I remember Colander, who taught Yearning & Duty, elucidating on the concept of feminine modesty in the past. He was less popular than Bobander, but he was good. ‘In the dark past,’ he explained as he lit a thin cheroot and placed it in the ivory holder, ‘choice little girlies had the option of one of two kinds of dress. Either the opaque crown-to-toe …’
‘Crude!’ we chorused.
‘Or the little colourful frock …’
‘Rude!’
‘You could say that.’ He exhaled luxuriously. ‘Or, you could also say: implicit and explicit.’
We were puzzled. These were new concepts to us then – we were only young, Minus-Nine from Attainment, so our understanding was still limited. He continued, ‘Both forms of dress had the same intent: to inflame Men and to create disorder in society. Think of it this way, children: think of sweets.’
We thought of sweets.
‘Think of chocolate-covered cherries.’
We did.
‘The chocolates hide something. What do they hide?’
‘A cherry!’
‘Correct. A cherry soaking in delicious syrup. But it is there, that cherry – implicit in the shape of the sweet.’
‘Ahh.’
‘The opaque crown-to-toe was like that chocolate, announcing to the world that within the enshrouding layer of impenetrable dark is a sweet, sweet thing concealed: a plump, juicy fruit, much desired by Men. But the Men cannot readily access this cherry.’
Galena’s hand shot up. ‘Yes, Gal?’
‘But that’s teasing!’
We got it now, and chorused, ‘Porno!’
He acknowledged our response with a smile, but still favoured Gal with his attention. ‘You are correct, Galena.’ He threw her a chocolate.
Now Anapaite was inspired. ‘Not like a licorice allsort!’ she called out, and we were shocked by her impertinence.
But to our surprise, Colander was not angry. Instead, he smiled and said, ‘Go on, Ana.’
‘The allsort is all stripy and showy and … if it was a dress then it would be for jezzy teases!’
‘Excellent child! It is explicit!’ He threw her an allsort. She caught it in her fist and crowed in triumph. ‘So now, class, this is why modest ladies and girlies neither conceal nor reveal, are neither implicit nor explicit cockteasing flirts, but disport themselves as our GodFather (BBHCM) made them.’
‘In available nakedness.’
‘Unless it gets too cold. Thus the serviceably see-through dressless. And now …’ A deluge of lollies. Such a rare treat! We were in ecstasies.
‘Eat them up, girlies. That is what sweets are for!’
How I wish I were back in the days of my innocence. But I am not, and never can be. And here is the Hag staring into my face, wearing an old floral-patterned shirt and Men’s trousers. Sitting with her legs splayed, the seam of her pornographic trousers marking the spot of the cockslot that is hidden under thick, impenetrable material. Though I suppose it doesn’t matter that much, as she is alone and, in any case, old and ugly. And she is tattooed. I see on the tops of her only semi-exposed dugs small fighting creatures, ferrets maybe; they are at each other’s throats with blood spouting in a fanciful crimson arc up her throat to her jawline, and brown rats with tails entwined and brown teeth bared, mongooses rampant entwined up her skinny arms. Scarred arms. Scarred hands.
Then she says, ‘How about a nice cup of tea?’
14.
I could die of thirst or be poisoned by the witch. So I do not answer, but sit quietly, trying to summon enough calm concentration to breathe in time with the pulses of pain that move through my arm and down my side, and to subdue the growing sick feeling in my belly.
She moves to the mantelpiece and takes down a caddy and measures tea into a saucepan, adding other powders from a jar. She adds water from a big black kettle and puts the saucepan on the range, then disappears into the adjoining room, which by the sounds of chinking crockery and running water, is probably a scullery.
I am alone with the beast, though it is now snoring like a great black boar by the hearth, where the heavy black kettle is set on its grid of metal. The rest of the room is unstable in the flickering firelight, its stone walls caulked with sludge that sprouts many small toadstools exuding a cool, dim light of their own so that there is no need for bulb or candle. There is a sleeping nook adjacent to the chimney, with a curtain of some coarse stuff painted crudely with red leaves and blue roses; it is only partly drawn and within I can see a narrow bed with yellow linen and a fat pillow under a small deep-silled window. In this main room there is a couch as well as our two chairs, and two tables, one before the fire, the other under another window on the other side of the room. Over the sound of her preparations emanating from the scullery her voice rambles on, and oh, my gut is churning …
‘Adolescent people are brimming with inexperience, ignorance. These qualities are not interesting at all, are merely a condition of youth, like acne. But I am interested in why you are here.’ Her head pops around the side of the door and her black eye winks. ‘I daresay you’ve had a shock – something very bad indeed must have happened to bring you to me!’ She disappears again then re-emerges with a tray in her arms, cups, a plate of bread and butter, radishes, salt and slices of some kind of cured meat, pink veined with white gristle. ‘Bloody nasty, I should say!’
‘I wanted—’
‘Oh, want, need, desire!’ She puts the tray down on the nearby table. ‘I know desire. It is the force behind everything worth doing. It motivates us and will eventually destroy us.’ She butters a piece of bread and halves a big radish. She places it on top of the bread with a strip of the fatty meat and places it on the arm of my chair. The scent assaults my already nauseated stomach. I swallow back my bile.
‘Desire is the eating place of the soul,’ she informs me, as she lights up a foully stinking cigar, and when she’s finished coughing, says, ‘It is like Oroborus, the ancient snake who perpetually swallows himself alive: our beginning and our end.’ She exhales a stream of acrid smoke and goggles her eyes at me so that the blue-whites show all around the dark brown irises. ‘Then we will go back and join our history, beneath the necrophiliac conifers with a stone at our feet. And the residue of our passion will live on in death, churning the earth in restless sleep, disturbing worms. Yes, I think the little worms will wriggle up to the surface, as do the new shoots, pale and greeny yellow and succulent, that feed the creatures, and so on and so forth and thus the end feeds the beginning, again and again. Nothing special. Yet entirely miraculous.’
Or similar grand words. I remember the snake and his name, and the earth and the worms, but some of her meaning is lost on me, as the unpleasant bodily sensations that have been with me since I crossed her threshold are by now occluding my wits. What has been unease and tightness in my gut has increased ten-fold as if curdled with acid, and the dryness of throat, pounding heart, cramping stomach, rising gorge now threaten to undo me