Alyx - Joanna Russ Read online

  “So you won’t let me go.”

  He said nothing.

  “You can’t keep me,” she said, and then she laughed; “no, no, you can’t,” she added, shaking her head, “you just can’t.” She looked before her and smiled absently, turning this fact over and over. Her husband was rubbing his knuckles.

  “What do you think you’re up to,” he muttered.

  “If you lock me up, I can’t work,” said his wife and then, with the knife she had used for the past half year to pare vegetables, this woman began to saw at her length of hair. She took the whole sheaf in one hand and hacked at it. Her husband started forward. She stood arrested with her hands involved in her hair, regarding him seriously, while without taking his eyes off her, running the tip of his tongue across his teeth, he groped behind the door—he knew there is one thing you can always do. His wife changed color. Her hands dropped with a tumbled rush of hair, she moved slowly to one side, and when he took out from behind the door the length of braided hide he used to herd cattle, when he swung it high in the air and down in a snapping arc to where she—not where she was; where she had been—this extraordinary young woman had leapt half the distance between them and wrested the stock of the whip from him a foot from his hand. He was off balance and fell; with a vicious grimace she brought the stock down short and hard on the top of his head. She had all her wits about her as she stood over him.

  But she didn’t believe it. She leaned over him, her cut black hair swinging over her face; she called him a liar; she told him he wasn’t bleeding. Slowly she straightened up, with a swagger, with a certain awe. Good lord! she thought, looking at her hands. She slapped him, called his name impatiently, but when the fallen man moved a little—or she fancied he did—a thrill ran up her spine to the top of her head, a kind of soundless chill, and snatching the vegetable knife from the floor where she had dropped it, she sprang like an arrow from the bow into the night that waited, all around the house, to devour.

  Trees do not pull up their roots and walk abroad, nor is the night ringed with eyes. Stones can’t speak. Novelty tosses the world upside down, however. She was terrified, exalted, and helpless with laughter. The tree on either side of the path saw her appear for an instant out of the darkness, wild with hurry, straining like a statue. Then she zigzagged between the tree trunks and flashed over the lip of the cliff into the sea.

  In all the wide headland there was no light. The ship still rode at anchor, but far out, and clinging to the line where the water met the air like a limpet or a moray eel under a rock, she saw a trail of yellow points appear on the face of the sea: one, two, three, four. They had finished their business. Hasty and out of breath, she dove under the shadow of that black hull, and treading the shifting seas that fetched her up now and again against the ship’s side that was too flat and hard to grasp, she listened to the noises overhead: creaking, groans, voices, the sound of feet. Everything was hollow and loud, mixed with the gurgle of the ripples. She thought, I am going to give them a surprise. She felt something form within her, something queer, dark, and hand, like the strangeness of strange customs, or the blackened face of the goddess Chance, whose image set up at crossroads looks three ways at once to signify the crossing of influences. Silently this young woman took off her leather belt and wrapped the buckleless end around her right hand. With her left she struck out for the ship’s rope ladder, sinking into the water under a mass of bubbles and crosscurrents eddying like hairs drawn across the surface. She rose some ten feet farther on. Dripping seawater like one come back from the dead, with eighteen inches of leather crowned with a heavy brass buckle in her right hand, her left gripping the rope and her knife between her teeth (where else?) she began to climb.

  The watch—who saw her first—saw somebody entirely undistinguished. She was wringing the water out of her skirt. She sprang erect as she caught sight of him, burying both hands in the heavy folds of her dress.

  “We-ell!” said he.

  She said nothing, only crouched down a little by the rail. The leather belt, hidden in her right—her stronger—hand began to stir. He came closer—he stared—he leaned forward—he tapped his teeth with his forefinger. “Eh, a pussycat!” he said. She didn’t move. He stepped back a pace, clapped his hands and shouted; and all at once she was surrounded by men who had come crack! out of nothing, sprung in from the right, from the left, shot up from the deck as if on springs, even tumbling down out of the air. She did not know if she liked it.

  “Look!” said the watch, grinning as if he had made her up.

  Perhaps they had never seen a woman before, or perhaps they had never seen one bare-armed, or with her hair cut off, or sopping wet. They stared as if they hadn’t. One whistled, indrawn between his teeth, long and low. “What does she want?” said someone. The watch took hold of her arm and the sailor who had whistled raised both hands over his head and clasped them, at which the crowd laughed.

  “She thinks we’re hot!”

  “She wants some, don’t you, honey?”

  “Ooh, kiss me, kiss me, dearie!”

  “I want the captain!” she managed to get out. All around crowded men’s faces: some old, some young, all very peculiar to her eyes with their unaccustomed whiskers, their chins, their noses, their loose collars. It occurred to her that she did not like them a bit. She did not exactly think they were behaving badly, as she was not sure how they ought to behave, but they reminded her uncannily of her husband, of whom she was no longer at all afraid. So when the nearest winked and reached out two hands even huger than the shadow of hands cast on the deck boards, she kicked him excruciatingly in the left knee (he fell down), the watch got the belt buckle round in a circle from underneath (up, always up, especially if you’re short), which gave him a cut across the cheek and a black eye; this leaves her left hand still armed and her teeth, which she used. It’s good to be able to do several things at once. Forward, halfway from horizon to zenith, still and clear above the black mass of the rigging and the highest mast, burned the constellation of the Hunter, and under that—by way of descent down a monumental fellow who had just that moment sprung on board—frothed and foamed a truly fabulous black beard. She had just unkindly set someone howling by trampling on a tender part (they were in good spirits, most of them, and fighting one another in a heap; she never did admit later to all the things she did in that melee) when the beard bent down over her, curled and glossy as a piece of the sea. Children never could resist that beard. Big one looked at little one. Little one looked at big one. Stars shone over his head. He recognized her at once, of course, and her look, and the pummeling she had left behind her, and the cracked knee, and all the rest of it. “So,” he said, “you’re a fighter, are you!” He took her hands in his and crushed them, good and hard; she smiled brilliantly, involuntarily.

  When she fenced with him (she insisted on fencing with him) she worked with a hard, dry persistence that surprised him. “Well, I have got your—and you have got my teaching,” he said philosophically at first, “whatever you may want with that,” but on the second day out she slipped on soapsuds on the tilting deck (“Give it up, girl, give it up!”), grabbed the fellow who was scrubbing away by the ankles, and brought him down—screaming—on top of the captain. Blackbeard was not surprised that she had tried to do this, but he was very surprised that she had actually brought it off. “Get up,” he told her (she was sitting where she fell and grinning). She pulled up her stockings. He chose for her a heavier and longer blade, almost as tall as she (“Huh!” she said, “it’s about time”), and held out the blade and the scabbard, one in each hand, both at the same time. She took them, one in each hand, both at the same time.

  “By God, you’re ambidextrous!” he exclaimed.

  “Come on!” she said.

  That was a blade that was a blade! She spent the night more or less tangled up in it, as she never yet had with him. Things were still unsettled between them. Thus she slept alone in his bed, in his cabin; thus she woke alo
ne, figuring she still had the best of it. Thus she spurned a heap of his possessions with her foot (the fact that she did not clean the place up in womanly fashion put him to great distress), writhed, stretched, turned over and jumped as a crash came from outside. There was a shuttered window above the bed that gave on the deck. Someone—here she slipped on her shift and, swung open the shutter—was bubbling, shouting, singing, sending mountains of water lolloping across the boards. Someone (here she leaned out and twisted her head about to see) naked to the waist in a barrel was taking a bath. Like Poseidon. He turned, presenting her with the black patches under his armpits streaming water, with his hair and beard running like black ink.

  “Hallooo!” he roared. She grunted and drew back, closing the shutter. She had made no motion to get dressed when he came in, but lay with her arms under her head. He stood in the doorway, tucking his shirt into his trousers; then this cunning man said, “I came to get something” (looking at her sidewise), and diffidently carried his wet, tightly curled beard past her into a corner of the cabin. He knelt down and burrowed diligently.

  “Get what?” said she. He didn’t answer. He was rummaging in a chest he had dragged from the wall; now he took out of it—with great tenderness and care—a woman’s nightdress, worked all in white lace, which he held up to her, saying:

  “Do you want this?”

  “No,” she said, and meant it.

  “But it’s expensive,” he said earnestly, “it is, look,” and coming over to sit on the edge of the bed, he showed the dress to her, for the truth was it was so expensive that he hadn’t meant to give it to her at all, and only offered it out of—well, out of—

  “I don’t want it,” she said, a little sharply.

  “Do you like jewelry?” he suggested hopefully. He had not got thoroughly dried and water was dripping unobtrusively from the ends of his hair onto the bed; he sat patiently holding the nightgown out by the sleeves to show it off. He said ingenuously, “Why don’t you try it on?”

  Silence.

  “It would look good on you,” he said. She said nothing. He laid down the nightgown and looked at her, bemused and wondering; then he reached out and tenderly touched her hair where it hung down to the point of her small, grim jaw.

  “My, aren’t you little,” he said.

  She laughed. Perhaps it was being called little, or perhaps it was being touched so very lightly, but this farm girl threw back her head and laughed until she cried, as the saying is, and then: “Tcha! It’s a bargain, isn’t it!” said this cynical girl. He lowered himself onto the floor on his heels; then tenderly folded the nightgown into a lacy bundle, which he smoothed, troubled.

  “No, give it to me,” she demanded sharply. He looked up, surprised.

  “Give it!” she repeated, and scrambling across the bed she snatched it out of his hands, stripped off her shift, and slid the gown over her bare skin. She was compact but not stocky and the dress, became her; she walked about the cabin, admiring her sleeves, carrying the train over one arm while he sat back on his heels and blinked at her.

  “Well,” she said philosophically, “come on.” He was not at all pleased. He rose (her eyes followed him), towering over her, his arms folded. He looked at the nightgown, at the train she held, at her arched neck (she had to look up to meet his gaze), at her free arm curved to her throat in a gesture of totally unconscious femininity. He had been thinking, a process that with him was slow but often profound; now he said solemnly:

  “Woman, what man have you ever been with before?”

  “Oh!” said she startled, “my husband,” and backed off a little. “And where is he?”

  “Dead.” She could not help a grin.

  “How?” She held up a fist. Blackbeard sighed heavily.

  Throwing the loose bedclothes onto the bed, he strode to his precious chest (she padded inquisitively behind him), dropped heavily to his knees, and came up with a heap of merchandise: bottles, rings, jingles, coins, scarves, handkerchiefs, boots, toys, half of which he put back. Then, catching her by one arm, he threw her over his shoulder in a somewhat casual or moody fashion (the breath was knocked out of her) and carried her to the center of the cabin, where he dropped her—half next to and half over a small table, the only other part of the cabin’s furnishings besides the bed. She was trembling all over. With the same kind of solemn preoccupation he dumped his merchandise on the table, sorted out a bottle: and two glasses, a bracelet, which he put on her arm, earrings similarly, and a few other things that he studied and then placed on the floor. She was amazed to see that there were tears in his eyes.

  “Now, why don’t you fight me!” he said emotionally.

  She looked at the table, then at her hands.

  “Ah!” he said, sighing again, pouring out a glassful and gulping it, drumming the glass on the table. He shook his head. He held out his arms and she circled the table carefully, taking his hands, embarrassed to look him in the face. “Come,” he said, “up here,” patting his knees, so she climbed awkwardly onto his lap, still considerably wary. He poured out another glass and put it in her hand. He sighed, and put nothing into words; only she felt on her back what felt like a hand and arched a little—like a cat—with pleasure; then she stirred on his knees to settle herself and immediately froze. He did nothing. He was looking into the distance, into nothing. He might have been remembering his past. She put one arm around his neck to steady herself, but her arm felt his neck most exquisitely and she did not like that, so she gave it up and put one hand on his shoulder. Then she could not help but feel his shoulder. It was quite provoking. He mused into the distance. Sitting on his lap, she could feel his breath stirring about her bare face, about her neck—she turned to look at him and shut her eyes; she thought, What am I doing? and the blood came to her face harder and harder until her cheeks blazed. She felt him sigh, felt that sigh travel from her side to her stomach to the back of her head, and with a soft, hopeless, exasperated cry (“I don’t expect to enjoy this!”) she turned and sank, both hands firstmost, into Blackbeard’s oceanic beard.

  And he, the villain, was even willing to cooperate.

  Time passes, even (as they say) on the sea. What with moping about while he visited farmhouses and villages, watching the stars wheel and change overhead as they crept down the coast, with time making and unmaking the days, bringing dinnertime (as it does) and time to get up and what-not—Well, there you are. She spent her time learning to play cards. But gambling and prophecy are very closely allied—in fact they are one thing—and when he saw his woman squatting on deck on the balls of her feet, a sliver of wood in her teeth, dealing out the cards to tell fortunes (cards and money appeared in the East at exactly the same time in the old days) he thought—or thought he saw—or recollected—that goddess who was driven out by the other gods when the world was made and who hangs about still on the fringes of things (at crossroads, at the entrance to towns) to throw a little shady trouble into life and set up a few crosscurrents and undercurrents of her own in what ought to be a regular and predictable business. She herself did not believe in gods and goddesses. She told the fortunes of the crew quite obligingly, as he had taught her, but was much more interested in learning the probabilities of the appearance of any particular card in one of the five suits1— she had begun to evolve what she thought was a rather elegant little theory—when late one day he told her, “Look, I am going into a town tonight, but you can’t come.” They were lying anchored on the coast, facing west, just too far away to see the lights at night. She said, “Wha’?”

  “I am going to town tonight,” he said (he was a very patient man) “and you can’t come.”

  “Why not?” said the woman. She threw down her cards and stood up, facing into the sunset. The pupils of her eyes shrank to pinpoints. To her he was a big, blind rock, a kind of outline; she said again, “Why not?” and her whole face lifted and became sharper as one’s face does when one stares against the sun.

  “Because you can’t,�
� he said. She bent to pick up her cards as if she had made some mistake in listening, but there he was saying, “I won’t be able to take care of you.”

  “You won’t have to,” said she. He shook his head. “You won’t come.”

  “Of course I’ll come,” she said.

  “You won’t,” said he.

  “The devil I won’t!” said she.

  He put both arms on her shoulders, powerfully, seriously, with utmost heaviness and she pulled away at once, at once transformed into a mystery with a closed face; she stared at him without expression, shifting her cards from hand to hand. He said, “Look, my girl—” and for this got the entire fortunes of the whole world for the next twenty centuries right in his face.

  “Well, well,” he said, “I see,” ponderously, “I see,” and stalked away down the curve of the ship, thus passing around the cabin, into the darkening eastern sky, and out of the picture.

  But she did go with him. She appeared, dripping wet and triumphantly smiling, at the door of the little place of business he had chosen to discuss business in and walked directly to his table, raising two fingers in greeting, a gesture that had taken her fancy when she saw it done by someone in the street. She then uttered a word Blackbeard thought she did not understand (she did). She looked with interest around the room—at the smoke from the torches—and the patrons—and a Great Homed Owl somewhat the worse for wear that had been chained by one leg to the bar (an ancient invention)—and the stuffed blowfish that hung from the ceiling on a string: lazy, consumptive, puffed-up, with half its spines broken off. Then she sat down.