The Sacred Beasts (26 page)

RUTH AND MONSERRAT were walking barefoot on the beach of the
Mediterranean late in the afternoon. They had seen two giant outdoor sculptures,
and Monserrat was very interested in Ruth’s responses to them. They passed
directly beside a sculpture by Rebecca Horn that looked like a tall stack of
black boxes leaning over slightly. “I’d call it ‘The Leaning Tower of Boxes,’”
Ruth said, “and it makes me think of the Ka’ba portrayed in a realistic light
with religious weaknesses exposed. There’s inherent mystery in not knowing
what’s inside a black box, especially a tower of them. So, it can be placed
here on the seaside like the Polynesian island gods. White boxes would never
have the same effect. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“Yes,” Monserrat said. “I’ve seen these city sculptures so many
times that I no longer respond to them. Your thoughts are very unusual.”

Later, in the distance they saw a very colorful outdoor sculpture
entitled “Barcelona Head” by Roy Lichtenstein. Again, Monserrat pressed Ruth
for her reaction. “I’d call it ‘Neon Lipstick Barcelona.’ It looks like a
pleasure boat becoming a man becoming a woman becoming a dervish becoming polka
dots and stripes becoming pop art. Of course, you could just call it pop art.
It says wild fun, excitement, hedonism, a part for both men and women, the
world turning around in your head, all in a beautiful city on water. It’s
closer to what Barcelona really is and probably more famous. As two giant
artworks by the sea, the colorful head is a lively lighthouse guiding you
toward the city whereas the black box tower is a silent god looking out to sea
in search of older truths.”

Monserrat smiled and said, “I am starting to think of you as
Odysseus as well as a guardian.”

“I can think of nothing better than to come home to you.”

They put their shoes on and then walked around in Barceloneta, the
old fishermen’s district. At sunset, they stopped at a restaurant with outdoor
tables and ordered dinner and a bottle of the local wine. A cool breeze was now
blowing in from the invisible Mediterranean, and they enjoyed the subtle
presence of the sea through the more intimate senses of smell, touch and sound.

“Yes,” Monserrat was saying as they touched their wineglasses. “It
is the most wonderful toast, ‘to the beauty of life,’
krasna život
. I
have never heard of it before.”

“I am a collector of wonderful immaterial things,” Ruth said. “In
time, I’ll show you my whole collection.” They laughed.

“How do you know this toast?”

“I learned it from a young Czech-American woman whose grandparents
were from Prague and Bohemia. She had somehow gotten herself stranded on Cape
Horn, a horrible black rock of an island that is technically the beginning of
Antarctica. She had missed a ferry back to Ushuaia, my hometown in Argentina.
Katia and I were on the ferry that fished her up. She was drinking from a wine
bottle in her backpack and yelling the most furious, ornate and original curses
I’ve ever heard; and I’ve heard plenty of seamen’s curses in my time. They were
literary, mythic, Biblical, and eschatological. Her mood changed remarkably
when we rescued her, of course, and then Katia and I had a long conversation
with her on the way back to Ushuaia. She was a fascinating woman from New York
City who wanted to visit the end of the world, as most travelers to Ushuaia do.
She was on a trip around the world, alone and on the cheap, which is not the
safest way to see the world, and she intended to use her material in a novel
about a woman wanderer. She heard the toast in Prague and said it was common
throughout the Bohemian countryside. We all agreed that the Czech people had
originated the world’s finest toast, which is one step in achieving the finest
attitude toward living. In Ushuaia, we get all ethnicities and states of being,
as is no doubt true of New York City, perhaps the top and even the capital of
the world. I don’t want to take you to Ushuaia, though. It no longer feels like
my home. Patagonia is still the place of my most important work, and I love it
for that reason. But, I don’t want to go back unless I decide to carry out more
studies, which doesn’t appeal to me now.”

They looked at one another silently. This moment is perfect, the
first step in a wedding, both were thinking; and they knew one another’s
thoughts. They looked at the streets, which were charmingly narrow and built
solely for pedestrians. They were filled with small bars and restaurants that
in turn were fertile gardens of human intrigue and hedonism as the night came
down. Lanterns were being lit, and the space was so close that they could see
other streets and lives branching away from them. Lively at dusk, it would
become magical at twilight with the invisible but increasingly powerful
presence of the Mediterranean and its phantoms of history.

“This is one of my spherical moments,” Ruth said. “I can feel the
whole past and future of my life. I have come from so far away—grief and the
end of the world.”

“Is this your home now?”

Ruth reached over the table to hold Monserrat’s hand. “If you say
so, yes it is, though it’s still hard to believe my luck. My life actually
began in Germany during the last months of the Holocaust. I will tell you about
it sometime later. This moment is to be savored.”

They were silent again, looking at one another for a long time,
completing a wedding in their thoughts. “What would you like to do next?”
Monserrat asked.

“Stay for the twilight, look at the sea for a moment; then return
to your house. I want to love you with more than my eyes. Without intending to,
you’re flirting with me, like the Mediterranean.”

“I will be delighted to give you much more than a flirtation.”

A marriage bed, they both thought.

ALEX SUDDENLY FOUND herself in Sylvie’s arms, head cradled, being
kissed on her eyelids and cheeks. It was the most pleasant thing in the world,
but then she was shocked to realize that she had no memory of how she got
there.

“What happened?” she asked.

“You passed out, just a few minutes ago,” Sylvie said, smiling.
“I’ve been taking very good care of you.” Alex then remembered everything. “You
made love to me for hours and hours in every way imaginable. It’s dark outside,
probably around nine pm or so,” Sylvie continued. “Then I just touched your
clitoris and labia and you went off like a roman candle. You came many, many
times. It was lovely. Then you passed out.”

“This has never happened before! Wow! Did you . . . did you . . .
?”

“How can you even ask? I’ve had more orgasms this afternoon than
in my entire existence before today. You’ve broken all the records. I passed
out several times, too, but you brought me right back. I decided to let you
sleep. I was sure you needed it, and you looked so sweet. If you’d been conscious,
you would never have let me just cuddle you like a baby. You were too
determined to break all the records.” They both laughed.

“God, I’m hungry! I feel like I’ve swum the English Channel,” said
Alex.

“I’m ravenous! I
was
the English Channel.”

“Let’s clean up and have dinner.”

A short time later, they both took a last look at the soft, giant
bed where they first became lovers. As they left the pension, the desk clerk
looked at them nervously, then seemed relieved. They laughed. “It often sounded
as though I was a serial murderer, killing a whole harem of women, one after
another,” Alex said.

“Yes, I remember. But, when the noise lasts all afternoon, they
must know it’s not murder. Maybe it’s hard for men to understand since what
they do doesn’t last that long,” Sylvie said. They laughed again.

They chose the nearest corner restaurant with outdoor tables,
ordered a large dinner of several courses and opened a bottle of the local
wine. For the first time in the day, they felt the presence of the Mediterranean;
a cool, dark breeze was flowing over them. They were relaxed with one another
for the first time, too. The city was completely dark and lit intimately with
lanterns. The unique pleasure of being new lovers in a cosmopolitan European
city was theirs; it was hard-won and it glowed in the richness of an ancient
Mediterranean night like a many-faceted gemstone admired by lovers over
thousands of years. It was a perfect moment and they were silent, only looking
at one another.

Eventually, Sylvie spoke first. “I’m curious about a few things.
Are there words for some of the things we’ve been doing all afternoon? I’m
familiar with cunnilingus and oral sex, but not the rest of it.”

“Which particular thing that I loved doing to you?”

“You did something that feels just like a man’s penis. Ruth did
that, too. What was it?”

“There’s no word for it, but I just used three fingers, maybe
four, for that unnamed thing.”

They smiled and remembered. “What about what we started out doing?
Ruth did that, too.”

“There is a word for that,
tribadism
, but don’t look for it
in the dictionary. It’s not there.”

“Ruth has photos of some female bonobo chimpanzees doing that.”

“Wow, X-rated science photos. Then it should be in the dictionary,
but of course, it’s not.” They laughed.

Then Sylvie leaned closer to Alex and whispered, “When my legs
were over your shoulders and you were making love orally, I felt something in
my vagina that seemed to be bigger than a penis. What were you doing?”

“There aren’t any words for it again, but I put several fingers
from both hands into your vagina and used the rest of my hands massaging your
labia.”

“Ruth never did that.”

“Actually, I’ve never done it before, but that’s where you seemed
to be responding so much. I worried that I might have hurt you. You really
screamed. Some women even use a fist, but I would never do that. Please tell me
if I hurt you, and I will never do it again.”

“No, you didn’t hurt me at all. I just thought there was suddenly
a train in my vagina.” They both burst into laughter that was nearly
uncontrollable.

When they were silent again, Alex asked, “Why didn’t you ask Ruth
these questions?” She stared in fascination. There is something very deep
there, she thought.

Sylvie looked away. “Ah, Ruth . . .” she said. “I am . . . sort of
. . . in awe of her. She is the strongest person I’ve ever known. I couldn’t .
. . question anything she did except as a joke, and that didn’t take me very
far . . . I just couldn’t ask her.”

Alex sensed disturbance and tried to draw Sylvie away from it. We
have all the time in the world to know and love one another, she thought. “What
did you like best?” she asked.

“I liked all of it. But, you are a bit of an enigma. I wanted to
do all that to you, too, but all I actually did was touch your clitoris for a
few minutes.”

“I get very, very turned on by making love to you and feeling you
respond. I’m in the middle of an orgasm the whole time. It gives me an
incredible amount of energy. I can do it for hours. Then, when you just touch
me, I have a bunch of orgasms until I feel sleepy. I’ve never passed out
before, though.”

“So we both broke the record,” Sylvie said and smiled. “I’m all
for new experiences.” She looked at Alex mischievously. “The night is young.”

“You want to go back to the hotel?” Alex asked in disbelief.

“No, let’s see the city at night. We missed it in that hotel.” She
still looked mischievous and something else for which Alex couldn’t find a
word. She suspected it was not in the dictionary, even a French one.

After finishing their dinner and wine, they left the restaurant
and continued exploring the city, with Sylvie’s impulse as their only guide.
She now became the mentor. Afterwards, Alex always called the night that
followed “The Fantasia,” and it was perhaps the most amazing experience of her
young life, something always to be remembered, never to be repeated or
understood by anything but a smile.

AT MONSERRAT’S HOUSE, another evening of many women’s group
meetings was drawing to a close. A spontaneous informal conversation about
Spanish Catholicism had sprung up between the women who had stayed behind to
enjoy the last of the evening together. A member of the university professor’s
group had decided to turn the conversation into a more formal discussion by
addressing a general question to all: “Is Catholicism, as James Joyce once
described history, a nightmare from which we have not yet awakened?”

Pilar, the gypsy girl from the writer’s group, found the question
pompous and deflated it promptly. “No, it is a hangover from which I have not
yet recovered.” The group laughed and became casual again.

Another of the university professors said, “I’d say that it is a
sticky monster with glue all over its body, an alien blob we should have killed
and buried in Africa eons ago when we left.”

One of the artists offered the images she might use in a painting.
“It’s a ribbon, a hairbrush, an arrow, a hand mirror floating down the street,
but the woman herself has disappeared.” This confused several women. They
realized that it probably referred to the Church’s refusal to give women the
power and participation of men, yet some found it too abstract; others, too
concrete. They agreed, however, that it was artistic.

The oldest woman in the room, one of the members of the seniors
group, then spoke. Everyone knew she had participated in the anarchist
resistance to the fascists and been imprisoned as a young girl during the
Spanish Civil War. “It is my mother’s prayers at dawn after nights of butchery
in the streets during that evil war. She died in the prison where I survived.
Those prayers were the last words I heard from her. It is the only time I have
ever been moved by Catholicism, and the prayers were unanswered.”

The group was very moved and no one spoke; the discussion might
have ended there. But, some of the youngest women still wanted to speak. After
a few respectful minutes of silence, Libre, the gypsy who was Pilar’s lover,
said, “I think it’s the fat ass on all the popes, trying to sit on every woman
in Spain. Who can remember a single one who didn’t have a fat ass?” Most of the
group laughed, though Libre only glowered. She was a truculent, overweight
presence who rarely spoke in the groups. Her mohawk hairdo was tinted blue that
day, which meant that she was in a relatively good mood.

“I think of John Paul on the day Zapatero legalized gay marriage,”
said one of the college student’s group members. “He pompously said that ‘the
living root of Christianity’ was ‘being ripped out,’ The only living roots that
ever fell out in his time were the hairs on the top of his head.” The group
laughed.

“Zapatero wasn’t even taking a political risk,” another college
student observed. “I’ve read that two-thirds of Spaniards already supported gay
marriage, and ninety percent described themselves as Catholic. That’s how
loosely defined Spanish Catholicism is.”

“But let’s go back to metaphors,” said a woman from the media
professionals group. “That’s how this started, with Joyce’s nightmare. How
about a dog’s whimper in the night or a frog’s flamenco croak by day?”

Everyone laughed and one of the writers asked, “Hey, whatever
happened to the opium of the people?”

“No way,” another writer said. “The papacy ate it all. There’s no
more left for the people!”

“What people? Not Spaniards,” said one of the professors amidst
general laughter. “They can’t even get anyone to become a priest now in Spain.
The only ones I see look like desiccated old monkeys, hobbling along with a
walker, drool running down their chins.”

“And those are the good ones,” said another writer. “They’re too
old to be pedophiles.”

Pilar, with a broad smile said, “You are delightfully raw, my
lovely ladies. I love this place. I feel like I’m back with the gypsies.”

“Why not go back to your gypsies, Pilar?” asked a journalist. “Why
stay here with us?”

Pilar knew that she was only being teased. “You ladies are
cleaner. You smell better, too. But please, please stay raw, my wonderful
ladies, because that’s the way I love you.”

A few whistles and claps followed this as well as an exclamation,
“for love, for love!”

One of the writers spotted a journalist she knew and saw an
opportunity to be outrageous. “The truest statement about a Catholic is that
she/he is screwed up sexually. But we all know that. I, personally, would add
constipation as well. Catholics are inherently constipated.”

The journalist to whom this was directed promptly said, “Oh,
they’re plugged up, alright. I don’t think the priests have had a good shit
since the Inquisition in the 1600s.”

But, one of the college students promptly deflated this. “You are
factually incorrect. The Inquisition did not end in Spain until 1813, and that
says everything about how enlightened Catholic Spain is.” The writer and
journalist looked very annoyed to have their game destroyed by a mere student.

“Now, there are all those parishes without priests,” said one of
the seniors.

“And now I’ve read that the Archbishop of Pamplona says that
Catholics are persecuted in Spain,” said one of the professors. “What a
turn-about!”

“Not enough for me,” yelled a college student. “Throw them all
under the bulls in Pamplona!”

“No ladies, ladies!” Pilar said. “We must
liberate
all the
bulls. We have agreed to that. Alex even put it on our web site.”

The group was smiling, though quiet and thoughtful again for a
moment, except for two very young women, college students, who had been lying
on the floor, laughing uncontrollably for some time. “But then, the Church
still has all that property,” said a journalist, “and those kids educated at
their schools. Don’t they still control half the country’s radio networks,
too?”

“And a considerable influence on the Spanish language,” said a
literary critic who was one of the professors. “It’s still full of religious
ideas and terms. Remember that headline when the first test-tube baby was born?
I do. It was, ‘Born Without Original Sin.’”

This was greeted by laughter and applause as well as a woman
yelling, “Give a hand to the little baby!”

Pilar, however, was indignant. “That doesn’t happen here. Not our
words! We’re not taken in by any of it.”

“But, there they are on your tax form,” said a senior. “You fill
in a box to fund the Church’s budget.”

“No, it doesn’t matter if you ‘x’ the box or not,” said a college
student. “The government makes up the difference.”

“No one supports its stance on contraception,” said a journalist,
“and not just in this house, everywhere in Spain!”

“And, no one trusts it,” said a media professional. “The only
noise Spaniards distrust more comes from the television.”

“There was that awful mess with Opus Dei,” said a college student.
“Aznar gave those whackos four of his cabinet appointments, and their leader
was canonized in his term of office, when we all know they’re nothing but a
bunch of elitist, misogynist, sado-masochistic Nazis.”

“The Church has always supported Opus Dei,” said a professor.
“Under Franco, they were the most exclusive men’s club, and even half of all
university professors in Spain were in Opus Dei.”

“Isn’t all this just too sweet a way of discussing those nuts?”
said a writer. “After all, these are the good men who wear an iron band on one
thigh with nasty little triangles to pierce their skin, and then they top it
off by flagellating their buttocks with special glamorous little whips. How
sane is that?”

This was greeted by laughter and jeers. The discussion was nearing
its end.

“A brilliant Spanish woman wrote a novel about a woman who
underwent psychotherapy with a psychiatrist from Opus Dei,” said the professor
who had originally posed the question to the group. “She was cured by falling
in love with the Virgin Mary.” This was followed by more laughter and applause.
The professor had finally discerned the general mood, but the evening was over.
The group broke up into brief smaller conversations and many women saying good
night.

Ruth and Monserrat were standing in the stairway. They had heard
most of the discussion. “It is a wonderful atmosphere here. They feel free to
say anything,” Ruth said. “You’ve done something great.”

“I’m just providing space,” Monserrat said. “They are the
wonders.”

Their thoughts quickly returned to one another. “Then do something
wonderful for me,” Ruth said.

“Only you will have all of me,” Monserrat said and touched Ruth’s
cheek. They hurried upstairs and were quick to wash and ready themselves, like
young lovers.