The Sacred Beasts (43 page)

ALEX WAS SILENTLY thinking beside Sylvie in bed. They had made
love and it was very late in Paris. She was trying to assimilate the
preposterous events that had occurred—fame, book contracts and movie rights for
more money than she thought she would ever earn, and an incendiary worldwide
women’s movement. The whole world was looking for Pilar and, not finding her,
trying to track Alex down in Paris. Yet Alex could only think, what more is
possible? You must return, after all, to your self. It was a great ride, she
thought, but we’re still back to Yeats’ old rag and bone shop of the heart. She
wanted to write a novel, the one that reflected the trauma of our time,
beginning with the end, proceeding to the beginning and ending in the middle,
since that was now chronological time. It would take classical liberal and
feminist theories but bring them to life and place them into an original
narrative structure with an original scientific theory about the origin of our
contemporary political conflicts. It would have characters as vivid as Sylvie
and Pilar, as complex and unique as Ruth. It would look directly into the mind
of an artist and find the moment of creation, then return to the preoccupations
of Ruth for we are, above all, living in a time of great danger and our
political systems will not acknowledge it. Would she ever write that novel?
Alex wondered. This had actually been her first choice, and she had to admit
that she wanted it more than fomenting a revolution. Revolution is only the
spark, the beginning of change left to other hands, not the meaning, the
synthesis, the gift most richly given. That could only be art. Perhaps she was
more like Pilar than she had imagined. What they had done was potentially
hollow and unfulfilled. It led everywhere and nowhere.

How to begin on that novel? Alex got up and went into the next
room and began to write in her journal:

It is my heart, I said.

But it is covered with cockle-burrs, seashells, bits of trash and shit.
It has fur in embarrassing places and mirrors that, far from reflecting, make
things disappear. It’s a bag of things to discard, but it sticks to you. It is
shapeless, useless, up to no good.

But it is my heart, I said.

But it whines, it hums ridiculous tunes, snores, quacks like a
duck, has romantic nineteenth century suicide symphonies playing forever in its
ears, can do a pitch-perfect imitation of Bob Dylan singing that can embarrass
a whole room full of people. It has suspenders but no shirt, no elegance or
grace, for that matter. It’s a used band-aid that must be thrown out; in fact
throw it out.
Please!

But it is my heart, I said. I can’t throw it out.

But it gets drunk too often, throws tantrums that no one can hear
and will never grow up, loves and hates to excess, knows nothing, spits on
itself, is more animal than human and that is a compliment. I am certain it has
been urinated on by a cat and even then, it only curses and yells. It tried to
fuck on every flat surface in Barcelona, it farts, is intrinsically unlovable
but has a gorgeous woman who will fuck with it anywhere on earth.

But it is only what it can be, what it is, my heart, I said.

Alex stared off into space. My heart is bitter, she thought. This
will have to be the secret beginning of my novel. When it is done, no one will
ever suspect that it had such an ignominious start. I must be content with that
and yet . . .

SYLVIE HAD NEARLY fallen asleep in Alex’s arms, in Paris. Her last
thoughts were very slow; in fact, they were hardly thoughts at all, only images
and phrases, something like . . . however to describe that trip to Spain, the
one that changed my life; but then, it was a return, really, to what I always
was but did not know . . . is it what I did not know or a fulfillment of all I
had wanted, yearned for so I knew it all-too-well . . . It was the time when a
tectonic shift occurred in my life . . . everything seen in a new way . . . or
merely an outburst, a volcano, but no . . . not a single thing . . . not
exactly, unless an explosion . . . a woman’s mind exploding . . . yes, that has
the color, movement, dance to it. The center of the painting is pure red
against pure black becoming orange and yellow further out, very hot . . . the
movement outward is a double helix but it keeps circling back upon itself . . .
out beyond that, the universe . . . what are the particles? Impossible states
of energy and heat . . . ah, but so tender, soft, full of love they are, now
multiple flickering colors . . . every one becoming another, so faint now that
they are voices singing, yes, all the intensity everywhere suddenly but softer,
singing and vibrating . . . then it is everything I must know and create . . .
what is the last stage . . . vibrating, singing filaments, only that . . . I
can ask for no more but I do and . . .

MONSERRAT AND RUTH were sleeping together in the house in
Barcelona. It was very late, and the house was empty and silent; but no, there
were a few diffuse, guttural sounds circling about. Something bubbled; then
popped. There was more than one barbaric yawp. Everyone thinks it’s haunted and
so it is. But more than that, it is full of something, perhaps virtual
particles and even virtual people going in and out of existence. But of course,
it’s the universe, the strangest house of all and greatest storyteller, where
anything can happen in some version of itself, and perhaps the story has
wandered into another version. Look there: the house contorts into ungodly
shapes to accommodate so many dimensions, curves space and time and then
perhaps goes on contorting for the fun of it. It has changed the lives of all
that come to it; this much is known. It induces passion, uncontrollable urges
and laughter; that much is certain. It is a vast expanse for a house, probably
endless—more of a fountain, a mountain, a circular canyon leading up and down.
It is a sacred place, known and unknown. It’s the spark, the beginning of
things and one day perhaps . . .

MONSERRAT WAS NEARLY asleep in Ruth’s arms, but still thinking.
They are all safe now, she thought. Alex and Sylvie are home together in Paris,
sleeping. Pilar has shaved her head and painted herself in different patterns
for her present disguise. She can go anywhere and be taken for another
protester. Earlier, she and Libre had dinner at a popular Barcelona restaurant,
and she heard talk of her exploits all around her. No one but Libre knew that
the most famous woman in Spain and perhaps the world was there with them, in
plain sight. She has used the Internet to be everywhere but, like the natural
feline she is, leaped out of the world entirely. Yet the entire world is
looking for her, especially in Spain where she is expected to be, but they are
looking for her in Borneo and Mongolia, too. Such is the result of the amazing
accomplishment of all those women, working together in my house, three weeks
ago. Those sworn to secrecy about Pilar’s identity and whereabouts will keep
their secret. No one else will know about the metamorphosis that occurred here
that night. Only that criminal young man running his brothel, whose naked ass
Pilar filmed, has divulged all of his secrets. I will never know if Pilar has
achieved the result she intended. Angelina Jolie would rather play a mystery
woman; it will give her greater creative license. Ruth’s mood is very turbulent
again, but I believe I have saved her, too. My house is full of something. It
is full of love and art, but mercurial, devious and metamorphic are the ways of
these, always, always . . .

NOW I AM lying here with my love beside me, at rest and at home,
Ruth thought. How great the peace yet how brief, for the future will not leave
me at peace. The terrible world I see in the making speaks to me in a wild cry
both angelic and bestial. It is the cry of an animal in pain, and my spirit is
joined with it. In the world to come, where will the heron, the avocet, the
grebe, all the big birds of Doñana and Antarctica, go? Where will they nest in
the spring? Where will the elephant, the big cats of the savanna, the rhinoceros
rest their great heads on a soft spot of earth? In the ocean, where will the
whale, the dolphin, all of the fish find that oceanic breast on which they rest
and find nurturance? They will love one another in their way, give birth to
their families and love them in their way as we do ours, but where will they
go? We will live on our tiny plots of land and defend them to the teeth and
they, they! the animals I have studied and loved all my life will be dying,
homeless, vagrant, hunted, strangers to the earth.

What then of our humanity? There are none so oppressed, distorted,
stunted, none so poor in spirit that they cannot go away from cities into
forests, mountains, into wilderness, and not be refreshed, renewed, at peace
again. None! There are none so poor in spirit that they cannot feel their need
for a primordial forest, a jungle, wilderness, a valley that opens endlessly to
a horizon, an animal’s glowing, unblinking eye, the thing that must always be
there or we are not human anymore. Yet, so few will give something up for that
beauty, wildness, otherness in the world. Few will question their covetousness,
their hunger for obeisance from others, so that they can give something up. If
I were a god, I would tear that out of every living creature of my kind. I
would leave them whole and full of love. But there is no god, no one who can do
this and religions have all compounded the wrong. Who will say, the world is my
family, the world is my beloved? I will touch it only as a lover, as a parent,
as one who cares for it at least as much as my own body. Who will give birth to
a new world if it is necessary? Who will give birth to the sacred, who lives in
the sacred, who will not fail it because it is leaving us, leaving, the
animals, the wilderness that belongs to us all is leaving, our humanity is
leaving us.

I speak as a parent who is terrified at what will happen to my
child. I speak as a child becoming cynical at all it hears. I speak as a
scientist who can see a clear inevitable future that is abhorrent. I speak as
an artist afraid of an empty canvas and an encroaching darkness in which no art
can live. I speak as a prophet who cries out at the shadow of what is to come.
What is my voice and what are my questions? I speak in a voice falling to a
whisper because it has become a prayer, not to a god but to a cumulative
humanity, a greater self that still must exist below thought. I speak only to
it. It is angry, fierce, full of fire and so are my words. It is our humanity
that is at stake, for we are the weak ones, the sick ones who cannot adapt. The
earth will always survive and regenerate. We are the ones who will not, and you
will know that when you look deeply into yourself and feel that your spirit is
leaving, leaving, is nearly gone, you have so little humanity left to save, it
is less by the day, you are that changed, you are that close to what has
already vanished, and that immensity and power in its violent beauty and
strangeness, that greater earth I have always loved, protected, worshipped as I
do my love, that last vestige of beauty and humanity left in the world is
leaving, leaving, is about to disappear . . .

Afterward, Bibliography & Acknowledgements

For the Patagonia section of
The Sacred Beasts
, I used
Bruce Chatwin’s famous travelogue,
In Patagonia
. The material is
wonderful and particularly appropriate for a character in Ruth’s position,
widowed and tormented, ruminating about history, politics and the past with her
lover and all the moments they experienced together in Ruth’s original home. If
Chatwin had ever used this material in a novel, of course, I wouldn’t have
touched it. But, his work remains travelogue. I used a less inspired book by a
geologist,
Patagonia: Windswept Land to the South
by Roger Perry, even
more extensively than Chatwin (since it covered flora and fauna in greater
depth) as well as various TV documentaries on Patagonia. I discovered on a
Globetrekker episode, for example, that there is a man living in Northern
Patagonia who did become something of a celebrity by creating a garbage art
display over his substantial acreage and a sign that read, “A Garden of Garbage
Art from One Who Has Lost Everything but His Mind.” This provocative, colorful
fact acted as the first glimmering of my own very different story.

For the Donana section, I used Juan Antonio Fernandez’ brilliant
photo essay,
Donana: Spain’s Wildlife Wilderness.
Both a poet and a
scientist, he was often my eyes and ears in Donana. The first two sections,
Patagonia and Donana, were relatively easy, then, to research. Then I turned to
the rest of Spain, the only country I had actually visited; which, contrary to
expectation, was virtually impossible to research for its relative lack of
information on, and interest in, women. Fortunately, however, I am always very
interested in projects that seem impossible to execute, and exploring and
unveiling macho Spain in terms of women fascinated me.

I began with several of the most famous books: James Michener’s
Iberia;
George Orwell’s
Homage to Catalonia;
and Hemingway’s
For Whom the
Bell Tolls
as well as
The Sun Also Rises
, only to discover that they
all had so drastically left out the experience of women that they were both
unusable and of highly questionable validity as portraits of Spain. They are
romanticized descriptions of the contributions of men. From Michener’s 900-some
pages, I only got a description of an Andalusian
romeria
at which a male
friend promised Michener “the real flamenco” of the gypsies. At this
performance, the first gypsy singer was a woman who ran on stage yelling, “I’ve
got ten times the balls of any man here!” and began singing throatily to a
shocked and fascinated audience. Michener left immediately in disgust,
convinced that this could not be the real flamenco. I, on the other hand,
immediately recognized it as authentic, the flamenco I had heard in Spain; and
this one fact was the germ of my character, Pilar the gypsy and her mother, the
flamenco singer, Malena the Singing Beast.

So, I knew that such a woman did exist. Now, I had to find her.
Giles Tremlett’s leisurely book,
Ghosts of Spain: Travels through Spain and
its Silent Past
, provided me with a walk through the gypsy tenement village
that is responsible for Spain’s best flamenco singers, Los Tres Mil Viviendas,
though Tremlett was going in search of “the real flamenco” in a male singer,
and I was looking for the home of a female singer. I had to do this kind of
thing in most of my research. The author was interested primarily in men in a
certain environment; I was looking for women, since they lived there, too. In
this way, the impossible became increasingly possible.

Tremlett’s book also provided me with a description of a Spanish
industrial park style brothel; they are in fact numerous in the countryside. I
used it, of course, in the novel’s climax, Pilar’s Gay Pride Day stunt.

John Hooper’s
The New Spaniards
displayed the sharpest
analytical powers of any book on Spain that I read, and the women who meet in
Monserrat’s house in Barcelona would have had much less to discuss and debate
without it, though I knew much of the quality of their interaction from my own
experience, seeing the birth of the women’s rights movement and the gay
liberation movement first hand in many cosmopolitan cities, both in the US and
abroad. A nascent feminist movement is something of which I’ve always been an
intimate part. Feminist academics gave me most of the rest, since their books
were devoted to the study of Spanish women, and they were limited only by
academic language.
Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the
Emancipation of Women
(Indiana University Press) by Martha A. Ackelsberg
gave me the history of Mujeres Libres and my translation of their original
anthem song, which Alex quotes.
Stories from Spain
by Genevieve Barlow
and William N. Stivers gave me my Spanish folk tales about women that are
mentioned in one of the “mother stories” told by the women of Barcelona over
several nights in Monserrat’s house. The poetry quoted one night by Alex for
the Mujeres Libres’ section of the house’s web site and in a later scene with
Sylvie was all written by Gloria Fuertes, probably the most famous female poet
in Spain during the twentieth century. I used four complete poems translated by
Philip Levine, another complete poem translated by Robert Mezey, and one from
John Haines. They all appear in
Roots and Wings: Poetry from Spain 1900-1975
,
edited by Hardie St. Martin and published by White Pines Press. I am grateful
for permission to reprint them. Gloria Fuertes’ poetry was one of the most
delightful discoveries of my research, and I urge all poetry lovers to read her
work in translation or in Spanish.

The most important and relevant book I read in all my research,
however, was
Prison of Women: Testimonies of War and Resistance in Spain,
1939-1975
, gathered by Tomas Cuevas and translated and edited by Dr. Mary
E. Giles, a Professor of the Humanities at California State University. The
“mother stories” involving the Spanish Civil War from women at Monserrat’s
house are all based on fact, stories recorded in this book; each of these
narratives really happened to a Spanish woman during the war, though I have
changed names and some details to protect the privacy of these courageous
women. I have tried to preserve some of the style of speech in these stories.
If you remember nothing else from my book, remember the name of Tomas Cuevas,
the greatest unknown heroine of the Spanish Civil War. The city of Barcelona
should erect a statue of her: the story of her wartime activities is most
arduous and courageous of all and lasted until the death of Franco. It involved
more self-sacrifice and heroism than any other freedom fighter in Spain. Her
gift to Spain continues into the present, since her book details the stories of
the women resistance fighters who eventually ended up in prisons where they
were tortured and starved; but nonetheless, bonded together strongly and never
lost hope. Mary Giles is a heroine, too, for finding Cuevas’ book accidentally
and fortuitously in a Spanish bookstore and translating it for English readers.
I don’t think this information is widely known in Spain, Europe or the US. It
contradicts Orwell’s account, which presents men heroically but only allows
women to pass briefly through the narrative. Cuevas’ women all clearly say that
the men who were in the War’s resistance fought fascists by day and returned
home at night to act like fascists with their families. And, their wartime
heroism was equaled by the participation of women. You will not find that in
the ”famous” books on Spain, not in Michener, Orwell or Hemingway.

Monserrat’s theory on Spanish art occurred to me as I read a very
simple history of Spain entitled,
Spain: A History in Art
by Bradley
Smith. I have no idea whether it is original. The Neolithic caves in Spain with
matriarchal imagery, particularly to the south, actually do exist and their
locations and my descriptions of them are factual and can be found in Smith’s
book.

Ruth’s theory has many parts and a much more complex history. I
first read about the scientific studies of women’s sexuality in a cover story
in the Sunday
New York Times
Magazine
many years ago, probably
2005. An Internet article from the
New York Times
of July 5, 2005
mentioned that there are two academic departments involved in it, psychologists
at Northwestern University in Illinois and the Center for Addiction and Mental
Health in Toronto, Canada. These authors seemed very much aware of the chimp
and bonobo connection. Wikipedia has entries about this research as well as
many studies of chimps and bonobos. Ruth would have known about this research,
since the events of the novel occur between 2004 and 2007.

I first read about the genetic basis of the tendency to be
politically conservative or liberal in a Tuesday “Science Times’ Section of the
New York Times
. The relationship of this to our ape origin in chimps and
bonobos is a belief I’ve held since I first read about the group dynamics of
bonobos decades ago, so it can be the theory of Ruth. However, it is consistent
with the arguments of Franz de Waals in his books on bonobos,
Our Inner Ape
(2008)
, and later books of his such as
The Age of Empathy: Nature’s
Lessons for a Kinder Society
. In very briefly cruising the web, I
discovered that a great many people whose work lies in the creation of ideas (a
primatologist, a technology entrepreneur, and myself, a novelist) have all been
struck by the difference between these two chimp species and its probable
relation to human political parties. If I had spent more time, I would have
found many others, I’m sure. The current Wikipedia commentary on this, however,
shows that it is no longer speculation, but the work of brain scientists (who
have found brain differences between liberals and conservatives) and
geneticists who have identified some of the genes that predict political
orientation.

The information about gays and lesbians involve several branches
of research. The “twin studies” have found that there is a genetic component to
being gay or lesbian, but they fall short of finding the genes. It tends to run
in families, strongly suggesting a genetic component, but has environmental
causes, too, such as birth order in families with many sons and the mother’s
age at birth for lesbians. Ruth would have known about this research. A 2012
article Ruth could not have known of by Dr. James Fowler, a professor at the
School of Medicine and of the Development of Social Sciences at the University
of California at San Diego, in the
Journal of Politics
from Cambridge
University Press, describes the situation as one involving sensitivity to
testosterone in the fetus from the
regulation
of genes or epigenetic
effects (whether specific genes are turned “on” or “off”) as determined by the
parent of the opposite gender to the gay person, fathers to daughters and
mothers to sons. This accounts for some 64% of the tendency to be gay whereas
genes and the environment account for the rest. The genetic effect is larger in
gay men (35%) relative to the environmental effect and, conversely, the
environmental effect is larger in lesbians relative to the genetic (only 18%).
This research is the most complete answer to date, but I don’t have space to
describe it in detail and must leave that to a curious reader’s own Internet
research and reading. The major point is that “gay genes” will never be found;
it is a matter of the effect of epigenes that turn particular genes involving
sensitivity to testosterone “on” or “off.” They may or may not pass from parent
to child.

Ruth’s observation that lesbian and gay couples have a more
loving, trusting and intimate relationship than heterosexuals because they are
more egalitarian is supported by the first study of the differences between gay
and heterosexual relationships. It appeared in The
Journal of Homosexuality
,
Volume 45 (1), 2003, and Ruth would have been familiar with it. It was carried
out by two psychologists, Dr. John Gottman of the University of Washington and
Dr. Robert Levenson of the University of California at Berkeley. A very
scientifically sophisticated and conclusive study, it was carried out over a
12-year period and used physiological measurements of emotion as well as
observation by psychologists and self-reporting by couples. This study found
that gay couples used much more affection and humor to resolve conflicts and
kept a more positive attitude toward themselves and the relationship. Too, they
used fewer controlling and hostile strategies with one another and were less
belligerent, domineering and threatening. Fairness and power sharing were more
common and important in gay and lesbian relationships, enhancing trust and
intimacy. The physiological measurements showed lower stress after a conflict
in gay and lesbian couples. For heterosexuals, the physiological arousal
indicating anger did not diminish, and heterosexual women were found to dislike
and resent the oppression and unfairness of male dominance, leading to
relationships that were less loving, trusting and intimate. This study was
actually able to rate couple relationships in terms of love, intimacy, trust
and maturity of conflict resolution and found lesbian relationships to be most
intimate and mature followed by relationships between gay men, with
heterosexual relationships ranked last. There were many other interesting
contrasts in this research, but I leave that up to the curious reader who can find
it readily on the Internet. The research concluded that straight couples should
learn the egalitarian strategies of gay and lesbian couples, and that the
greatest impediment for them is peer group pressure on heterosexual men to
maintain dominance. It also expressed surprise that lesbian and gay
relationships were superior to heterosexual relationships in spite of the
oppression and social disapprobation typically faced by them from the society
at large. The results of this study were replicated in a second study appearing
in the January 2008 issue of
Developmental Psychology
, conducted by
psychologists at the University of Washington and San Diego State University.
This study also came to the same conclusion as Ruth, observing that
heterosexual role-playing was not genetic and that straight couples should
learn from the example of gay couples. These psychologists, too, found that the
main problem for heterosexuals was peer group pressure from male groups to
maintain male dominance and that this influence must be successfully challenged
before heterosexual relationships could become as intimate and mature as gay
and lesbian relationships.