from their mothers, who were shouting their repulsion and their fear of their infants. Maire, her own New One in one arm, held a new baby Monster in the other; Astre snatched up a babe, and the two went as fast as they could – remember that running was not something they were used to – to the Killing Rock. Two eagles were floating down from their mountain. Some of the young Clefts came crowding up from their shore, to watch how the eagles took off with the new Monsters.

  Astre and Maire stood there on the edge of the Killing Rock, calm and self-possessed, though they were in danger.

  And now the two girls began telling the young Clefts about the grown Monsters who lived over there, beyond the mountain. They were people, just like us, said Maire and Astre, speaking slowly because these ideas were difficult and hard to take in. They were people except that in front of their bodies they had the tubes and lumps that made new babes. That was what they were for. So said Maire, so said Astre, standing there before the others facing their hostile looks, their threatening faces.

  Now the two spent their time in the entrance to their great cave, their airy cave with its clean sandy floor and walls sparkling with the crystalline rocks of the region. It was full of sunlight when the sun was setting: these caves faced west: a word, an idea, which would not be known to these people – to us – for … well, I may say thousands of years and no one will contradict me.

  They were there, instead of inside the cave’s deep coolness, because they could watch what went on down on the shore, their shore. It had been their shore but now they were afraid. The two girls, both so pregnant, and the infant, the New One, were visible to anyone choosing to glance up, and the glances were hostile. Down there, the girls knew, those Clefts were their kin, like them, their kind – and were too indolent to keep a regular watch on what they feared: Maire, and Astre. The laziness of their sisters meant that Maire and Astre were safe from them. Sisters: those Clefts down there were not merely kin, but sisters. You may have sisters even without brothers, though already the word ‘sisters’ had within it a sense of something in opposition.

  What a sleepy indolent scene, down there on the rocks. The Clefts might lie dozing from one high tide until the next splashed their feet with chilly water. Then they yawned, slid into the waves, swam a little, climbed back to loll on the rocks.

  Above them was the mouth of the cave where the difficult sisters Astre and Maire sat, dandling the infant, the New One. They cradled and soothed this child more than either had ever done with a child; but earlier babes had not cried and fretted and this one did. They tried to hush the infant, not wanting to alert the attention of their sisters down there. But still the baby cried, and it was a sound that gritted on those placid lazy nerves, so unused to feeling irritated or annoyed. Why did she cry so much, this very first member of the race to come, our race, the human race – though the two had not got as far as that thought while suspecting that something new was here, with the New One.

  What was this new Cleft, that had in her the substance of the Monsters? Babies did not cry unless they were hungry or wanted to be dipped into the waves, or even allowed to swim a little – these people might swim before they walked, so at home were they in the water. Babies did not as a rule cry. But this one might sob or even wail as if its little heart were broken. Was she, this new type of Cleft, new Person, aware of her strange new nature? It sounded like grief, the weeping she did; but grief was not something these people went in for. They did not love each other with intensity and exclusiveness, they did not say, ‘I want only her, that one’; did not desire to hear, ‘I want only that one.’

  Without the ‘only that one’, without wanting and craving the Other, and only the Other, some kinds of grief did not arise.

  But this babe sounded desolate, lacking something. And the two girls, because of the babe’s crying, felt a new emotion because of the New One.

  Ideas, emotions, words, thoughts, that have been inhabiting the minds of us, the human race, quite comfortably and at least without strain, were presenting themselves now to these young Clefts, and they were restless and disturbed, sitting there at the mouth of their cave.

  The three of them, the two females and their babe, soon to be five with the two soon to be born, were something new in this world of ours, a new thing, and they could have been swept out of existence by a fall of rock, or an enemy creeping up on them … an enemy? What was that? An enemy is someone who wants to harm you. Those Clefts down there, dozing on their rocks, and the Old Ones particularly, were enemies.

  At night, in the dark, when the moon was absent, they went to the back of the very long cave, and positioned themselves behind outcrops of rocks, different ones every night. It would be so easy for someone to come creeping in, unseen when not outlined against the stars in the mouth of the cave, and … what then? Would they take up a stone and …

  Unthinkable, these new thoughts.

  The two did think a good deal about the Others over there, in their valley. They were the fathers of the New One, and of the unborn infants, and of the little Monster Astre had taken to the valley. Fathers … a word that no one had needed, but now reverberated against the sound of mothers. If these Clefts were not mothers, then what were they? They were the mothers of Clefts and Monsters, mothers of us all, our ancient mothers.

  Take a half-grown Squirt and half-grown Cleft, and if their middle parts were covered, no one could tell the difference, but one would become a mother and one a father. What a mother was they knew: Clefts had a capacity the Others lacked; they could make new people. What, then, was a father? They could tell any young Cleft who would listen, or even the Old Ones, that these new kinds of people made new infants, but they could not say what it was the fathers added to the mix. Which was there, in their arms, close to their bodies, in Maire’s infant, the New One.

  We might think that the two were planning to take that New One, and go off across the mountains to the valley – not more than a walk, after all, but they did not. The mysterious prompter was silent. Across the mountain were brothers, if the Clefts down there were sisters; and were fathers. There were no Old Ones among the Squirts, no Old Hes. Well, that was easy enough, there had not been enough time to make Old Ones in the valley. Young – old; that was easy enough. Me – the Clefts; they – the people once called Monsters.

  The coming of these new people made comparisons start up in their minds, each idea with a shadow.

  As for the Others, in their valley, they longed for the girls, whom they expected to come walking down the mountain any day. There were lookouts posted so that when they came they would be welcomed. And there were the eagles, too, who noticed everything. Sometimes the boys crept along the rocky hills so they could see the shore. They wanted to see Maire and Astre, but they did not recognise other individual Clefts.

  The males – with their restless, ever-responding squirts, which were sometimes large, sometimes limp, but mostly stiff with need, so that it was unpleasant for them to bump into a bush or tall grass – did not know that their hungry wanting, their need, was the voice of their own Squirts down there, but felt as if it were their whole selves that wanted and needed. They fought each other, for no good reason, and invented games where they competed, sometimes dangerously. One of them, finding his squirt getting in the way, tied his loins up with eagles’ feathers, and with leaves, and they began competing with each other to make the most attractive aprons. Soon they all wore decorative coverings and were ingenious in thinking up new ones.

  Then something unexpected: two of the very oldest of them died. That is, two of the first Monsters, badly mutilated by the Clefts. They had watched arrive with the eagles, and then with the girls, babes just like themselves, but untorn, unh
urt. They made their comparisons. They learned they were incomplete, misshapen, and so did the others. Their deaths took away a source of bitterness – of danger – which, only when it was gone, did they all recognise was better gone. And something else went with them – the baby language they had brought and taught to the very first boys. There were two ways of talking, one childlike, and the language learned from the visiting girls. With the two gone there was not so much left now of the infant talk. They all practised among themselves the language spoken by Maire and Astre. They were proud to be leaving behind infantile babble. But two had gone, disappeared, and there seemed to be far fewer of them, as if more than two had been removed. Perhaps they were the last of their kind? This was a thought the Clefts could never have: they had that gift, they gave birth to new Clefts and to Monsters too, but the boys, the males, could not make people.

  They felt threatened. Yes, the eagles had brought them the two new baby Monsters, and they were thriving in the care of the doe, but… what were they going to do if more of them died? They were so vulnerable. Animals sometimes came raiding out of the forest, and more than once had taken off a boy. Boys at various times had been swept away by the river. They were too few: that was their situation. If two could die, for no reason – they had yet to take in the idea of old age – then why should not all of them just die? The records we have of that time speak of their fear.

  They set watchers at night to see any animals coming out of the trees, and made piles of weapons where they could be easily reached. These were stones – they all could use stones to bring down even birds, or small animals. They could throw clubs and sticks; several of them together could outrun a small beast. But they knew some beasts working together could rush into their valley and take them all away – and there was nothing they could do.

  When the girls did come running down the mountain they were welcomed with a hundred embraces but also with warnings: they must keep a watch for predators.

  This visit went well, the boys were delighted, and the girls too, before they suddenly and as far as the boys were concerned inexplicably, took themselves off back to their shore. There they settled in caves near Maire and Astre, and this made a territorial statement of the fact that there were two parties now among the Clefts.

  In the valley, with the Clefts gone, there seemed even fewer of them and almost at once two were lost: they went out into the trees after a much-liked fruit, and were attacked by a big animal they had not seen before. They ran, but not fast enough, and did not return to the valley.

  The boys huddled near the great log, fearfully watching the margins of their valley. They even wondered if they could run over the mountain to the shore and persuade some more Clefts to come back with them.

  Then the eagles came with the two newborn Squirts, two hungry babes. There had not been additions to their numbers for a time; and here were two, replacements for the two that had vanished into the forest. How to feed these hungry babes? The old doe had not been seen around recently. The eagles that had brought the babies stood in their places, watching the infants who lay crying noisily on the grass, stuffing their little fists into their mouths. The Clefts all had milk in those breasts of theirs, but they themselves had none. Then the old doe appeared from the forest’s edge and stood looking at the two yelling babies. The boys cried out with joy but then with dismay: they could see that the animal’s dugs were shrivelled and dry: she had no milk. She was really old: her muzzle and her ears were greying. She lifted her head and looked for a long time at the boys, and then at the eagles. Then she walked a little into the trees and called. A long silence, while still the hungry babies wailed. She called again and turned to greet two young does, nose to nose. It seemed she was telling them what to do, the three animals close, and then two fawns that had been afraid to come stood by the three big deer. The young does went to the babies and stood near, and looked at the big old doe – very probably their mother – then at the babes, then they looked long at the watching boys. The fawns began suckling. When the first doe, this old one, had come to rescue the first babies, she had lost her fawn. That must have been it: she lay down beside the babes to feed them. But fawns do not lie down to feed, they stand under the mother.

  A boy crept close to a young doe, so that the fawn had to jump back away from him. He picked up a yelling babe and held it to a dug that dripped milk. The child did manage to take hold, and did suckle, a little, but the doe did not like what was happening, and her fawn didn’t either. Before the other young doe could move away, the same boy held the second hungry baby to a teat. In this way both babes got a few mouthfuls of milk, but though the old doe did come right down close to the young does, and did nose first one babe and then the other, it seemed the animals simply decided to give up. They moved off, but before they left the boy snatched up a gourd and caught some leaking milk, and another boy did the same. There was a little supply of milk in the two gourds.

  The old doe moved off slowly into the trees. She was lame, they could now see, and her head was not held up, but drooped, and the white scut of her tail did not friskily flick like those of the two young ones, but was limp and hung down.

  These two boys had had no mothering at all, but had been nuzzled and licked and fed by this old doe now limping away from them. There was a lament from them which for a moment was louder than the babies’ crying.

  What were they going to do? The eagles recognised the difficulty and actually tore off little bits of fish which they tried to insert into the babies’ mouths that were stretched wide with crying.

  But over the mountain was the shore where lived the Clefts with their full milky breasts. Up the mountain the boys ran, down the other side, past the Killing Rock and burst out on to the rocks in full view of the basking Clefts. From the cave mouth just above, the two isolated ones saw them and called. Just as the Old Shes were ready to sit up and perhaps even attack, the two boys reached the cave where Maire and Astre were. They recognised Astre whom they had seen pregnant, but did not at once recognise Maire. The urgency of their mission made them incautious, and they bent to take up handfuls of these breasts, the life-saving breasts, and yes, there was milk. Maire and Astre understood why the boys had come: they had been wondering how the two babes had got on with feeding from the doe.

  ‘What are you doing?’ demanded Maire, and then Astre; and the boys answered, ‘Milk, we need milk.’

  Among the younger Clefts there had been a change. Of course the ones recently come back from the valley were not likely to respond but most of the others had crept up to the cave mouth and asked Maire and Astre about the other camp over there. And they had talked to the girls who had just come back. Whatever ferment that had gone to work in Maire and Astre was stirring in these young Clefts. We could call it curiosity, but perhaps there was more. However that was, while the two messengers from the valley stood there, staring down, fearful, ready to run, first one girl, then another, rose up from her patch of warm rock, and climbed up to the cave where Maire and Astre, watching as always, the First One, told the girls the situation. Two of the girls had full breasts. Perhaps they were even mothers of the two babes who were at that moment yelling their heads off in the valley.

  ‘Go with them,’ said Maire and Astre, and in a moment the cave that had seemed full of people had again three, Maire and Astre and the First One. The two young women and the messengers found themselves urged on through the rocks. They were trying to run, these people who had never run in their lives.

  They were fearful, of course they were; they were going over the mountain which had always been a barrier at the end of their world. And they did reach the mountain and did climb it and stood high among the eagles’ nests, looking down into a wide valley where an energetic river bounded along. And down the mountainside they went, helped by the boys, and they were in the midst of the Monsters, now grown, or at least the same size as themselves, and the naked babes were being thrust at them, Monsters both, so they had to suppress repulsion and
even fear.

  The babes fastened on to those breasts as they had earlier tried to hold the does’ dugs, and they fed, while all around stood the young Squirts, watching – not one had seen a baby feeding at a breast. Then, the babes sated, the boys took them, and placed them inside a shelter to sleep. And only then were the girls offered some water from the river, and some fruit and eggs that had been cooked on a hollow stone in the sun.

  And then began the games that Maire and Astre had told them about, the Squirt and Cleft games, beginning with urgency and haste and then, as the boys, like the babes before them, were sated, continuing with the games of curiosity.

  ‘What have you got there?’, ‘What is it’, ‘What is it for?’, ‘And you – what is that? Can I put my finger in?’ And so on they went, as the Clefts lost their fear of the Monsters and began to be fascinated.

  As for the two new Monsters or Squirts, they thrived and grew and were noisy, just like the First One in the cave with Maire and Astre.

  These girls returned when their time was up to their shore and soon after that both Maire and Astre gave birth, a Cleft for one and a boy – the word had not yet been used – for the other.

  The Old Ones were fearful, angry – and vindictive. They said that every female due to give birth must have a guard or a watcher who must kill every little Monster as it appeared.

  And they did succeed in killing one. At once the eagles appeared, sweeping low over the heads of the frightened Clefts. Then the Old Ones demanded that the eagles be killed. This was absurd. How were the eagles to be killed? When a Cleft took up a beach stone and flung it at a seated eagle the pebble slid down over a glossy slope of feathers. The eagle, with its claws, tossed her into the waves. She swam: everyone knew how to swim. But then the big bird sat on the rocks just where the Cleft wanted to climb out, and pushed her back, and when she moved to a different point of exit, the bird moved too. She was ready to drown with exhaustion when the eagle at last flew up into the air letting her land. Everyone watched this little battle, fearful of what it meant. Everything seemed new and terrible. Fighting … animosity … retribution. The old females sat themselves up to see better, their mouths open in dismay, their little fat-swollen eyes full of hate.