The Cleft

by Doris Lessing

  The boys in their flimsy shelters by the forest’s edge found themselves helpless as the wind tossed them over and over, or threw them into the river. They could not find any place in their lovely valley where they could be safe. Up on the mountain no eagles could fly – most were killed or hurt in those long days and nights of the Noise. The boys crept up the mountain, keeping as low as they could to the ground, and went over the top, among the smashed eagles’ nests and hurt birds, and found their way to the caves above the shore where the girls welcomed them, being glad of their presence. They were all distraught with fear and with knowledge of their helplessness. They did not have – or we believe they did not have – a personification for this wind, the Noise, they did not pray – I believe – to wind’s being. They all, including the ones who seldom left the shoreline, got as far into the caves as they could and wept and trembled together. There is no mention at all of the Old Shes, the Old Females, and from this we have agreed to believe that they had died out, and that none of the young ones had grown into the status and stature of the Old Ones. Those caves above the sea were full, crowded with people, all hungry and afraid. They could not go out into the storm to catch fish, and could not light their fires. The Noise went on, and went on, while it seemed as if the whole island would be lifted into the air.

  What could have caused such a wind? Where was it blowing from? The chronicles did not immediately begin again, but when they did, it was said that any babes born were precious, guarded, and every baby was allotted to an older person, watcher or carer. The depletion of both the communities was such that there was speculation by the Memories that it would take very little to wipe out all the people living on the shores and the valley. A big storm – or Noise – could do it. ‘There are so few of us,’ the Memories had been instructed to keep in their records, perhaps as a reminder.

  From the time of the Noise – the great wind – there was a new note in the histories of both shore and valley: the wind put fear into people who before had not – so it seems – known fear. They were apprehensive. The suddenness and surprise of the Noise changed them all. Of course bad things had happened before, a death, a drowning, the unfortunate beginnings of the males, but when had a murderous attack from Nature, surely their friend, happened before? ‘What has happened may happen again.’ The Noise, the wind had taught them all how helpless they were.

  The boys went back to their valley as soon as they could. It is recorded that they could not stand the supervision and the regime of the women. And they felt unappreciated too. When the Noise was at its height, and no one had eaten for days – weeks, perhaps – the boys crept on their bellies down to the shore to collect the fishes flung up by the violence of the waves. They built great fires in empty caves and cooked the fish. Some animals running before the wind arrived on the shore, frantic and fearful, and the boys killed enough with their bows and arrows to feed them all. The women did not seem to admire them for this cleverness. And, as always, came the complaints about the messy and smelly caves.

  Back in their valley they did not find the ease they had remembered.

  The great forest, which had stood there always like a promise of plenty, had been flattened in large areas by the wind. It was hard now even to walk in it, the fallen trunks and branches made some parts impenetrable. The animals had suffered, and so had the birds. When the boys came down the mountain they could hardly recognise their place. The shelters and sheds had been thrown down by the wind, or taken over by animals trying to find shelter. The valley seemed full of dung and churned-up soil. A track came from the destroyed forest to the river’s edge where the animals had come for water. The wind had blown the water everywhere, so around the river’s edge were marshes, and reeds and grass poked up out of the shallow waves.

  The boys did not return to the caves, but tried to set their camp to rights. When they took a fish to the eagles’ place no eagles came at once. They were pleased to be given food – the Noise had left some crippled, with broken wings and legs. The boys who could never be afraid of these great birds tried to help them, and even sent a message to the caves, asking for someone good at healing to come. From this time the eagles saw the females as friends, like the boys.

  And from that time began the concern over the children, both Clefts and Squirts – but perhaps this is the moment to repeat a fragment of history. ‘The rumour that when the first males were born they were called Monsters and were sometimes badly treated, even killed, must be considered as just that – rumour. A tale expressing some kind of deep psychological truth. It is now believed that the earliest ancestors were male, and if it is asked how they reproduced themselves, then the reply is that the eagles hatched them out of their eggs. After all, it cannot be for nothing that respect for the great birds is expressed in a hundred myths about our origins. It is much easier to believe that eagles, or even deer, were our progenitors, than that the people were in their beginnings entirely female, and the males a later achievement. After all, why do males have breasts and nipples if not that once they were of practical use? They could have given birth from their navels. There are many possibilities, all more credible than that females came first. And there is something inherently implausible about males as subsidiary arrivals: it is evident that males are by nature and designed by Nature to be first.’

  This fragment certainly belongs to a much later time than anything else we have. It is from our histories – the males’.

  There is a consistent theme in all the records after the Noise, the knowledge of a threat, a danger, inherent and unavoidable, and the concomitant: fear for the babies and small children.

  The time had long gone when small boys had to fear attack from some of the females. When a little Monster was born there was no urgency about taking him over to the valley to be brought up there. From their first beginnings the boys had proved they could look after the babies – it was they who taught the deer to feed the babes and it was the older boys who were responsible for them. Boys sometimes guarded the little Clefts, too: often a small girl, or even an older one, taken to the valley when it was time for her mother to mate, begged to be left there. The children, boys and girls, enjoyed the valley, just as some preferred to live by the sea.

  They were indulged, watched over and precious, both boys and girls.

  Long ago the females had relinquished their capacity to become impregnated by a fertilising wind, or a wave that carried fertility in its substance; they did not become impregnated at all, except by the males. It took some time for this to be seen, by both males and females. There must have been a point when this knowledge went home, and probably painfully: the females had to be reliant on the males to get children. Did that mean both understood the means by which babes came to be lodged in female wombs? Did notions about fertilising winds and waves continue in the general consciousness but then – suddenly the truth was known? When the females lost their power to become pregnant, that must have been a relinquishing of belief in themselves, and how could that not have been painful? I am inclined to believe that the truth came home to both parties all at once, or at least within reasonable time. After all, from the start of this record (which purports to be representing both) sudden arrivals of knowledge, of understanding, were common, were how Nature managed its economies. Suddenly one, or two, or more individuals were different, thought differently, obeyed impulses that were new to them. So, it seems to me, the knowledge that it was the monstrous (once) arrangements of the males that put infants into the females happened all at once. Suddenly the truth was evident.

  Together with the constant fretting and perturbation about the fewness of the children, and how vulnerable they all were, went – in the tales of the males, and of us – complaints about the females’ continual nagging at them. The females found the males lacking, and we have now perhaps to wonder if this expressed a deeper dissatisfaction – because females were so fundamentally dependent on the males.

  And while all this went on an older pattern (we m
ay call it a preNoise pattern) also went on.

  All the babies were born in the caves above the sea, and they played in the waves and were safe. Most females lived in the caves, because they did not like the valley, and most males lived in their valley. There was constant visiting. The girls went to the valley when they had to, and the males sometimes spent time in the caves. New little males were not brought up by the men, but were with the little girls. The caves, full of little children, boy-babes and girl-babes, would not look so very different from a collection of our children. The children, the girls and boys, often went to the valley. The valley was a wondrous and amazing place, for both the little girls and little boys.

  The women did not like the children to be in the valley – and here is sounded another consistent complaint from them. The great river, recovered from the Noise, ran as swiftly and as strongly as ever, and the children were at risk. The newly built sheds and shelters were as dirty and unkempt as ever and, if the children enjoyed that, the women complained and tried to keep the children with them on the shore. But that changed because it became the custom for the little boys to leave their mothers and the caves, and join the men, when they were about seven. In language not unfamiliar to us now, the boys described the caves, and the seashore, and their mothers as soft and babyish. The big river and its dangers were seen as initiatory, and desirable for the boys’ development. Soon all the boys had to leave the caves and learn to dare the dangers of the cold, deep, deadly river currents. When one, and then another, died the males seemed to think this a reasonable risk.

  Some events this summer make me resume my comments.

  I preface what I have to say with the reminder that the Spartans removed boy children from their mothers at the age of seven.

  Titus and I had ridden out to our estate early in the summer, expecting not to see Julia and Lydia till early autumn. But Julia sent me a message that she meant to go to a wedding party on the farm next to ours and would drop in. The new husband was Decimus, and Julia had been his mistress for years. Decimus was marrying ambitiously, Lavonia, a highly placed girl. Decimus sent a chariot to bring Julia to the wedding, and one afternoon this pretty vehicle, garlanded and beribboned, arrived with Lydia as well as Julia. The women got out and I went out to greet them. Titus saw them and was running up but then, really seeing his mother and his sister, stopped, and stood frowning at them: the sun was in his eyes. But that was not the trouble: Julia and Lydia made a dazzling pair. Julia wore a rose-coloured gown, and the little girl a light mauve one, designed for her by her mother. What a handsome woman Julia was now, and the girl, an apparently frail and delicate little thing, set her off. Julia saw a good-looking boy, staring at her. She did not at once know this was her son, whom she had scarcely seen for a year or so. Her first reaction was to flirt, send him smiles that acknowledged his attractions, but this impulse was cut off as she took in his pose. He had half turned away, hands loose, his body saying that he was about to take off and away.

  Next to his mother his sister stood smiling. ‘Look at me! Just look at me. You almost didn’t recognise me, did you?’ Those two had been good friends always, until the summer before, when Lydia seemed almost overnight to enter into some ancient endowment – a newly arrived sexual knowledge, an instinctual understanding of herself and of the male sex. Her smiles at her brother were not acknowledging their friendship, but that she was an adult and he must recognise that. Is there a greater gulf than between a thirteen-year-old boy and his fifteen-year-old sister, already a woman? My boy was stunned, as if the smiles of the two women had been poison-tipped arrows. He could not move.

  Meanwhile Julia was equally immobilised. This was her son, this beautiful boy. She did not know how to behave. Then she took a step towards him and ruffled her hand through his hair – a beautiful white hand where shone my first wife’s rings, and my mother’s. The boy took a step back, frowning. He was as tall as she was. His eyes, on a level with her wonderful dark eyes, stared, stern, grave – accusing? Certainly he repudiated her and her silly caress. I believe that she was feeling, as I had so many years ago, that this was her son and she had lost all the years when she could have known him. I don’t know: she never said so, but she was certainly penitent, standing there. Her eyes filled with tears. Meanwhile, just behind her, the chariot’s horse was stamping and tossing his head: the reins were too tight. I signalled to the charioteer to loosen the horse’s head, and I saw that Julia at the same moment had seen the discomfort of the horse, and that she might have remedied things herself. She was overcome with shame, a complex of regrets, standing there, this beautiful woman, in the hot sunlight. The slave with the sunshade was holding it steady, but the sun was striking Julia’s cheek.

  I have always said that she has a good heart, she is a kind woman. I think her present associates would laugh to hear me say so. They know the woman who screams applause at the blood in the arena, the death throes of the animals, and of the gladiators. Yet that afternoon she felt for that mistreated horse.

  She was such a picture of vulnerability – helplessness? – and I impulsively did something that I had planned to say to her, alone.

  I believed she was mistaken, agreeing to go to this wedding, particularly when the new husband had made a point of sending a very elegant little chariot. Julia would shine at this wedding, no matter how many other pretty women would be there. I stepped forward, and put my arms around her and whispered into her ear just visible under one of the monstrously complicated coiffures that are fashionable now, ‘Be careful, little partridge, be careful, Julia.’

  Lydia heard these words. I do not believe that either of the children had seen many tender moments between their parents. Julia, careful not to disturb her complicated tresses, responded by melting into my embrace (I have to say, like a daughter, rather than a wife) and she whispered, ‘Thank you, my dear, thank you – always.’ Her daughter’s eyes flashed – jealousy, that so primeval emotion, mother-and-daughter jealousy. Lydia even put out her hand as if to pull her mother away from me, but let it drop. Meanwhile the boy stood, staring at us. If we had been in private I would have gone on, ‘It is not unknown, Julia, for a new wife to punish her predecessor or even try to kill her.’ But I could see Julia was thinking hard, as she deftly let me go, patting her rolling black locks.

  (In the event Lavonia, the new wife, died in childbirth in the spring of the following year.)

  Tears flowing on her pink cheeks, Julia stepped into the chariot, and Lydia, obviously feeling that she had not made enough of a statement, came to embrace me. This was not false, we had always got on well, little Lydia and I – but little Lydia was not here this afternoon, here was this lovely young woman, returned to being a child for a moment. Then, feeling herself as she had been so recently as a few months ago, she went towards her brother, not coquettishly, or flirtatiously, but sending him glances like a friend – like a loved sister. But Titus had turned away from her. Lydia, spurned, tossed her head and was ready to sulk, but then she too got into the chariot and off they went, the two women, to the next estate. It was only a short distance: they could have walked it easily.

  And I stood there in the wonderful afternoon, eagles wheeling overhead, sparrows chirping from a near bush.

  The boy turned from the women in a violent impulse of escape and leaped, once, twice, more – he went running across the already sun-parched fields. And that was how I remember that summer – the boy in movement, in flight, by himself or with the herdsmen’s boys, or the house slaves’ sons. These had always played together, but what I was watching was not play.

  The house servants, who of course had known Titus all of his life and could be said to be secondary mothers, loved him. Some had seen that little play by the chariot. They knew what it all meant – the slaves and servants know far more of us than we like to think. They wanted to make up to the boy for his careless mother, but tenderness was not what he needed then. Watching him in his strenuous activities, climbing high and dangerously in
the hills where the eagles nested, running races with the other boys, high at the top of trees so tall I could hardly bear to watch, the somersaults, the acrobatics, the competitions they set up for themselves, I felt that he was trying to outrun something or somebody, to free himself. I was reminded of once when some slaves were sent to get fish from the marsh and the midges were out looking for food. The slaves were dancing and leaping about inside a dense cloud of the insects, swatting at their heads, their arms, their legs.

  You could imagine that an invisible cloying clinging substance was attacking my boy, and he was trying to free himself.

  He became gaunt and lean, that summer, no longer a child, but a strong youth, even a man.

  He refused to see his sister, and was not at home when Julia arrived, ready to see him.

  This summer made me think of my childhood. I was one of three brothers, older than the little girl, born late in my mother’s reproductive life. We boys petted the girl, made her our plaything – and ignored her when she got in the way of our games. How hard it can be for a boy younger than a loved sister, I saw that summer.

  I tried to be always available for him, tried to show – silently – how I felt for him. And so did the servants and slaves – the women. He was a polite boy, good-hearted, he did not repel them, fend them off – but he fled from them, his face always averted from them.

  One afternoon I had picked a little bunch of flowers, and I was walking down towards our statue of Artemis, in a grove where paths crossed, when I saw Titus walking behind me, looking to see what I was doing. I beckoned to him and he nodded, but stayed behind me, his steps audible on the hard late-season earth. When I was a boy (like my father), I loved Diana, the tomboyish girl, whom I thought of as a playmate, who understood me. I left her little gifts and hoped that one day I would come on her, with her girls, and she would recognise me. Later I found her too young for me and loved Artemis. When I reached the statue, I bowed and set the little bunch of flowers at her feet. I hoped Titus would see me and understand what I felt. I could not say to him, your mother, your sister are not the only representatives of the female sex.