By Damon Knight
Chapter One
Thirty sisters, as like as peas, were sitting at their looms in the court above the Gallery of Weavers. In the cool shadow, their white dresses rustled like the stirrings of doves, and their voices now murmured, now shrilled. Over the courtyard was a canopy of green glass, through which the sun appeared to swim like a golden-green fish; but over the roofs could be seen the strong blue of the sky, and even, at one or two places, the piercing white sparkle of the sea.
The sisters were ivory-skinned, strong armed and straight of back, with eyebrows arched black over bright eyes. Some had grown fat, some were lean. But the same smiles dimpled their cheeks, the same gestures threw back their sleek heads when they laughed, and each saw herself mirrored in the others.
Only the youngest, Mary, was different. Hers was the clan face, but so slender and grave that it seemed a stranger’s. She had been brought to birth to replace old Anna-one, who had fallen from the lookout and broken her neck sixteen springs ago; and some said it had been done too quick; that Mary was from a bad egg and should never have been let grow. Now the truth was that Mary’s genes had a long-recessive trait of melancholy and unworldliness, turned up by accident in the last cross; but the Elders, who after all knew best, had decided to give her the same chance as anyone.
For in the floating island of Iliria, everyone knew that the purpose of life was happiness. And therefore to deprive anyone of life was a great shame.
At the far side of the court, Vivana called from her loom, ‘They say a new Fisher came from the mainland yesterday!’ She was the eldest of the thirty, a coarse, good-natured woman with a booming laugh. ‘If he’s handsome, I may take him, and give you others a chance at my Tino. Rose, how would you like that? Tino would be a good man for you.’ Her loom whirled, and rich, dark folds of liase rippled out. It was an artificial fibre, formed, spun, woven, and lyed in the loom, hardening as it reached the air. A canister of the stuff, like tinted gelatin, stood at the top of every loom. It came from the Chemist clan, who concocted it by mysterious workings out of the sea water that tumbled through their vats.
‘What, is he tiring of you already?’ Rose called back. She was short and moon-faced, with strong, clever fingers that danced on the keyboard of her loom. ‘Probably you belched in his face once too often.’ She raised her shrill voice over the laughter. ‘Now let me tell you, Vivana, if the new Fisher is as handsome as that, I may take him myself, and let you have Mitri.’ Mounds of apple-green stuff tumbled into a basket.
Between them, Mary worked on, eyes cast down, without smiling.
‘Gogo and Vivana!’ someone shouted.
‘Yes, that’s right - never mind about the Fisher! Gogo and Vivana!’ All the sisters were shouting and laughing. But Mary still sat quietly busy at her loom.
‘All right, all right,’ shouted Vivana, wheezing with laughter.
‘I will try him, but then who’s to have Gunner?’
‘Me!’
‘No, me!’
Gunner was the darling of the Weavers, a pink man with thick blond lashes and a roguish grin.
‘No, let the youngsters have a chance,’ Vivana called reprovingly. ‘Joking aside, Gunner is too good for you old scows.’ Ignoring the shrieks of outrage, she went on, ‘I say let Viola have him. Better yet, wait, I have an idea - how about Mary?’
* * * *
The chatter stilled; all eyes turned towards the silent girl where she sat, weaving slow cascades of creamy white liase. She flushed quickly, and bowed her head, unable to speak. She was sixteen, and had never taken a lover.
The women looked at her, and the pleasure faded out of their faces. Then they turned away, and the shouting began again:
‘Rudi!’
‘Ernestine!’
‘Huga!’
‘Areta!’
Mary’s slim hands faltered, and the intricate diapered pattern of her weaving was spoiled. Now the bolt would have to be cut off, unfinished. She stopped the loom, and drooped over it, pressing her forehead against the smooth metal. Tears burned her eyelids. But she held herself still, hoping Mia, at the next loom, would not see.
Below in the street, a sudden tumult went up. Heads turned to listen: there was the wailing of flutes, the thundering of drums, and the sound of men’s rich voices, singing and laughing.
A gate banged open, and a clatter of feet came tumbling up the stair. The white dresses rustled as the sisters turned expectantly towards the arch.
A knot of laughing, struggling men burst through, full into the midst of the women, toppling looms, while the sisters shrieked in protest and pleasure.
The men were Mechanics, dark-haired, gaunt, leavened by a few blond Chemists. They were wrestling, Mechanic against Chemist, arms locked about each other’s necks, legs straining for leverage. One struggling pair toppled suddenly, overturning two more. The men scrambled up, laughing, red with exertion.
Behind them was a solitary figure whose stillness drew Mary’s eyes. He was tall, slender and grave, with russet hair and a quiet mouth. While the others shouted and pranced, he stood looking around the courtyard. For an instant his calm grey eyes met hers, and Mary felt a sudden pain at the heart.
‘Dear, what is it?’ asked Mia, leaning closer.
‘I think I am ill,’ said Mary faintly.
‘Oh, not now!’ Mia protested.
Two of the men were wrestling again. A heave, and the dark Mechanic went spinning over the other’s hip.
A shout of applause went up. Through the uproar, Vivana’s big voice came booming, ‘You fishheads, get out! Look at this, half a morning’s work ruined! Are you all drunk? Get out!’
‘We’re all free for the day!’ one of the Mechanics shouted. ‘You, too - the whole district! It’s in the Fisher’s honour! So come on, what are you waiting for?’
The women were up, in a sudden flutter of voices and white skirts, the men beginning to spread out among them. The tall man still stood where he was. Now he was looking frankly at Mary, and she turned away in confusion, picking up the botched fabric with hands that did not feel it.
She was aware that two Mechanics had turned back, were leading the tall man across the courtyard, calling, ‘Violet -Clara!’ She did not move, but her breath stopped.
Then they were pausing before her loom. There was an awful moment when she thought she could not move. Then she looked up fearfully. He was standing there, hands in his pockets, slumped a little as he looked down at her.
He said, ‘What is your name?’ His voice was low and gentle.
‘Mary,’ she said.
‘Will you go with me today, Mary?’
Around her, the women’s heads were turning. A silence spread; she could sense the waiting, the delight held in check.
She could not! Her whole soul yearned for it, but she was too afraid, there were too many eyes watching. Miserably, she said, ‘No,’ and stopped, astonished, listening to the echo of her voice saying gladly, ‘Yes!’...
Suddenly her heart grew light as air. She stood, letting the loom fall, and when he held out his hand, hers went into it as if it knew how.
* * * *
‘So you have a rendezvous with a mainland Fisher?’ the Doctor inquired jovially. He was pale-eyed and merry in his broad brown hat and yellow tunic; he popped open his little bag, took out a pill, handed it to Mary. ‘Swallow this, dear.’
‘What is it for, Doctor?’ she asked, flushing.
‘Only a precaution. You wouldn’t want a baby to grow right in your belly, would you? Ha, ha, ha! That shocks you, does it? Well, you see, the Mainlanders don’t sterilize the males, their clan customs forbid it, so they sterilize the females instead. We have to be watchful, ah, yes, we Doctors! Swallow it down, there’s a good girl.’
She took the pill, drank a sip of water from the flask he handed her.
‘Good, good - now you can go to your little meeting and be perfectly safe. Enjoy yourself!’ Beaming, he closed his bag and went away.
* * * *
Chapter Two
On the high Plaza of Fountains, overlooking the quayside and the sea, feasts of shrimp and wine, seaweed salad, caviar, pasta, iced sweets had been laid out under canopies of green glass. Orchestrinos were playing. Couples were dancing on the old ceramic cobbles, white skirts swinging, hair afloat in the brilliant air. Farther up, Mary and Fisher had found a place to be alone.
Under the bower in the cool shade, they lay clasped heart to heart. In her ecstasy she could not tell where her body ended or his began.
‘Oh, I love you, I love you!’ she murmured.
His body moved, his head drew back a little to look at her. There was something troubled in his grey eyes. ‘I didn’t know this was going to be your first time,’ he said. ‘How is it that you waited so long?’
‘I was waiting for you,’ she said faintly, and it seemed to her that it was so, and that she had always known it. Her arms tightened around him, wishing to draw him closer to her body again.
But he held himself away, looking down at her with the same vague uneasiness in his eyes. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘How could you have known I was coming?’
‘I knew,’ she said. Timidly her hands began to stroke the long, smooth muscles of his back, the man’s flesh, so different from her own. It seemed to her that her fingertips knew him without being told.
His body stiffened; his grey eyes half closed. ‘Oh, Mary ...’ he said, and then he was close against her again, his mouth busy on hers.
Near the end she began to weep, and lay in his arms afterwards with the luxurious tears wetting her cheeks, while his voice asked anxiously, ‘Are you all right? Darling, are you all right?’; and she could not explain, but only held him tighter and wept.
Later, hand in hand, they wandered down the bone-white stairs to the quayside strewn with drying nets, the glass floats sparkling sharp in the sun, spars, tackle, and canvas piled everywhere. Only two boats were moored at the floating jetty below. The rest were out fishing, black specks on the glittering sea, almost at the horizon.
Over to eastward, they saw the desolate smudge of the mainland and the huddle of stones that was Porto. ‘That’s where you live,’ she said wonderingly.
‘Yes.’
“What do you do there?’
He paused, looked down at her with that startled unease in his glance. After a moment he shrugged. ‘Work. Drink a little in the evenings, make love. What else would I do?’
A dull pain descended suddenly on her heart and would not lift its wings. “You’ve made love to many women?’ she asked with difficulty.
‘Of course. Mary, what’s the matter?’
‘You’re going back to Porto. You’re going to leave me.’
Now the unnamed thing in his eyes had turned to open incredulity. He held her arms, staring down at her. ‘What else?’
She put her head down obstinately, burying it against his chest. ‘I want to stay with you,’ she said in a muffled voice.
‘But you can’t! You’re an Islander - I’m a Mainlander.’
‘I know.’
‘Then why this foolishness?’
‘I don’t know.’
* * * *
He turned her without speaking, and they stepped down from the promenade, went into the shadow of some storehouses that abutted on the quayside.
The doors were open, breathing scents of spices and tar, new cordage, drying fish. Beyond them was a pleasant courtyard with boats piled upside down on one side, on the other a table, an umbrella, chairs, all cool in the afternoon shadow. From there they took a shallow staircase up into a maze of little streets full of the dim, mysterious blue light that fell from canopies of tinted glass between roofs. Passing a house with open shutters, they heard the drone of childish voices. They peered in: it was the nursery school - forty young Bakers, Chemists, Mechanics, fair skins and dark, each in a doll-like miniature of his clan costume, all earnestly reciting together while the shovel-hatted Teacher stood listening at the green-board. Cool, neutral light came from the louvred skylights. The small faces were clear and innocent, here a tiny Cook in his apron, there two Carters sitting together, identical in their blue smocks, there a pale Doctor, and beside him, Mary saw with a pang, a little Weaver in white. The familiar features were childishly blunted and small, the ivory skin impossibly pure, the bright eyes wide.
‘Look - that one,’ she whispered, pointing.
He peered in. ‘She looks like you. More like you than the others. You’re different from all the rest, Mary. That’s why I like you.’ He looked down at her with a puzzled expression; his arm tightened around her. ‘I’ve never felt quite this way about a girl before. What are you doing to me?’ he said.
She turned to him, embracing him, letting her body go soft and compliant against his. ‘Loving you, darling,’ she said, smiling up, her eyes half-closed.
He kissed her fiercely, then pushed her away, looking almost frightened. ‘See here, Mary,’ he said abruptly, ‘we’ve got to understand something.’
‘Yes ?’ she said faintly, clinging to him.
‘I’m going to be back in Porto tomorrow morning,’ he said.
‘Tomorrow!’ she said. ‘I thought—’
‘My work was done this morning. It was a simple adjustment of the sonics. You’ll catch plenty of fish from now on ... I have nothing else to do.’
She was stunned; she could not believe it. Surely there would be at least another night ... that was little enough to ask.
‘Can’t you stay?’ she said.
‘You know I can’t.’ His voice was rough and strained. ‘I go where they tell me, come when they say come.’
* * * *
She tried to hold back the time, but it slipped away, ran through her fingers; the sky darkened slowly from cerulean to Prussian blue. The stars came out, and the cool night wind stirred over the jetty.
Below her, in a cluster of lights, they were making the boat ready. Orchestrinos were playing up the hillside, and there was a little crowd of men and women gathering to say goodbye. There was laughter, joking, voices raised good-naturedly in the evening stillness.
Klef, pale in the lights, came up the stairs to where she stood, his head tilted as he came, his grave eyes holding hers.
‘I’m not going to cry,’ she said.
His hands took her arms, gripping her half in tenderness, half impatiently. ‘Mary, you know this is wrong. Get over it. Find yourself other men - be happy.’
‘Yes, I’ll be happy,’ she said.
He stared down at her in uncertainty, then bent his head and kissed her. She held herself passive in his arms, not responding or resisting. After a moment he let her go and stepped back. ‘Goodbye, Mary.’
‘Goodbye, Klef.’
He turned, went quickly down the steps. The laughing voice surrounded him as he went towards the boat; after a moment she heard his voice, too, lifted in cheerful farewells.
In the morning she awoke knowing that he was gone. A frightening knowledge of loss seized her, and she sat up with her heart leaping.
Down the high dormitory, smelling faintly of cinnamon oil and fresh linens, the sisters were beginning to rustle sleepily out of their cubicles, murmuring and yawning. The familiar hiss of the showers began at the far end of the room. The white-curtained windows were open, and from her bed Mary could see the cream and terracotta roofs spread out in a lazy descent. The air was cool and still and mysteriously pure: it was the best moment of the day.
She rose, washed herself and dressed mechanically. ‘What is it, dear?’ asked Mia, bending towards her anxiously.
‘Nothing. Klef is gone.’
‘Well, there’ll be others.’ Mia patted her hand with a relieved smile and went away. There was a closeness between them, they were almost of an age, and yet even Mia could not be comfortable long in Mary’s company.
Mary sat with the others at table, silent in the steaming fragrances of coffee and new bread, the waves of cheerful talk that flowed around her. Carrying her loom, she went down with the rest into the court and sat in her usual place. The work began.
* * * *
Time stretched away wearily into the future. How many mornings in her life would she sit here, where she sat now, beginning to weave as she did now? How could she endure it? How had she ever endured it? She put her fingers on the controls of the loom, but the effort to move them appalled her. A tear dropped bright on the keyboard.
Mia leaned over towards her. ‘Is there anything the matter? Don’t you feel well?’
Her fists clenched uselessly. ‘I can’t - I can’t -’ was all she could utter. Hot tears were running down her face; her jaw was shaking. She bowed her head over the loom.
The others clustered around her. ‘Sick?’ ‘What’s the trouble?’ ‘It was her first time, remember.’ Then Vivana’s big voice: ‘All right, what’s wrong?’
She lifted her face. ‘He’s gone, Vivana. I can’t—’
‘Of course he is. Don’t be a silly girl.’ A big arm went around her comfortingly.
‘But I love him!’
‘Well, of course you did. Nothing to cry about. Now sit up and behave yourself.’ She held Mary’s chin, squinting at her critically. ‘Hm. I don’t suppose you’ve had much sleep. Didn’t eat a bit at breakfast, either, did you?’
The tears kept on flowing, silently; Mary could not stop them.
‘She isn’t as strong as—’ someone whispered.
‘Shush! Now look here.’ Vivana’s voice grew gentler. ‘I’m going to let you off weaving this morning. Go up and get some sleep, if you want to. Or go down to the pools and take the sun. Go on with you now; don’t worry about the loom.’
Mary stood up, drying her eyes, feeling miserable but flattered by the attention. The other sisters drifted back to their work. Vivana, taking Mary’s arm, walked her over to the archway. ‘Listen,’ she said in a hoarse undertone, ‘how long since you’ve been to church?’
‘I don’t know. A few weeks. Or a month. Why?’
‘Better go this morning. It’ll do you good, believe me - take my advice.’ With a final squeeze, Vivana let go her arm and turned away.
* * * *
Chapter Three
Iliria was neither wearisomely flat, nor cone-shaped nor pyramidal in its construction, like some of the northern islands, but was charmingly hollowed, like a cradle. The old cobblestoned streets rose and fell; there were stairways, balconies, arcades; never a vista, always a new prospect. The buildings were pleasingly various, some domed and spired, others sprawling. Cream was the dominant colour, with accents of cool light blue, yellow, and rose.
For more than three hundred years the island had been afloat, just as it now was: the same plazas with their fountains, the same shuttered windows, the same rooftops. The people, too, were unchanged. Making the best of their reduced stock of healthy genes, Iliria’s founders had chosen some two hundred types, all congenial, sturdy, industrious, and cheerful, to be reproduced over and over, time without end. Every Ilirian male was sterilized before puberty; the race had its only immortality in the incubators and frozen-storage units of the clans’ birth laboratories.
During the last century, some colonies had been creeping back onto the land as the contamination diminished; but every Ilirian knew that only island life was perfect.
Above, the unchanging streets and buildings served each generation as the last. Down below, the storage chambers, engine rooms, seines, preserving rooms, conveniently out of sight and hearing, went on functioning as they always had. Unsinkable, sheathed in ceramic above and below, the island would go on floating just as it now was, forever.
It was strange to Mary to see the familiar streets so empty. The morning light lay softly along the walls. In corners blue shadow gathered. Behind every door and window there was a subdued hum of activity; the clans were at their work. All the way to the church circle, she passed no one but a Messenger and two Carters with their loads. All three looked at her curiously until she was out of sight.
Climbing the Hill of Carpenters, she saw the grey dome of the church rising against the sky - a smooth, unrelieved void, with a crescent of morning light upon it. Overhead, a flock of gulls hung in the air, wings spread, rising and dipping. They were grey against the light.
She paused on the porch step to look down. From this height she could see the quays and the breakwater, and the sun on the bright-work of the moored launches; and then the long rolling back of the sea, full of white-caps in the freshening breeze; and beyond that, the dark smudge of the land, and the clutter of brown windowed stone that was Porto. She stood looking at it for a moment, dry-eyed, then went into the shadowed doorway.
Clabert the Priest rose up from his little desk and came towards her with inkstained fingers, his skirt flapping around his ankles. ‘Good morning, cousin, have you a trouble?’
‘I’m in love with a man who has gone away.’
He stared at her in perplexity for a moment, then darted down the corridor to the left. ‘This way, cousin.’ She followed him past the great doors of the central harmonion. He opened a smaller door, curved like the end of an egg, and motioned her in.
She stepped inside. The room was grey, egg-shaped, and the light came uniformly from the smooth ceramic walls. ‘Twenty minutes,’ said Clabert, and withdrew his head. The door shut, joining indistinguishably with the wall around it.
Mary found herself standing on the faintly sloping floor, with the smooth single curve of the wall surrounding her. After a moment she could no longer tell how far away the big end of the ovicle was; the room seemed first quite small, only a few yards from one end to the other; then it was gigantic, bigger than the sky. The floor shifted uncertainly under her feet, and after another moment she sat down on the cool hollow slope.
The silence grew and deepened.
She had no feeling of confinement. The air was fresh and in constant slight movement. She felt faintly and agreeably dizzy, and put her arms behind her to steady herself. Her vision began to blur; the featureless grey curve gave her no focus for her eyes. Another moment passed, and she became aware that the muffled silence was really a continual slow hush of sound, coming from all points at once, like the distant murmuring of the sea. She held her breath to listen, and at once, like dozens of wings flicking away in turn, the sound stopped. Now, listening intently, she could hear a still fainter sound, a soft, rapid pattering that stopped and came again, stopped and came again ... and listening, she realized that it was the multiple echo of her own heartbeat. She breathed again, and the slow hush flooded back.
* * * *
The wall approached, receded ... gradually it became neither close nor far away; it hung gigantically and mistily just out of reach. The movement of air imperceptibly slowed.
Lying dazed and unthinking, she grew intensely aware of her existence, the meaty solidness of her flesh, the incessant pumping of blood, the sigh of breath, the heaviness and pressure, the pleasant beading of perspiration of her skin. She was whole and complete, all the way from fingers to toes. She was uniquely herself; somehow she had forgotten how important being herself was ...
‘Feeling better?’ asked Clabert, as he helped her out of the chamber.
‘Yes ...’ She was dazed and languid; walking was an extraordinary effort.
‘Come back if you have these confusions again,’ Clabert called after her, standing in the porch doorway.
Without replying, she went down the slope in the brilliant sunshine. Her head was light, her feet were amusingly slow to obey her. In a moment she was running to catch up with herself, down the steep cobbled street in a stumbling rush, with face popping out of shutters behind her, and fetching up laughing and gasping with her arms around a light column at the bottom.
A stout Carter in blue was grinning at her out of his tanned face. ‘What’s the joke, woman?’
‘Nothing,’ she stammered. ‘I’ve just been to church.’
‘Ah!’ he said, with a finger beside his nose, and went on.
She found herself taking the way downward to the quays. The sunlit streets were empty; no one was in the pools. She stripped and plunged in, gasping at the pleasure of the cool fresh water on her body. And even when two Baker boys, an older one and a younger came by and leaned over the wall shouting, ‘Pretty! Pretty!’ she felt no confusion, but smiled up at them and went on swimming.
Afterward, she dressed and strolled, wet as she was, along the sea-wall promenade. Giddily, she began to sing as she walked, ‘Open your arms to me, sweetheart, for when the sun shines it’s pleasant to be in love ...’ The orchestrinos had been playing that, that night when—
She felt suddenly ill, and stopped with her hand at her forehead.
What was wrong with her? Her mind seemed to reel, shake itself from one pattern into another. She swung her head up, looking with sharp anxiety for the brown tangle of buildings on the mainland.
At first it was not there, and then she saw it, tiny, almost lost on the horizon. The island was drifting, moving away, leaving the mainland behind.
She sat down abruptly; her legs lost their strength. She put her face in her arms and wept: ‘Klef! Oh, Klef!’
* * * *
This love that had come to her was not the easy, pleasant thing the orchestrinos sang of. It was a kind of madness. She accepted that, and knew herself to be mad, yet could not change. Waking and sleeping, she could think only of Klef.
Her grief had exhausted itself; her eyes were dry. She could see herself now as the others saw her - as something strange, unpleasant, ill-fitting. What right had she to spoil their pleasure?
She could go back to church, and spend another dazed time in the ovicle. ‘If you have these confusions again,’ the Priest had said. She could go every morning, if need be, and again every afternoon.
She had seen one who needed to do as much, silly Marget Tailor who always nodded and smiled drooling a little, no matter what was said to her, and who seemed to have a blankness behind the glow of happiness in her eyes. That was years ago. She remembered the sisters always complained of the wet spots Marget left on her work. Something must have happened to her; others cut and stitched for the Weavers now.
Or she could hug her pain to herself, scourge them with it, make them do something...
She had a vision of herself running barefoot and ragged through the streets, with people in their doorways shouting, ‘Crazy Mary! Crazy Mary!’ If she made them notice her, made them bring Klef back...
She stopped eating except when the other sisters urged her, and grew thinner day by day. Her cheeks and eyes were hollow. All day she sat in the courtyard, not weaving, until at length the other women’s voices grew melancholy and seldom. The weaving suffered; there was no joy in the clan house. Many times Vivana and the others reasoned with her, but she could only give the same answers over again, and at last she stopped replying at all.
‘But what do you want?’ the women asked her, with a note of exasperation in their voices.
What did she want? She wanted Klef to be beside her every night when she went to sleep, and when she wakened in the morning. She wanted his arms about her, his voice murmuring in her ear. Other men? It was not the same thing. But they could not understand.
* * * *
Chapter Four
The Elders met in a long, low room with cream-coloured walls and beams of bone white. Behind a plain table of sanded, unpolished wood they sat in their starched white garments, and looked at her with their wrinkled dark faces, with their great dark eyes that were like an aged caricature of her own.
‘Please your ageships,’ said Vivana uncomfortably, ‘this is the matter of your youngest, Mary, who won’t go back to work at the looms.’ She curtsied and sat down.
‘Won’t go back to work?’ asked the eldest, the crone Laura-one, with an incredulous lift of her hairless eyebrows. ‘Is she sick then?’
Vivana bobbed up again. ‘Please your ageship, she’s been to the Doctors. They said she was poorly and gave her a tonic, but she threw it away.’
There was an agitated stir among the Elders. Heads bent together; eyes stared at Mary in disbelief and alarm.
‘Come closer, child,’ said Laura-one at last, beckoning with a clawed finger. Mary rose and walked to the table.
‘Now, then, tell me. Why won’t you go back to work? Why did you throw the tonic the doctor gave you away?’
‘I won’t work,’ she dared to say, ‘until they give me back Klef.’
The elders looked at each other. ‘Klef? What is Klef?’
‘Klef is my lover!’ she said. ‘He had to go back to the Mainland, but no one will listen. I have to be with him. Either let me go, or bring him back. That’s all about it,’ she finished, and folded her arms across her breast.
‘But my dear child,’ said Laura-one, bending across the table, ‘if I understand what you are saying you feel you have a claim upon this Klef of yours, simply because he lay with you a night or two? Is that it?’
Mary nodded.
‘But don’t you see how absurd that is? What if all of us suddenly decided to feel the same way?’
‘Then each woman would have her man, and everyone would be happy!’ answered Mary.
‘My dear, they are all happy now. Except you.’
At these words, Mary found herself unable to prevent the tears from flowing. She wept miserably, and could only sob, ‘He’s mine. I want him! I want him!’
The Elders looked at each other with faces of dismay. At a sign from Laura-one, Vivana led Mary away.
‘Sisters,’ said the eldest, when Mary was gone, ‘here’s a pretty pail of fish. What’s to be done?’
‘The girl came from a bad egg,’ said Laura-two, tracing a round design on the table with her fingertip. ‘It’s a pity. It happens sometimes. There was a madman when I was a child, I remember the women talking of it. Once I think I saw him: wild eyes, and he waved his arms. Some of the Chemist boys laughed, but he frightened me.’
‘What was done with him, do you remember?’ asked Edna-three.
‘No. I don’t like to think of it.’
The others looked at each other. ‘We must help her if we can,’ said Laura-one.
‘Yes.’
‘She’s had no man since this Klef?’
‘It seems not.’
‘If she had one or two, she’d soon see there’s little difference.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Let’s think.’ The old heads leaned nearer across the table.
* * * *
‘But why do you want me to make myself pretty?’ Mary asked with dull curiosity.
Mia bent over her with a tube of cosmetic, touching the pale lips with crimson. ‘Never mind, something nice. Here, let me smooth your eyebrows. Tut, how thin you’ve got! Never mind, you’ll look very well. Put on your fresh robe, there’s a dear.’
‘I don’t know what difference it makes.’ But Mary stood up and wearily took off her dress, thin and pale in the light. She put the new robe over her head, shrugged her arms into it.
‘Is that all right?’ she asked.
‘Dear Mary,’ said Mia, with tears of sympathy in her eyes. ‘Sweet, no, let me smooth your hair. Stand straighter, can’t you? How will any man—’
‘Man?’ said Mary. A little colour came and went in her cheeks. ‘Klef?’
‘No, dear. Forget Klef, will you?’ Mia’s voice turned sharp with exasperation.
‘Oh.’ Mary turned her head away.
‘Can’t you think of anything else? Do try, dear. For me. Just try.’
‘All right.’
‘Now come along, they’re waiting for us.’
Mary stood up submissively and followed her sister out of the dormitory.
* * * *
In bright sunlight, the women stood talking quietly and worriedly around the bower. With them was a husky Chemist with golden brows and hair. His pink face was good-natured, and peaceful. He pinched the nearest sister’s buttock and whispered something in her ear; she slapped his hand irritably.
‘Quick, here they come,’ said one suddenly, ‘go in now, Gunner.’
With an obedient grimace, the blond man ducked his head and disappeared into the bower. In a moment Mia and Mary came into view, the thin girl hanging back when she saw the crowd and the bower.
‘What is it?’ she complained. ‘I don’t want— Mia, let me go-’
‘No, dear. Come along. It’s for the best, you’ll see,’ said the other girl soothingly. ‘Do give me a hand here, one of you, won’t you?’
The two women urged the girl towards the bower. Her face was pale and frightened. ‘But what do you want me to— You said Klef wasn’t— Were you only teasing me? Is Klef—?’
The women gave each other looks of despair. ‘Go in, dear, and see, why don’t you ?’
A wild expression came into Mary’s eyes. She hesitated, then stepped nearer the bower. The two women let her go. ‘Klef ?’ she called plaintively. There was no answer.
‘Go in, dear.’
She looked at them appealingly, then stopped and put her head in. A man’s form lay waiting for her in the dimness. ‘Klef?’ she said.
The man sat up; strong hands caught her wrists, pulled her down. Her eyes gleamed in the dimness; she caught the reek of his breath - beer and fish. She gasped and began to struggle.
‘So. so,’ the man muttered, holding her body hard against him.
‘But you’re not Klef! Let me go!’ She kicked ineffectually, clawed at his face. The man grunted in surprise. When she screamed, he put his hand over her mouth.
‘Stop that!’ he said, then cried out in pain - she had bitten the meaty pad under his thumb. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Her limbs had turned weak. She tried to get up, and this time the man’s body rolled away from her. Outside the bower, anxious voices were calling. Weeping, Mary got to her hands and knees, then struggled to her feet.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ the man’s voice said again, in a tone of anger.
She came out into the light, blinded by tears. Her robe was wadded somehow around her waist, and she could not see to pull it down. Bent over, tugging at the robe to cover herself, she walked past the blurred faces, the reaching hands.
‘Mary, wait—’
‘Dear, what is it - what did he do?’
‘She bit me!’ came the man’s indignant voice.
‘You fool, you must have been too rough.’
Somewhere up the slope, an orchestrino began playing. ‘If you would not be cruel, torment me no more. Do not deny me ever; let it be now or never. Give me your love, then, as you promised me before...’
* * * *
Chapter Five
Her ageship, Laura-one, the eldest Weaver, was pacing up and down the sea-wall promenade, knotting her fingers together in silent agitation. Once she paused to look over the parapet. Below her the wall dropped sheer to blue water. She glanced over at the blur of Porto, half concealed in the morning haze, and at the stark hills above with their green fur of returning vegetation.
Her eyes were still keen. Halfway across the distance, she could make out a tiny dark dot moving towards the island.
Footsteps sounded in the street below. In a moment Vivana appeared, holding Mary by the arm. The younger woman’s eyes were downcast; the older looked worried and anxious.
‘Here she is, your ageship,’ said Vivana. ‘They found her at the little jetty, throwing bottles into the sea.’
‘Again?’ asked the old woman. ‘What was in the bottles?’
‘Here’s one of them,’ said Vivana, handing over a crumpled paper.
‘Tell Klef the Fisher of the town of Porto that Mary Weaver still loves him,’ the old woman read. She folded the paper slowly and put it into her pocket. ‘Always the same,’ she said. ‘Mary, my child, don’t you know that these bottles never can reach your Klef?’
The young woman did not raise her head or speak.
‘And twice this month the Fishers have had to catch you and bring you back when you stole a launch,’ the old woman continued. ‘Child, don’t you see that this must end?’
Mary did not answer.
‘And these things that you weave, when you weave at all,’ said Laura-one, taking a wadded length of cloth from her apron pocket. She spread it taut and held it to the light. In the pattern, visible only when the light fell glancingly upon it, was woven the figure of a seated woman with a child in her arms. Around them were birds with spread wings among the intertwined stems of flowers.
“Who taught you to weave like this, child?’ she asked.
‘No one,’ said Mary, not looking up.
The old woman looked down at the cloth again. ‘It’s beautiful work, but—’ She sighed and put the cloth away. ‘We have no place for it. Child, you weave so well, why can’t you weave the usual patterns?’
‘They are dead. This one is alive.’
The old woman sighed again. ‘And how long is it that you have been demanding your Klef back, dear?’
‘Seven months.’
‘But now think.’ The old woman paused, glanced over her shoulder. The black dot on the sea was much nearer, curving in towards the jetty below. ‘Suppose this Klef did receive one of your messages. What then?’
‘He would know how much I love him,’ said Mary, raising her head. Colour came into her cheeks; her eyes brightened.
‘And that would change his whole life, his loyalties, everything?’
‘Yes!’
‘And if it did not?’
Mary was silent.
‘Child, if that failed, would you confess that you have been wrong? Would you let us help you?’
‘It wouldn’t fail,’ Mary said stubbornly.
‘But if it did?’ the older woman insisted gently. ‘Just suppose - just let yourself imagine.’
Mary was silent a moment. ‘I would want to die,’ she said.
* * * *
The two elder Weavers looked at each other, and for a moment neither spoke.
‘May I go now?’ Mary asked.
Vivana cast a glance down at the jetty, and said quickly, ‘Maybe it’s best, your ageship. Tell them—’
Laura-one stopped her with a raised hand. Her lips were compressed. ‘And if you go, child, what will you do now?’
‘Go and make more messages, to put into bottles.’
The old woman sighed. ‘You see?’ she said to Vivana.
Footsteps sounded faintly on the jetty stair. A man’s head appeared. He was an island Fisher, stocky, dark-haired, with a heavy black moustache. ‘Your ageship, the man is here,’ he said, saluting Laura-one. ‘Shall I—?’
‘No,’ said Vivana involuntarily. ‘Don’t. Send him back.’
‘What would be the good of that?’ the old woman asked reasonably. ‘No, bring him up, Alec’
The Fisher nodded, turned and was gone down the stair.
Mary’s head had come up. She said, ‘The man—?’
‘There, it’s all right,’ said Vivana, going to her.
‘Is it Klef?’ she asked fearfully.
The older woman did not reply. In a moment the black-moustached Fisher appeared again; he stared at them, climbed to the head of the stair, stood aside.
Behind him, after a moment, another head rose out of the stairwell. Under the russet hair, the face was grave and thin. The grey eyes went to Laura-one, then to Mary; they stared at her, as the man continued to climb the steps. He reached the top, and stood waiting, hands at his sides. The black-moustached Fisher turned and descended behind him.
Mary had begun to tremble all over.
‘There, dear, it’s all right,’ said Vivana, pressing her arms. As if the words had released her, Mary walked to the Fisher. Tears were shining on her face. She clutched his tunic with both hands, staring up at him. ‘Klef?’ she said.
His hands came up to hold her. She threw herself against him then, so violently that he staggered, and clutched him as if she wished to bury herself in his body. Strangled, hurt sounds came out of her.
The man looked over her head at the two older women. ‘Can’t you leave us alone for a moment?’ he asked tonelessly.
‘Of course,’ said Laura-one, a little surprised. ‘Why not? Of course.’ She gestured to Vivana, and the two turned, walked away a little distance down the promenade to a bench, where they sat looking out over the sea wall.
Gulls mewed overhead. The two women sat side by side without speaking or looking at one another. They were not quite out of earshot.
* * * *
Chapter Six
‘Is it really you?’ Mary asked, holding his face between her hands. She tried to laugh. ‘Darling, I can’t see ... you’re all blurred.’
‘I know,’ said Klef quietly. ‘Mary, I’ve thought about you many times.’
‘Have you?’ she cried. ‘Oh, that makes me so happy. Oh. Klef, I could die now! Hold me, hold me.’ His face hardened. His hands absently stroked her back, up and down. ‘They sent me to talk to you,’ he said. ‘They thought you might listen to me. I’m supposed to cure you.’
‘Of loving you?’ Mary laughed. At the sound, his hands tightened involuntarily on her back. ‘How foolish they were! How foolish, Klef!’
‘Mary, we have only these few minutes,’ he said.
She drew back a little to look at him. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’m to talk to you, and then go back. That’s all I’m here for.’
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘But you told me—’
‘Mary, listen to me. There is nothing else to do. Nothing.’
‘Take me back with you, Klef.’ Her hands gripped him hard. ‘That’s what I want - just to be with you. Take me back.’
‘And where will you live? In the Fishers’ dormitory with forty men?’
‘I’ll live anywhere, in the streets, I don’t care—’
‘They would never allow it. You know that, Mary.’
She was crying, holding him, shuddering all over. ‘Don’t tell me that, don’t say it. Even if it’s true, can’t you pretend a little? Hold me, Klef! Tell me that you love me.’
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘Tell me that you’ll keep me - never let me go - no matter what they say.’
He was silent a moment. ‘It’s impossible.’
She raised her head.
‘Try to realize,’ he said. ‘This is sickness, Mary. You must cure yourself.’
‘Then you’re sick too!’ she said.
‘Maybe I am, but I’ll get well, because I know I have to. And you must get well too. Forget me. Go back to your sisters and your weaving.’
‘No, never,’ she said.
‘You must. Promise me, Mary.’ He held her tighter. ‘Do you understand? It’s important to me. I must know, before I leave, that you’ll let them cure you. Otherwise—’
‘Otherwise?’
‘I couldn’t bear it,’ he said.
She put her cheek against his chest, gazing out across the bright ocean. ‘Let me just be quiet with you a moment,’ she said. ‘I won’t cry any more. Klef—?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is that all you have to say to me?’
‘It has to be all.’ His eyes closed, opened again. ‘Mary, I didn’t want to feel this way. It’s wrong, it’s unhealthy, it hurts. Promise me, before I go. Say you’ll let them cure you.’
She pushed herself away, wiped her eyes and her cheeks with the heel of one hand. Then she looked up. ‘I’ll let them cure me,’ she said.
His face contorted. ‘Thank you. I’ll go now, Mary.’
‘One more kiss!’ she cried, moving towards him involuntarily. ‘Only one more!’
* * * *
He kissed her on the lips, then wrenched himself away, and looking down to where the two women sat, he made an angry motion with his head.
As they rose and came nearer, he held Mary at arm’s length. ‘Now I’m really going,’ he said harshly. ‘Goodbye, Mary.’
‘Goodbye, Klef.’ Her fingers were clasped tight at her waist.
The man waited, looking over her head, until Vivana came up and took her arms gently. Then he moved away. At the head of the stairs he looked at her once more; then he turned and began to descend.
‘Dear, it will be better now, you’ll see,’ said Vivana uncertainly.
Mary said nothing. She stood still, listening to the faint sounds that echoed up from the stairwell: footsteps, voices, hollow sounds.
There was a sudden stir, then footsteps mounting the stair. Klef appeared again, chest heaving, eyes bright. He seized both of Mary’s hands in his. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘I’m mad. You’re mad. We’re both going to die.’
‘I don’t care!’ she said. Her face was glowing as she looked up at him.
‘They say some of the streams are running pure, in the hills. Grass is growing there - there are fish in the streams, even the wild fowl are coming back. We’ll go there, Mary, together -just you and I. Alone. Do you understand?’
‘Yea, Klef, yes, darling.’
‘Then come on!’
‘Wait!’ cried Laura-one shrilly after them as they ran down the stair. ‘How will you live? What will you eat? Think what you are doing!’
Faint hollow sounds answered her, then the purr of a motor.
Vivana moved to Laura-one’s side, and the two women stood watching, stricken silent, as the dark tiny shape of the launch moved out into the brightness. In the cockpit they could make out the two figures close together, dark head and light. The launch moved steadily towards the land; and the two women stood staring, unable to speak, long after it was out of sight.