Читать книгу The Orchid Nursery - Louise Katz - Страница 21

I understand immediately who is the creature now wilfully blinding me with that cruel light. Who else could it be, living alone in a field of mutilated gravestones with her hellhound familiar? Only the Hag. And this is where Pearl’s map has led me: so close to the very edge of things.

At last she lowers her torch and crouches by my side. The hound stays at her heel. I do not flee; I cannot. Indeed, in my exhaustion and pain I actually allow her help me to my feet though it hurts my shoulder bone badly, one broken edge grating against the other.

She draws me towards the door of her foul dwelling place. I am seized by the fear that I might be struck down – perhaps, after all, I could run? Or at least stumble a little further. But then, as if reading my thoughts, she speaks.

‘You may run away if you like, but the night is very large.’ She widens her eyes. The whites are almost blue. ‘And it is not empty.’

This is doubtless true. And I am so very weary, my arm hanging useless at my side. And then the hound leans against my thigh, exerting an insistent pressure so that I am compelled to enter the room, but as I do I feel in my pocket with my good hand for the smooth comfort of my knife. Light from the small fire burning in the grate patterns the walls. The hound advances into the room and settles by the hearth, eyes of red regarding me with baleful menace.

‘You could try coming closer to the fire. Blackguard won’t bite, though I might!’ She snaps her teeth at me. Click! I jump, stumble against a fireside chair, then fall into it.

She looks me over with the eye of a merchant considering new stock. I do not move a muscle. She sits on the arm of the chair and reaches out a hand towards my shoulder. She feels it carefully with callused fingertips, then further, to my collarbone. Now this makes me cry out.

‘What brings you here, to me?’ she asks as she rises and moves to a cupboard from which she withdraws a sheet. This she nips at the hem with her sharp teeth, then rips in half with a sound like a shriek. ‘And so faintingly tired so that you trip over your girlie-shroud all covered in blood and mud and god knows what-all?’ She approaches with the torn fabric which at first I think she will throttle me with, so that I lurch back. ‘Shhh,’ she hisses, ‘It’s a sling. For your arm.’

I feel faint, and my gut is tight, but I answer her through gritted teeth as she winds the sheet about my arm and shoulder, ‘One must pass through hell to be ensouled.’ My voice sounds distant to my own ears, and echoes in my brain.

She cackles quietly. The subject of my redemption is nothing to her of course. She is corrupt beyond healing and full of evil magic. They tried to burn her, the Hag. We all know her story. Once she had lived in one of the States, I don’t know which. Perhaps Incomparable, or Superlative. But her story has spread throughout Civilisation. Many years ago, she was found astride a Man, her face a twisted mask of foulest carnality, riding that Man as if she had a right to harness the power of the Seed-Bearers. The prideful, wicked arrogance! They say she was a demon herself, a real demon from the pit, like Lilith, Adam’s first wife and vilest incarnation of feminine mischief who was cast out of Eden for her presumption – exactly the same sin that earned the Hag her banishment. Of course the Man was censured for his weakness but the (wo)Man, the jez, slithered away like a sweaty snake. The soldiers caught her and bound her to the stake and lit the fire, but she wriggled free of the tether by magic she had learned in night-time conversation with demons over cups of sweet and salty blood. She slid out of the knotty twine and escaped.

I learned in Instruction & Destruction class of the time four Ecumen of Houses Usama and Gabriel rode out to her in their Holy Hummer with righteous vengeance on their minds. They failed to execute her, and it was clear that she would have drawn on her fount of evil and pitted against them some nameless horror with which no Man could be expected to contend, regardless of the nobility of his station and bearing. It was obvious that an old, as yet unaugmented, (wo)Man who had spurned Perfection would have had to have given herself to Satan. How else could she have survived in isolation, on the edge of a forest full of vindictive scouts, snipers and spies from Unrule? Ecumen are no longer dispatched after her for she serves us well enough as a living example, and there is no need for Men to pollute their hands with her noisome blood.

But she speaks again: ‘Passage through hell, you say?’ and her voice is sticky with sarcasm. ‘Young people have been alive in the world for five minutes and think that older people will find their histrionics interesting … There, that should do it.’ She tightens the knot on the sling and then pulls up another chair. It has a tapestry covering and a small piece of spring poking through the worn seat. ‘It is a function of self-centred youth to find itself fascinating,’ she continues in her raspy voice as she takes a seat too close to me for comfort, ‘regardless of being unformed and relatively featureless, as reflected in the youthful, unlined face like a flat, desert landscape. Isn’t it so?’

I have no idea of how to answer – but it is not necessary, for she has not finished. ‘Yet I have to say, it is ironic that such hopefulness endures in one who was raised like a battery chicken. And now that you are ready for plucking and butchering you have run off. Now this is rare, so it really does interest me.’

The Hag’s words are disgusting but her voice is refined, like the voice of a Propergander, and her accent and intonation are almost musical. I know I must be on my guard against such charm – for charm I know it to be. Have I not been schooled since childhood in ways of pleasing both by means of attracting and satisfying Men’s sexual needs, and also the subtler art of colloquy? But my gut aches and my arm throbs and the black beast glowers. Her clever, cynical eyes smile brightly at me as if expecting a response. Yet how does she expect me to answer to her presentation of me as a sacrificial chicken? Where to begin to speak to one ungraced with Truth, one whose understanding of life was formed in the muck? I choose silence, for it is written: ‘An untutored woman’s voice is the grunting of a rutting sow; her breathing silence is the soughing of the gentlest zephyr.’

She is dark-skinned with big eyes the shape of almonds, her hair is thick and black with a stripe of white like those spiders in the gardens whose venom causes your limbs to wither and rot if they bite you, and she wears it in a long queue to her waist. She is slight, a twig-boned woman, much smaller than me. Blighted by GodFather (Blessed Be His Cock-and-Muscle, alive-alive-oh-oh ever amen) for her sins, no doubt. The stories tell of many such punishments. GodFather (BBHCM) takes and GodFather (BBHCM) gives, beware the wrath of God­Father (BBHCM). She is mostly covered up in an ancient style of dress, the most wanton kind that covers dugs and cockslot but hints at them being there through the cut and fold of the fabric so that boys and Men can become unfairly aroused, yet be given no immediate access. Obscene. Haraamasur. Though in her case, given her age, probably it is best that no-one can see her body. The sight of it would likely offend more than the vanity of concealment.

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?’