The Cleft (13 page)

Oh, how the females hated that river valley. That comes clear and insistent from the chronicles and songs of the time. Most of all they hated the river itself, which was dangerous to them, not only to the infants and small children. The theme ‘How few we are, how easily we die' – the words of a song – is reiterated. Many had died in that river.

It ran very fast, it was deep, it was cold, and to bathe in it they all, except for the strongest of the young men, had to confine themselves to a bay or inlet where water idled and lazed, and it was shallow. These people who had been born on the edge of the sea, had always been in and out of the water, who had felt about water almost as they did about air, benign, safe, their element, now knew water as an enemy. On the insistence of the Clefts, there were guards on the river banks, preventing the small children from going in. The bigger boys willingly did
this. They were as handy with the small children as were the females. Had they not nurtured many of their own, with the eagles' help? Had they not taught deer to feed the babes? It was not that they didn't know how to look after small children, they were rather too casual, the females complained; the boys were forgetful. The older boys would start a game with some tiny boy who was trying to reach the enticing water, but the game became general, with the other little boys coming in, and the first little one would be forgotten, or even knocked over and into the water. The females exhorted the boys, trying to teach them consistency of care. In the end, the guards on the river banks included females: they could not trust the boys to remember their duties.

The Clefts for the time believed that the boys were defective, mentally: they did not have normal memories. This idea developed to ‘they are born normal but then later they don't seem to think of anything but their squirts'.

One of the games developed by the boys caused a violent altercation.

The more adventurous boys, and this did not necessarily mean the older ones, would step away from the safe bay, and fling themselves into the fast-running waves of the main river. They let themselves be carried along until they reached a certain little island further down the river. They clambered out, rested, and then
had to reach the bank, a dangerous swim, where they ran back and jumped into the swimming shallows, and then again leaped into the cold and rapid waves. Sometimes, if a log or a branch was travelling along in the flow, they might catch it and hold on and use it for the ride. The females did not do this, that is to say, the older ones, though the younger Clefts joined in. What the Clefts objected to was allowing the young boys to join in. It was certainly very dangerous, and a little child did lose hold of his support and drowned.

There is mention of mourning for this child, very different in emphasis from the careless, even indifferent, attitude towards much earlier deaths. This child was valued. The dead infant was not consigned to the water, but brought back to the main bank from the little island where he had been caught on an underwater snag. The child was buried on the edge of the forest with stones over the place, to prevent the body being dug up by animals.

There is mention now, often, of the big animals that sometimes came out of the trees.

Apart from the dangerous river, great fires were kept burning always, day and night, because of these animals, who were afraid of fire, and the fires too had guards.

A new thing, now, the constant references to danger, to threat: ‘How few we are, how easily we die.'

This is why we think now this period went on for
a long time: enough to develop new customs, feelings, ideas.

What did they feel when they buried that small child? What, when the Old Ones died? Did they put some fish near the infant's grave for his journey into the afterlife? Did they believe in an afterlife?

When this infant died, from the young men's carelessness – so the Clefts thought – the girls from the shore demanded a debate with the boys, insisted on decisions being made about safety.

The men suggested meeting on a certain stretch of shore. Before that there would be a feast. There was much excitement and enjoyment, ‘games' went on most of the night, and a full moon surveyed the festivities. On that night it would have been easy to believe the moon had once filled the wombs of the Clefts, before the coming of the boys. Not many slept, and when the sun came up the girls were still trying to entice the boys into more ‘games'. There was ill feeling when the boys said now it was time to go off to the shore they had designated for their deliberations. In fact there were none for the boys were only interested in their pastime, which on that day was well favoured, because high tide had exposed even more of the stones they needed for a certain sport. The girls' description of the day was irritated, exasperated, but the boys' account only said the girls ‘were complaining as usual'.

This is what happened.

This seashore, unlike the rocky shore the females knew so well, was a long edge of white sand, and on this were stones, all smoothed by the sea, pleasant to handle – and the females were doing that, playing with them, and wondering how to attach them to make necklaces and adornments from them.

Meanwhile the men were standing where the waves stopped, and throwing the stones with a low skimming motion over the waves and making them skip once, twice, three times, until the stones sliced into the waves. ‘What are you doing?' said the women, and the men said, ‘These are the best conditions we've had,' and, ‘If you don't mind, we aren't going to waste them.' ‘Yes, but we are here to talk about safeguarding the little boys.' ‘Well, wait, then.'

But on they went, throwing the stones, admiring each other's skills, while the women were at first puzzled, then astounded, then affronted. ‘What's the point?' the women asked each other. ‘What are they doing?' ‘Perhaps they want us to admire them.' The men were naked, except for their little aprons of feathers. They were certainly a challenge, an invitation, as some girls saw it, and they tried to entice the boys away from their game to play with them. But the boys did not seem to feel they were trying to make the girls admire them, so absorbed were they in their stone-throwing. ‘Three … four … five …'
said a boy. ‘But I did six,' said another. ‘No, you didn't, that was five.' So they bantered, competing over the skipping stones, matching their skills and ease with the stones. Surely they would soon be bored? was what the women were thinking. ‘What's the point of doing this?
What do they think they are doing
?' But the men just went on. It was warm and then it was hot. The sun hit straight down from the burning sky. The females retreated to patches of shade, where they sat, arms round their legs, watching. What skill was going into the men's game, and what concentration. And what was it all for? was the thought exchanged between the women in their unhappy glances. It was midday and time, surely, to find shade, find even a cave perhaps, and sleep, or play, as the women wanted. Then the men, as if at a signal, stopped their game and began another. The tide was going out, exposing the tops of weed-slippery black rocks. The men, all of them, down to the little boys, were jumping from rock to rock in daring leaps which, though apparently impossible, mostly succeeded. If they fell into the sea, and even cut themselves, they had to continue the game bleeding. On they went to see who could jump further, jump furthest, faster, more skilfully.

A little boy cut his knee and came to the women to have it bound with seaweed and then he at once returned to the others.

The women made a point of showing the bleeding child to the men, who did not seem to find it any proof of their negligence, but indicated by their manner that the women were – as usual – absurd.

A group of youths wandered off, not greeting the women or even seeming to see them. The light went out of the sky and the women looked to see the youths return but the others said they were a hunting party and probably wouldn't get back that night. Often hunters stayed at a good place to take advantage of the early morning when animals emerged from the trees to go down to the waterholes and streams.

There was no suggestion that the promised discussion would take place: the incident with the damaged little boy had to do in place of the reproaches the women had planned.

That night there was no feasting. There was some mating but nothing like last night, though the moon stood there above them.

In the early morning the women woke to find there was not one male to be seen. Hard to avoid the thought that the men had seen the women, their females, asleep and silent, and stolen off silently, so as to – escape? Yes, almost certainly, that was what they had done.

The women decided to give up. They went back along the shore to their own place, sad, disappointed and feeling let down, although later some of the
hunting party brought them a carcass and arranged the parts to cook around a fire. It seemed they felt they were apologising.

Something like this happened more than once, and the comments entrusted to the Memories included remarks about the men's mental equipment. Speculation went on. Were they mad? Hard to see a whole day's skimming stones over the waves as a sane activity. No, they were – at least sometimes – crazy. Perhaps the full moon affected them? After all, if the full moon regulated the women's fertility and their menses, then the full moon could wreak otherwise sane minds into lunacy. It was generally agreed in the end that the men were, if not mad, then deficient in understanding.

Yet there were some girls who refused to leave the men's valley, and said they liked the life there. Then, first one and then another, they returned, angry and fearful, because they were pregnant, and as their bellies swelled were told they were not wanted, even though they were useful, cutting up carcasses, making fire, clearing away rubbish and the remains of feasts. ‘Back to your own place,' they had been told, though some did not want to go. The women's shore, with so many pregnant females, babies, small children, was not peaceful, though there was plenty of entertainment for the babes and infants, in and out of the waves, water babies, like the young of seabirds or
like sea pups. The cold slapping and slicing waves could never lose their allure for the adults.

But the contrast between the women's shore and the men's valley was hard for some females, hard to bear.

It was not that the men did not come to visit the women in their airy caves, or that the women did not go to see the men.

Then occurred the confrontation which sent the males out of their valley into the forests.

The young men were always inventing for themselves daring feats and challenges, and they came up with something that sent Maronna, ‘half mad with rage', over the mountain to Horsa. Maronna, the name appears about now, and so does Horsa. We do not know if the syllables with Mar … Maro … Mer and similar represented an individual or, as we think, the current leader of the women.

The youths went together with forest rope – the underside of the bark of trees – to The Cleft, and one of their number tied rope round his middle, and jumped down on the platform where the fumes from the ossuary below soon overcame him. The game was that those standing on the rim, peering down, had to haul him up before he passed out. They all did this, one after the other; those who had never attempted The Cleft were not considered adult.

Maronna went alone, and found Horsa just off into the forest to hunt.

Our chronicle says Maronna physically attacked Horsa and had to be restrained. Their chronicle says Horsa apparently did not know he was at fault in anything, until she screamed at him that he never thought about his actions, never saw consequences … everybody knew that the little boys emulated the big boys in anything, and when they attempted to jump down to the platform, first, they would be using seaweed rope which almost certainly would not be enough to hold them, and also, they were children, and not strong enough either to withstand the fumes at all, or, if handling the ‘rope', would not prevent themselves from being tugged over and into the gulf.

‘Are you trying to kill off all our children?' shouted Maronna, and Horsa, who had never thought until this moment that the small boys would of course try to follow the example of the big youths, shouted that there was no need for her to shout and scream, he would make sure the practice stopped at once.

Did Horsa apologise, admit he had been thoughtless? – because of course she was right. I cannot see Horsa ever admitted he had been in the wrong, but our chronicle says that Maronna was ‘pacified' and he agreed to put a guard at The Cleft, day and night, to make sure no little boys went up there.

‘Don't you care about us?' Maronna demanded, weeping.

This has earned the scrutiny of a hundred commentators. What did she mean by ‘us'? The appellation ‘the people' seems to have been dropped long ago. Did she mean that the males did not care about the trials of the women? Or about the little boys? (‘Very few of the girls were tempted by the trial by fumes – they said it was sacrilegious, and The Cleft was holy.' This kind of talk was not often recorded, about the Clefts, and we have to think, then, that they were inventing religious reasons to criticise the boys.)

Did these people, women and men, have an idea of themselves as the only people alive, as suggested by the song, ‘How few we are, how easily we die'? There is no record anywhere, either by them or by us, that they believed there were other people like themselves or even unlike themselves somewhere else ‘on another island'. It seemed they believed this land of theirs was an island, though I wonder what they thought an island was. An island or land implies other islands or lands and we shall see that Horsa would soon go off in search of other shores, if not other people.

We return to what did she mean by ‘us'? There is certainly a suggestion there of the consciousness of a threat, or several.

This question did reach Horsa, and it is recorded that he thought about it. There was a good deal to
think about: for two at least of his young men had succumbed to the effluvias of The Cleft, and fallen into its depths. More than one small boy had drowned in the great river. Going off into the forest was as much a safety measure as it was a need to avoid the continual criticism from Maronna.