The saskiad, p.5
The Saskiad, page 5
Only Jane has kept the situation from being a total loss by taking French herself. Not that she is in Saskia's class. Jane already had two years of French in merry olde England, so she's with the ninth graders and still better than anybody else. She has a lovely French accent. The French nobleman's daughter-in-law is now chocolate-colored, and the Captain could not be more pleased.
Jane was taught Latin in England, too.
"It's not fair!" Saskia wailed.
"Shit, I hated Latin," Jane said. "What good is it to anybody? All I can remember is semper ubi sub ubi."
"That's what the pope's speech is called, right?"
"I don't think so. It means, 'Always wear underwear.'"
But those were troubled times. Novamundus was at war. The disciples knew it was an unjust war, but no one would listen to them!
A great battle between the disciples and the Ithacan centurions swept Huge Red. Lauren was captain of a brigade of disciples. When she lost a bloody skirmish — a valiant rearguard action involving swordplay on a footbridge suspended dizzyingly above a gorge — the centurions exiled her from Huge Red. The only choice left to her was to join the colony of Novamundian exiles in India, a land in the East famed for the wisdom of its Masters.
After much wandering through deserts and jungles, over mountains and across mighty rivers, the exile Lauren came at last to the court of the wisest Master of all wide India and found her rightful place at his feet. Soon Lauren was his favorite disciple.
Then it came to pass with the passing of days that a new disciple knocked at the gate of the court of the wisest Master of all wide India. He had eyes of the clearest blue and hair like the sand of the Phaiakian dunes. He was a seafarer, an adventurer, a man who had traveled much in the realms of gold, and he had come at last to learn the Wisdom of men who knew nothing of the sea, who ate not their food with salt, nor knew of ships. His shield was azure, oar upright, or. He carried that oar on his muscled shoulder and the gatekeeper of the court of the Master asked, "Why do you carry on your shoulder a winnowing fan?"
He planted his oar in the Earth and said, "I have found my resting place."
Thus it was that Thomas the Phaiakian entered the court of the Master. And thus it was that there he found his home in Lauren, who is not a traveler nor a seafarer, but a woman of the earth, a tiller of the soil. And they did love each other in the court of the Master amid great rejoicing, and she did return from her exile, bringing Thomas with her to Wonderland, as the prophecies had foretold. And so loved were Thomas and Lauren by their Master, the wisest of all Masters in all wide India, famed for the wisdom of its Masters, that the Master came to Novamundus with the young couple and lived also at Wonderland as their guru, Truth, and took only them and their circle as his disciples.
6
"So wait a minute," Jane says, bemusedly tracing the pink floral pattern on her bedroom wallpaper with a sepia finger. "Who are Mini's parents, then?"
"Jo is her moor, too." Saskia is lying on Jane's bed. The tufts of the white bedspread are deliriously nubbly against her arms.
"But that makes Jo everybody's mother."
"That's the whole problem. Mim was the first. When Jo got pregnant with her, she was only seventeen and the far was some guy named Mack or Mick or Max who was only eighteen and they had to get married."
Jane flops over onto her stomach and grimaces down at Saskia, her hair forming a tent around the two of them. "That old story! How depressing!"
"This guy Mack or Max or whatever hadn't finished high school and had some lousy job like garbage man or chimney sweep. They lived in someone's attic and wore burlap sacks and ate cat food. Then the twins came along." Saskia imagines the far, a greasy motorcycle dreg, looking through the glass in the maternity ward and counting his fingers, horror-stricken. "After that they were really poor. Lauren told me Mack or Mick had some sort of operation so they wouldn't have any more kids."
"He must have got his tubes tied."
"Yeah, whatever. But they must have done it wrong, because Jo got pregnant again."
Jane nods wisely. "That happens sometimes. And that one was Quinny?"
"Exactly. So Mack or Mick just took off. While Jo was pregnant. He couldn't handle it." Saskia sits up, emerging from the tent of Jane's hair into her bright bedroom.
"He was history," Jane says. Her narrow face is wedged between her hands, her legs are lifted from the knee, her bare feet happily tapping teaspoon ankles together.
"He was outta there," Saskia says, admiring Jane.
"He said, 'Eat my dust, Jo.'" The girls laugh.
Saskia wriggles around on the spread, feeling the nubbles under her bare arms and feet. "I guess it's not so funny, though," she adds, for form's sake. "Lauren says Jo was desperate."
"So Lauren took them in."
"Yeah."
"What a good person she is."
"What a martyr."
"I don't blame Mack for taking off. Jo is such a sourpuss."
"She smokes like a proverbial factory."
"She looks almost retarded."
"But how could Mack leave Mim? I mean, really! She's so beautiful."
"She is beautiful," Jane confirms. Her hand is balled under her chin, a confirmatory pose.
"He must have been a schmuck," Saskia says. That's one of Bluf-faroo's words, along with half-pint, small fry, hotshot. Saskia has been called them all.
"No wonder Austin and Shannon look like Jo," Jane says.
The twins are tall for their age and gangling like Jo. They have her thin face and pointy chin, the same sidelong, hooded eyes. Quinny, on the other hand, is short and moon-faced. "I guess Quinny takes after Mack or Mick. And who knows where Mim came from. Maybe Jo found her in a rush basket in the river."
"Ugly people often have beautiful children, and vice versa," Jane observes. "Ever notice that?"
Like me, Saskia thinks. Is that what she means? Tall Lauren of the floor-length hair and muscular Thomas of the wine-blue eyes: they mate like gods and what do they get? A lizard. "Yeah, I guess."
"So do any of them think of Jo as their mother?"
"I don't know. I guess."
"They all sleep in the big house."
"That's the way the commune used to work. The idea was the barns were all together and the folksens took care of them all together. It had something to do with Native Americans."
"So Bill is Jo's boyfriend?"
"No."
"I thought they lived in the same trailer."
"Bill lives in the one nearer the house."
"How long has he been there?"
"A few months. A year, I guess."
"So why is he there?"
"That's what I want to know."
"But doesn't he do anything?"
"He calls himself a writer. That's what he's supposedly doing in his trailer all day."
"That's cool! I've never met a writer before."
"Bluffaroo isn't a real writer. He's always talking about some series of novels he's supposedly working on. You'd think his trailer was the cave of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the way he carries on about staying out of it." Bill refers to it as his Work. He says it like that: capitalized, lapidary. Saskia has his epitaph all figured out: A Jerk, He Worked. She can't wait until it's needed. "I just think it's really pretentious to talk about writing a series of novels when I don't think he's even written the first one." Something to do with making Ithaca into another Alexandria. Ithaca is Greek and Alexandria is Egyptian, stupido. Bluffaroo says it will be a "tetrahedron" of novels. What is a pyramid of novels? The pyramids aren't even in Alexandria, stupido.
No one has ever seen anything by Bluffaroo except a few lousy haiku. He calls them "moment essences" and uses no capitals, not even for his name. (Hey Bluffaroo, I think it's already been done.) He types them on little rectangles of special doodah green rag-paper he buys at an Ithacan art supply store and thumbtacks them to the bulletin board in the kitchen. He uses four tacks for each haiku and pile-drives them into the board so deep that only he, with his super-long fingernails, can pry them out again. Later, he remounts them on more special doodah rag-paper (blue) and sews them into numbered volumes which he puts in the common room on a shelf labeled "moment essences of william hobart owens."
w.h.o.?
Here is Bluffaroo in the lyric vein:
nature is shameless
her clouds litter the skylake
silk veils flung away
Or:
harlequin moon bows
low, hat doffed, sly by the wings —
the last curtain call
Hunh?
"Actually, the books aren't bad-looking," Saskia says to Jane. "Pretty blues and greens, good sewing job. He missed his calling."
Saskia once asked Bluffaroo to make a volume of her own haiku, which, let's face it, are better, and he told her to make it herself. Then he tried to weasel into her good graces by saying he would show her, but when he read one of her haiku, you could see him struggling to make the connection: I am the haiku writer here. I didn't write this. Haiku. Not by me. Haiku. Not by me. Does not compute. "That's really quite good. May I suggest —"
"No, you can't."
"Look, if you want help, you can't take that bratty tone." She whipped out her bazooka-sized flamethrower and blasted his shelf of collected haiku, turning it into a glorious roaring sheet of flame reaching from floor to ceiling.
"There's something just plain wrong with Bill," Saskia says.
"You think so?" Jane asks.
"Don't you think so?"
"Shit, I don't know."
"He pretends to be mellow, but actually he's really tense. Haven't you noticed that?"
"I only saw him for about a minute."
"It's like he's telling himself, 'Be mellow, Bill. Just be mellow now.' But then he jumps down your throat. You didn't notice that?"
"Maybe you're right. Maybe he's a little jumpy."
"Exactly! Bluffaroo is exceptionally jumpy."
"It's a little spooky, in fact."
"I just don't like the cut of his jib." As the Captain would say.
Damme, the service doesn't need men of his kidney! "He looks like the kind of guy who might go on a rampage."
"You mean like the V.P.?"
"Worse. He's probably got an enormous arsenal in his trailer and that's why no one is allowed in. He's not working on books at all, he's taking apart and oiling an M-whatever or an AK-something-or-other and a so-and-so bolt-action repeater. One of these days he'll kick open the door with an army boot and come out in camouflage gear, armed to the teeth, and he'll shoot anything that moves. And afterward people will say, Gee, we didn't really know him, he seemed mellow, he just stayed in his trailer all day."
"Fuckin' A," Jane says. The two girls collaborate on a shocked silence. Jane's hand is barely half an inch away from Saskia's. Then Jane says, "Those trailers are so depressing. And all the junk in the yard makes the place look like one of those backwoods places in the movies where the couple from the city are afraid to go up to it after their car breaks down. A dog attacks them and the hicks on the porch just watch."
"We don't have a dog," Saskia objects, a little hurt. But she can remember a dog at Wonderland, many years ago. A sleek, black and white bitch who ran so fluidly and fast she was like a swallow skimming over the meadows. She flushed birds, herded bugs with her nose, and flopped down like a dropped marionette when you scolded her, turning toward you a bright face with lolling tongue and eyes arched in innocent surprise. She was Thomas's dog and she left with him. Saskia has always wanted to get another one, but Lauren has always refused. "You don't want one."
"No, you don't want one."
"You only think you want one."
"No, you only think I only think I want one. You're Lauren. I'm Saskia."
"Don't be obnoxious."
Jane jumps up from the bed. "I need a cigarette in the worst way! Let's go to the cemetery." She pulls Saskia up. "If I smoke in here my mother has a conniption." She goes into her closet and rummages among her shoes. "I even have to hide the pack because she fucking pokes around in here." Jane shakes a pack down out of the toe of a cobalt pump. Smart hiding place, since Jane has about five hundred shoes. The girls put on their jackets, Jane slipping the pack into a pocket. "We're going out!" she yells as they go through the front door. No answer. "We tried." They head down the driveway. Jane!
"Shit," Jane says under her breath. "Don't look back."
Too late. Stupid Saskia has turned. Jane's mother is beckoning from a window. "Jane!"
Jane whips around. "What?!"
"Where are you girls going?"
"I said we're going out!"
"Where?"
"For a walk!"
"Well don't be gone long, honey, I have to drive Saskia home soon."
Jane turns and takes Saskia's arm, propels her toward the street. "Christ, a fucking interrogation all the time."
Saskia liked that "honey." How pretty! Like honey-colored hair, which Saskia has always thought must be beautiful, although she has never seen it in real life.
They walk out of Tyler's only suburban development and down the county road past the aqua water tower to what passes for the town center: gas station, greasy spoon, funeral home, four churches. ("My dad marveled at how much lower house prices were here than in Ithaca," Jane said. "Has he figured out why yet?" Saskia said.) The cemetery is behind the oldest church, the one with the stubby Doric columns. The girls sit on the dead grass of the frozen ground behind an obelisk that is tilting because of some tree roots. It's typical Ty-lerian weather, gloomy and cold, windy, not doing anything in particular at the moment but basically taunting, "I can rain, sleet, or snow anytime I want to, just remember that, scuz." Saskia huddles. No wonder she never goes outside.
Jane has a cigarette in her mouth. With one hand she flicks open a pack of matches, folds one down, catches it under her thumb against the emery strip, snaps it. She ducks her head and grimaces as she cups the flame, then tosses her hair back and points her chin and the cigarette straight up as she puffs life into it.
"Ahh, that's good," she says. "That's good." Her long legs are drawn up, her knees under her chin. So lovely. "The first time I made out with a boy was in a cemetery."
Saskia feels her face, despite the weather, getting hot.
7
Naked and limber, she stops on the stairs. A commotion is coming from the kitchen: shouts, squawks. She turns toward it, gliding down.
The sunlight is fierce. Merchants' awnings stretch the length of the crowded street. Chickens and slaves run underfoot. This is her city, her home. She walks the streets, knowing the way. She greets old friends at every turn. "Aiyaruk!" they call out, delighted. "Where have you been?"
Today is the day on which the Khan's emissaries come, and the city has turned out to greet them. She makes her way through the crush of bodies to the Square of Martyrs. The emissaries wear robes of white and sit astride white horses, splendidly caparisoned. They come only once a year, to choose the maidens who will be brought to the imperial city of Khan-balik. She stands among the others quietly, not pressing herself forward as some do, nor calling out shamelessly. She is wearing a jerkin of camlet, sturdy leathern boots, a belt of copper with an amber clasp.
The emissaries pass on their steeds, impassively reviewing the maidens. Then they catch sight of her. Startled, they murmur among themselves, stroking their long beards. The chief among them motions her forward. The crowd parts. He leans down as if to help her onto a horse. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she grasps the steed's mane and vaults easily onto its back. The emissaries look at each other and nod. They ride out of the city.
This is the custom: each maiden has been judged, and awarded marks according to whether her features are well formed and in harmony with her person. Each has also been observed, to make sure that she sleeps sweetly without snoring, that she does not give off an unpleasant odor, that she is a virgin. (The last is tested with a robin's egg and handkerchief, and virginal blood is known by this virtue: it will not wash out. The test is sure. Let this be a warning to the heedless young.)
Only maidens awarded ten marks are taken to Khan-balik. Some years, one or two are awarded eleven. There have been rumors of a twelve, every decade or so. Now the excited news flies forward from village to village, from signal fire to signal fire, reaching the imperial city long before the emissaries and their charges: among this year's maidens is one who has been awarded thirteen marks.
In the great city of Khan-balik, in the Great Khan's palace, in the antechamber to the bedroom of the Great Khan himself, she stands with five other maidens, and this is the custom: for the next three days and nights they will serve the Great Khan, ministering to all his needs. He will use them according to his pleasure. The other maidens are dressed in elaborate finery. They babble emptily among themselves. "Will he like me?" they ask each other. "Is my hair all right?" "Did you see blahblah last night, it was so funny!"
When the door to the bedroom opens, they rush in, each vying to reach the Khan's bed first, and like a clutch of chicks they jump on it, while she stands off to the side. They hit each other with his pillows before settling down to a game of Truth or Death. Suddenly the Great Khan is standing by the door, splendidly attired in beaten gold. The five maidens run squealing to him. He carries them to the bed and puts them under the covers. He strokes and kisses them one by one, according to his pleasure. One by one they fall asleep.
Gazing at the sleeping maidens, the Great Khan heaves a deep sigh. He gets up from the bed and comes to her where she is standing. He looks at her for a long time. His robe of gold is a wonder to behold. He stretches out his hand and drops it on her shoulder. His voice is octaves deep, but kind, so kind: "So you are the maiden of whom I have heard so much." She answers nothing. His hand is warm.
