The Cleft by Doris Lessing Read Free Book Online

dirty, smeared, smelling bad of their ex cretions, the wide empty eyes accusing them.
    What were they to do?
    Carry her to where the eagles would find her? But something forbade them to do this.
    In the end they carried her stiff soiled body to the river bank where the water ran faster and pushed her in, and watched her being swirled away downstream towards the sea.
    This was the first murder committed by our kind (I except the exposing of crippled newborn infants) and it taught them in that act what they were capable of; they learned what their natures could be.
    This murder was not recorded in their recitals of their history and they tried to forget it, and in the end did, just as the Clefts, when they did remember how they had tortured and tormented the Squirts, softened the tale and made it less, and then soon chose to believe there had been one monstrous babe they had hurt – just one.
    We would not know about this murder if a very old dying man had not become obsessed with his memories, with this terrible day of rape and killing, so long ago – he had been a boy – and he could not stop repeating and repeating what he knew. Not possible to ignore what he was saying, and some young ones, hearing, shocked, distressed, preserved the tale, which they could not forget, and in theirold age told it to the younger ones. This was, I believe, the beginning of the Squirts’ oral annals, their Memories, at first coming into being almost by accident, but then valued and preserved. The female kept records – and I cannot bring myself to write down all that is there; and the male kept records: and I do bring myself to write down what is there.
    Over among the Clefts, they noticed the absence of one of their own, wondered, fretted, in their soft lazy way, mentioned her absence, looked to see if she had fallen into one of the near pools, wondered again …
    When the Squirts’ distress had subsided, there remained a doubt which did not get less. Though the murdered girl had not been able to say much that was coherent, from the words she did say they knew that the language they used was poor compared with hers and, forced to worry over the question, find a reason, they at last understood that all they said had developed from the speech of small children who had made that first brave quest over the eagles’ mountain. Their language was a child’s, and it was even pitched high, like children’s talk. Yes, they had new words, for the tools and utensils they had invented, but they talked together like children.
    How were they to learn more, and better? Their dread of the Clefts, their fear of themselves and whatthey had done, made it impossible to go back to the shore, and find another Cleft and learn from her.
    What were they to do?
    It was a Cleft who did something. We do have to ask why it happened. After a period of time so long it is not possible to measure it, when no Cleft had had the curiosity to leave their maternal shore, one did just that. She walked towards the mountain where she knew the eagles took the Monsters, climbed the mountain, passed the eagles’ nests, stood there on the height, and looked down and saw … we know what she saw, it is recorded.
    Down there in the valley were a company of Monsters, moving about in activities she could not understand, or at the edge of the great river, and she had never seen a river, only the little rivulets that seeped down the cliffs. She was shocked into a fear that nearly took her running back to her shore. She could not see from where she stood the horrid bundles that made a Squirt what he was. They were at ease down there, those terrible creatures, and their voices floated up to her, talking as the Clefts did, but in high childish tones. Why was she there at all? We do not know. Something in the stuff and substance of life had been agitated – by what? For ages – we use this dubious definition of time – no one had wanted to