Grazing The Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones Read Free Book Online

laughing.

    I could not sleep. Derveet’s quarrel with the foolish ogres nagged at me like a toothache. The stupid Aneh, the contraband trade….In the dark I left my rustling shack and went to sit on the end of the verandah, in my sleeping sarong and a shawl. It was cold. The centre of the sky was dark blue and starry, but all the lower reaches of the dome had faded, the East was showing a few lines of muddy orange. A screen creaked and a door opened in the wall of the boy brothel: a big, crop-headed Koperasi stood looking out. He was naked. He stood there, touching himself absently, presumably not aware of me in the shadow above. In my mind’s eye I pictured that rod of flesh, swollen and upstanding, entering me: thrusting in and out, hard and strong. I have tried not to have such thoughts about them, I know they are brutes. Why does power attract?

    Before it was fully light the inn family appeared, the women, boys and children. A little man, about three years old, wandered about playing with sticks and stones while the girls worked. Occasionally, a wail arose from him, and one of the women lifted him absently to a tit. His grief didn’t concern them, it was something to be turned off like a dripping tap. No one ever treats a little girl like that. To a tiny infant they will say, with their eyes and gestures, while they comfort her: Why are you crying? You must explain. You must learn to understand. If it isn’t a good reason you had better stop, you have work to do in the world.
    Then they complain that we are irresponsible.
    The girls, including one midget who could barely toddle, were taking it in turns to jump on the pedal of the heavy rice pestle: laughing, silent, breathless with effort, full of self respect. The grown women talked a little with their eyes. Probably they had something to say about “the one with no family” because they often glanced in my direction without bothering to conceal it.
    Tradition! When I was fourteen I should have died. My neighbours would have considered castration a barbarity. Once you’ve been chosen to be a man no one can take away that sacred “privilege.” But they would have given me a beautiful, sharp knife and stood over me, very kindly, while I did my duty. Suicide is the decent way, for a gentleman who outlives his use. I had escaped, but I could never leave the shame behind.
    Buffalo was right. It was not a compliment, when my adopted family let me come up here alone. They were “sophisticated Timurese”, living close to our Rulers, but they would not have been so casual with their own beloved son and consort. The full male is a necessary luxury, cosseted and disregarded. An unneeded male is nothing. If I wanted worthless “letters of introduction” I might as well have them. Why not? It would keep me quiet.
    This country must change, I thought. This country must change.
    The man-child wailed and was lifted to suck. Annet, the Aneh delegate, had said of the great Debate, “Typical Dapur government. Stick something in the people’s mouths and shut them up, give them whatever poisonous thing they’re crying for.” That made me smile, grimly. Good. Let them give Timur what Timur cried for, with all its “poisons,” without thinking too much about the consequences.
    Derveet came up the road and turned into the yard, picking her way between puddles and cabbage stalks. Perhaps she had been spending the night with Annet, in her much-superior lodging. Halfway across she stopped and looked back over the dizzying panorama, making its brief early morning appearance. Rivers of pale cloud streamed away down the dark folds of the hills, plains of Timur imaginary in the distance: underfoot, the sordid thatch roofs of Canditinggi. She spoke. She was reciting quietly, for herself, a pantun : the Jagdanan quatrain. The subject was a lady travelling. The chill of the wayside inn at dawn is strange to her, strange and cold as her own desire to leave her family. The inn mothers