by Seán Haldane
I told her that I needed to ask her some questions. She nodded and said that she would go and wash her hands first. She went over to one of the fires where there was a big pot of water from which she dipped with a ladle and began washing her hands and arms. I looked down at the women beside me. I recognized Wan, who glanced up at me shyly. They were gutting and plucking about a dozen waterfowl – geese, ducks and coots.
Lukswaas returned and led me over to the edge of the forest. She sat down on the ground, crossing her legs under the long tattered fringes of her blanket. I sat down opposite her, leaning on one arm. I looked into her eyes. They seemed worried.
Chinook, as always, reduced my thoughts to their most simple form. I said I wanted to see her because when I talked to her she said things which helped me. Then, since she still looked worried and I felt it would be wrong to conceal myself from her, I said I liked seeing her. I liked seeing her in the woods. But I liked talking to her also.
I realized with a shock which made me stop talking for a moment, that if I were speaking English I would reassure her by telling her I loved her. But that could not be true. Instead I changed the subject and told her brusquely that I had to ask her some questions about the dead man, McCrory. After that, we could talk of other things.
She nodded her head, her face still serious.
I began to reiterate the story of McCrory going into the forest with Lukswaas. Lukswaas had said McCrory had asked for herbs to make a man powerful in loving, herbs to make a person sleep, and herbs to give long life. Had he also asked for herbs a woman could take so as not to have a baby when she had been with a man?
‘Ah-ha’, Lukswaas nodded. She blushed slightly, with that natural innocence of hers which seemed to belie what I knew of her. Then she said that she had told McCrory the truth, that Tsimshian women did not take herbs for that purpose, and she knew of none.
I felt surprised by this. I went on to ask if McCrory had enquired about herbs that a woman could take, when she was carrying a child in her body (I pointed at my abdomen) so that the child would come out dead.
Lukswaas nodded. The doctor had indeed asked her about such herbs. But again she had told the truth, that Tsimshian women know of no such herbs.
Again I was surprised. I had read that quinine was used for such purposes among the South American Indians. I had imagined the Tsimshian might have an equivalent. These questions had seemed important to me, when I woke up in the morning, because of the nightmares of the previous day. Asking them was part of the purpose of, as Lukswaas herself had put it a few days before, ‘getting into the skin’ of McCrory. But now I felt no further ahead in my case. Out of curiosity I asked what a Tsimshian woman would do if she lay with a man and did not want to get a child.
Lukswaas replied that most women knew from the feeling in their body, (this time it was she who pointed to her abdomen), when they could get a child. And at that time they might decide to be with a man, or not, depending on whether or not they wanted a child. But of course there were sometimes mistakes.
I wanted suddenly to ask her if she had risked having a child by me. But I didn’t dare. Instead I asked more generally, what happened when a woman had a child and she was not married. The word in Chinook for ‘married’ was ‘malie’, which came from the French ‘Marié’. I knew nothing of marriage customs among the Tsimshian.
Lukswaas replied with her usual seriousness that among the Tsalak, at least, if a woman had a child then she would say who the father was. If the father was a chief or a rich man he would either provide for her, or marry her. Some men had two wives, she added. The child, at any rate, would be known as his, and the child’s standing depended on who the father was as well as who the mother was. If the father was of low standing or a bad man, then the child would have no standing, although of course the mother would look after it. And sometimes such a child might grow up and become known for beauty or great deeds or gathering goods or money.
I asked if a woman who had had a child but was not married to the father could marry another man.
Lukswaas frowned, as if puzzled. Of course the woman could. But it depended on her standing.
Clearly, I reflected, there were social barriers among the Tsimshian as among the whites – by the sound of it as well defined as in England. But there did not seem to be a moral barrier. I thought of asking her if a Tsimshian woman could marry two men. But that would be too close to the bone … And I had never heard of such a thing among Indians – only of men having several wives.
I asked if it was a good thing for a young girl to lie with a man if she did not want to be married to him.
‘Wake’. Lukswaas shook her head vigorously, and seemed upset. She said it was best for a young woman to keep herself for the man she wanted to marry.
I was baffled by this statement, as rigid as any to be heard from an English girl’s lips. It was not fair of me to ask Lukswaas all these questions without explaining why. She would take everything I said as an oblique reference to our own love-making. But I felt, inexplicably, as if I wanted to confide in her.
I told her, slowly and carefully, the whole story of Kathy Donnelly, and my work in finding out what had happened – though I did not mention Sylvie or the Windsor Rooms, out of delicacy. Delicacy, in talking to a ‘squaw’…
Lukswaas listened carefully, making no comments except to get the meaning of a word clear from time to time. When the story was finished she said in Chinook that it was a story to make a person cry. It showed that when a girl had two men at once it led to trouble.
It was my turn to look puzzled.
Lukswaas went on to say that if the woman knew which man was the father of her child, then she could go to that man and say: this is your child. Then of course he would have to provide for it, or marry her. Lukswaas said she could understand how the young man in my story would not want to marry the girl, if the child might be that of the old man. In a case like that, among the Tsalak and other Tsimshian, the two men would provide for the child. But it would be an unlucky child and an unlucky woman. Every child should know its father. But it was terrible that McCrory had cut the child out of the woman. The result was worse than an unlucky child, it was a dead child. Or were the King George men so cruel that it would be worse for the girl to have the child?
I admitted ruefully that yes, it would be worse. I felt ashamed.
It was worse still, that the girl had killed herself, Lukswaas added. Were the King George men always so cruel to their women?
I replied that since the girl had been of low standing in society she had had no power – no ‘skookum’ – so of course it had been worse for her. But I felt that was a lame excuse.
Lukswaas asked as abruptly as the repetitions of Chinook allowed, what I myself would have done if I were the young man?
I said, meaning it, that if I loved the girl I would marry her. But if the child was by the other man, I would feel ‘tum tum sick’. Perhaps if I loved the girl very much I would want to be with her anyway. If she loved me, I added. But it would be very difficult, I said, trying to be honest. In all this I had used ‘tikegh’ the nearest Chinook word to ‘love’, though it also meant pleasure and liking.
‘Nika tikegh tikegh mesika’. (I love love you), Lukswaas said, looking intently at me.
I felt a wave of emotion run through me and said back to her: ‘Nika tikegh tikegh mesika.’
But this was impossible. I felt a sudden reaction, almost a sickness. I scrambled to my feet. She did the same and looked at me questioningly. I said I was sorry, but I had to go, since I had much work to do that day. I thanked her, and said I would see her the following night. As I said this, I almost melted with the desire which I had somehow managed to put aside during our conversation. But I looked away from her eyes.
‘Kloshe’, she said. (‘Good’). Then she asked if I was going to find who killed McCrory.
I looked back at her, and said that I hoped so. I explained that, as she had said to me before, I was tryi
ng to get into the skin of everyone who might have killed McCrory, and of McCrory himself.
Lukswaas looked concerned. I marvelled at the transparency of her expressions, which I could always read without difficulty – as it seemed she could read mine. She said that I should be careful to come back inside my own skin. This was why, she said, it was necessary for me to see her.
The simplicity of this was too much for me. I turned away.
But Lukswaas spoke again. She said that if there were several people whom I thought might have killed McCrory, then probably there were some whom I wanted to be the murderer, and others whom I did not want to be. I should be sure that those feelings did not stop me from seeing clearly. I would only see who the murderer was when my heart (or mind or soul – the ‘tum tum’ again) was clean.
I smiled and said I agreed. I said I felt sad to be going.
We clung to each other with our eyes for a moment. Then I went over to my horse. Lukswaas was already walking away to join the other women.
When I got back to Victoria just before noon, I was pleased to find that Rabinowicz had been prompt in his search for the book by John Humphrey Noyes: he had sent it by messenger to the courthouse, where its title, Male continence: Self Control in Sexual Intercourse (on the front of the book where I had not seen it: Noyes’s name was on the spine) had attracted the interest of Parry and Wilson, who had each leafed through it. Parry said it was a ‘damned perverted tract’, and Wilson that its title should be Self-Gelding. But Parry, as he handed it over to me, added, ‘it shows McCrory was up to mischief’, which I hoped meant he was becoming tolerant of the investigation.
After a quick lunch on a cheese sandwich and a glass of ale, I retreated to my office with the book. It was not much more than a pamphlet really, although McCrory had had it bound in leather, privately published at Oneida, New York, in 1866. It was not only well thumbed, but full of McCrory’s own notes, in the margin and sometimes on pieces of paper which had been gummed in like extra pages. These notes, in a larger, messier and more childish hand than that of an educated Englishman, added comments which must have come from McCrory’s own experience at Oneida, beginning with such statements as ‘According to Noyes…’, or ‘JHN says…’ There were also enlargements of the pamphlet’s points, and notes on a few new topics.
The members of the Oneida Community, under Noyes’s direction, called themselves Perfectionists. Noyes, although not proclaiming himself to be God, claimed to speak for God in the same way Christ had done. The Perfectionist way to salvation was a practice called either ‘male continence’ or ‘magnetation’. This meant that in sexual intercourse, the man would penetrate the woman and move gently in such a way that an exchange of magnetism via the genital organs would take place; however, he would restrain himself from ejaculation by stopping movement if this threatened. With experience, magnetation could be continued for hours. Its essence, in fact, was to continue until the male member shrank of its own accord, but without ejaculation having occurred, while still in the vagina. This process caused no risk to health – whereas if the man withdrew while still in a state of erection or, still worse, if he practised coitus interruptus or onanism and ejaculated outside the woman, then dire physical and spiritual consequences would ensue.
McCrory had annotated Noyes’s description of magnetation with the comment: ‘Possibility of eventual retrograde ejaculation or seeping into bladder? Not physiologically out of the question. Do Elders have cloudy urine?’ There was no answer given to this, and I was not sure if it was deliberately irreverent, though it seemed so.
The practice of magnetation was, according to Noyes, the answer to all problems. First, it meant that women would not conceive unless they wanted to, so they would not be burdened by frequent childbirth. However the decision that a woman should conceive was not entirely hers: it was taken, or confirmed, in a Community meeting. I gathered from a note of McCrory’s, perhaps added after he had cut his association with Oneida, that there was a constant problem of jealousy because the Community Elders, and in particular Noyes himself, were those selected to father the women’s children. There was surely an inconsistency, I thought, in the rule of Male Continence, which was proclaimed to be infinitely superior to sexual intercourse with normal ejaculation, being broken only by the most privileged of the Community’s members …(no pun on ‘member’ intended – be careful, Chad!)
The second point about magnetation was that it enabled the communal sharing of everyone by everyone. The Perfectionist ideal was a total ‘communism’ (although not, it seemed of the anarchic varieties that had brought workers to the barricades in Paris in 1848), in which all properties and sexual favours were shared. The woman and man have congress in private (after approval at a community meeting), but a woman must not restrict her favours to one man. Individual attachments were the root of all evil.
The third point was that the exchange of magnetism at the physical level accompanied the union of the man’s and the woman’s souls. This was apparently impossible if intercourse led to climax. Climax, in fact, led to the sort of attachment (‘falling in love’, McCrory had scrawled in the margin) which was banned in the community.
One insert which caught my eye was headed ‘Criticism: in Community meetings, Criticism can last two or three hours. Some subjects reduced to state of nervous prostration, carried from room. But following day in state of elation and spiritual renewal. ‘The storm is past, the lightning has cleft me to the root, and Lo, I am miraculously new!’ as one woman said to JHN. A technic of enormous power, susceptible to individual application.’
On another of McCrory’s inserts was a summary of the principles of ‘Ascending and Descending Fellowship’, from which I gathered again that the Elders must have the best bargain at Oneida. If they had intercourse with younger, less spiritually advanced Community members, there was a certain loss of magnetism! On the other hand it was only through intercourse with the Elders that the younger members, through ‘Ascending Fellowship’ could gain and store magnetism. In other words, a young man and woman together would be squandering their magnetism and impeding their spiritual development. McCrory had scribbled: ‘JHN himself initiates all female virgins.’
I laughed out loud at this solemn American version of the medieval ‘jus primae noctis’ – the ‘right of the first night’: Noyes had the same power over his community’s virgins as that of a medieval baron over the daughters of his serfs. What humbug!
Another interesting marginal comment was: ‘Lambskin condoms, being made of gut, transmit the animal magnetism. Vulcanized rubber condoms, as proposed in Chicago, being vegetable matter, would obstruct it.’
All was becoming clear. After reading the pamphlet and its notes, I sat doodling for a while, thinking about it. First I could not help applying it to myself. I had just discovered the animal in myself, with Lukswaas, and at times I felt a return of the physical horror which had made me wash myself in the ice cold stream. But at times I felt that I had also discovered my soul. This made my heart pound with fear as well as desire. I had always known I would fall heavily in love some day: I had waited so long! But Lukswaas was an insane choice – not that such an event was really a choice. I could not be in love with her. So I tried, constantly, to extrapolate my experience with her to other circumstances. I had suddenly become intensely and openly interested in sex. I could imagine doing it with all sorts of women. Yet I had not been able to, or wanted to, with Sylvie. (Yes, I could get the clap, the firesickness, from a woman like Sylvie. But from a squaw too!) Could I do it with Aemilia? There I imagined a spiritual union as well as the physical. But not to melt into her, not to give myself, not to ‘come’ into her? Now I thought not of Aemilia, but inevitably of Lukswaas again. There was a melting on the woman’s part too. A ‘spending’, in the current term. The ethos of my time is, so far as I can understand it – a difficult task, like that of a fish understanding the water it lived in – accumulative. ‘Spending’ is frowned upon in financial terms, and
also in sexual. The proper thing to do is to save – both money and sexual energy. John Noyes joined a long list of cranks whom even I had heard of, who felt that the spending of male seed depletes body and mind; that abstaining from it is rather like keeping money in a bank account at a good percentage of interest. The original idea of Noyes’s Community was that they could have their cake and eat it too: fornicate and ‘save’ (salvation!) at the same time. (Except for Noyes and other Elders allowed to impregnate the young women …) I find all this repugnant. Like ‘utilitarianism’, another part of the contemporary ethos. Darwin’s theory of evolution is based in it: a species survives if its adaptation is useful. Although this is materialistic, it is also common sense. It is not useful to accumulate: there is also time to spend. And for every crank with a fear of spending, there is a sexual utilitarian (a London physician by the name of Acton came vaguely to my mind) who points out the dangers of saving …
But all this is theory. In practice, I know simply that whomever the woman I love, I would want to lose myself in her. Lukswaas has shown me, to my surprise, that a woman can also lose herself in a man. I gave myself. She gave herself. What have we found? I would rather not think.
* * *
Here I find mysef in a quandary. My ‘introspections’ are now occurring in my narrative. I have been assuming that the narrative would one day be read – by someone, if not in print, in manuscript by my friends or – even – my descendants. These passages with the line down the side are marked so as to be discarded, so that the narrative is not too private, too intimate. But I cannot keep the private out of the public. My introspections are becoming mingled with my ‘extrospections’, my insights with my ‘outsights’. This whole story is not a narrative for the world. It can only be for a few. For Lukswaas, I find myself thinking – though she doesn’t know a word of English. Except for ‘Thank you’.