by Linda Talbot
~~~~~~~~~~
The whitewash appears in large cans one Sunday morning. The workmen arrive the next day. Every house in the ancient town that had been painted yellow, ochre, pink and pale blue, is whitened to dazzle like a virgin in the sun.
The women inside come out and gaze in astonishment as the great brushes sweep and curve, loaded with heavy paint that leaves trails like the leavings of obscene snails on the dusty roads. Horrified, they retreat into their rooms, rich with ornament, their wardrobes hung with elaborate clothes and their jewels in large carved boxes. And they wonder what is happening.
The fact is, the men are reversing a foolish decision. They abolished monogamy, imagining this would be solely to their advantage, little dreaming that the women would want polygamy too and being denied it, become simply promiscuous.
They luxuriated in fine fabrics and jewels from the eastern dependencies. They refined methods of seduction and founded a school for the evolution of harmless flirting which nonetheless led to much misunderstanding and in one case, murder.
So now the men will confine the women indoors, like the Turkish harems that came before them in this old city that has seen constant conflict.
The men will take away the clothes, the jewels and the ornaments made in the far eastern workshops and compel the women to live within stark white walls, echoing those outside and symbolising lost innocence.
The women try to leave their homes again. But now, at each door stands an implacable doorkeeper with ape-like arms, barring their escape. The women retreat and wait.
Having finished the white-washing, the men move indoors and the gathering of the goods begins. Long dresses of fine linen and silk, flamboyant with peacocks, flowers and multi-coloured abstractions, are swept from the cupboards into black plastic bags. So are the numerous ornaments of mythical figures and exotic beasts, the gold-rimmed jugs, the onyx abstractions that caught the sun. Jewellery is more carefully conserved. That will be sold.
The women are speechless. Alexia, an enamelled butterfly gleaming in her short-cropped hair - looks with hostility at the man she called consort but to whom she paid little attention. He reaches to grab the butterfly, but she withdraws with a shriek and he relents.
Maera sits solidified in alarm, her transparent dress reflected in the bands of patterned wallpaper, the carved carnation static for once in her ear as her man carries out the last vestiges of a voluptuous life. Kyllene, still young and susceptible to dream, stares uncomprehendingly, as her partner sweeps ruthlessly through the rooms. And Semele, her long hair tied with a yellow spotted band, gasps and stutters as she watches the evacuation.
The men vanish from their homes. They have their sexual interests elsewhere in town - small harems of women in apartments on the outskirts. These are women who have not felt sufficiently liberated to break the mould of submission. They know about the official “wives” in the houses that were slowly transformed as their consorts strayed with increasing audacity, but they are content to be obedient and be kept without resort to luxury or inventive love play.
The “wives” took any men who were willing to comply. Sometimes they were the men of women they knew. Webs of intrigue were woven.
Now the women who had relished fleeting freedom sit in a silence that slowly ferments. They begin to seethe, to rise and pace about their rooms, trailing the white gowns in which their consorts had confined them. As though of one mind, they besmirch them with food and tear their seams. They hunt fruitlessly for brushes and combs and seek perfume and soap that have been confiscated. They slump on chairs whose fine coverings have vanished. They brood and plot, then rise again to hammer and scratch the virgin walls.
They emit a united scream that echoes through the ageing outer walls to fly across the rooftops into the gathering night sky, to skim the sea and the mist-dim mountains, to sweep and dive onto the island of Aeaea.
Here the enchantress Circe lives, waiting and watching for a situation in which she can mischevously intervene. Her supernatural ears hear the great scream and she flies seaward to observe the tumult of the air and see the white birds wheel in alarm.
She locates the origin of the scream and winding her thick black hair high onto her head, wills herself into the tempestuous town. She is invisible to the men who have now dispersed to visit their mistresses. But as she enters the harsh white houses they have abandoned, she reveals herself; her body undulating and shape-shifting as she promises the women retribution.
They know how she turned the sailors of Odysseus into pigs and how they retained human minds and feelings.
“I’ll do you the same favour. It’s all your men deserve!” she promises, settling at last into the image of a woman with a faint phosphorescence. “Where are they?”
She is in Kyllene’s house. The woman shrugs and scrapes sharp nails in frustration down her grubby gown.
“Relax! I’ll find them,” says Circe, tossing back her black hair which has loosened to flow saltily on her shoulders.
She lifts as though fleshless from the floor and one by one ejects the men from their mistresses’ homes. They have no choice but to follow her as though magnetised.
A high pen of fine gold mesh materialises in the city centre and through a gate, Circe herds the maddened men. They mill and stumble, trying to find the exit but the golden gate has firmly closed.
Limb by limb the men turn into swine, dropping helplessly onto all fours, buffeting each other and snorting in fear and indignation.
Circe laughs and returns to marshal the women. They are taken to the pen and peer incredulously at the plunging pigs. The women laugh, sneer and toss insults through the evening air. Looking closer, they can identify their men by their eyes, imploringly encased in pigflesh. The derision mounts to a cruel crescendo as Circe flits about the pen, tossing her hair in delight - her laughter shot with the sound of the sea.
“Let them stew for a while and do as you please!” she urges the women. She vanishes and they return to their homes, find the doorkeepers in crumpled heaps and with leftover wallpaper and paint begin to restore their rooms to their former richness. Their cupboards and shelves are still bare, but Alexia discovers the painting - Girl leading man with sheep’s body - a work by the popular Kalighat painters of India in a book that was overlooked by her consort.
The picture is widely reproduced and hung on every wall and the occasional knife flung at it. The sparse white robes are washed and hand-painted. Shells and stones from the beach are fashioned into primitive jewels to enhance the women’s sallow skin.
Then Circe reappears and marshals the women once more. “I am not saying that you women are blameless, but you were provoked. You and your men need bringing to your senses. Meanwhile, if you can’t have men and there is not a single one who didn’t deserve to be turned into a pig - take your pick of these companions.” She indicates a strange menagerie striding, fluttering and floundering in her wake. They are in fact some of the worst male offenders, unrecognisably transformed.
There is a grimacing fish with gleaming scales struggling waterless along the road, a pert peacock whose tail glimmers with enchantment, a miniature elephant with a malevolent eye and the unnerving feet of a man and a disgruntled harpy with limp black curls.
Each of the women chooses a “familiar. Semele takes the harpy, Kyllene the elephant, Maera the peacock and Alexia the fish.
“Enjoy!” cries Circe and once more vanishes.
Semele places her harpy on the mantelpiece where the bird-like being nervously twitters.
“Don’t be afraid,” soothes Semele and strokes the ruffled feathers. The harpy smells of sea salt and her black curls are damp.
Semele sinks into her deep chair, watching the harpy hopping up and down the mantelpiece until she is lulled to sleep.
The harpy has gained in size and suddenly Semele is flying out of the window in the harpy’s wake, her long hair streaming in the early morning air. The harpy, flapping broad blue wings, is heading for the harb
our.
There are no crews on the ships - all having been turned into pigs and Semele and the harpy scatter terrified seagulls as they move out to sea, flapping low above the lace-crested waves. The land disappears, the motion of the water is mesmerising; a unified wash like a seething symbol of infinity.
Semele flies as though hypnotised, then sees ahead, a tossing ship with a loudly complaining crew who appear to be lost. They are heading for an island; stark with rose red crags, caught now by the strengthening sun. There is the faint sound of singing.
The harpy lowers sharp black claws like an undercarriage and lands lightly on the rock. Semele follows but falls with a thud, grazing her legs. She sees that the rock is covered with creatures; half woman half bird, similar to her “familiar”, yet with more flesh than feathers. Simultaneously opening and closing lustful mouths, they are singing. The notes drift and are half lost on the sea wind, the words are non-existent, yet the sound is softly seductive.
Semele feels she should join in but does not know the tune. Her voice is feeble and is snatched by the wind but she strives to lie gracefully on the hard rock.
The ship with the lost crew looms suddenly. The laughter of the harpies stirs the water, so the sailors are pitched unceremoniously into their wet laps. They lie, gazing enraptured into the bird-like faces with their soothing song and do not notice the ship drifting away on the waves.
One sailor - swarthy and still drunk from the last of the rum - has landed in Semele’s lap and fumbles to feel her salt-encrusted face. She recoils and tries to push him off but he clings like an intoxicated limpet. She wrestles and he writhes and has his clumsy way.
The other harpies are frolicking now on the rocks, the besotted sailors clinging to their feathers and flesh, bereft of will and doomed to die of starvation.
Semele’s sailor passes out and rolls from the rock into the sea where he bobs away like a black-haired cork. Semele sighs, closes her eyes, then opens them to find she is still in her chair and the harpy fast asleep on the mantelpiece.
Kyllene is not sure she trusts the elephant that scrutinises her with an eye that is knowing and seemingly alien to its species. Its man-like feet rest on the shelf near a curvaceous Japanese vase retrieved from a cupboard overlooked by Kyllene’s consort. She is transfixed by the elephant’s eyes. Her own slowly close.....
She wakes in a valley shining with orange trees under a cloudless sky. Birds sing and she can hear the sound of the sea. Snow-capped mountains soar to the south. The air is warm and she walks into the orange grove which glows and rustles; the dark green leaves lifting gently in the wind.
She dreams beneath a tree, absorbing the birdsong and the fragrance of fresh fruit. Suddenly there is the sound of crashing timber and a full-sized elephant - otherwise identical to the miniature she had been given by Circe - appears, breathing heavily with the effort of uprooting trees in its path. Oranges roll around her as she scrambles up and runs away.
But the elephant, with lustful eyes and huge human feet, pursues her, his smelly trunk at full stretch and intermittently prodding her in the back. Kyllene darts at a sharp angle and races up a narrow track. She crosses a stream and stumbles, falling hard on slippery stones fringed by a pale green weed. It lifts and whips round her legs, binding them tightly. Then it writhes around her body, immobilising her flailing arms.
The elephant crashes through the trees and, with his alien eye, lustily surveys her helplessness. He lifts his obnoxious trunk and draws it across her frightened face. Kyllene shrieks and struggles and the pale weed tightens. She can barely breathe.
Then three female elephants burst through the shattered trees. They trumpet and shake their heads, hung thickly with the blinding blue of morning glory. They stop and stare at Kyllene’s elephant with eyes whose lashes still shimmer with dew. He quivers and reaches with his trunk to tease each of theirs.
They retreat, their eyes lit now with sexual promise. Kyllene’s elephant lumbers after them into the trees. With a sigh, the pale weed around Kyllene’s body loosens and falls to lie limply on the streambed. She struggles to her feet and clambers up the slimy bank.
Slowly she emerges from her dream - sprawled at an odd angle in the chair and sees the elephant is still on the shelf, watching her. Indignantly, she gets up and prods his leathery back, so he turns, as though in disgrace, with his face to the wall.
Maera is delighted with her peacock that might have stepped from a Turkish tapestry. His hooked feet touch the carpet lightly and his black-edged tail gleams with jewel-like “eyes”. Intermittently though, he turns to look surreptitiously at her. And she has the uneasy feeling he is endowed with more than a bird’s brain. She slips a fine black chain round his neck to which he does not object, yet she does not feel in control of her companion and watches him with growing apprehension.
Exhausted by her vigil, Maera falls asleep. She is in a bare white room - like that painted by her consort - with walls that seem to be silently contracting and about to dislodge the ancient basin of red hot poker flowers she had placed near the door. She walks towards the wall where a window once opened onto the street. Now its opaque surface has a feathery feel - like the body of a bird. She shudders and withdraws.
Turning, she sees the peacock - grown to the size of a man, but his head, above the sharp black beak, is eyeless. His “eyes” glare at her from his tail. They no longer have a jewel-like lustre. They are those of her consort. They are grey and coldly accusing; the eyes that had so often silently probed her, trying to extract her amorous plans.
She tries to push past the peacock but he fluffs up his feathers and fixes her with the multiple eyes so she is frozen and inundated with fear and speechless loathing. The grey eyes bore and begin to swim, as though they would work loose, expand and draw her into oblivion. She crouches and covers her head with her hands. She reaches for one of the red hot poker flowers and holding it at arm’s length, thrusts it at the pulsating eyes ......
Suddenly she is within the eye - trapped in a viscous veil through which she can barely see. She slips and slides, seeking a way out, but encounters only grim grey walls that yield, then mockingly resist.
She spins in panic and feels the persistent pressure of her consort slipping in and around her; demanding and deriding. She pushes a wall which hardens, then, as the great eye blinks, relents, forcibly ejecting her.
Rapidly, she regains consciousness, but when she opens her eyes, can see nothing. Her anguished cry rouses Circe who, under various guises - from a shadow without sun to a ship’s rat - is still in the city.
In seconds, the enchantress is at Maera’s side and laying spiny hands on her quivering eyelids, restores her sight. The peacock, his tail resplendent once more, trails his chain across the floor, pauses, and turns to look at her in disdain.
Alexia is watching her exotic fish. It swims in circles, constantly coming into contact with the edge of its tank and eyeing her with disgust. But she is conscious only of its flashing scales and the strong propulsion of its tail. The iridescent colours merge, undulating like a dress she once wore for twilit seductions. Alexia too succumbs to sleep.
She is drawn down through rushing water shot with sinuous flowers and darting fish, the salt encrusting her mouth, nose and eyes. She gasps and tries to rise to the surface, but is bound in a flowing water weed that whispers and derides as she drifts deeper onto the sharp stones littering the ocean bed.
A triton with a curvaceous scaly tail, small wings and a large conch shell clutched in one hand, hovers nearby, reaching tiny, malicious hands towards her, a mean glint in his bright blue eye. Painfully Alexia pulls away, then is eerily brushed by the blackness of a flailing squid. She wrenches one arm free of weed and flaps at a tenacious tentacle. Uncannily it dissolves and desperately she squirms among the floating fragments. She moves through a multitude of curious creatures with flapping fins, translucent scales, vestigial horns and horrendous teeth.
Suddenly her exotic fish appears from behin
d a rock. Grimacing, it shoots towards her, its tail furiously fanning the dark water, its gimlet eye fixed on her frightened face.
Appalled, Alexia waits and is horrified when another fish with a great gaping mouth swims up and swallows her whole. She flounders inside with moaning minnows and half digested plankton, thrown against slimy stomach walls and whirled in steamy darkness. Then she feels the fish rise rapidly to the sea’s surface. It heaves her out of its mouth onto the convenient crest of a wave and she is borne regally ashore.
Alexia wakes suddenly, the taste of salt water still on her lips. She is relieved to see the exotic fish has wedged itself under a rock in the tank. But, with a baleful eye, it follows her every move.
Circe reappears, riding a high sea wind into the city. She gathers the women by the shore and says, “Well, did you enjoy your dreams?” The women, still dazed, blink heavy eyes. They are speechless.
“Let’s see if the men have come to their senses.”
They follow the enchantress through the white-washed streets to the golden pen. The pigs squeal, expecting their bowls of swill. The harpy, elephant, peacock and fish have been spirited from their owners into the midst of the quarrelling pigs, where they collide and complain about overcrowding.
The pigs gaze at the women with the eyes of the men they once were. Some are in tears. Others seem distant and disorientated.
“Now, you men, we need a new arrangement here!” says Circe in her saltwater voice. “Equality. Either you and your wives agree to be polygamous or you both settle for monogamy. But I won’t have tinpot dictators - men or women. I am not suggesting your qualities are identical but I do insist you have equal opportunities - perhaps a vote is in order.”
She sweeps a phosphorescent arm over the pigs pushing towards the gate. One by one they regain their humanity, staggering to ten-toed feet and gazing in bewilderment from Circe to the women, whose post dream daze has been replaced by defiance.
Then as though magically manipulated, the men chorus, “We’ll take our women. We’re worn out.”
“I hope that’s not the only reason!” chides Circe, swinging her formidable hair which balloons about her like a storm cloud.
“No - we took them for granted!” admits the man who had briefly been a fish.
Cautiously, Circe opens the gate. The bedraggled men file out and one by one find their consorts.
“No more whitewash?” asks Alexia of hers. He concurs.
“I can wear jewels now and then?” asks Kyllene of hers. He concurs.
“I can embroider my dresses?” asks Semele of hers. He concurs.
“I can have that Persian pot I fancied?” asks Maera of hers. He concurs.
The women smile behind their demurely lifted hands. Even Circe does not see the faint but unmistakable hint of mischief in their eyes.
~~~~~~END~~~~~~
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Author's Note
Linda Talbot writes fantasy for adults and children. She now lives in Crete and as a journalist in London she specialised in reviewing art, books and theatre, contributing a chapter to a book about Conroy Maddox, the British Surrealist and writing about art for Topos, the German landscape magazine. She has published "Fantasy Book of Food", rhymes, recipes and stories for children; "Five Rides by a River", about life, past and present around the River Waveney in Suffolk; short stories for the British Fantasy Society, and stories and poetry for magazines.
My next book will be Words On The Wind - a selection of my poetry in sections from "Breakages" and "Demeter's Dance" to "Moonbirds and Wild Water" - poems from Greece.
Contact blog: https://lindajtalbot.wordpress.com
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