The Saskiad, page 15
"In fact, I'm the third generation. My father's parents became vegetarians in the twenties. Part of a back-to-nature movement. My father converted my mother. This incident concerns my father —"
"What did he do?"
Thomas looks at her patiently. Stop interrupting or he will clam up.
"He was a minister. He came from a long line of ministers." Thomas pauses. He is wondering: Is she going to ask something else? Or will she finally shut up?
She shuts up.
"My father was a minister and my mother was a minister's wife. An intelligent and active woman, but women back then didn't have much choice, as you girls probably know."
Yes, they were subordinate to their men. Not like now, when Lauren owns White-on-the-Water and runs the business herself and boots her men out of bed as soon as she gets what she let them scuttle in for. Not like now, when a manly man like Thomas nonetheless has sensitive and gentle hands, and expects the girls to be strong and responsible, and listens seriously to what they say. "Anyway," he is saying, "it's hardly a story, just an early image, really. I remember a beautiful evening, the sun sinking slowly down, everything getting yellow and quiet. I was playing outside by myself."
The cherub Thomas would play by himself. He must have had few friends, he was too responsible and mature for other barns. Poor Tycho never had any friends either. The other aristocratic drengs (that's the real word, by the way, not "dregs," just as "ko" is the real word for "coo") were all drinking, cavorting, and gaming while Tycho was working hard at his astronomy studies, putting the pleasures of heaven above those of the earth. "My father came out our front door and down the steps."
Saskia's grandfather! Perhaps he was a stern patriarch, stiff in his minister's black cassock and white ruff, with a shaven upper lip and an unforgiving beard jutting out, Jutland style.
The minister did not have a suitcase or clothes bag, Thomas says.
He wore a light jacket, which he was buttoning up. As he crossed the grass to his son, playing innocently in the yellow light, he smiled and as he passed he laid his hand for a moment on the crown of Thomas's head. "I can still feel that," Thomas says, touching the top of his head. "That light touch."
Perhaps not so stern, then. A genial man, quick to laugh, walking with a slight waddle, endearingly clownish in his ruff. Wherever he went, meat eating fell off and vegetarianism blossomed.
"It was so strange," Thomas says, gazing into his own eyes, separating truth from falsity. "There was nothing abnormal about his behavior, he didn't have any luggage. And yet I knew. Somehow I knew that something was wrong. When he went to the car instead of the bicycle, I realized that he was leaving us. He was going to leave us forever."
The girls catch their breath. Perhaps there had always been something wrong about that geniality, something hollow. When he thought no one was looking, his face went spookily blank. He never quite managed to be "one of the boys," just as Bluffaroo, whenever he tries to ingratiate himself with Saskia, smiles uneasily and fakes interest in what she's doing. "I suddenly saw quite clearly that he would get into that old car and drive off and never come back, never call or write a letter, just vanish off the face of my world as if his purpose there had ended. I started to cry." Young, cherubic Thomas crying, behind today's Thomas's eyes. Through the mystic link of blood, Saskia can feel it, the pressure mounting behind her own eyes.
He was walking toward the car and Thomas ran after him, his fingers jammed in his mouth, crying his heart out and begging him not to go away. He started the car and waved from the window, smiling that hollow smile. Thomas's mother was coming down the front steps to see what the matter was, and she held Thomas back, comforting him, a kindly woman, a baker of pies, a minister's wife, but oblivious to what was happening, while his father waved and drove away, drove out of their lives forever. "God!" Jane breathes. "That's awful!"
Thomas smiles gently. All around them the mountains and waters are hushed, ashamed that such things happen. The crouching sun is red with anger. Saskia is having a revelation, a sudden widening appreciation of the painfulness of every life, not just her life, the painfulness of Life itself. The limitless frozen lake of Vastamundus is not carnal knowledge — nothing so barnish — but the knowledge of pain, pain woven into the fabric of the world like a net of merciless metal threads. Run your fingers through the fabric and get sliced.
"Ever since then I've wondered where my father was going that day. When I asked him years later, naturally he couldn't remember. And for my part, I can't remember anything about his return, what time it was, what he said. I have just that one image of him leaving."
Saskia is lost. "I don't understand."
"I was wrong. I was sure he was leaving, but I was wrong."
Jane expels air. "What a strange story!" Saskia is silent.
"Childhood is a strange thing," Thomas says. "Facts are nothing, conviction is all. My father did come back. But he had made me think he was leaving, and I never trusted him after that."
11
Lunch in the shelter of an overhanging rock. The biscuits have gotten wet. Thomas hands them out drooping over his fingers. "Gross!" the girls say. But they are kidding. It's nice to be eating even the soggy ones with apples and nuts when you're hungry and hyggelig under a rock on a wet day. While they are lying around afterward, delaying a return to the rain, Thomas's head on his pack, Saskia's on Jane's stomach, Thomas suddenly says, "Lauren hasn't cut her hair, has she?"
"Oh no," Saskia says, horrified.
"How much gray is in it now?"
"None."
"So she has you pull the gray hairs out."
"Yeah."
"You must have to pull a lot."
"Not really. Almost none."
"Mm." Thomas seems to file that away somewhere, noncommit-tally. He brushes his hand over the top of his head. "That beautiful hair. Everybody loved it. And here I am losing even the little I have. But just imagine how tough it must be to have hair so beautiful that it's considered your most important attribute. Beautiful-haired Lauren: that's how everyone thought of her. And then to have it dry up and turn gray. It would be like losing yourself. She probably colors it."
"No."
"How do you know? She would do it secretly. She would be embarrassed about it."
"If she did, she wouldn't have a gray hair now and then."
"Mm. Good point."
"Thank you." Point Saskia. A merry disputation!
"So you're telling me her hair is still beautiful."
"Yeah."
"Very," Jane puts in sleepily. Consolingly or pityingly, she is gently
stroking Saskia's hair.
"Why didn't you bring a photo?"
"We don't have a camera."
"Has she got wrinkles?"
"No."
Thomas traces the lines radiating from the corners of his eyes. "These are good wrinkles. Sun, wind, laughter lines. Surely she has some of those."
"Sure."
"I sense a pattern here. You're only admitting to the good things."
"I just can't remember about wrinkles." "She always had sweet breath. Like apples."
"Yeah!"
"Comes of being a vegetarian. Not the revolting roadkill breath that meat eaters have, right Jane?"
"Right," Jane murmurs.
"But there was something particular about Lauren. Her sweat smelled as fresh as sap. That's why she was named Tree."
"I thought it was Striding Tree," Saskia says.
"Tree for short. Has she gotten grossly fat?"
"Not at all."
"Pleasingly plump?"
"No."
Thomas sighs. "Are you trying to tell me she's still beautiful?"
"Gorgeous."
"I wish you'd brought a photo. Does she smoke?"
"You mean pot?"
"Yes."
"A little."
"Ah." Thomas processes that. "So she went back to it. I was afraid of that. Such a stupid habit." Saskia and Jane look at each other. "I can sense that neither of you are stupid enough to be into that sort of thing. I'm sure of it."
"We're not," Jane says.
"Not into it, or not sure of it?"
"Both." They haven't, in fact, touched hemp since leaving Nova-mundus. Then again, they haven't had any to touch.
"You know, it rots your brain out from the inside, like a peach. You could think of it as a gradual lobotomy."
"You never smoked?" Jane asks.
"Of course I did. We were all stupid at Wonderland. Did Lauren ever tell you that pot made her stop menstruating?"
"No," Saskia says. Hemping stops mooniness? What a great idea!
"That's why you don't have any siblings. Lauren wanted more, you know. She came from a big family. But instead she grew a mustache. She had to have it burned off with electrolysis."
"But she has periods now."
Thomas shrugs. "Once the commune changed to Godhead, drugs were out. Even coffee! Meditation was the natural way to God. I suppose her system recovered. Which is why it's depressing she slid back into it."
"She doesn't smoke much at all. It's probably just for old time's sake."
"Sure. Nostalgia for the days when she was sterile."
But a sibling! Saskia would love to have a little brother. His name would be Haven, and the two of them would be so close! Blue-eyed, brilliant, a beautiful boy. He would confide only in her, and she would protect him.
"Pot also lowers men's sperm count. With all the sex going on at Wonderland it's just as well we smoked, or we'd have drowned in kids. When you were born I'll admit I was relieved to see how much you looked like me. Although you would probably rather look like your mother."
"No."
"As they say, 'Mommy's baby; Daddy's, maybe.' Every man's worst fear. Of all the advantages women have over men, the most appalling is that they absolutely know that their children are their own. Even kings couldn't be sure. In some ancient societies, rule didn't pass to the king's son but to his sister's son. Why? Because his sister's son was the only relative he could be certain had some of his own blood."
"I see," Saskia says. Actually, she doesn't.
"Women know what they're about," Thomas muses. "They can make any man a eunuch. If they were capable of parthenogenesis, they would never have anything to do with men. That's one of the reasons I like women. The fact that they don't like men."
"They don't?"
"They're disappointed in us. I like that. It shows they're idealists. Why am I saying 'they'? I mean you. You and Jane. You don't need boys, do you? Do you have a boyfriend?"
"Me?!" Saskia says. "No."
"Of course not. That's what I'm saying. The boys are jerks, aren't they?"
"Yeah."
"How about you, Jane?" He prods her with his toe. "Wake up." Unh?
"Boyfriend. Do you have one?"
"I wish." Jane settles her back more comfortably against the tree root and closes her eyes again.
"Speaking of which, Lauren must have a boyfriend."
"No."
"She's had lots since I left, though. She's between two at the moment."
"No, she hasn't had any."
"I can't believe that."
The first one Saskia remembers is Jeff, who drove the pine-green truck. Then there was Victor, who wore black turtleneck sweaters and had a big mustache, which he waxed. He was always bringing his pale fingers to his face and caressing his mustache while he stared off into the distance. Creepy. Then Kevin, who had long hair and a bushy beard and a hard belly like a Mongol war drum. He had come to put in a new septic system, and he took to mooning after Lauren. He spent so much time in the garden with her, asking the names of plants for the tenth time, that he was fired by the boss of the septic tank company. Apparently, Kevin got fired a lot. A photo left from the Kevin Age shows him turning the flexed muscles of one shoulder toward the camera and laughing through stained, crowded teeth. On the shoulder is a new, raw tattoo: lauren, backed by a rose and clippers, crossed. What a tabe. Lauren doesn't even grow roses. She says they're so overdeveloped they have a sickly karma. In the photo you can see above the tattoo another one peeking out of the sleeve that says NICOLE. Here and gone, and all he left was a photo, and all he took of Lauren was a name in a column. C'est l'amour! And after Kevin, the Bluffaroo himself. Bluffaroo has solved the problem of getting fired by never having a job in the first place. Saskia told Jane that Bluffaroo had only been around for a year, but that was wishful thinking. Bluffaroo has been at White-on-the-Water for four years, the longest by far of any of the usurpers. Surely there has been some mistake Some bureaucratic snafu has held up the issuance of Bill's walking papers.
Faced with Thomas's unyielding disbelief, Saskia concedes: "She's had a couple of boyfriends, or whatever. . . But they've been incredible losers."
"Naturally. All successors are, it's a physical law."
"And she hasn't really liked any of them. She hasn't let any of them sleep in her bed."
"The brass bed?"
"Yeah."
"Well, of course not. It's my bed."
"Oh. I thought—"
"If another man falls asleep in it, when he wakes up he finds he doesn't have any genitalia. He's as smooth as a Ken doll."
"Gosh."
"It's the Curse of the Brass Bed. Lauren never told you about that?"
Saskia is speechless. The awful secrets of the inner sanctum. Lauren the High Priestess on the high bed, using men according to her pleasure, her hair wild, something alive, devouring, a maenad. Wow! But Saskia notices something in Thomas's eyes. "You're kidding!"
"And you're gullible. Anyway, Lauren making her groveling boyfriends walk home in the rain. That's just what I've been saying. Women hold all the cards." Beneath Saskia's neck, Jane's stomach is rising and falling regularly. Thomas winks. "Do you think she's dreaming about boyfriends?" "We were talking late last night." "She ought to drink coffee."
We 11 teach her " Saskia now drinks a whole cup every morning, nursing it like Thomas, crouched with him around the sun.
12
Dateline:
1:30 a.m., July 22, A.N.T. 1. In Camp, Hyperborea.
We humans must learn to fit into the web of life, not tear it. If we tear it, killing whales, poisoning our environment, then we too will someday fall out of the web.
Consider our lowly gray toilet roll, unpretty to look at. It has no bleach, no perfume. We bury it beneath the turf, in the moistness, where it quickly breaks down and returns its goodness to the soil. Why do people want perfumed rolls? Thomas says it is a sign of sickness that we are disgusted by something natural. Toilets waste precious water because we don't ever want to smell anything. The water hides the smell from our pampered noses.
Truth to tell, the hardest part for Saskia about getting used to the camping life has been doing her business. She accepts that it is her own fault, not that of the perfectly natural things she is leaving in the hole she scraped out with a stick. "You might as well be ashamed of breathing," Thomas says. "Here's an exercise. Say, Thomas, I think I'll go take a shit,' without blushing."
"I think I'll go take a shit, or whatever," Saskia murmurs.
"You blushed."
"I can't help it!"
"OK! Be ashamed of your own shit if you want to be. That's your business. But surely you're not ashamed of my shit. I would find that insulting. Say: 'Hey Thomas, I saw you making a nice big shit the other day.' Look, you're blushing even without saying it."
Jane is in stitches. "What's so funny?" Saskia asks her indignantly.
When we are hiking in stony areas, we keep our feet on the stones as much as possible, instead of crushing the grass and flowers. Jane picked some lichen off a rock and Thomas pointed out gently that lichens are the first step on the road from stone to soil, and this land needs all the soil it can get.
"As the signs in the U.S. parks say, Take only photos, leave only footprints.' In Tasmania they have an expression I like even better. They tell you to be a 'phantom walker'"
"You've been in Tasmania, too?" Jane asks.
"I've been in Tasmania twice."
Thomas doesn't even kill mosquitoes or horseflies. All the poor mother mosquito wants is a little blood for her needy eggs.
Saskia and Jane have not yet advanced to that plane, but Thomas is tolerant. "Perhaps it is too much to ask of everybody," he says, a mosquito gorging on his forearm. He doesn't even get welts. Talk about discipline! The horseflies are awful. Half as big as the pompom bees, they come out in force in dry weather. When they land on you they pause to gather strength before tipping forward and jamming a post-hole digger into your flesh. They are slow, but hard to kill. A direct hit only stuns them for a moment. Nonetheless, Jane has worked out an effective routine. She delivers a thunderous slap and the fly falls to the ground, kicking its legs. Before it can recover she stamps on it several times, yelling, "Take that! And that!" She emerges from the frenzy with a flushed face, smiling.
"How was it?" Thomas asks playfully. "Nice?" Even he avoids horsefly bites. He waves the flies away.
"OK, I understand the mother mosquitoes, but what do the fucking flies want?" Jane asks.
"Just a square meal."
"Why can't they be vegetarians?"
"Ah, the zeal of the convert."
Perhaps flies are a test of our goodness, of our reverence of life for life's sake. Well, it's a hard test.
Once at dinner Thomas said, "Consider what your needs are when you want to go to sleep. You need your sleeping bag, so you take it out of the stuff sack. Now you've got this empty stuff sack. What are you going to do with it? You also have to take your clothes off, so you do that. But what are you going to do with your clothes now? They're lying all over the place. You crawl into your sleeping bag. You discover that you would really like to have a pillow. But — wait a minute! You can put your clothes in the stuff sack. Voila! A pillow!
"Think for a minute about how wonderfully that works. Our needs will mesh, if we only let them. If people learned to love most the things that worked simply and well, this planet would not be in so much trouble."
