by Alex Pheby
‘I am Horus and Seth; I do not allow you to make the head of my mother white!’
Onto the wrappings, prayers and spells are written, and between the wrappings amulets and charms are placed. Providing the necessary recitations are made in the chapel above the tomb, these will serve as protection for the dead in the underworld.
NEARBY MEN
EUROPE, THE YEARS AFTER THE MENARCHE OF LUCIA JOYCE
There are so many ways it is possible to act improperly without realising it.
You must try to understand what it is like for us, we creatures that are driven by our needs and for whom there is constant goading from our groins. Glands… we are affected by them terribly, constantly pumping chemicals into our nervous systems. They fire us up, changing what we see. We see red mist. We become slavering, rabid bears. Is it any wonder we sometimes do things we ought not to do, and don’t take account of the feelings of others? You should feel sorry for us, really, and not mope about the house in a mixture of resentment and self-pity – what good will ever come of that?
Can you imagine what it is like to have the testicles of a monkey inserted under the skin, or to be at the beck and call of the same urges that drive a rutting stag? From the moment one wakes, to the moment one sleeps? It is a wonder we get anything done at all! Puffing and panting, and everyone we see a threat, or someone to dominate. It is we who deserve the pity, not you. And to expect us to know which side of the line we ought to stay on, under the circumstances? You will learn.
Let us say that a father is drunk – James Joyce likes to drink. He wanders the bars of whatever city he is in, partaking of the local specialties one after the other until he can scarcely see straight, and why not, since he has done his work for the day? Can he be expected to exercise the same degree of control that he can when he is sober, over the urges his endocrine system exhorts him to satisfy? He is very short-sighted, too, James Joyce, and visually fixated, which is an unfortunate combination, because he finds himself aroused not just by those things he finds attractive, but also those things which may be mistaken for those things he finds attractive, since he cannot differentiate between them at a distance.
Say he is sitting in the living room and there is the proper object of his affections – his wife, Nora – and he is aroused by her, but then she leaves while he is reading the paper, and you, Lucia, replace her in her chair. When he puts the paper down he sees you, in his state of arousal. Is it any wonder, in the blurry world in which he exists when he has his reading glasses in place rather than the glasses he has for distance, that his arousal is transferred to you? This is the kind of thing that happens ten, twenty times in a week, such are the comings and goings in the house, and so, like a duckling who has imprinted on its mother, in the same way James Joyce imprints on you, in error. And this is when he is sober! So think what it must be like when he is stinking drunk.
Is it any wonder?
Also, remember that a certain type of man finds himself attracted to women who bear a superficial resemblance to his mother (although, equally, there is a type of man who desires the opposite of his mother in every way). If, then, he has a sister, and that sister bears a resemblance to her mother, one also should not be surprised when that man, Giorgio Joyce, finds himself attracted to his sister. In a house where there is a lot of play between the children, where horsing around has never been discouraged, unless the father is writing, and where space is at a premium, rooms must be shared since there is no money for anywhere bigger. Brother and sister are often in close proximity, and during the rough and tumble of everyday play, especially during puberty and adolescence, it is not surprising that you will sometimes find him on top of you, Lucia, panting from your rough-housing. There is a sudden shift in the mood. Remember, he is surging with the hot-bloodedness of his sex, and if a line is crossed, if your blouse has become open at the breast, and your slip is revealed, and perhaps more skin than is proper, and he leans forward, or quickly dismounts, then this is no surprise. This will happen ten, twenty times in a week, and like a duck, et cetera, it can become a behaviour that is reified, purely by accident, and nothing should be said about it.
Also understand that a man’s brother will often have an unspoken desire for his brother’s wife, and what could be more natural? Two males of the same brood, James and Stanislav Joyce, for example, will have similar tastes, particularly if they are of the type of man that chooses for his wife a woman who bears a superficial resemblance to their mother. There are lines to be crossed in this department too, and, like the brother, he is a big drinker, so it is not unusual to find him breathing over the mother’s shoulder when she is cooking chops. That he then slips his hand around her waist and asks whether there is anything she needs should surprise no one.
Here also the question of mistaken identity comes into play, since if the daughter resembles her mother then the husband’s brother might also find himself attracted to the daughter by substitution. As she grows into a lithe and troubled young thing, and bearing in mind that a brother can never come between his brother and his wife… perhaps the girl? And can she be induced to remain silent on the matter? Such are the thoughts of a drunken man, filled with the urges that a bull satiates on a harem of cows in any field in Ireland, regardless of which of them was sired by whom, and you should not take it so personally, you will learn.
The flat is so small, with everyone pressed up against one another, and the nights so hot that it’s unfair to make anyone wear bedclothes. The customs of this country require one to drink a great deal of wine and smoke cigars and be hospitable to guests, offering them every consideration, and where are the lines drawn anyway? And aren’t you at least partially to blame, Lucia, being a volatile little thing? You stand there in the doorway to the bathroom, splashing water onto yourself in the humid past-midnight, lit from behind so that the outline of your stomach and your chest and your buttocks could not be clearer from this angle. Don’t you know the story of the sirens, who lured sailors to their fates? Or the selkies who did… whatever they did, and can you blame a drunk man for his indiscretions when he is hot and confused and wakes in the night with an erection borne of too full a bladder? He finds you there, dousing yourself, in a piece of cotton that barely covers your arse? Or a brother the same, rolling over onto your side of the bed since Uncle is in your room, with an erection borne of a fever dream of mermaids? Your cotton slip is pulled up since you’ve always turned in your sleep and your belly button is visible, like the women in far Arabia. He’s never seen a breast, let alone touched one, and don’t you need to show some empathy? To understand what it must be like for us?
It’s different for girls; they are driven by love. But boys? We are slaves of our gonads. You can smell it on us, that reindeer musk, and we don’t really have a choice. Once we have a head of steam up a girl can easily fail to see where she crosses the line between childish horse-play and prick-teasing. Between wearing clothes that are comfortable, and revealing too much thigh. Between affection for the men of the house and driving us to distraction, particularly since her menarche.
Women and girls give off a chemical like that which attracts insects to each other, and in such a small flat, with the windows closed against the oncoming winter, the concentration of pheromones is overwhelming for a healthy man. It can cause him to sleepwalk, so that when he is dreaming of his wife he finds himself in the bed of his daughter. When he is dreaming of his brother’s wife, he finds himself in the bed of his niece. When he is dreaming of a woman who bears a superficial resemblance to his mother, but is not his mother, he finds himself in the bed of his sister, with an erection borne of his dreaming. Once he has a head of steam up, it is unfair to hold him to account for that, and you will learn.
Indeed, if a girl wishes to avoid the attentions of the men that surround her, and this is a good lesson for life in general, she should not go to so much trouble to make herself beautiful. Some say that, to the old, all young women are beautiful, but there are degrees. O
ne only need consider the existence of spinsters in the world. Or women who have been left by their husbands. Or widows who cannot remarry. Or women who expend all their energies in compensatory activities, such as work. Understand that some women are less attractive to men than others. So perhaps cut your hair short, since men prefer long-haired women. Dress in clothes that do not cling to the body, since men are attracted by a woman’s secondary sexual characteristics. Keep boyishly thin, since men who find boys attractive will have their hands too full with boys to have time to seek out boyish girls.
She should also not display personality traits that men enjoy, such as an easy, relaxed, and unpretentious attitude. She should be reserved and nervous in the company of men, and thereby not draw attention to herself. If spoken to, she should then make shrewish and sarcastic remarks that do nothing to make the man she is conversing with feel as if he has a high place in her affections. She should not be constantly giggling and holding onto his sleeve as if in apoplexy. She should not grab his shoulder as if to support herself and drop her head, laughing. This will cause him to imagine her mouth around his erection, even if he has not imagined it already. Indeed, she should not laugh at all, or speak much, since the open mouth is very like to the spread vulva. The sight of it glistening, lips parted, is too much for some men, and they will seek to press any advantage they feel they have. If she speaks, she should show her teeth often, and so offset any desire that may be building with threat of castration, which is what we fear most.
She should not discuss matters which men find interesting, such as sport, gambling, or the news, since we will then feel as if it might be very acceptable to have a partner in life who is so affable. We long for a woman who shares our preoccupations, so that the entire evening can be spent in conversation before we take her to our rooms and undress her. If she wishes to be left alone she should show a strong desire to discuss laundry, or recipes for bread, or childbearing (though this itself can come perilously close to topics that will cause a man to imagine intercourse, her uterus, and by association, his sexual domination of her, later, in the hotel room, slap her, put a pillow over her face).
She should never drink, since she will need her wits about her. Does a fox drink before a hunt? Not if it wishes to stay ahead of the hounds! Dogs will tear a fox to bits, and while this is a sobering thought, alcohol deadens the senses and dulls the mind. If she has taken none, while we have been helping ourselves to the bottle freely, with money behind the bar, this will even the playing field. She should not give up this small advantage. A drunken letch can be seen coming a mile off – our gambits are as clumsy as our fat fingers, and the grasp of both is easily avoided.
Some girls believe they can do away with men altogether through lesbianism, but this is wishful thinking, since for some men the more distant the prize, the more effort we exert to achieve it. The thought of two girls together, sweating beneath the sheets at the heavy work of defying nature’s intentions for their bodies, is tremendously exciting. We will do almost anything to interrupt your exertions and show you girls how it is properly done. We will often bring our friends in numbers, to watch or help out, and what was intended as a means of avoiding the issue altogether brings it front and centre.
We will not be told.
Girls should hope for war, provided the campaign is prosecuted in another territory, since then men are occupied with it to the exclusion of all else. The only men left behind are those who are relatively easy to fend off – the elderly, the very young, and the infirm. During wartime, the nerve-fire that our glands secrete is spent on the exciting business of killing each other, or on waiting to kill each other, or on training to kill each other, or on thinking of ways to kill each other. If there is any goatish behaviour it is carried out at the expense of the women of the territories in which the war is raging. God help those women, certainly, but things go much easier for those left behind – wives are left un-harried, children unmolested, and lesbians may go about their business without fear of being barged in on. Girls may then read the papers in the public library with interest for news of how the war is progressing, and watch newsreels in the cinema, and luxuriate in the knowledge that many miles lie between them and their tormentors. The only way back is in a coffin, or through time-consuming and heroic traversing of enemy territory. In the meantime, if hands are slipped across thighs in the dark they will be owned by people whom they wish would do so, not by those they dread doing so, which is so much more relaxing.
Say the man comes home, then, injured and requiring care. You should provide it, gladly, knowing that it is you who are in control now. If you spit in his soup while he is upstairs, bed-ridden, and cannot see you, then that is your privilege. If you have your friend round, you can finger each other on the threshold of his bedroom door, and, if he hears you, you can deny it. Act as if it is he that is losing his mind, that he gets it from his father, and does he expect there are women out there who will put up with this kind of paranoia? From a cripple? Think again and count his blessings.
Not you personally, of course, Lucia. None of this is to do with you personally. But stop seeking out the company of men; nobody likes a girl who only likes men. Other girls are suspicious of her, will expect treachery from her, will not include her in their small talk, will stop speaking when she enters the room of things that are common knowledge to everyone else. At some point one has to stop being so bloody doe-eyed and romantic about everything and come to terms with the world how it is – it is a shithole. More so than you imagine, since you have been sheltered all this time. If you had to live as your mother lived as a girl, then you’d know why it was you moved around so much and never went back. If you think your mother had it bad, then you should think of your grandmother and grandfather and the stories your mother could tell you would make your teeth chatter, make your hair curl, would widen your eyes.
Those stories might make you think twice about your attitude, which is ungrateful to a degree that is startling, and your mother would have given an arm to have been brought up in the lax and slovenly environment that you constantly complain about.
There is no telling people, though, and consequently, you shouldn’t go crying to her when you get what you deserve. You were warned, and she cannot live your life for you. If you refuse to take good advice when it’s given to you, then what do you expect her to do about it? Men are men, and whining about it isn’t going to help – you get your jabs in when you can, how you can, and learn to take a punch.
When you are old enough you will stay out late and come home as infrequently as possible. You will walk the streets, which is easy enough if one has money since the bars never close. When it is raining one can sit under the canopy and smoke and wait for men to buy you drinks, which they always will, until you lose your looks, which will happen eventually, but not for many years. Things will be different then, the world will be different, it will be more to your tastes, more in your image. You will rule it, decide who does what when, and then they will see.
Just wait.
Again, the nature of the desecrations was not appreciated by my colleague. He ran his fingers in awe through the air immediately above her image, tracing the line of her nose, her shoulders, her hands and then back up, along the crook and the flail. He was breathing as heavily as a man who had run a mile. I found his excitement vulgar and out of place, and I had to look away from him. Here were more of the erasures, in those places where she was represented in the funerary spells on the sides of the sarcophagus.
The crook and flail are symbols of royalty, and the precision of the decorations was so perfect that the sense of unease and, I don’t know how else to put this, wrongness was very strong. Why was the tomb vandalised? Why was the name removed? Who had disrupted the protective magics?
Open the mouth and the eyes
The symbol of Horus is made in lapis lazuli and placed at the throat so that the deceased might enjoy the favour of all whom she meets.
GIORGIO JOYCE
FRANCE, SUMMER 1925
Giorgio waits on the grass verge.
A gnat buzzes at the periphery of his attention, but he is under no obligation to turn his head. On a late afternoon walk in summer, after the bar has shut and the old sots wander slowly home for bollockings from their wives, clouds of midges gather above the drought-stagnant brooks and rills that follow the road. The insects sense a young man and want the sweat that gathers on his forehead, his wine breath, and as he stands still to appreciate the views they mob him. He isn’t able to swat them all away. They are too small to have the sense to avoid his hand, too numerous as a race to need to develop that intelligence, but they swarm recklessly and get what they are after that way.
When he resumes his progress, he passes through them as if they are nothing, outpaces them, and though they follow for a while he is soon away, up to higher ground.
Gnats and midges are not the same thing. Gnats live solitary lives, and their wings make high-pitched screams an inch from your ear. They are less easily put off than midges, who are content with the company of their own kind, generally, and don’t stray far from their territories. A gnat will follow you for miles, craving you, sometimes resting on your shoulder, or in the small of your back. When you think you have left it behind it will appear again, distressingly close, shrieking in your ear when it’s quiet and dark.
From the top of the hill he takes in the surrounding land and what is cracked and brown close up – wilted, yellowing – from up here is almost as verdant as one might expect it to be, despite the incredible heat and the prolonged dry spell. His eyesight is not good, and this is one of the few benefits – he has an impressionistic appreciation of the landscape, a sense of the whole of it undistracted by particulars, and fields and trees are daubed in, the boundaries of farms scored with the edge of a palette knife, an outhouse a fingertip of grey.
