by Tom La Farge
“And the Despina has expressed a gratitude condign with your services,” said Kaliskopa.
“Of course,” he added, “nothing would give me more patriotic pleasure than to assist at an authentic birth.”
“Iftooby,” said Kaliskopa. “I think, dottore, your name will be on the next List.” The obstetrician silently raised his eyes and hands and thanked The God. “The Despina has enrolled Kyra ’Nna among the Women,” Kaliskopa went on, “to have her and her mother’s wisdom and comfort in the seeking of an heir. ’Nna will soon put on the hobbled skirt.”
They all applauded ’Nna. She was truly someone now and had added another powerful friend, without losing any. The Megas Kyr performed his regular devotions at the Fondooq temple. Kyr Sevene still summoned ’Nna to prepare a special sauce; Drytung wondered fleetingly if she had done so the night of the Despina’s event. For now she had the Despina: three of the most powerful in the Despotate were obliged to ’Nna.
Drytung suddenly was seeing the translucent, crumpled petals of a poppy. It was the sort of seeing he’d done in the Roohaneeya. Utterly poppylike: he could trace every wrinkle, every crape scalloping, each gradation from scarlet to orange. At the heart of its flaming flare little black seedshapes spread out from a hub. What was he seeing? The Despina’s bliss? ’Nna’s expansive spirit growing manifest?
The poppy faded and was replaced by a different vision, a long platter brought in between Lhiss and Hamamra, who laid it where everyone could reach it. Long, sinuous, coiled upon itself, there stretched the fattest eel Drytung had ever seen. Against the platter’s canary glaze its skin gleamed olive, and a smell came off it of honey, garlic, tangerine, and thyme. Hamamra took up a silver cleaver and chopped it into lengths. Each diner took a section. Lady Fayte’s bulged curiously, and so did the dottore’s.
“It’s stuffed!” exclaimed Embrose. “I can see the sutures!” He broke them open and peeled back lips of eelflesh. “Stuffed with eggs!” Embrose found two and popped one whole into his mouth, and Drytung watched surprise grow in his eyes. “A chick in it!” he said indistinctly. “Delicious! Eat it bones and all!” The other egg he laid aside, on a square dish that seemed meant for such use. Everyone chewed and murmured. Drytung tried the eel and found it excellent. Then his two extracted eggs began to tremble. Everyone stopped eating and stared. The eggs rocked as if they were about to erupt in smoke and flame. Then one began to crack. “Good heavens, it’s opening!” cried Embrose. The egg fell into two parts, and a brown scorpion crawled out, tail bent. “Watch out,” cried the dottore, leaping to his feet, “those beasts are venomous!” The other egg broke open in its turn and a mantis emerged, its saw-toothed arms raised for combat. Lady Fayte, with a curious smile, bent nearer.
In two minutes both scorpion and mantis lay dead in the dish, the scorpion beheaded, the mantis twitching. The dottore could not understand his fellow-diners’ applause. “I might have eaten that scorpion,” he said. He wiped his brow and sat. “What do you call this most dramatic dish, Kyra ’Nna?” he asked.
“Allegory of eel,” she answered.
“Allegory? Is that some culinary word? I once ate an olla gorda.”
“No, dottore,” said Miyano, “not exactly. It got its name another way. Shall I tell?” ’Nna nodded.
“Well, then: when Kyra Sevena was beginning to entertain in a serious way,” Miyano narrated, “around the time her husband was winding up the electrification, she found she needed to spruce up her repertoire of dishes. You know her background. Her father is Mdiq the builder, a veteran of Walls and now its satellite. So she knows quite a bit about food, but citizen dishes, roasts and ragouts and soups. Now, as she contemplated translation into a higher sphere, she needed something more recherché. So one day, when she had important people coming to dine, she visited Kyra V’Liubella, at whose house many of those same important people had dined the night before. Myself the least important. ‘And did you have a pleasant dinner?’ ‘Oh, yes, most unusual and original.’ ‘Oh, what did you have?’ ‘We had allegories,’ Kyra V’Liubella replies. Well, of course she meant that instead of reading aloud verses by old Drytung, or some other improving text, we’d made a game out of turning gossip into beast fables and called it allegories.
“Kyra Sevene had never heard of the game and didn’t know the word. She thought it was a dish. She flew back home and went straight to the kitchens, assembled her staff and instructed them to prepare allegories for that evening. Of course no cook likes to say, ‘What’s that?!’ Then our ’Nna, who was working there then, says, ‘Here’s what we’ll do.’ She sent a slave to the fish market for eels, made a sauce and a stuffing, and arranged the eels on a platter, stuffed with eggs with significant contents, just like tonight. Of course it was delicious, and Kyra Sevena’s guests were entranced. ‘What do you call this dish?’ someone asked, just as the dottore did, and she replied, ‘Why, don’t you know? It’s allegories, the same as you had last night at Kyra V’Liubella’s!’ We laughed so hard she turned red and had to be unlaced. Ever since then allegory of eel has been the very height of refinement.”
Korto licked a shred from his fork. “I don’t recognize the flavor of this one. Not from the Mother.”
“No,” said Lady Fayte, “nor the sea, but where else could an eel grow so large? Have you a private supply, Kyra ’Nna?”
“Or are you stealing from the sacred tank?” asked Miyano impishly. “Awfully good, wherever it’s from.”
“The height of refinement,” agreed Embrose, tucking in.
“Listen!” said ’Nna. A curtain bellied and let in a hiss and gust of damp air.
“Rain!” said Kyra Kaliskopa and smoothly rose from her couch. They all stood and bowed in silence, for the winter rains had come.
“Now,” said Miyano, “we open the very good wine!” And indeed Lhiss and Hamamra were at hand with full pitchers. The guests held out cups to be filled and then, when the girls had opened the curtains, walked out to stand under the arches and watch the first rain of winter fall on the dark garden.
Drytung looked toward the pavilion, where he’d left Umm’ and the twins, but could see nothing through the curtain of rain. Piptiyya and the babies must be sleeping, as rain fell on the roof and drowned out other sounds. He drank the wine; his debts were almost paid. When he came back from the war (iftooby), he would return to the farm, to The Answer. Unless he was dead. Unless war overswept the farm and wrecked the garden.
“We must toast the rains,” said Kyra Kaliskopa. “Syr Drytung, won’t you propose?”
“To renewal and Roohaneeya,” he said, raising his cup, and the others laughed and echoed: “Renewal and Roohaneeya!”
“Very good, quite clever,” chuckled the dottore. “What is ‘Roohaneeya’?”
Then they went in and found colorful salads at their places. The dressing was sharp; with a bite, Drytung thought, like a scorpion’s tail. What had been the sense of that combat? Which he had watched without ever finding words to put to it, so quickly it had moved. ’Nna and Shandimus, he decided, biting into a radish. She has placed herself now where he must engage with her and meet the fortune that he spurned. He looked out and saw dim shapes move in the wind behind the curtain of rain.
PART FIVE
THE NAUTOMACHY
30.
Desert Mother
“Umma!” cried Yoowa.
“Ummaa!” bellowed Dib.
“UMMAA! UMMAA!” they chanted until laughter overcame them, their legs gave way, and they suddenly sat. They searched her face to see if they were hurt, then off again in caracoling laughter.
“Up!” said Piptiyya with a lifting gesture. It was the latest word.
“Up! Up!” they chanted and got back on their feet but soon were down again, rolling in giggles. Piptiyya looked out at the garden. Wind and rain had laid a heavy hand on it. The pool brimmed with leaves; some branches trailed unsightly. Roses bent double. It was not ruin, only work.
S
mall hands were laid on her calves.
“Umma, up! Up, Umma!” sang Yoowa, a nice chiasmus; she’d be the poet. Dib, spellmaker, chanted, “Up Umma! Up Umma!”
It was their first birthday today. Piptiyya picked up the boy, who laid his cheek on her breast while his sister unclutched and set off for the dog lying by the stove. Mshi, a large threelegged stray whose fur hung in white twists; Piptiyya had seen him hobble down the lane and taken him in. If we’re to think about animals in the Fondooq, she had reasoned, I’ll start with this one. The dog flicked the tip of his tail as Yoowa landed heavily on his flank. “Mshi!” Mshi licked Yoowa, and soon both were comfortably asleep. Dib had gone limp, a strand of her hair in his grasp. They were adding words every day. Dry had made a phrase today: “Up Umma!” A preposition forming there. Good. Piptiyya wanted company. Drytung had been away two months.
Someone was in the garden — a small figure. Piptiyya opened the kitchen door and called. ’Nna looked wild as she came in, soaked through, hair astray, her stare restless, her kiss cold.
“Did you know we have a bathroom now?” Piptiyya asked. “Drytung put in a boiler. You must take a hot bath.”
“Thank you,” said ’Nna. “That would be nice.” She was using her new City voice. “I did not forget their birthday,” she said, wrapping her arms around her torso, nodding at the boy. Piptiyya carefully laid Dib beside his sister and gave him a twist of Mshi’s fur to hold. “They’ll wake up soon and you can kiss them.” Then she stripped ’Nna and led her into the new bathroom. While she opened the taps, ’Nna perched on a stool and spoke of news, staring at the plumes of steam.
“The Pitch Factions are growing dangerous,” she said. “There have been deaths at every match the last three weeks. The Blues are secretly sympathetic to Old Belief. Watch has made many arrests. Some houses have been searched, and incriminating seditious documents have been found.” ’Nna was learning new words too. She went on to the war news, all bad. Gnaupoor had fallen. The enemy was pushing into the hills near the dam. And the Rhemots were across the Cut. Shandimus’ Force was falling back on the City; slower than expected, but he was coming, and ’Nna was dreading it.
“Get in the tub, now, ’Nna.” She sank into steaming water, hair spreading around her and closed her eyes. “I’m going to have a bandum of Mules posted to protect the Nahloon,” she said. “If the Force retreats inside the walls, I don’t want you and the babies left up here without protection.”
“Thank you, but no Mules, please. The veterans of Walls will raise a guard, and if need be we’ll take refuge at one of their houses in the Valley. What is the news of the nautomachy?”
“The Despot has had me,” said ’Nna, not opening her eyes, “model armor.”
“Armor? For a woman?”
“Yes. They cast me in plaster!” Her hands fluttered above her body. “Kaliskopa smeared fat on me. She wore gloves. I am to play a part in the nautomachy. The Despot came to the Roohaneeya. It seems I made an impression. He has charged Root to write a masque in which I am the pagan witch. At one end of the Artificial Ocean I straddle the pharos of Rhem and drink its light and grow stronger. At the climax I am destroyed by a projectile launched from the Throne. It is a brass falcon that can really fly, fitted with a device that steers towards light. My armor will reflect the light from the model pharos; I will not. The Despot wanted me because I am so dark.” ’Nna was the color of scorched wood.
“To test the device, the Despot put the armor on me. He stood me at the end of a long table and closed the shutters. He shone a light on me and then brought out a snake and put it on the table. It was a jointed brass serpent with this light-hunting eye fitted to its head. He removed a cap, and the snake began to twist. It slid down the table at me.
“Then he had me take the armor off.”
She paused. Piptiyya watched her hands close and open. A stain was coiling in the bathwater between ’Nna’s legs.
“To be certain the snake was seeking the armor’s light and not me! He called it a control! And the snake came for me anyway. He told me to close my mouth and eyes and make fists, to make myself blacker. I did as he said,” she sobbed.
“’Nna, you’re bleeding. Are you having cramps?”
“Yes!”
“I’ll give you a rub, then.” She took ’Nna’s hand and drew her up to sit and then crawl over the tub’s rim; toweled her dry and laid her on her back on a bench by the kitchen stove. The babies were still asleep. Mshi opened an eye, ’Nna never did. Piptiyya warmed some oil in the hollow of her palm, then she began to make circles on ’Nna’s belly till the spasms calmed.
“Shandimus will soon be in the City,” ’Nna murmured. “I cannot bear to have him look at me. He renews my shame!”
“Drytung told me what he said outside the Animal Refuge,” Piptiyya said. “But you have worked for him, ’Nna. He comes home beloved because of Drytung and you.”
“I hoped to keep him in the field, at least distract him!”
”But the ’Nna he sees will not the same as the ’Nna he spoke of so coldly. Aren’t you one of the Women now? You have risen as well as he.”
“I want,” said ’Nna, “to destroy him.”
Then Piptiyya settled ’Nna’s limbs, took more oil, and rubbed her shoulders, arms and chest. “Turn over now.” She worked the taut muscles above the shoulderblades and down along the knobs of the spine, found the sore points on her hips and low on her sacrum and deep inside her buttocks; worked them with her thumbs. All the while she talked, to be talking, to keep ’Nna from talking. She told ’Nna about the desert mothers.
“They lived when women were given in marriage at ten or nine. Doctors thought that a man’s penetration was needed to bring on fertility. Husbands made no objection to wives so young, brought up with blows to be docile.
“Amma Tniyya was the first to go into the desert, to live alone in a cave, a life of fasting, work, and meditation. Many others followed.” She massaged ’Nna’s thighs, again finding nodes and working them. “But they were visited by znoon wearing the shapes of their desire. Desire to be touched but even more to speak and be answered, be seen as women.” ’Nna turned over. With the tip of her forefinger Piptiyya gently oiled the skin around her sex. “Some ammas made images, to have a body to talk to. Amma Tniyya, when she came to make the Solitary Rule, banned them. She’d seen wooden women with breasts polished smooth. She’d seen one or two with a man’s parts, larger than life!”
They laughed. “And how shiny was that?” ’Nna asked.
“They had to burn the images. Instead the mothers were told what to do when lust occupied their bodies: fast, pray, train their thoughts upon their work, keep working as long as they could; sleep standing to keep off dreams; eat no meat or bread, only raw roots and salt; drink only water, as little as possible. If all that failed, they must withdraw into their souls and observe with loathing the passions that trampled their flesh. Many found that easy, since, as girls, they’d been as good as raped by the husbands their fathers chose for them. What they had done then they did again now, separate themselves. A desert within the desert: enter that.”
“Yes. They gave themselves the look that Shandimus gave me. That’s why I smashed my mirror. Piptiyya, you were raped.”
“Yes. I tried to separate. But he stank.” Her hand made even sweeps down the long muscles of ’Nna’s belly, then rose and turned around her navel.
“Did you want him?”
“Did I want him? No! No. I did not want him. But there was wanting. I had to fight something, here —“ she squeezed ’Nna’s vulva as if to close it.
“Is it consummated?” ’Nna asked. “With Drytung?”
“Yes.”
“Have you felt pleasure?”
“No.”
“Not with Drytung?”
“No. Perhaps in time,” she sighed. “He’s very kind.”
“But still just a hard thing wedging in.”
“Yes. I
’m dry, ’Nna.”
“That I can fix. But do you want to know how to retrieve desire? Without,” she laughed, “going to the desert?”
“Yes,” said Piptiyya. “I would like to learn that.”
“Close your eyes. It is victims who watch. All whores know this. They watch the man to guard against the knife.”
“I’m afraid of what I’ll see if I close my eyes.”
“Znoon? But znoon can only dance around an emptiness, and what they haunt is you, what they torment is you. Your refuge is the grave; you make yourself like dead when you close your eyes with a lover. Znoon will have no power till you climb out of your temporary grave, and you can open your eyes then. Piptiyya, are you going to rub my bellybutton all day?”
She raised her hand, blushing. “Are the cramps gone?”
“For now. Make me some tea, ma’adnoos.”
Pipityya put the kettle on, found some parsley. The rest of that day ’Nna sat, wrapped in a robe, drinking parsley tea and singing to the enchanted twins while her clothes steamed by the stove. Rain and wind did not let up till sunset.
“I must go now. Will you come with me? I will worry to think of you here. In the City I can keep you safe.”
“No. Drytung will look to find me here.”
In orange light they walked through the garden to the upper gate, where her donkey waited under the figtree.
“The storm has blown down your beehives, ’Nna!”
“I don’t care! I have honey stored. I kept bees just because he taught me about them. Now, if they can hear me, they’ll fly to him and sting him, every inch of him!”
She got on her donkey. “Which way is that desert?” she laughed and turned the donkey’s head away.
31.
The Artificial Ocean
Sacellary’s had his car repainted, Root noticed as he stepped into it, ten o’clock on the first sunny morning after a week of winter rain. The carriagework and mudguards glowed spring green with flecks of gold in the lacquer. The old motor wheezed, though.