by Glenn Grant
They told Tasman the other Tale of Janus also, and no one knows which one is true, or whether they really lived. But not of the mutilations (and he may have been one), most of whom did not live, because it is said that in Lond and Camp David and some of the other cities, there were two and three generations who were unilaterally garotted, and who garotted their infant children, and held the power like kings; but they were overthrown. There were many old Tales, some more terrible than these.
* * *
One morning when Tasman was nearly six, she was told that there was a Book that would take her. “It is very small,” her mothers said, as they dressed her and combed her hair. “It is on the outskirts of the city and we will take you there every day in the cars.”
“You knew about it yesterday. You heard a letter when I was sleeping.”
“Stay still. Where do you want Pillowmarie?”
“I don’t care. Twell: I’m going to Book.”
They did not tell her that it was an institution connected to the medical Book, and fortunately it was in a separate building, and going in the closed cars Tasman would not even see the place she disliked so much. With Pillowmarie hooded on her left shoulder, she sat upright all the way.
When her mothers left her, and she was taken in and shown around, Tasman saw that it was indeed small. The few children in evidence were strange and silent, most clinging to teachers. The screens looked primitive, like the ones at the markets. There were more teachers than screens. The teachers with her sat down with her and stroked her. They told her they were called Var Fadel and Fadar.
“You are not my Fa,” said Tasman angrily. She did not like them, their touch reminded her of medical Book and they were light-skinned.
“We are going to introduce you to some little friends,” they said, and took her over to a corner where, with feet pulled up close to their chest, towheaded twins about five years old were eating out of a double bowl. The teachers half-stroked, half-pushed Tasman to persuade her to sit down in front of them, and gave her a bowl with the same food in it—sliced star fruit and bananas. Then they left her.
Tasman observed the little boy-heads closely. The Twel was eating, and their right hand was “pretending to be Twar,” she could see that, and pretending to feed the Twar. But the Twar was not eating. His head looked too small. Not by much, but to glance from one to the other was enough to confirm it. His jaw was small and slack. Though his eyes moved, they did not fix. The right hand pushed food into the slack mouth and it remained there. Tasman’s eye caught the Twel’s in a reciprocative sharp, scared glance. For once she saw someone who did not see or judge her, he was too much on the defensive, too absorbed to be repelled or amazed. He went on trying to feed the Twar, not looking at him, pretending the Twar was doing it. Both wore protective muffs on their adjacent ears; Tasman had seen this on babies. When the Twar moved his head, in a clumsy jerk, away from the Twel, their right hand smeared the banana on his cheek.
Tasman said, “You were doing that with both hands, I saw you.”
The Twel stared at her, furious. His own mouth full of banana, he had to swallow hastily before he could splutter, “Go away. Leave us.” The formal sounded funny. Tasman backed up a little. He did not look at her again, and pulled their feet in closer. With both hands and with both feet, thought Tasman. If she said it, what would he do?
It might have been possible to be friends with the tow-headed Twel, who after all had looked at her with clear human dislike, without fear, as an equal and not as a curiosity. He was angry at her not because of her malformity, but because of her interference. It was obvious he was going to be loyal to his brother, find in him what comfort and what communication—it was a choice encouraged by his parents, and by Book also; the teachers did not try to intercede for Tasman. She later saw the Twel, whose name was Semer, playing at building a city with other children, and talking with them, and animatedly bringing his Twar into the game, using their right hand: “Now my Twar is raising the dyke”—and the others, though fully aware of the deception, did not deride it.
Tasman liked Semer Twel, but her liking couldn’t allow him that silly pretence. “Leave us,” that pretentious adult command, was all he ever said to her, and it was a phrase she could not even answer back with, as it had no singular.
She explored the screens and found them too simple, and when she asked for the pictures for the Old Tales she was told there were none “just here” or “just now.” Fadel said, “You may ask for whatever you want, this is Book,” but it was a strange Book if the pictures you wanted to learn to read from were not there. What words shall I learn, she wondered, and did not know what else to ask. Finally she recalled the Tale of Saduth Twel, and asked for that, but again her teachers denied her. Perhaps tomorrow, they said, indeed ashamed. “We will try to locate it.”
“It must be in all Book,” insisted Tasman. If they were denying it, they were just too stupid to find it.
In the afternoon, more children arrived. There were lively twins in a chair on wheels, because they could not walk. They were pretty, with a mass of thick, lustreless black hair that was forever entangled. Though they looked only about eight years old, their teeth were already blackened. Tasman wanted to ask them about that, but they stared at her like street children, fascinated and repelled, and then talked softly to each other. Their glances in her direction were deceptive, devious; they were no longer pretty then, and Tasman sensed they’d soon wheel their chair over to the screens and smile with their mouths only, and ask her cruel questions for their own reasons. She ran to the Fa and stayed at their feet, lifting her arms to be stroked.
“I don’t want those blackteeth to talk to me,” she said.
Fadar Var said, “Come, then, and talk to other little friends.” They took her this time across to a second room which had no screens, but a lot of sleeping ledges and long shallow steps covered with rugs. Teachers were sitting with twins there, but stood up and went out when the Fa nodded to them.
Left sitting on the steps was a very small figure. Tasman, led closer, was startled by the great difference in the twins’ faces, but then realized that the Twar was bald, or almost so; he had some tufty baby-hair but his bluish-gray scalp showed clearly. The Twel’s hair was cropped short, but thick as fur.
Close up, Tasman knew that the Twar mind was dead. She had heard of this, but it had seemed to her like the Tales, and nothing you would encounter in real life. She stood open-mouthed, staring this time the way she herself was stared at, and the Twel’s look, downcast, did not prevent her. Somehow the Twar head had been braced, its very stiffness making it more lifeless. Its eyes, half open, were blue around the lids as if bruised. There was a piece of brown transparent tape on its jawline. There were strange, short marks on its scalp, like drawn lines or cuts healed.
“Twel Kistat, this is Tasman,” said the Fa gently, almost in unison. They stooped and stroked his arms and chest but he did not look up. He turned his furry head, still downcast, towards his twin, and began in a slow, dreamy motion to clean the corners of its eyes, and smooth the hairless brows. The dark fingers were small, thin, delicate as a girl’s. Tasman knew, with a sudden conviction, that this Twel would not live.
Sickness did not kill him,
But he did not wish life.
The Fa were as good as their word and produced the Saduth Tale, and so she learned to read, and demanded the Brother-murder, in which the notorious Twar Yvar twisted and heat-sealed a wire garotte on his Twel, out of jealousy, doing it so swiftly that the Twel could not break free; yet the Twel in a final act of almost superhuman strength broke his murderer’s neck—revenge even in death is sweet.
“Where did you hear this Tale?”
“My mothers tell many tales to each other, it is an amusement. Sometimes when they think I am asleep.”
The Fa compromised, and produced the ballad, as if rhymes made it more acceptable. But it was not really a Tale, it was modern, it had happened in this generation.
Because she was ignored or repelled by the other children, Tasman read voraciously. She demanded tales of love and jealousy, the old Romances. She only half-wanted to read the oldest Tales, about the Barbarians; what Mamar had told her was enough for now, and the Tales were there, she would read them when she was ready.
She heard no sounds from the second room, and, if she had had her way, she would have stayed clear of it. But the Fa took her in every day for a time. The Twel never acknowledged her, and she never heard him speak. She went against her will. Once, after the Fa had spoken to his teachers and together quietly for a long time, they persuaded her to go in alone; they said, “Just tell him, Tasman, tell him it is possible to live.” She wanted to refuse, but they looked really unhappy—“beautiful in sadness”—so she walked in stiffly, and stood in front of him on the soft floor.
“Twel Kistat, it is possible to live,” she said, as if repeating a letter.
He did not look up. She squatted in front of him, where he sat on a higher step. She could see up into his face, and he looked toward her, but whether he saw her or not she could not tell. She whispered, “Look at me.”
The blind, dead head, fixed on its stalk like a burnt lamp, was raised while his hung forward. Yet it was the Twel cheeks that were ruddy, it was he who was breathing. Suddenly furious, she jumped up and began to tear at the binding tape behind her shoulders, but she could not find the ties. She burst into tears. Something gave, and she pulled the sleeve over her head, and flung Pillowmarie on the floor in a heap.
“Look at me! It is possible!” she shouted, stamping with rage and the futility of it. Could she have torn that Twar head away so easily, she’d have done so. The Twel looked up. His eyes could not cry any more but he saw her. Perhaps his look said only, “I do not want to live like that,” or perhaps he had said this already, once and for all. Her own life, which felt at that moment like a vigorous, crackling fire in her body, persisted for its own reasons. They could not understand each other. The Twel turned away, laying his silent face against his brother’s grey temple.
Tasman ran back to the door where the Fa and some others waited. Then she ran back across the room again, grabbed up her tunic. They came to meet her. She was embarrassed now and ashamed. “Put this on me!” Did the Twel hear her, as she went out with the adults murmuring around her?
One day she received a visit at Book. These tall, earnest but smiling twins stayed only a short time, but she would have liked them as her teachers, and for a while she believed they would be. They did not approach her, or stroke her or speak to her, but listened and watched while the Fa talked with her about what she had read and was reading. Did she draw? Sometimes she drew while she was listening to Book. Could she show the strangers how she did this?
Tasman drew her version of a Savannah, something like the Saduth pictures, but with many more snakes in it, made of different coloured lights, while a rather boring Book told her the way numbers multiplied. It was a demonstration, neither subject interested her particularly then, but she wanted to please the strangers.
“Tell us what this is,” said Fadel, pointing to Pillowmarie.
“It is not anything. I used to call it Pillowmarie when I was small. It is so I do not get stared at, so I can live.” Anticipating their next question, she added, “I wear it either side, I am not really Twel.”
Then she was ashamed, because what she was saying was private, the way she talked to her mothers; it did not make sense, and she could tell how the Fa were upset by it, their faces made ugly by her saying it. But the strange Twar spoke, just once, whether to her or to the Fa she was not sure.
“There are many people who are not really Twar mind or Twel mind, it is only an appellation. It is all right to have said this.”
The words comforted her. But the strangers did not touch her, and the Fa said they would not come back again. She was so disappointed that she put them out of her mind. She did not tell her mothers of the visit, and did not remember it, when she saw them again. Other events overtook her, the outside world of other people. Though she was unable to make friends at the little Book, she was learning, and she went at it with a greediness that filled her days. The stares of the black-teethed twins made her miserable, but she was quicker than they could be, and stayed away from them. Had she been able to choose, she would have continued at Book despite the bad parts. But the cars were withdrawn. Mamel and Mamar found other drivers who agreed to take them, but often they were late, or would not take her mothers back again.
“You do not need to accompany-us,” she offered, but they refused to let her go alone. They remained in that part of the city all day. Once, the cars were so late in fetching her from Book, that they almost decided to walk. “We must find a house in this quarter.” Then that was what her mothers were doing all day, looking for a new place to live. No one would have them. Mamel cried at night.
Then they were stoned. The cars jerked and stopped. It was on the way to Book. “Go on, go on,” urged her mothers. Stones banged on the lid. The cars went on suddenly and fast. At Book, Tasman ran in, she did not wait to hear her mothers arguing with the drivers. Her mothers appeared early in the afternoon. “We cannot get cars,” she heard them say to the Fa. “We will have to walk, and we are not sure whether we can protect her.”
All the teachers were standing with them inside the entrance. The Fa was saying, “It is all right. She can stay here till you arrange something. Medical Book must agree to it.”
What was wrong? If medical Book agreed to keep her, would she have to live in the box again? Silent, Tasman waited while they talked and talked. Perhaps the Fa liked her mothers, and would let them stay too, and sleep with them. She did not like the Fa, but, seeing their hands on her mothers’ breasts as they talked, she knew there was sympathy and felt a little hopeful.
She ended up staying in medical Book, somewhere in the large, main building, going to her Book with the Fa in the morning by an interior path, and seeing her mothers settled in rooms she was unable to reach on her own. She slept with other children on a long pallet. There were no boxes but the room had that same constant white brightness, the lights did not change colour with the hours, and this reminded her of her times in the box. The other children were always drowsy or asleep when she left them, and when she returned to bed. She supposed they were sick. Sometimes she cried at night, missing her mothers’ nearness.
Mamar, Mamel,
Never apart,
Two hands, two breasts,
Two smiles, one heart.
The Fa had arranged it and it was all that could be done. Each day they took her to eat with her mothers. They ate there also. It was a windowless place, perhaps underground. Mamar and Mamel looked thinner, and tired. After supper, Tasman lay down on the pallet in the adjoining room. She heard their low voices.
“Is it possible?” Mamar said, “Are we to be driven out?”
“It is Moonfall hysteria. We can’t suggest anything better than making her a Ward of this Book. No one’s happy about it, but it has been offered.” That was Fa Twar speaking: he had a squeaky voice.
She heard Mamel stand up suddenly with both feet as was her way: “No, no no” (the imperative speech). “That is what the Barbarians did to our race, do you realize that? She would be…” Her voice lowered. Someone pulled the curtain up across the opening. Their voices went on for a long time.
“Tasman. Tasman, come, we are going away.” She woke roughly, not sure where she was. She was still in her mothers’ rooms. They pulled on her leggings and wrapped hoods over her head and Pillowmarie. The Fa were there. They walked, Tasman half running, a long way by interior paths. No one spoke. At a street, cars were waiting. It was short Darkening and the city’s lights were a dim orange. The outside air was hot and humid, full of the smell of orchids and gardenias and fire smoke off the dykes. In the cars, she lay across the laps of her mothers and the Fa. She did not ask where they were going. No stones struck the cars, yet it was as if the adults’
bodies were stiffened in anticipation of it, of something bad.
The Fa helped them out, and they walked a very long way among bushes, while the world’s light grew stronger and clearer. They came, finally, to a low-roof house that seemed quite overgrown with fronded trees. Tasman could hear water running or breathing, as on a long beach, but almost no city sounds.
The Fa went away.
* * *
Tasman did not return to Book, or to the city for five years. Her mothers told her that medical Book knew where they were and would provide for them. But no one came to see them except the Fa, and these visits were infrequent.
Tasman got used to the Fa, even to her mothers’ whispering “Var” in the night, but she never liked them. Sometimes she told herself stories like the old Romances, and in these stories, the Fa were even younger, like big clumsy-spoken boys, and her mothers were not really her mothers, but more beautiful and self-assured. Some predicament had landed them on an island, and their rescue (which included the dismissal or death by accident of the Fa) was by Travellers arriving on a raft, with beautiful black faces and huge warm hands. Was Tasman there? Not really. But in other stories, she tried to imagine herself loved, the way young girls do, crossing hands, but it did not work, her lovers were faceless. Perhaps, remembering the tow-head Semer Twel and his half-minded twin, she could imagine them well-grown, Twel’s look still defiant, and she told herself stories that ended, after long, complex trials, with kisses. But she was fastidious; the retarded twin had to be replaced by one who was blind and recovered his sight by some heroic, intuitive deed on her part. Certainly she wanted to court and be courted by the tow-head Twel first, yet he had to be twinned, as a matter of course, and handsomely. These were stories she created word for word, but never told.
She was in World now, literally, her days spent at the overgrown tidal stream behind the house, and on the great beach that lengthened, running out to the horizon and in again, fast and shallow, swiftly becoming water, becoming sand, like a great breathing. It was dangerous to walk on the flats and it was forbidden, but sometimes at Lightening she did this, late, when the moon hung pocked and bloated overhead and really did look closer, and the warm water swilled past her ankles outward, with a hurrying, whispering sound. When it was gone, and everything was steady and silent, she would run back, imagining it turning and chasing her, a long translucent wave like a skin or a curtain blowing. Two pools near the house filled and emptied too, twice a day, and they bathed there; it was simple and refreshing.
