The Animal Wife (20 page)

Ah, well. To lie with her at all was better than lying with no one, better than remembering Pinesinger, better than imagining how it would be someday to lie with Frogga, with her running nose and her cold, damp, too-smooth skin.

As I listened to Muskrat's clumsy footsteps going to her sleeping place and watched her rumpled shadow sweep the ceiling of the lodge, I wondered who else was listening and watching. Poor Marten, who slept at Rin's fire near the door, had surely heard me taking Muskrat. He surely envied me. At that time, if Marten ever climaxed, he did it in his dreams, since his pregnant wife, Rin's daughter, Waxwing, was not supposed to lie with him until after their baby was born.

Rin had surely heard me too. Rin would have been listening for the sounds of her daughter and her son-in-law together, for the sounds of their breathing, since their having coitus could frighten or bruise her unborn grandchild. Everyone knows that even a very pregnant woman can't always refuse her husband, since he can (like my Uncle Bala) usually command her, or, after she falls asleep, he can (like my stepfather) play with her softly until she wakes up lusting. So in a way it was Rin's duty as a mother-in-law to make sure no harm came to her unborn lineage; it was her duty to be listening for Marten, so she could say a few words that would help him chill his need.

Maral could have heard me. Andriki too, that light sleeper. In the morning he would tease me. Their wives would have heard me. Pinesinger would have heard and realized that Muskrat had no interest in me, or worse, that I had given her pain but no pleasure. This thought made me angry. The women would think little of me. Behind my back, they would laugh. I made up my mind to wait for a chance to show my woman how to do this thing. Then, if she and I made sounds at night, the sounds would show our happiness, not her fear and my need.

***

Because of the snow, my chance came soon. Muskrat couldn't leave the lodge until she had clothes. Instead, while everyone else was out, Muskrat waited by the fire, trying her best to keep warm. All I had to do to be with her was to wait until all but she were elsewhere, then come with my load of wood. The very next time I brought wood I knew she was inside alone. I scrambled down the coldtrap, found her sitting by the embers, pulled her to her feet, and took off her clothes.

Would I have acted so if she had been a woman of our people? Just the thought is funny. Our women can't be treated lightly—it makes them angry. Often it makes their kin angry. And always it makes the other women angry. Then all women turn against you, even the little girls. If I had tried to pull the clothes off one of our women, she would have boxed my ears and laughed in my face.

But my woman didn't know this. While I took off my own clothes and shook out my sleeping-skin to make a bed for us, she stood watching me, her bare, bent legs pressed tight together, her arms hugging her goose-pimpled body, her chin shuddering with cold, and her tattooed forehead scowling with puzzlement.

What did I think I could teach about coitus? I had known only Pinesinger, yet I fancied I had much to teach! In truth, of course, I knew very little, and Muskrat had a big surprise waiting for me, something that has stayed with me all the rest of my life, but something that I have seldom spoken of, not even to Andriki. Thinking of it now makes me smile, since the memory still pleases and shames me. To come out with it, what happened next, what happened when I pulled Muskrat down on her knees, bent her forward, and raised her hips so I could enter her, was that she rolled on her back like a beetle and opened her legs!

I had never seen a woman's vulva, yet there it was. Red! Like a ferret's den, like a small skull's eye, the hole stared up at me. Around it I saw damp, wavy ridges like the edges of a snail. And it was wide! As wide as my palm, or so it seemed. Something like a mouth, it had lips and gums, without true skin. All around it was her hair, and below it was her anus. I knew I shouldn't stare, but I couldn't stop.

Muskrat said one word to me in her twisted language. I didn't understand her, and don't remember the word. But her voice helped me tear my eyes from her vulva and set them on her face, where her own eyes, round and angry, seemed very impatient. She raised her head and said the word again louder, pointing her thumbs at her gaping red vulva. She wanted me to hurry!

So I did, I dropped my body onto hers and entered. She clasped me with her hard, cold arms and legs. The feeling shocked me, as if a hunting animal had seized me, or as if an enormous beetle had fastened itself to my hips and chest. I tried to thrust, but I was slowed by her clinging, and the position was so strange that I had trouble starting. Even so, it was very exciting. I heard her panting—her breath stirred in my ear! Her thighs gripping my waist, her two breasts squeezing tight between us, made me dizzy. I would have liked to get used to this new thing, to think how best to do the man's part, but she began to growl, then moan, then cry aloud. She frightened me! I thrust as quickly as I could and climaxed suddenly, then felt a sense almost of panic. I had wanted to teach my woman something. Instead, to my great surprise, she had taught me something, and I had no idea what she might do next to me, or what I should do with her!

I didn't have long to wonder. Almost at once she set her feet firmly on the floor, heaved her hips to get rid of me, slid out from under me, and hurried to the fire, where she sat on her heels almost in the flames and quickly pulled her shirt on, her teeth chattering and her lips blue. I stared at her, stunned by the suddenness of everything. We had gone against nature!

I was not a little frightened by this slave of mine and by what she had showed me. Desperately fighting animals, cornered animals, also insects, beetles, sometimes roll onto their backs with their legs up. Babies lie on their backs with their legs open before they understand decency, and so do women in difficult childbirth, if exhaustion overcomes them. But not even the animals turn wrong side up for coitus! Coitus is done by the will of the Woman, who shows us, Her children, how it must be. When we see the rainbow, we know it is She, head down and back bent, taking Cloud Woman's Son as Her lover. Rain is Her sweat, thunder and lightning are Her climax, and the rainbow is the arch of Her spine. Huge mammoths, lions, deer, birds, frogs, and everything else too, even flies, all do as She does, even though some get only eggs from doing it. Who were this slave-woman and I to do differently?

Suddenly ashamed, I swept away all traces we had left on the floor of the lodge, especially the places scuffed by Muskrat's shoulder blades and buttocks. I pulled up Muskrat's shirt and wiped the dust from her back, and took my sleeping-skin outside and shook it. Then I took my spear and ax and hurried away to gather more wood, before anyone came back to the lodge to make fun of me.

After that, though, I made one bed for both of us every night, and when Muskrat was in it, I, with a show of yawning, would lie down. Then, when I hoped the others were asleep or at least too tactful to be listening, I would roll over to face her as she had showed me. In truth, I liked her way of coitus. I liked to feel the grip of her thighs around my hips and the solid, fat pads of her breasts between her ribs and mine. I liked her breath in my ear and her arms around me. And I liked that she liked to be taken this way.

Not when others could overhear us did she growl or shout. And not in the dark, with my sleeping-skin over us, could anyone see that she faced me. So every night we made love in the way of her people. Then, with our arms around each other, we slept like children, while our spirits flew where they would in dreams.

W
ITH THE
Pine Nut Moon came crisp, cold weather, and with the Reindeer Moon came deep, fine snow. We ate a horse killed by Maral; we hunted again, killed a roe deer, then a reindeer. My spear killed the reindeer, so I began to replace with meat the skins given to make clothes for my woman, Muskrat. The first person to get meat from me was my mother-in-law, Lilan.

By then Muskrat had a full set of clothes, so she could help the other women on their trips for pine nuts, winterberries, and firewood. She was also given the task of filling our waterskins, as she didn't need to know her way through the country to do it but needed only to walk from the coldtrap to the lake.

When the lake froze, Rin gave Muskrat a heavy pole to break a hole in the ice and showed her where on the lake she should make the waterhole. Although Muskrat couldn't understand her, Rin told her how one day in midwinter a few years before, she, Rin, had gone to get water and had seen a young wolf's face looking up at her from the waterhole. The wolf must have fallen in while trying to drink. By that time of winter the ice was thicker than the length of a man's leg, and the sides of the waterhole were steep and slippery. The wolf couldn't get out. Seeing Rin gave the wolf a new burst of strength, because it started to struggle, dancing its hind feet in the water, scraping its front feet at the steep sides of the waterhole. It might have escaped, but Andriki had come running and had speared it. Its fur soon lined Andriki's daughter's parka.

"If you fell in, you could slide under the ice," said Rin to Muskrat. "You couldn't climb out. Here the lake is deep. If no one saw you, no one could help you. You would drown. Anyway, the cold would quickly kill you."

"Io," said Muskrat, not having understood what Rin had said.

***

Because I sometimes heard her crying softly at night, and because by day she kept to herself, quiet and alone, I knew she was unhappy with us. It made me sad, but I didn't know what to do to help her except to try to be kind. From one of the reindeer's antlers I carved a pin for her hair. She took it, but it wasn't much help. She was homesick. But what could I do about that? Even if I had wanted to take her back to her people, I didn't know how to find them.

Still, I was always afraid she might run away. After the snow she had no hope of tracking her people, but just to be sure she didn't try to leave us anyway I took her to the tree that the tiger had scratched, to show her how recently he had visited us and how big he was. Her eyes grew wide at the sight of his scratches. Lest she mistake his sign for that of another animal, I drew a tiger's track in the snow, and also the stripes of a tiger's forehead. But I needn't have bothered. She knew what she was seeing. She made a soft tiger's moan and whispered "edde," which I later came to know meant both "eater" and "tiger" in her people's language.

Pinesinger tried to teach Muskrat our speech. Muskrat learned to say, "Eye sah-eeh," which meant "I'm sorry"; as these were almost the only words she knew, she said them often. No one expected Pinesinger to learn Muskrat's speech, yet that is what happened, and before long she and Muskrat could chatter together. Perhaps this should not have surprised me. Pinesinger had always been better than the rest of us at making animal sounds. She could cluck and rattle like a raven; she could call a fox to her in the voice of a vole; she could mutter like an owl and even rumble in the low voice of a mammoth, although not as loud.

By the time of the full Reindeer Moon, Muskrat and Pinesinger would talk long and, as far as the rest of us were concerned, secretly. Muskrat seemed somewhat happier after that, although the secrecy made the rest of us angry. Yet no one could really command the two women to do differently. My father wasn't present to command Pinesinger, and in what language could I command Muskrat? Speaking to her through Pinesinger came hard to me. Nor did Pinesinger help. Whenever I asked Pinesinger to use our language, not Muskrat's, she would ignore me and gabble for as long as she pleased while I waited to hear something understandable.

My anger, and the anger of the others, didn't bother either Muskrat or Pinesinger, since Muskrat hardly sensed it and Pinesinger ignored our feelings, knowing that most people hadn't forgiven her for dividing our lodge. On top of a wrong as large as that, how could a little strange speech be important?

Some nights I brought Muskrat to sit near me by the owners' fire in the back of the lodge, so she could watch me carve things for her. After the pin, I made her a needle and an awl. As I worked I would try, with the help of Pinesinger, to talk with her, since I wanted to learn who her people were and why they had come to our country. But Pinesinger's knowledge of Muskrat's speech wasn't up to the question. All she could say was that Muskrat called her people the Ilasi, that her people were few, that they had been forced to leave their old place in the south and had been looking for a new place. So they had come north.

Since we soon learned that "ilasi" meant "people" in Muskrat's language, we didn't feel we had learned much about her. Where did these people of Muskrat's come from? Through Pinesinger, Muskrat said the place was far.

Yet women often say a place is far. To some women, all places are far. That is because women and children travel slowly, as do men who travel with them. Men alone travel quickly, so men are more likely to know the truth about distance. Even so, Muskrat's home was probably really very far, or so we thought, for two reasons. First, not even Maral had ever seen people who swam, or who wore buttocks marks on their faces, or who spoke Muskrat's speech, or who wore clothes as strange as the clothes in the bundle Andriki and I had found at her people's abandoned camp. Second, in time Muskrat told us that in her homeland lived a kind of animal none of us had ever seen. Even Maral didn't know it.

This animal ate plants but also ate meat. It had a stomach like a wolf's stomach, but its feet were split into hooves like deer's feet. Its young were born in litters like wolves' litters, but the babies could stand up and walk like newborn fawns. The adult animal was plain gray-brown, like a reindeer, but the babies were striped.

Strangest of all, this animal was something like a person. Its hair was straight and coarse like human hair, with no soft undercoat beneath, and it called out with a human voice. Also, its feces were like human feces. And it could build a shelter from grass like a person's summer shelter. It would make a pile of grass, trample on the pile to mat it, then, like a child playing under a sleeping-skin, it would kneel, crawl under the mat, and stand up, making a dome!