The Sacred Beasts

by Bev Jafek

  “Irresistible woman! And you are old enough to give irresistible reasons.” Now she will astonish me for a new set of reasons. It has been a circuitous, almost tortuous path to one another: the world does not want us to know how completely women can love one another.

  “So tell me, when did you want this to happen?” Her voice is warm, thrilling velvet. It is the question that always comes, the most beautiful.

  “From the beginning, but I could not believe you would want it.” I smile effortlessly, perhaps dreamily. “And you?”

  “I’ve always been fascinated by you, from the time I was a little girl. It began with all those photos of animals on your walls. I thought that you were unique, ideal and perhaps not human.” This pleases me so much that I can only touch and kiss her, draw her to me, though we are still eating breakfast. “And you? You haven’t really answered.”

  “Your beauty is so overwhelming that I can only describe it slowly, over several days. It completely overpowered me. But of course, I thought you could not want a woman old enough to remind you of your mother or even your grandmother. What is that like?”

  “Complex at first. You are fascinating . . . and yet forbidden somehow, tabu . . . but then I feel love and it all becomes simple.”

  “Am I at all like your mother?”

  “No, more like my father.”

  “Ah, tell me about that.”

  “Well, he is a geologist and has taken me camping with him all over the world. I’ve been very close to him.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She was an artist who gave it all up for her husband and family. She . . . I guess I would say that she trivialized it, got into arts and crafts, jewelry. For him, really. I’ve talked to her about it many times, but I can’t get through. She only tells me that she didn’t really want to pursue art, and I know it isn’t true.”

  “She is the one you most wanted to save but could not.”

  Sylvie is suddenly silent and pensive. “Yes. Why did you say that? Do other women feel this?”

  “The women I’ve known often do.”

  “Do you think of it as pathological?”

  “Oh, no. Never. It is part of what is best in us, really. It goes back to the difference between the bonobos and the other chimpanzees.”

  “I remember, you told me about them when we first met.” She is smiling now. “You wanted me to choose between them as our true ancestors.”

  “Let me tell you when there is more blood and less love in my head. I can’t think at the moment.” Now I am smiling. She kisses me and then I . . . and then she . . . and I . . . “I have never kissed a woman so many times during breakfast,” I finally say. “I will never be able to think today. But there is one more thing I must know immediately: have you ever made love with a woman before?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t you want to?”

  “I doubt there is any woman who hasn’t wanted to.”

  “But wasn’t it easy for you in Paris?”

  “It is so much easier to get involved with men.”

  “Haven’t you been happy with that?”

  “The sex, yes. The relationship, no. French men are very sexist. All that égalité and fraternité don’t apply to women. They’re worse than Americans.”

  I am done with my breakfast and I pull a T-shirt over myself and start to put on my jeans. “You are . . . going to get dressed?” She sounds slightly confused, then we laugh again uproariously, since we have been naked with one another for a morning and part of an afternoon.

  “It does suddenly seem strange, doesn’t it?” I pause to kiss and touch her. Yes, I am sorry she will get dressed. “It feels as though we are alone, I know, but it is not quite true. Guards and rangers can turn up; so can groups of tourists. What will the Spanish government think of the lesbian nudist camp my research has become?”

  Sylvie laughs and begins to dress. Contentedly passive, I merely sit beside and touch her overwhelming beauty as it disappears into clothing. I feel very fortunate and grateful for this unexpected love. As soon as she has her jeans on, she rolls over on top of me and kisses me passionately. Already, she wants to startle me. I know that very well. Ah yes, this could go on all afternoon and evening . . .

  “Wait until it’s dark,” I whisper and then she . . . and I . . . and . . . “Whatever made me think you were a child?” I finally say when I have breath to speak.

  We spend the late afternoon and early evening hours in a pinewood forest near Doñana’s palace. We have taken all of our equipment with us and will camp here or beside another lake tonight. The forest, called San Agustin, is another locus through which wildlife—mammals, birds, and reptiles—pass to hunt and breed, so I have placed my cameras and equipment here, too. At this time of year, it is also the place where rutting deer carry out their mating rituals.

  The forest has a striking reddish bark that makes the light seem to be dawn or sunset at any hour of the day. The bare trunks are very numerous as they incline toward one another; the bark follows this seemingly sinuous movement and enhances it with islands of rich cinnabar. The density of the trunks and lack of undergrowth as well as their subtle suggestion of movement gives the forest an uncanny and almost spiritual aspect. Katia thought of these trees as pillars in the interior of a mosque. To me, they have always seemed to be living magic wands, perhaps moving behind me and even inspecting me when my back is turned. What will Sylvie’s brilliant eye discern in this strange forest?

  She has been wandering about like a wild creature, completely at home and even swinging from branches like a child. What did I do after I first made love with a woman? Something uncivilized. Later, her chalk drawing displays red staves with flags on top, as though a conference of representatives from many species, a United Nations of the Forest, has met here.

  She disappears for several hours and returns with another drawing. I want to see it immediately; her artistry fascinates me as much as her beauty. As I look at this new creation, I see that she has had the good luck to come upon an azure-winged magpie, a bird that nests in the forest. Before me is a luxurious black hood that nearly hides the bird’s glowing eyes; it richly drapes itself to the middle of the bird’s back. With its white throat and long, jutting blue tail at a sharp angle to the body like an elegant fillip, the bird makes me think of a woman dressed for some elaborate, mysterious evening encounter.

  “I am almost embarrassed to tell you how wonderful they are again, but they are.” She moves very slowly toward me as though she were hunting me, then kisses me and squeezes my thighs. Already, she wants to play with me. I know that very well, too.

  The evening comes quickly, and we set up our campfire here in the forest. Sylvie pours wine for us immediately and seems uninterested in eating. I try to broach the subject I mentioned before, though neither of us is pensive. “I was telling you about our protective feelings for our mothers, which is part of whom we are and where we come from. I don’t ever want you to be led astray by idiots who think gay people are sick or evil. I should tell you about the research that has clarified gender and sexuality, particularly as I am more responsible for this relationship than you are.”

  “Bullshitita!” She has a charming smile as she moves closer to me, as though I had been ignoring her.

  Yet I persist. “So, you don’t think I more or less seduced you?”

  “I’ve been planning it all summer. Before that, too.” Her eyes are bemused, challenging, which only makes her more beautiful.

  “Before?”

  “When we first met. If you hadn’t been grieving . . .” She smiles in devilish delight and we laugh long and hard. Amazing: for all my years and wisdom, she can effortlessly keep secrets from me.

  “Then, all of my noble efforts to control and disguise my feelings . . .”

  “Were completely in vain! You never had a chance of escaping me.”

  “I haven’t been grieving for quite a long time. Why here, now?”

  “How could I le
t this paradise pass us by without the most paradisal part of it? I’ve been flirting outrageously since we entered Doñana. Sleeping with you has been my top priority since you told me about Doñana’s eccentric women. Haven’t you noticed? I never have to do this with men; they’re all over me.” Her eyes are bright with laughter and a restless intensity. Everything we do or say is becoming love: the rough kind.

  “Well then, since you cynically seduced me, destroying my innocence, I still must tell you who we are and where we come from . . . except that I can’t think again.” I am much too distracted by a kind of erotic force she radiates. Is it only the power of her beauty or something more deliberate? She moves to the rock I am sitting on and kisses me, her arms around my back in a tight embrace without tenderness.

  “Tonight, I will give you your first bedtime story,” she says. “Wordless!”

  “We almost missed breakfast because of that, tiger. Now, we really need to have dinner.”

  We laugh and begin to prepare our dinner, though the atmosphere is strangely tense. Very soon, the night has come and we are enclosed in a darkness of palpable energy and power. Animals are everywhere in the dark, mating and crying, killing and dying. My mind cannot distinguish individual species; the night is a rhythmic cry, strident and raw; it is the sound of our own blood. I can only drink wine and watch this woman who is both beloved and unknown to me.

  Suddenly she says, “There’s something I really want to know: do we play roles with each other? That’s a big part of my problem with men. You and I seem to be completely unlike that, but are we doing some of it?”

  “Probably, yes.”

  “Really! What are the roles?”

  “Well . . .” I can’t think and don’t want to. “I am the relentless one and you are the insatiable one.” She dissolves into laughter that temporarily destroys the tension between us. Now I have startled her, played with her, even tossed her around. She loves it. Already, she wants me rough. I know that very well, too.

  “And then?” She looks at me seriously without a bit of humor.

  I am silent. Touché, Sylvie. I can’t read your mind. “And?” I ask.

  “And then?” Her eyes are dancing with laughter, though her face is serious, even fierce. Her drawing of the lynx passes through my mind.

  “Then, you are relentless and I am insatiable.” We laugh, nearly dispelling the tension. I’ve tossed her around again. Her playfulness still has a sharp edge. She needs to make love to me. Amazing: I thought I was the one who could barely keep herself under control. Where will this go? It seems to be as necessary and unknown as the night.

  We finish our wine quickly. She reaches for me in the dark, and I rapidly douse the flames. Her face is smiling over me in the moonlight. “Now the fire comes back!” she says.

  It does. Wordlessly, passionately, relentless and insatiable, insatiable and relentless; for the entire night we make love as though we could die within the hour; as close to violence as we will ever be. At once: powerful legs rush about us; hooves fall harshly; antlers clash and trumpeting calls sound everywhere. Even danger incites us: we are incandescent. It is a night of hooves, clashing cymbals, trumpets, and love as rough as any in the forest. No wonder the god of love is also the god of war in so many cultures.

  When I awaken in the morning light, I am on my back, holding her in my arms. One of her arms is around my neck, the other across my chest. Our legs are intertwined. We look like a couple who drowned in the ocean and then washed up on a coastline. It is not far from what happened. She has already sensed that I am awake, though I have not moved. As she looks up at me, her eyes are very soft, full of gentleness, utterly pristine and lovely. “What a bedtime story that was!” I say and we laugh.

  “I had to make up for all those bedtime stories you’ve been telling me.”

  “You did it! It was worth the lot of them.” The sun is already bright overhead, close to noon. We are a lesbian nudist camp again. I must insist that we make love in the tent tonight. I wonder if I will be that thoughtful. “The deer nearly trampled us last night. It’s their rutting season, much too dangerous for us here. We should camp somewhere else.” There, I am finally the voice of reason. Mother, too? No, I am no stand-in for her mother. I am the animal she wanted. And I will be again.

  Still, she is all tenderness now, and I can do nothing but reciprocate. We have shown parts of ourselves that we would not ordinarily have revealed so soon. She is testing me for boundaries, and I sense there is something she wants to tell me. She rises and I think she intends to bathe, but instead she brings me the huge paper pad on which she has been drawing. Aha, there are drawings she did not show me. Why?

  Without a word, she gives them to me. The drawings are of me, nude, and there are many of them. She spent the whole previous day drawing me. The other pictures she showed me were cursory: this is how she actually spent those hours. They display intense emotion and have been drawn very fast; there could be fifty of them. Some of them show me as a girl; in some I am barely delineated. At last, I see one that is detailed and evidently finished. It shows me reclining in the position of Chac Mool, the Mayan water god. We first made love in a lake . . . My body is lean, elongated and curving. Unlike the god, my eyes and face show passion, my brow, darkly furrowed. My hands reach out. What do all these drawings say? There is nothing I want to know more, and I look from one to another quickly. But it is simple: how could I misunderstand? They say, I can’t think of anything but you. I love you.

  I sit back, stunned. Tears begin to fall down my cheeks, and I brush them away. She is asking a question that I must answer. Finally, I look up at her and say, “Yes, I love you. I do. Never doubt it.” She immediately kisses me. When I can speak, I say, “even if you have some things in common with the Marquis de Sade.” We laugh long and hard.

  “I couldn’t tell you,” she says, as though of the delirious night we have spent. “I couldn’t draw anything but you . . . and I know you can take anything . . .”

  “Really?”

  “Your cosmic calm. You’re always so charismatically at ease. You weren’t when I met you.”

  “Oh, no, I was demonic.”

  “So last night, I asked for your demons again.”

  “Is this what we’ll be together?”

  “Angelic and demonic.”

  “Our roles again?”

  “As in art, so in love.” She is serious, no longer playing. “Haven’t you found it so?”

  “Mmm. But . . . more often angelic.” She looks at me fondly, tenderly. Yes, she is a lovely kitten today, and it is as natural as what happened last night. “To breakfast, to eat,” I conclude. Silently, I decide: I have come for the wildlife, so I cannot complain that it is too wild for me.

  When we have moved our equipment into the jeep, I hardly know where we will go. The world has opened its arms to me, as it always does when my whole being is quickened to beauty and love, and immediately, I want to work. The endlessly disturbing question of how to live is only a matter, after all, of love and work. Paradise is no more and no less than these, and it is as true for women as for men. Only in the pleasure of these primal acts and their spiritual flashes of selflessness, do we revere the earth enough to protect it. Truth is ultimately simpler than illusion; it pleases the classicist and derails the romantic.

  We can probably work best on the banks of one of Doñana’s lakes. Which one? They are all beautiful and very different from one another. Some plunge into the forests and carry their diverse life; others lie both within and outside the preserve. Their waters are different colors, which will interest Sylvie. Charco de Toro has forbiddingly black waters. Lake Tarje has purple silt in the spring; leading away from it are trails of pale lilac. Santa Olalla, where we have already camped, has green waters. When the wind gusts and rips the surface, it turns into a bed of sheer green foam. I decide that we will camp tonight beside Lake Tarje, where the tamarisks grow.

  When we are settled beside the lake, I find, not surprisin
gly, that my sensors and cameras from our previous campsite have excellent footage of deer, both from the present and from spring. I immediately give it to Sylvie, since she has never seen their life cycle.

  Then we are absorbed in our work for many hours. From time to time, one of us looks up at the other. When this happens, we always know we are being observed and feel a glow of delight. It is much as though we are sharing the same thoughts.

  As footage of animals passes before my eyes, I see only Sylvie’s beauty. It seems to hold different images in differing contexts. In daylight, the exoticism of her face, coloring and simple tunics make me think of the women of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Persia, even South Asia. In bright sunlight, it is a profusion that gleams and scatters itself into the world like light. At night, her beauty is a unified force of tremendous power. Would I ever be able to resist her? At night, I must merge with her yet by day, she is a perfect sculpture I can turn about in my vision and thoughts, always different yet always exquisite. She often sketches while lying on her side, and then I cannot take my eyes away from her.

  I do not mention her beauty to her, as I sense she has heard too much about it from men and has not wanted what inevitably follows. I am not surprised by her ambivalence toward men. I have long suspected that extremely beautiful women do not draw the best out of men, but the worst.

  In the late afternoon, when I am totally absorbed in my work, I look up and find that she has disappeared. For a moment, I am alarmed. As I look around, her arms embrace my back and I feel her lips on my neck: she has been directly behind me all along. “I don’t think I have ever been so happy and so exhausted at the same time,” she says, her head resting on my back.

  “Me, too,” I say. “We have to sleep tonight. Even paradise has its limits.” She nods her head as her arms embrace my waist, and I feel a peaceful ecstasy. “I would love to see your drawings,” I say. She places her pad of paper beside my leg, and I see immediately that she has chosen images from the spring.

  The first drawing shows a family of deer at dusk. They are seen from the rear as they leave the tall grasses of the scrublands to graze. Here is the regal solemnity and powerful girth of the stag with his huge antlers piercing the sky in arcs like elegant cups. The doe is caught in a dancer-like pose whose round-curving withers pick up the sinuous lines of the stag as the two merge into the landscape. Awkwardly and charmingly, the faun follows on thin, ungainly legs, his ears as large, upright and expressive as a jackrabbit’s.