Doris Lessing - The Cleft

She saw that some of the older ones were deformed, unlike the others, and did not at once know that these were the Cleft victims, grown and for ever disfigured.

A tree trunk had been dragged by them, or had fallen – and her tiredness, for it had been a long way for a Cleft, made her subside on it to rest. As she sat there, slowly they came crowding up, staring, and it was at her middle, which was naked, because this was halfway between full moon and full moon, and no blood flowed then.

She could see everything of their differences from her; they could see little of hers from them.

One, grown, sat by her on the trunk, staring always at her face, her breasts, the large loose lolling breasts, at her middle. Driven as she was, she put out a hand to touch his protuberance, the terrifying thing that for all her life had been horrible to her, and at once it rose up into her hand and she felt it throb and pulse. What had driven her here was an imperative, and in a moment she and this alien were together, and his tube was inside her and behaved as its name suggested.

They stared at each other, serious – and separated.

They resumed sitting near each other, looking. She curiously handled his new flaccid tube; and he was feeling and probing her.

Parents interested enough in their children’s development to drop in on nursery games will be able to say what was happening now: they will have seen it all.

Naked, because of an imminent bath, or change of clothes, the two little children are standing looking at each other. This is not of course the first time brother and sister have seen each other nude, but for some reason both have been alerted to the other’s differences.

‘Why have you got that thing ,’ somewhat petulantly enquires the girl – but we have to imagine that what the tones of their voices suggest refers to far in the future adulthood.

‘Because I am a boy,’ announces the child, and what he is saying dictates a whole series of postures. He thrusts out his pelvis, and makes some jerky movements which he seems to associate with some game. He holds the tip of his penis down and releases it in a springing gesture. All the time he frowns belligerently, not at his sister, but probably at some imaginary male antagonist.

The little girl, seeing all these achievements, none of which are possible to her, frowns, looks down at her centre and says, ‘But I am nicer than you.’

The boy, frowning at her cleft, which no one could say is threatening or even assertive, now adds to his repertoire of cocky tricks with some others, rolling his balls about in their sac.

‘I like me much better than I like you,’ says the little girl, but she approaches her brother and says, ‘Let me feel.’

He shuts his eyes, holds his breath, endures her pulling and rolling, and says, ‘Now, let me feel you.’

At which he inexpertly probes the crevices and announces, ‘Your pee-thing is not as nice as my pee-thing.’

‘My pee-thing is better than your pee-thing,’ she insists.

There are two slave girls in the room, their nurses. They have been watching this play (foreplay) with knowing worldly smiles, which relate to one’s husband and the other’s lover.

At the little boy’s thrusting and showing off, they exchange what-do-you-expect-from-a-male smiles, and both show signs of wanting to shield the girl, who after all has a hymen to protect.

One says, ‘Your mother’ll be cross if she sees you,’ making a ritual close to the play.

They do not immediately separate but the boy gives a little tug at the girl’s hair and then kisses her shyly on the cheek. She, for her part, gives him a hug. The slave girls put on appropriate smiles, oh-what-dear-little-things.

This particular little play is for now, the girl about five, the boy a little younger. The children wouldn’t want to repeat it, let’s say, next year.

She will be into maternal and nurturing games, he already a legionnaire – a soldier.

You may be thinking that I write of these scenes with too much assurance? But I feel more certainly about them than about many I have attempted to describe. And now I must explain why by way of what may seem a diversion, even an irrelevance.

I married young a girl approved by my parents, and we had two children – boys. I was ambitious, planning to become a senator, worked hard, cultivated the suitable connections, and had very little time for my wife and less for my boys. She was an admirable mother; they had for me a distant regard. I did everything I could for them in the way of easing their way into the army, where they did well. But both were killed fighting against the German tribes. When they were dead I regretted how little I had known these young men whom everyone commended. I think it is not uncommon for a man in his second marriage to regret what he had omitted in his first. I thought a good deal about my two sons when this could do no good to them at all. My first wife died. I lived alone for years. I became ill and took a long time to recover. Friends came to see me, and I was recommended to marry again. I thought of my first wife and knew that we could have loved each other, if I had had the time for it.

When I was convalescing, a girl from a junior branch of the family, Julia, arrived to look after me. I knew what was happening: the mother had of course hoped that her well-off relative would ‘do something’ for her, her children. But there were so many of them. I had observed that if a man takes an interest in one member of a too abundant family, it will not be long before he is taking on the whole tribe. Julia was pleasant, pretty, attentive, and did not talk about her needy sisters and brothers. I enjoyed her, her genuine simplicity, the fresh observations of a clever little provincial girl, who watched everything that went on, so as to model herself on the ways of the elite. I am sure I can truthfully say she liked me, though I was always aware – and made myself remain wary – that an old man should not expect too much of a very attractive woman a third his age. Young relatives and young men who thought of me as a patron were suddenly often in my house, and I thought it would not be long before she married one of them, causing me a little pang or two: and this was – contradictorily – because I thought so much of my first wife and what I had missed. And those boys, those wonderful young men, whose childhood I had scarcely been conscious of.

I asked Julia to marry me, saying that we must agree on a deal. She would give me two children, and I would ask nothing of her beyond that, and she and the children would be well provided for. She agreed, but not without hesitation, having learned that young men were desiring her in plenty. But they weren’t rich, like me. And she did like me, as a friend. Or perhaps as a tutor? She told me she enjoyed talking with me and listening to me because ‘I learn such a lot, you see’. She was almost completely ignorant.

And now something unexpected. I had taken it for granted that this fresh, plump girl (‘my little partridge’) would bring forth children easily, but her first pregnancy was difficult and the birth worse. She told me it was because she had bad illnesses as a child, and sometimes the family didn’t get enough to eat. If she had asked me to let her renege on the second half of our bargain – the second child – I would have been ready to forgive her. I had not enjoyed seeing her discomfort, and then the difficult birth. But she was an honest girl, the partridge, and she went ahead for the second child, though she had a bad enough time with that one, too.

The two infants once born were handed into the care of the slave girls working in the children’s wing – and I don’t think she thereafter ever thought of them. It had not occurred to me to make part of our bargain ‘Give me two babes and be a mother to them’. But when I did tax her about her indifference to her children she said, ‘Bad enough having to be a child without having to look after them too.’ I learned that she was the eldest of the children, with a sickly and worn-out mother, and she had had to be a mother to her siblings, with the help of one inadequate slave girl, a runaway slave from some great estate, where they treated slaves badly. Julia’s helper could hardly speak our language – she was Greek. Julia had sworn that when she got to maturity she would refuse to marry a man who could not provide her with slaves. A pretty big oath to swear, if you are very poor, from a small country town. But that explained why she agreed with her mother to come and offer her services to me.