Tales of Neveryon (16 page)

‘She tried to step around his knee to see.

‘“No,” he repeated, more firmly, and turned the boy away from her eyes.

‘And Kell, like any two-year-old denied access to a nut, or a stick, or a rock, or a shell, began to cry and pull at his knee.

‘“Come on,” Arkvid said, a bit testily. “Now I shouldn’t even be doing this with you in the house, but – here … hey, Venn. Come take her away, will you. She keeps trying to touch his” and here he laughed and used one of the more childish euphemisms for that most sacred object.

‘I came over and lifted her. She rose with an ear-piercing squeal and for the next two hours there was a battle – renewed every thirty seconds to five minutes – to touch, tug, or examine the carving now tied to her brother’s stomach, with Arkvid patiently getting between them when I began to lose patience, and sometimes saying, “I mean, I suppose there’s nothing really
wrong
with it, but suppose she were to do it outside.” Somewhere near the end of this, Kell made the connection that the carving tied to her father’s stomach, which she had till now never paid much attention to, was the same species of object now on her brother’s, and for minutes stood, her eyes going back and forth between them, looking perfectly forlorn. Finally she resolved the whole thing by taking a small, clay pot top, holding it to her stomach, and walking back and forth with it, giving both her father and me surly-eyed little
glances; and of course she would have nothing to do with her brother, who, having gotten over the thrill of having something his sister didn’t, now wanted someone to play with. Arkvid stood by the door, tugging on his penis, which Rulvyn men tend to do when nervous, and finally said to me: “I just hope you women can break her of that, and not let it turn into a habit.” He sighed. To a Rulvyn of either sex, a girl wearing a rult is a perfectly incongruous image. And a girl
pretending
to wear one borders on the obscene. And as every Rulvyn knows, though most of them seldom talk about it, the giving of the rult from father to son can sometimes occasion months of such hostility in little girls, what with keeping the girls from touching it and not letting them examine it and generally inculcating the respect necessary for it to retain its magic. Indeed, discussions of the various ways the rult should be given in a family with girls – informally as an ordinary part of an ordinary day, as Arkvid had done, or formally before the whole clan with the little girls held safe in their mothers’ arms, or whether the father should take the boy off and make the exchange in private out in the forest – form a major subject of conversation on the porch of the Men’s House or across the borders between turnip yards. Kell got by, I remember, with only a couple of weeks’ annoyance over the whole business before she found other things to absorb her. But it was a few nights later, when we were all getting ready to celebrate a naven on the completion of the house of a new young family across the road that Arkvid, after we had fed him, lingered squatting by the hearth till we had set up plates for our own meal. “I have been thinking,” he said as Ydit passed turnips to Ii, and I took barley from Acia’s bowl, “and I have an idea,” in that pontifical way Rulvyn men take on when
they are talking to all their wives together. “An idea about why women’s ways are so different from men’s.”

‘“Are you still hungry?” Ii asked him. “You can take some nuts and butter wrapped in a fava leaf to the Men’s House and eat it while you dress for tonight.”

‘“Now that’s exactly what I mean,” Arkvid said. “Here I have a perfectly fascinating
idea
, and
all you want
to talk about is appeasing hunger, building houses, and tilling the soil,” which are considered the classical concerns of Rulvyn women. “Listen to me. I have discovered why women behave so differently from men. It has to do with rults.” Now there’s a very strange thing. If a grown boy or a man were to visit a friend or relative’s home
without
his rult, everyone would feel extremely uncomfortable. At the same time, rults are
not
a subject you
talk
about – especially at dinner. But Arkvid was our husband and hunter. “This is my idea: The little girl sees that her brother and her father have rults,” Arkvid explained in a clear, precise voice which let us know he had been thinking about this a long time, “and she is jealous and envious of the rult – as she does not possess one. It is right that she should be jealous, for the rult is strong, full of powerful magic, and a man would be hardpressed to kill a wild goat, or a mountain cat, or a rock turtle without one – that is certainly clear. Now even though in a week or a year the little girl seems to forget this jealousy, my idea is that she does not. My idea is that the little girl will put this jealousy down in the dark places below memory where things eat and gnaw at one all through a life, in silence, without ever saying their names. My idea is that the reason women like to have babies is that they think of the new child as a little rult growing inside them, and if the child is a male, they are particularly happy because they know that soon the little boy will be given a rult by his father and, in
effect, while the boy is still a baby, they will now have one. My idea is that those women who fail to pay the proper respect to their hunters for bringing meat to add to their yams and millet and turnips and apricots and palm hearts are simply suffering from the jealousy over the rult, even stronger than most, though they do not realize it.” Arkvid folded his arms and looked extremely pleased with himself.

‘After a while, Ydit ventured, in the most respectful form of address, “My most prestigious hunter, speaking as a woman who was once a little girl in these tribes, your idea does not quite correspond to my experience of things.”

‘“Well, remember now,” Arkvid said quickly, “this is all happening deep down in the dark places of the mind, below memory. So you wouldn’t necessarily
feel
this jealousy. But you can’t deny – I mean everyone knows about it, though one
doesn’t
usually discuss it, I’ll admit – that little girls
are
jealous of the strength and the magic in their father’s and brother’s rults. We have all seen it, even in this hut.”

‘Acia looked as if she was going to say something, so I waited. When she didn’t, I suddenly felt all uncomfortable.

‘“Arkvid,” I said, “That’s the most ridiculous idea I’ve ever heard. I mean, if you carried on about your … well, your gorgi,” which he was tugging at again, “the way you carry on about your rult, you’d have little girls jealous of
that
in a minute.”

‘“Now
that
is
truly
ridiculous,” Arkvid said. “Why would a little girl be jealous of a little boy’s gorgi when she has a perfectly good gorgi of her own, and more compactly built at that? In fact, I’m sure that what you’re expressing now, whether you are aware of it or not, is just this deep-down rult-jealousy left over from your own
babyhood.” And he let go of his penis, looked very proud, and folded his arms once more.

‘“Arkvid,” I said, “until two years ago, when I came up here into the hills, I had never even seen a rult.”’

‘“Well, you must have
heard
of them. Besides, I’m not so much talking about the rult itself, but the power, strength, and magic that the rult embodies. The rult is not just a piece of wood, you know. It’s the whole concept of distinction, of difference itself. Come on now, Venn,” for he was always a little placating toward my foreign ways, “even if my idea isn’t exactly right – though I’m sure it is – you must admit it has, as an idea, great beauty.”’

‘When I’d been working on the bridge, the Rulvyn had all been impressed with some of the principles of the lever and lifts I had showed them, and they found them to be, as indeed they are, beautiful. From then on there had been a mad spate of “beautiful” ideas about practically everything that, alas, applied – practically – to nothing.

‘“Besides,” Arkvid added, no doubt thinking along the lines I had been, “here, in this tribe, little girls just aren’t jealous of little boys’ gorgis; nor are little boys jealous of little girls’, for that matter – curiosity is not jealousy. But girls
are
jealous of rults – and that’s just a fact, whether the idea is beautiful or not.” For, if only upon my own family, I had been impressing ever since the importance of facts.

‘“Arkvid,” said Ii, who knew how to humor hunters, “you are a strong, handsome man, with four wives who have between them the best-irrigated, if not the largest, turnip gardens in the village. Your daughters will grow up strong and clever and your sons, handsome and brave. Your catch this week could probably have fed twice the number of wives you have. And Acia here has roasted a haunch of the goat you caught the day before yesterday to take to the naven tonight, and you should get many
admiring glances for that. Why do you bother your handsome head with these things that should only be the concern of women anyway. Now give us a smile and take yourself off to the Men’s House and dress yourself for the naven tonight in honor of our neighbors’ new dwelling.”

‘Arkvid stood up, stalked to the door, then turned. And gave a sudden, great, and generous laugh, which was what Rulvyn men used to do when they were crossed by women – though since the coming of money, that laugh is no longer so generous, but is shot through with contempt. And he left, still laughing, for the Men’s House.

‘“Now you mustn’t mind him,” Ydit said, as Ii and Acia turned to me. “The fact that he even tries to have such ideas is a compliment to you. For didn’t
you
first tell us about the great, dark places below memory where stories and numbers come from?” (Where
do
you get your crazy ideas, one of them had asked me not a week ago.
What
was I supposed to say? Well, then, they wanted to know why didn’t
everybody
come up with stories and numbers? For the Rulvyn are persistent. Well, I explained, in some people the things in the deep, dark places are so deep and so dark that they cannot say their names. I don’t know … it had a sort of beauty when I said it.) “You let yourself get too upset about the babbling of hunters,” Ydit went on. “You always have, too.” And she looked at me wryly and passed me one of the clay bowls Acia’s mother had made, full of tamarind juice whose amber was still aquiver from where Ii had just sipped. I took it. I sipped. I said:

‘“But don’t you see, Ydit. This rult-jealousy of Arkvid’s is all out of his own overvaluation of the rult, and nothing more. Let me describe exactly what happened while you were out a few days back.” When I had, they all laughed.

‘“Though, even so,” Ii said through her laughter, “you
must admit that a raised knee to shield a naughty child’s prying eyes or simply to turn a boy a modest-so-much for the same effect is not a lot in the line of overvaluation. There are some men, of this tribe too, who carry on about their rults as if they
were
indeed their gorgis – and what’s more as if their gorgi had just been kicked by a mountain goat!”

‘“And to give our prestigious husband credit, there
are
women who sometimes act with their hunter as if they would like to snatch their rults away. After all,” Acia went on, wiping her mouth of barley flakes, “would you really want to go to bed with our husband
without
one? One could
do
it, probably: but you must admit it would be bizarre!” And they all laughed.

‘“Seriously,” Ydit said; she was toying with a fruit rind. “You and Ii are not being honest with our most prestigious husband’s newest wife.” She looked down at the bowls among us, dropped the rind on a pile of rinds. “There are more things than you suggest behind his idea. And you know it.”

‘The others were suddenly very quiet. I looked at Ydit, who – suddenly and startlingly – looked up at me. “Many, many years before you came, Venn, a terrible thing happened in the tribe. And while we laugh and joke here, we are all thinking about it. And I am sure Arkvid was thinking about it when he got his idea. What happened, all those years ago, is that the Great Hunter Mallik went mad. But it was a slow, evil madness. First he brought home no meat, but ate all his catch, raw, alone in the woods. Then he befouled with urine and feces the rest and left it to rot in the forest. He refused to sleep with any of his six wives, and finally he took to bringing home sand in his feathered hunting sack, and scattering it on his wives’ turnip gardens. Several nights he left his house and
tore up the turnip fields of the women who lived in the thatched house next door so that his wives were obliged to replant them; and, in general, he made his wives’ lives miserable. There are many stories of the awful things that occurred within that sad, unfortunate home. Once, in a rage, he beat his oldest son to death, and another time he broke his little daughter’s wrist with a turnip rake. He disgraced his wives in every way; he even walked around the village with his rult all undone, hanging down with its inner carving showing like a careless, baby boy whose mother has neglected to retie the thongs after washing – and when there was a naven, he refused to dress himself in the Men’s House, but would run off instead into the woods and spend four or five days in the forest, from which he would return half starved and ranting like some old holy woman, only without any holy words. And within the house he made his wives’ lives an endless and terrible dream by mockings and by violences of the sort that the sane can hardly imagine. Several times he put poisonous herbs into the cooking pots and sat laughing and singing while his wives and children lay sick and vomiting in their front yard. This is when he did not take to threatening and beating them all outright – I have spoken of the murder of his son …? One night, after what particular outrage no one can be sure, his wives, driven half to madness themselves no doubt, with the help of Mallik’s mother and an aunt, killed him while he lay sleeping. They cut off his hands and his gorgi and his feet; these they buried at the four corners and the center of the oldest wife’s turnip garden. Then they …” Her eyes moved away from mine. “They took his rult, broke it, dipped the pieces in blood and hung them by the thongs from the doorposts. Then they slit the throats of their children; and then their own throats. All were found dead
the next morning. You can’t imagine what it was like, Venn, for twelve-year-old Arkvid to come upon that obscene, bloody carving dangling from the door of his mother’s brother’s home; and then to walk in upon the carnage –” and she stopped for the look that crossed my face; for once more I had been brought up by how small a tribe my beloved Rulvyn were, how quickly they grew up, how young they married, how soon they died – with everyone related to everyone in at least three directions, and where “many, many years ago” can be three as easily as thirty, and where a seventeen-year-old wife, with a child at her feet, telling you of something that happened in her great grandmother’s time might just mean six years ago when her fifty-year-old great grandmother was, indeed, alive. For as well as farming and cooking and baby-caring with Ydit and Acia and Ii, somehow I had managed to learn how Acia had got lost in the forest for three days when she was seven, and how she had slept next to a suckling mother goat; and how Ii had stolen a big jar of honey when she was ten and was beaten for it till she couldn’t walk for three days; or how Acia used to run off at night as a girl and sit by the stream for hours in the moonlight – and mynad other things that made up who these women were – in the same way I suppose I tended to forget that one’s prestigious hunter ever had a childhood, or that anything had ever happened in it worth remembering. “You see, something
is
going on down in the places below memory you so easily speak of.” Ydit looked at me again. “The rult has always been too much here associated with death: for it is what empowers the hunter to kill his goats and his geese and his turtles. And on that day, hanging bloody and broken from that profaned doorpost, it was a sign of the death for all who lay inside.” She took my wrist in her hand and dropped her
head to the side. “So if our most prestigious hunter has devised a way to make the rult a sign of life – if he wants to see the child growing in my womb as me growing a little rult, then I think there is a beauty, a necessary beauty there.” Her smile formed and became that strangely private and at once public smile that I always envied in the Rulvyn women and have always missed so in the women of the shore; “I have the best-irrigated turnip fields in the village. So I can certainly allow our hunter his little idea.”