Les Guerilleres by Monique Wittig Read Free Book Online Page A

riderless, walking slowly, pressed flank to flank. From time to time one of them lifts its head and shakes its mane. Not a neigh is heard. An unshod hoof scrapes the ground, turning over the pebbles. Some of the horses are wounded, the blood flows over their bellies. Or else they advance on three legs, the fourth is broken galled slashed. Those that still bear saddles have the stirrups banging against their flanks, ill-fastened. Most have lost them.
    Someone speaks of the women who have gone as delegates to the opposing armies. These are young women who sit down decisively to parley. They wear the white costume of those who stand for peace. They make their way without a moment's rest to the places assigned to them. The saliva on their tongues is thick with the dust of travel. The armies are invisible. Once a route is decided on no heed is paid to the days the enterprise takes. They are on the march. If the sun appears they keep their eyes fixed on it. Or else they look at the moon and the stars. They do not know when they will be able to rest their limbs and sleep shielded from the light, eyes closed.
    It is learned that in the world of the Four Powers the women have sustained casualties. Several hundred of them have had their legs broken. For the time being they must lie in small invalid carriages. Those seconded to their care push them along the streets of the town. It is they who wash them and keep them alive. A debate is held to decide what is best to be done. It is a matter of despatching small clandestine groups to sustain the morale of the dissidents. Thus the Front as a whole will be in permanent liaison with the world of the Four Powers. As well as information and orders, advice encouragement and exhortation will not be spared.
    The women say that they have been given as equivalents the earth the sea tears that which is humid that which is black that which does not burn that which is negative those who surrender without a struggle. They say this is a concept which is the product of mechanistic reasoning. It deploys a series of terms which are systematically related to opposite terms. Its theses are so crass that the thought of them makes the women start laughing violently. They say they might just as well be compared with the sky the heavenly bodies in their general movement and disposition the galaxies the planets the stars the suns that which burns those who struggle bravely those who do not surrender. They joke on this subject, they say it is to fall between Scylla and Charybdis, to avoid one religious ideology only to adopt another, they say that both one and the other have this in common, that they are no longer valid.

    OURIKA AKAZOME CYPRIS
    LEONTINE ANGELICA LIA
    RODOGUNE JASMINE KALI
    SIVAN-KI ZULMA CYANA
    GALERIA HELLAN AIMATA
    SAMARE JOSUE SAKANYA

    They persuade Shu Ji to tell them the story of Nü Wa. Shu Ji relates how the mountain in Nü Wa's country crumbled, how the sky began to tilt to one side, how the earth began to sink. It is then that Nü Wa undertook to remedy this state of affairs. She is seen hewing rocks of every colour to repair the sky, cutting off the feet of a giant tortoise to set the world aright on the four cardinal points. Everything that lives in that country is in mortal danger because of the black dragon. Then Nü Wa wages a great battle against the dragon and eventually kills it. Shu Ji says that Nü Wa however has not yet reached the end of her difficulties. The waters that were released at the time of the cataclysm cover the earth. Thus it is that Nü Wa sets fire to all the reeds of her kingdom until, completely consumed, they absorb the water with their ashes.
    In recalling that Lei Zu is she who discovered silk the manner in which she arrived at this outcome is not mentioned. It may have resulted from a series of observations she made herself. Or else some one of her followers may have bequeathed her the monopoly of this industry. Or perhaps the first success was obtained by