Читать книгу The Orchid Nursery - Louise Katz - Страница 16

The cunnydorms are now behind me. The corp-yard is quiet. I walk across it and do not pause at the gate whose inscription I know so well: submission is freedom. Beyond are the Scholars’ and Seed-Bearers’ Rooms, built of purple-brown brick and white mortar. I move with great stealth, for although they should now be in their dining room on the far side of their complex they are Men, so naturally they are free to go where they please at any time. Yet I manage to pass by without incident. Then I come to the workrooms of the Craftsmen who make lovely objects of utility from glass and bone, metal and wood, or from the strong yellow ivory of the great tusked hammerheads that swim up from the Far Greasy Sea against Big River’s current to feed on the waste from Spare Parts Manufactory where the dudbubs live for a short while.

After a little longer I reach the outer rings of our Perfect State, comprised of gardeners’ and foot-soldiers’ quarters, and make my way through the vegetable gardens that we are slowly extending further and further. In the distance I see the starlit gleam of Big River Harbour, full of container terminals and traffic from the other States, as it loops below on its way from Snow Mountain to the Sea. I follow the river a little further and soon pass beneath the darkened windows of Spare Parts. I hear the hum of the systems that sustain them, the malformed failures of gravidity, and the cripsanretards. I hear an occasional small voice, not quite a cry … Very little sound penetrates, and none ever reaches beyond the nearer curve of Big River where stand the elegant Ecumenical Houses and Properganders’ Mansions within their bastions of stone and their great Pine Circle.

And now Stone Plain stretches out before me, as much granite as grass. It is a rare dry night. I feel an easing of the heart as I walk through this open space along the chalky path with nothing between me and eternity but the wide sky with its masses of cloud and the high-riding moon emerging from time to time like a thin smile. That was Pearl’s fancy – giving the moon moods and humours. It had become a sort of game for us. ‘What is her mood today?’ she – or I – would ask the other. And I – or she – might reply, ‘She feigns shame tonight, see the tip of her cowl between her teeth, playing for time, a dangerous game …’ or ‘She needs you now, and her desire is urgent. See how round and ruddy is her blood-suffused plumpness this red dawn,’ or ‘She is a mean stone-faced witchy-moon tonight, just asking for trouble …’

I walk many miles and all through the night along the pale chalk line that weaves its way among stones and low wiry shrubs, and as the sun stain seeps into the worn hills to the east and the darkness ebbs to grey, I find I am very thirsty. I notice also that my feet hurt me where the shoe-leather has rubbed. There is no cover, no way to protect myself from the Ecumen or foot-soldiers who might already have been dispatched to pursue me, no relief from the elements. Still, I must rest awhile. I draw my cowl over my head and lie down.

But my mind is teeming and I do not sleep for some hours. Still, I use those hours well. I review my actions of the last day, meditating on what I have done, what I have seen, and what it might mean. Now, revisiting my feelings of horror in the Orchid Nursery, I see that I have reacted as if fully possessed by the fleshly fallacy, incapable of seeing beyond the surface of things. Thus limited I could only experience a purely visceral reaction. For without the light of reason guided by faith and prayer, how can one see truly? And the truth of what I saw was this: a set of lovely streamlined propagation machines, living (wo)Men whose whole being is directed towards one pure and precious goal. That of service to the Truth embedded in the ideals of Perfect State.

Time passes and eventually I feel myself drifting, buoyed up on a current of images, most soothing and harmonious, of fields of clean, dry grasses, of silken garments, of unfurling flowers, of Pearl’s face. I will find her and bring her home. I will be forgiven in time, in time, and if the Brother Ministers will still allow it I will Beseech again, next year … and surely they will, when I bring back my prize Pearl who will be recovered from her madness, will be glad that I found her, will walk with me in all willingness relieved and grateful that I have saved her. On our return we will confess and suffer whatever punishment is meted out, for it will be fair, and good, and redemptive … and yes, we will both Beseech. Next year, next year…

I awake in a clammy sweat. My lips are parched. I have slept through the dewfall and now there is not even that moisture to refresh me. The sun is stewing away in the soupy cauldron of the sky, the low clouds promise yet withhold rain. But it is slightly more possible to walk than to rest. I gather some of the coarse grass that grows between the stones and layer them in a crosswise thatch-pattern between the tongue of each shoe and my blistered feet. This remedy lasts about five minutes before I am again limping badly and now hunger, as well as thirst, comes to torment me. I have eaten nothing since yesterday morning. The physical discomfort is hard to endure, but the knowledge of my own stupidity in going off without any preparation at all makes me realise once more what a foolish, dull scrap of a thing I am. Truly, I am a waste of air. Yet since I still breathe I must find a way to sustain myself for such is the animal nature of all living creatures, however undeserving.

By the grace of GodFather,

May the shadow of his

Sceptred Eye forever

Darken the false glister

That is not gold,

But tinsel.

Tinsel tawdries that clutter

The margins of the right path

Drawing us towards the offer

Of guileful glamour

And temporal temptations.

Lead us not

Now or ever

Alive-alive-oh, amen.

A small creature darts out, startled by my footfall. Anticipating his direc­tion I throw myself bodily forward – and yes, my judgement is true for I feel the small, warm body crushed beneath me.

I sit up carefully and observe that it is a stone rodent, the kind with tall ears and thighs like pistons. Quickly I wring the last of the life out of him, and his head slumps heavily from his broken neck. I cut into the skin with Pearl’s knife and with a strong tug I pull the whole furry sheath back to expose the pink flesh, all shiny, and the striations of white fat; I slit his belly open, pulling out the organs and taking care not to tear the intestines with their burden of filth.

I consider taking the time to build a fire to cook him here and now, but I do not have the patience to endure further rumblings in my gut while I painstakingly coax fire from stone and tinder. Thus, I eat the little heart for the modest measure of valour that is in it, and the liver for its rich blood. I feel immediately stronger, but now, with the taste of iron and salt in my mouth, my thirst is unbearable. But no – not so – for I must bear it. I wrap the remains of the small corpse for later in a strip of fabric torn from my dressless, and continue to walk in the direction I hope will eventually lead me to Hagovel, the destination outlined in the map beneath the Standard of the Fool.

I stop to rest a couple of hours later and cook my small meal. I allow myself time for a brief nap, awaking in the evening with my thirst now a mortal agony. The cruel moon glares down with baleful malice, and I curse her, the sow-faced Lili, monster daughter of Lilith, first (wo)Man and original criminal for whose sinful demonstration of waywardness all girlies must now suffer grief and woe, now and forever, alive-alive-oh amen. Though my feet bleed, I continue on my way in the cool of the night until, towards dawn, with the tired moonlight seeping through the dirty scrambled-egg clouds, my energy begins to wane. My head is light, my feet heavy. I stumble a little over stones and bracken and scrub. A soft, penetrating rain begins to fall, chilling my skin, pasting my hair across my face. I raise my face and open my mouth to the delicious moisture. But once my thirst is quenched, new trials await me.

The landscape has become ill-defined, foully female in its featurelessness, grey rain blurring into grey pre-dawn light, marsh gas stinking all sulfurous and greenish and wavering in the still air and yes, I am fearful of these lights now that I am alone. How will I be able to tell the difference between a marsh-light and a fey-light? How will I know if some stealthy stalker, an emissary of the Hag, is mere inches from me, ready to drain the life from me that she might live on, a warped semblance of (wo)Mankind? Keep your head low, I tell myself. The way leads ever downwards now, and the land is less stony; there are trees now, thin, gaunt, writhy in the unreliable light refracted by rain, rain, rain; they are anchored by twisted roots into black mud, and I am now walking by the banks of a sluggish river pocked with the fat drops of the slow, insistent rain. I recognise this country. It is a dangerous place filled with fey humours, certainly riddled with the spores of Lilith. It is the place we came to before, years back, with MaOblat on that excursion to where the orchids grow, where Pearl reached out her hand to touch … My shoes are waterlogged and my garments stick to my body like a second, ill-fitting skin, freezing me to the marrow of my bones. I stumble on, teeth chattering in my skull, and after a time I feel as if I too am losing definition, becoming blurred and vague in body and in mind both. This is surely the effect of the evil presences as yet invisible, and I pray hard that they will remain so. Indeed, the effort of traversing this place alone, without the support of the sorority, is wearing me down, so that by daybreak I feel as if I might dissolve completely and become another part of this landscape. The ground underfoot is swampy, spongy, and I too am damp and soft. I am the swamp. I’ve got frogs. And crocodiles. The sky reflected in my water is yellow as sulfur.

As I walk, to comfort myself I recite the Fourth Tenet from the Way of (wo)Man: ‘Gonna Take up My Burden, Far From the Riverside’.

though I walk through damp val-leys

oo-zing with lilith spores

ten-thousand filthy whores

who spurn the sacred cause

gonna think on

the Scep-tre

the Rod pro-tect-eth me.

gonna take up the bur-den

far from the riverside

far from the salt-steeped tide

where fey lil’im reside.

gonna cut out my e-go

far from the ri-ver-side

gonna take up the bur-den

far from the riverside

far from unhallow’d sites

all rank and bloody tides.

gonna serve with decor-um

with all so-ro-ri-ty

gonna hold up the Scep-tre

prayerful humility

pious docility

uphold virility

gonna o-pen my bo-dy

to all Frat-ern-ity.

gonna lay down my e-go

beneath the holy Son

draw in his sacred cum

as servant of the Son

gonna hold to

the Scep-tre

in exalt-a-tion.

for I’m but a ves-sel

to hold the holy Seeds

to pleasure all his needs

down on my hands and knees

gonna draw

on that Sceptre

submission doth make free.

At the end of this long day I find myself by a broad and deep and very ancient crater filled with the blackened and rotten remnants from before the Liberation, when the founders of our Perfect State defeated the last of the Agnostics, impenitent transgressors as sinful as those of ancient Sodorra. Stories are still told of the Great Muster, when the artifacts of dissolution were collected from the houses of the butchered enemy and interred in such landfills. All night long our Men had overseen the collection of products of their grandiose technology, their pictures, books and clothing. And now, did I need any evidence of our righteousness and the corruption of those who populate the Lands of Unrule beyond the forest, I have only to gaze into the pit.

It is possible to identify charred remains of compacted pages of their idolatrous texts, twisted metal and melted plastic shells of their vain­glorious devices of entertainment and communication and information. Then the blasphemous thought occurs to me that, if indeed a (wo)Man could earn a soul, inshallaweh, that part of me would suffer for the demonstration of crude curiosity I now feel compelled to enact. Crouching at the lip of the pit I peer in to see what I can see and to take what I may take: I want some small memento. I tell myself it will be to remind me of the sins of our past. So that I might not be tempted to err now that I have placed myself out of reach of the help of the Fathers of Men and in the near occasion of foulest sin and degradation. But another part of me knows well that this is not so. It is pure acquisitiveness. I want a keepsake. Just a small thing. I spot a bit of fabric, just a small loop of stretchy material that is a hot shade of pink. It is the colour that attracts me. We do not have pink to wear. Haraamasur, I know. Still, I slip it over my wrist and push it up under the sleeve of my dressless, then continue on into the glare of the low sun and into this, my third night alone in the wilderness. I walk all through the night, for what reason to stop? I find no place of shelter to protect me from the cold and rain.

Close to dawn the rain eases away almost entirely, and the grisly moonlight labours once more through her cowl of cloud. Now, clear of the bog at last, I note the land is again capable of supporting flora greater than rushes and swamp grass. Indeed, here are many greeny-grey bushes. It is clear that this was once a garden, though it is now overgrown. When I kneel to investigate I find a profusion of small beans, pale yellow in colour. Surely there can be no harm in eating from such shrubs, since they seem to have been cultivated by human hand. I collect several handfuls of the beans, which are bitter and very hard, but I force myself to chew as I walk on into the morning. And now, as the mists clear, I see what kind of a place I have stumbled into.

As far as I can see stretches a field whose monotony is broken at regular intervals by grave markers, each rough-cut from white granite in the shape of the holy phallus. Some are whole, many are damaged, intentionally split down the middle by some heretical hand. There are tens of thousands that I can see, though I cannot see the end of them. All of our fallen soldiers and Men, martyrs sacrificed in the holy wars fought so long ago. All the nameless dead.

Ah, horrible! I fall to my knees and hide my face in my cowl. I am exhausted beyond description. I sleep, I don’t know for how long, but after a time I hear a snuffling breath and feel the moisture of a rough tongue that dares to lick the salt from my face. A lili!

I open my eyes and find myself presented not with the lashless eyes of a malformed swamp-siren, but with the brindled face of some cat-like thing, only three times the size of any cat I have known, its muscular body longer than my own. Behind him are ranged three others, low rolling growls issuing from all throats. Then the one nearest me exposes his fangs, leaving no doubt as to his intent. Very carefully, stealthily, I feel for Pearl’s knife in the folds of my garment.