by inciting, as it certainly does, untoward emotion in the listener. If the heart of a Man – but particularly a (wo)Man, so soft and biddable – should respond to that call, who knows where it might lead? However, music constrained and disciplined through repetition and monotone, using only drums and never ever woodwind or string, may serve a sacred purpose.
I knew the song we were about to sing. It was an old one from before Liberation, a song of self-sacrifice that anticipated the ideal of female Perfection, yet sung by an unPerfected (wo)Man, tragically common in those days. She had been mistreated in her lifetime in that wretchedly chaotic world, used and abused and finally martyred: forced to inject poison as punishment for her faith in her principles. The Son was introducing the long-awaited climax of our day with the words: ‘All rise and join me in song …’
To the accompaniment of the big, deep bass drum reserved for ritual occasions we Fifteens chanted as one Billie Holyday’s Hymn of (wo)Man, ‘All of Me’, in which she invites a Man to take her body, her arms, her legs – all of her – so demonstrating her profound understanding of how a (wo)Man may be fulfilled. My heart ached towards the possibility of self-realisation through sacrifice, oh take me, take me …
And then the moment was here: in an orderly queue we mounted the granite steps, each with a hand on the shoulder of the sister preceding us and clasping that of the one behind so as to remain steady and dignified on our towering heels. We were proudly aware of the hot gaze of the boys and Men below us as their eyes followed the bulge of our calves up to our thighs and between them, our buttocks and waists bound in tightly cinched leather. And so, to the Altar before the western wall of the Orchid Nursery. One by one we prostrated ourselves before the Plea Box. Each girlie then rose and deposited her Plea in the slot – or at least, made that motion. Did Pearl indeed refrain? She made a pass towards the lip of the Plea Box. But was that a slip of paper in her hand, or a flicker of her light fingers to impress the notion of such on those who watched?
PEARL
4.
I have confided a little – only a very little – of the turmoil of my mind to my friend, my sweet fierce Mica, who is so good at all the lessons, all the tasks, all the disciplines learned in the classroom, the Ways and Duties and Prayers, and all those practical skills for cleaning, gardening and military training. I do not tell the worst though. I do not tell her where it has led me. I do not tell her that I have been with a man, a single man, alone, with no witnesses. And we have kissed and we have touched each other in the vilest ways, unobserved by any other, as if we were a separate pair of people cut off from the body corporate. I told him I will go with no other. His face went pale, pale, pale at his Pearl’s latest profanation. Then it went all rosy, rosy pink, so I kissed him again. And he held me to him as if I were precious.
The demons who possess me have found a comfortable home here among my cerebral folds and all that cosy cushioning brain-flesh. They have no desire to leave. Why would they? No, they say, very comfy, thank you, Pearl … it is very comfy in your mind, Pearl Stone. Bring me a cool drink scented with rosewater and a cinnamon stick to stir it, bring me a fragrant rollie-smoke in an ivory cigarette holder like the one Colander uses when he speaks to us after the News for Girlies and before the State Anthem of the Dual True Faith. Or actually, my pearly Pearl, why not bring me his ivory cigarette holder, his very one? You can hide it under your pillow with the pile of stories you stole the week before from the Museum.
Listen to me, say the demons in my head. And I do. I listen and I feel, I feel their bodies inside my own, and where their skin touches mine, bruises form, bruises of corruption that will rot me from the inside out … But, says a big red demon with a face white as light, his finger raised imperiously, but, he says, it is from degeneration, from rot and corruption, that new life springs! When I heard that blasphemous twisting of one of our most sacred lessons, I laughed out loud! I felt not fear then, but joy! Oh, I’m a goner.
So, this is what is happening to me, to my soft mind. Yes – that is it – my mind is soft and pliant because all my lessons have failed to harden my edges – I feel I have no edges, and sense sometimes that I am slipping, slipping into some bright and dark place between certainties where there are no rules, no Ways, a lawless zone populated by monsters. And I no longer care. No – worse – worse and better – I welcome them!
How can I stay here, in my home? I am sickened by all that I see. I do not want the future that has been laid out for me. All the attributes that I once attempted to emulate, that I saw as noble, self-abnegating, dutiful, loyal, I now see differently. This new vision is the Devil’s work for sure, isn’t it? Yes, it is. Brought into my head by his imps and demons. And I welcome the Devil into my mind. I welcome the Devil into my heart.
I will find my chance. I will. Soon I will go. Soon, now … and Asa will come with me. He will.
Something I know to be true: Asa will say he made his choice freely. That’s true as far as it goes, as far as ‘choice’ goes. But if you start from a place of weakness or desperation, or hopelessness or love, you are compelled. There is no choice.
And here is something I learned from the Devil: in your life you can stay safe. If you stay safe you may live longer. But your spirit will shrivel and your heart will become a tight, dry little fist. Hard and wizened. But you can live with a shrivelled spirit, lots do. Or you can take a difficult way and die sooner. Though until that happens your spirit will be pumping full of life and you will die with a heart full and plump, full and plump as my blood-filled cunny-bulb!
Ah, Mica, my little darly. Mica. You looked forward so very very hard with all your heart. You looked forward to Attainment, always just around the corner, always just coming up, Four Years to Attainment, Three, Two, One (ah one diddly um-pum – pumpum!), when we’ll all be standing together in our naked rows – chookies for the plucking, birdies for the fucking – and you so proud, but never for yourself, no, for you are so good good good. You are so proud of all this ‘Perfection’ we have.
She knows me so well, does Mica, so she does! She knows me well, my temper and intemperance, how I go all hot and cold and need to run run run … But how can a girlie run when everywhere she goes are the eyes?
The eyes of the mothers and the soldiers and the Men of all the trades, the Bearers and the Ganders and all the idiot boys. And the eyes of the rest of you stupid breeders, my sisters.
My sisters: I loved you all through my childhood and I love you still for I am still a part of you – though now apart. But if you knew, you with your trimmed quims and your sweet neat ways, if you only knew how to wish, wish for the ache, that delicious deep corrupting ache, then you would! But you do not know what I know. I know because they cocked it up, cocked up the operation we all have at Minus-Eleven from Attainment, all of us, Oblation, Sacricunt and Dutilove – Stone and Dirt and Bark – bark bark and howl at the moon! Oh my lovely butchers – you missed a bit! You missed a bit!
I have a man and his name is Asa, thank all the ancient gods, whoever you were before the Big Dual One came and knocked you sprawling so that all that’s left of you is bits of broken limb and shattered ribs laid about the world. My gods – are you still breathing your dewy humours somewhere? Just over the lip of the horizon, some horizon somewhere! Where? Where are you now? Gone back to the heart of the sun that birthed you? Or deep in the ocean, in the cold, clean, salty sea, surging a hundred miles from the greasy greedy waters that lap at the shallows of Big River, choked with the filth from our godowns and manufactories?
Asa is mine. He is named after one of those ancient famous kings or kooks that the boys always get named for – and what do we girls get? Bark, dirt, and rocks. Let me pick up one of those rocks and throw it, throw it and hit you right between the eyes, you big old sunny Son Twin Resolved, Child of GodFather, you big old manny Man from the pictures in the DoppelBook, you with your right foot forward and a flower in