The Sacred Beasts (12 page)

“Complex at first. You are fascinating . . . and yet forbidden
somehow, tabu . . . but then I feel love and it all becomes simple.”

“Am I at all like your mother?”

“No, more like my father.”

“Ah, tell me about that.”

“Well, he is a geologist and has taken me camping with him all
over the world. I’ve been very close to him.”

“And your mother?”

“She was an artist who gave it all up for her
husband and family. She . .
. I guess I would say that she trivialized it, got into arts and
crafts, jewelry. For him, really. I’ve talked to her about it many times, but I
can’t get through. She only tells me that she didn’t really want to pursue art,
and I know it isn’t true.”

“She is the one you most wanted to save but could not.”

Sylvie is suddenly silent and pensive. “Yes. Why did you say that?
Do other women feel this?”

“The women I’ve known often do.”

“Do you think of it as pathological?”

“Oh, no. Never. It is part of what is best in us, really. It goes
back to the difference between the bonobos and the other chimpanzees.”

“I remember, you told me about them when we first met.” She is
smiling now. “You wanted me to choose between them as our true ancestors.”

“Let me tell you when there is more blood and less love in my
head. I can’t think at the moment.” Now I am smiling. She kisses me and then I
. . . and then she . . . and I . . . “I have never kissed a woman so many times
during breakfast,” I finally say. “I will never be able to think today. But
there is one more thing I must know immediately: have you ever made love with a
woman before?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you want to?”

“I doubt there is any woman who hasn’t wanted to.”

“But wasn’t it easy for you in Paris?”

“It is so much easier to get involved with men.”

“Haven’t you been happy with that?”

“The sex, yes. The relationship, no. French men are very sexist.
All that
égalité
and
fraternité
don’t apply to women. They’re
worse than Americans.”

I am done with my breakfast and I pull a T-shirt over myself and
start to put on my jeans. “You are . . . going to get dressed?” She sounds
slightly confused, then we laugh again uproariously, since we have been naked
with one another for a morning and part of an afternoon.

“It does suddenly seem strange, doesn’t it?” I pause to kiss and
touch her. Yes, I am sorry she will get dressed. “It feels as though we are
alone, I know, but it is not quite true. Guards and rangers can turn up; so can
groups of tourists. What will the Spanish government think of the lesbian
nudist camp my research has become?”

Sylvie laughs and begins to dress. Contentedly passive, I merely
sit beside and touch her overwhelming beauty as it disappears into clothing. I
feel very fortunate and grateful for this unexpected love. As soon as she has
her jeans on, she rolls over on top of me and kisses me passionately. Already,
she wants to startle me. I know that very well. Ah yes, this could go on all
afternoon and evening . . .

“Wait until it’s dark,” I whisper and then she . . . and I . . .
and . . . “Whatever made me think you were a child?” I finally say when I have
breath to speak.

We spend the late afternoon and early evening hours in a pinewood
forest near Doñana’s palace. We have taken all of our equipment with us and
will camp here or beside another lake tonight. The forest, called San Agustin,
is another locus through which wildlife—mammals, birds, and reptiles—pass to
hunt and breed, so I have placed my cameras and equipment here, too. At this
time of year, it is also the place where rutting deer carry out their mating
rituals.

The forest has a striking reddish bark that makes the light seem
to be dawn or sunset at any hour of the day. The bare trunks are very numerous
as they incline toward one another; the bark follows this seemingly sinuous
movement and enhances it with islands of rich cinnabar. The density of the
trunks and lack of undergrowth as well as their subtle suggestion of movement
gives the forest an uncanny and almost spiritual aspect. Katia thought of these
trees as pillars in the interior of a mosque. To me, they have always seemed to
be living magic wands, perhaps moving behind me and even inspecting me when my
back is turned. What will Sylvie’s brilliant eye discern in this strange
forest?

She has been wandering about like a wild creature, completely at
home and even swinging from branches like a child. What did I do after I first
made love with a woman? Something uncivilized. Later, her chalk drawing
displays red staves with flags on top, as though a conference of representatives
from many species, a United Nations of the Forest, has met here.

She disappears for several hours and returns with another drawing.
I want to see it immediately; her artistry fascinates me as much as her beauty.
As I look at this new creation, I see that she has had the good luck to come
upon an azure-winged magpie, a bird that nests in the forest. Before me is a
luxurious black hood that nearly hides the bird’s glowing eyes; it richly
drapes itself to the middle of the bird’s back. With its white throat and long,
jutting blue tail at a sharp angle to the body like an elegant fillip, the bird
makes me think of a woman dressed for some elaborate, mysterious evening
encounter.

“I am almost embarrassed to tell you how wonderful they are again,
but they are.” She moves very slowly toward me as though she were hunting me,
then kisses me and squeezes my thighs. Already, she wants to play with me. I
know that very well, too.

The evening comes quickly, and we set up our campfire here in the
forest. Sylvie pours wine for us immediately and seems uninterested in eating.
I try to broach the subject I mentioned before, though neither of us is
pensive. “I was telling you about our protective feelings for our mothers,
which is part of whom we are and where we come from. I don’t ever want you to
be led astray by idiots who think gay people are sick or evil. I should tell
you about the research that has clarified gender and sexuality, particularly as
I am more responsible for this relationship than you are.”

“Bullshitita!” She has a charming smile as she moves closer to me,
as though I had been ignoring her.

Yet I persist. “So, you don’t think I more or less seduced you?”

“I’ve been planning it all summer. Before that, too.” Her eyes are
bemused, challenging, which only makes her more beautiful.

“Before?”

“When we first met. If you hadn’t been grieving . . .” She smiles
in devilish delight and we laugh long and hard. Amazing: for all my years and
wisdom, she can effortlessly keep secrets from me.

“Then, all of my noble efforts to control and disguise my feelings
. . .”

“Were completely in vain! You never had a chance of escaping me.”

“I haven’t been grieving for quite a long time. Why here, now?”

“How could I let this paradise pass us by without the most
paradisal part of it? I’ve been flirting outrageously since we entered Doñana.
Sleeping with you has been my top priority since you told me about Doñana’s
eccentric women. Haven’t you noticed? I never have to do this with men; they’re
all over me.” Her eyes are bright with laughter and a restless intensity.
Everything we do or say is becoming love: the rough kind.

“Well then, since you cynically seduced me, destroying my
innocence, I still must tell you who we are and where we come from . . . except
that I can’t think again.” I am much too distracted by a kind of erotic force
she radiates. Is it only the power of her beauty or something more deliberate?
She moves to the rock I am sitting on and kisses me, her arms around my back in
a tight embrace without tenderness.

“Tonight, I will give you your first bedtime story,” she says. “
Wordless!
”

“We almost missed breakfast because of that, tiger. Now, we really
need to have dinner.”

We laugh and begin to prepare our dinner, though the atmosphere is
strangely tense. Very soon, the night has come and we are enclosed in a
darkness of palpable energy and power. Animals are everywhere in the dark,
mating and crying, killing and dying. My mind cannot distinguish individual
species; the night is a rhythmic cry, strident and raw; it is the sound of our
own blood. I can only drink wine and watch this woman who is both beloved and
unknown to me.

Suddenly she says, “There’s something I really want to know: do we
play roles with each other? That’s a big part of my problem with men. You and I
seem to be completely unlike that, but are we doing some of it?”

“Probably, yes.”

“Really!
What are the roles?”

“Well . . .” I can’t think and don’t want to. “I am the relentless
one and you are the insatiable one.” She dissolves into laughter that temporarily
destroys the tension between us. Now I have startled her, played with her, even
tossed her around. She loves it. Already, she wants me rough. I know that very
well, too.

“And then?” She looks at me seriously without a bit of humor.

I am silent.
Touch
é, Sylvie. I can’t read your mind. “And?”
I ask.

“And
then
?” Her eyes are dancing with laughter, though her
face is serious, even fierce. Her drawing of the lynx passes through my mind.

“Then,
you
are relentless and
I
am insatiable.” We
laugh, nearly dispelling the tension. I’ve tossed her around again. Her
playfulness still has a sharp edge. She needs to make love to me. Amazing: I
thought I was the one who could barely keep herself under control. Where will
this go? It seems to be as necessary and unknown as the night.

We finish our wine quickly. She reaches for me in the dark, and I
rapidly douse the flames. Her face is smiling over me in the moonlight. “Now
the fire comes back!” she says.

It does. Wordlessly, passionately, relentless and insatiable, insatiable
and relentless; for the entire night we make love as though we could die within
the hour; as close to violence as we will ever be. At once: powerful legs rush
about us; hooves fall harshly; antlers clash and trumpeting calls sound
everywhere. Even danger incites us: we are incandescent. It is a night of
hooves, clashing cymbals, trumpets, and love as rough as any in the forest. No
wonder the god of love is also the god of war in so many cultures.

When I awaken in the morning light, I am on my back, holding her
in my arms. One of her arms is around my neck, the other across my chest. Our
legs are intertwined. We look like a couple who drowned in the ocean and then
washed up on a coastline. It is not far from what happened. She has already
sensed that I am awake, though I have not moved. As she looks up at me, her
eyes are very soft, full of gentleness, utterly pristine and lovely. “What a
bedtime story that was!” I say and we laugh.

“I had to make up for all those bedtime stories you’ve been
telling me.”

“You did it! It was worth the lot of them.” The sun is already
bright overhead, close to noon. We are a lesbian nudist camp again. I must
insist that we make love in the tent tonight. I wonder if I will be that
thoughtful. “The deer nearly trampled us last night. It’s their rutting season,
much too dangerous for us here. We should camp somewhere else.” There, I am
finally the voice of reason. Mother, too? No, I am no stand-in for her mother.
I am the animal she wanted. And I will be again.

Still, she is all tenderness now, and I can do nothing but
reciprocate. We have shown parts of ourselves that we would not ordinarily have
revealed so soon. She is testing me for boundaries, and I sense there is
something she wants to tell me. She rises and I think she intends to bathe, but
instead she brings me the huge paper pad on which she has been drawing. Aha,
there are drawings she did not show me. Why?

Without a word, she gives them to me. The drawings are of me,
nude, and there are many of them. She spent the whole previous day drawing me.
The other pictures she showed me were cursory: this is how she actually spent
those hours. They display intense emotion and have been drawn very fast; there
could be fifty of them. Some of them show me as a girl; in some I am barely
delineated. At last, I see one that is detailed and evidently finished. It
shows me reclining in the position of Chac Mool, the Mayan water god. We first
made love in a lake . . . My body is lean, elongated and curving. Unlike the
god, my eyes and face show passion, my brow, darkly furrowed. My hands reach
out. What do all these drawings say? There is nothing I want to know more, and
I look from one to another quickly. But it is simple: how could I
misunderstand? They say, I can’t think of anything but you. I love you.

I sit back, stunned. Tears begin to fall down my cheeks, and I
brush them away. She is asking a question that I must answer. Finally, I look
up at her and say, “Yes, I love you. I do. Never doubt it.” She immediately
kisses me. When I can speak, I say, “even if you have some things in common
with the Marquis de Sade.” We laugh long and hard.

“I couldn’t tell you,” she says, as though of the delirious night
we have spent. “I couldn’t draw anything but you . . . and I know you can take
anything . . .”