The perpetually diving women have developed a trace of a similar coat. Now, I long ago made the point that our peoples of The One World are usually devoid of body hair, but I should amend that assertion. Every human being, even the newest and apparently hairless baby, wears an almost invisibly fine down over most of his or her body. Stand a naked man or woman between you and the sun and you will see. But the down of those island women has grown longer—encouraged, I imagine, by their having been sea divers for so many generations.
I do not mean that they are furred with coarse hair like that of white men's beards. The down is as fine and delicate and colorless as milkweed floss, but it covers their coppery bodies with a sheen like that of the sea-cuguars and serves the same purpose of making them more agile in the water. When an island woman stands with the sunlight falling from behind her, she is edged and outlined in shining gold. In moonlight she glistens silver. Even when she is long out of the sea and completely dry, she looks delightfully dewy, and more supple than other women are, and as if she could slip easily from the embrace of the strongest man...
Which brings me to the subject that had, all this while, been uppermost in my mind. I have mentioned the many generations of the women divers. But how did one generation beget the next?
The answer is so simple as to be ridiculous, even vulgar, even somewhat revolting. But I did not summon up enough nerve to ask the question until the night of my seventh day in the islands, on which day old Kukú had decreed that I must depart the next morning.
XXVI
I had finished cutting and shaping my paddle, and Ixínatsi had stocked my acáli with dried fish and coconut meat, plus a line and a bone hook with which I could catch fresh fish. She added five or six green coconuts from which she had sliced the stem end of each, so it remained closed only by a thin membrane. The heavy shell would keep the contents cool even in the sun; I had only to puncture the membrane to drink the sweet and refreshing coconut milk.
She gave me the directions which all the women had memorized, though none of them had ever had reason or wish to visit The One World. Between the islands and the mainland, she said, the tidal currents were always southerly, mild and stable. I was to paddle directly east each day at a steady but not overstrenuous pace. She rightly presumed that I knew how to maintain an eastward course, and she said that what southward drifting my acáli would do—while I slept at night—was allowed for in the instructions. On the fourth day I would sight a seaside village. Cricket did not know its name, but I did; it had to be Yakóreke.
So, on the night that Kukú had said would be my last there, Cricket and I sat side by side, leaning against the fallen tree trunk that roofed our two shelters, and I asked her, "Ixínatsi, who was your father?"
She said simply, "We have no fathers. Only mothers and daughters. My mother is dead. You are acquainted with my daughter."
"But your mother could not have created you all by herself. Nor you your Tirípetsi. Sometime, somehow, in each case, there had to have been a man involved."
"Oh, that," she said negligently. "Akuáreni. Yes, the men come to do that once a year."
I said, "So that is what you meant when you first spoke to me. You told me I had come too soon."
"Yes. The men come from that mainland village to which you are going. They come for just one day in the eighteen months of the year. They come with loaded freight canoes, and we select what we need, and we trade our kinúcha for them. One kinú for a good comb made of bone or tortoiseshell, two kinúcha for an obsidian knife or a braided fishing line—"
"Ayya!" I interrupted. "You are being outrageously cheated! Those men exchange those pearls for countless times that value, and the next buyers trade them for another profit, and the next and the next. By the time the pearls have passed through all the hands between here and some city market..."
Cricket shrugged her moon-radiant bare shoulders. "The men could have the kinúcha for no payment at all, if Xarátanga should choose to let them learn to dive. But the trading brings us what we need and want, and what more could we ask? Then, when the trading is all done, Kukú gathers those women who want to have a daughter—even those who may not be so eager, if Kukú says it is their turn—and Kukú selects the more robust of the men. The women lie in a row on the beach, and the men do that akuáreni we must endure if we are to have daughters."
"You keep saying daughters. There must be some boys born."
"Yes, some. But the goddess New Moon ordained that these be The Islands of the Women, and there is only one way to keep them so. Any male children, being forbidden by the goddess, are drowned at birth."
Even in the dark, she must have seen the expression on my face, but she misinterpreted it, hastening to add:
"That is not a waste, as you may think. They become nourishment for the oysters, and that is a very worthwhile use for them."
Well, as a male myself, I could hardly applaud that merciless weeding out of the newborn. On the other hand, like most god-commanded doings, it had the purity of stark simplicity. Keep the islands a female preserve by feeding the oysters on whose hearts the islanders depend.
Cricket went on, "My daughter is almost of an age to commence diving. So I expect Kukú will order me to do akuáreni with one of the men when they come next time."
At that I did speak up. "You make it sound as enjoyable as being attacked by a sea monster. Does none of you ever lie with a man just for the pleasure of it?"
"Pleasure?!" she exclaimed. "What pleasure can there be in having a pole of flesh painfully stuck inside you and painfully moved back and forth a few times and then painfully pulled out? During that while, it is like being constipated in the wrong place."
I muttered, "Gallant and gracious men you women invite for consorts," then said aloud, "My dear Ixínatsi, what you describe is rape, not the loving act it should be. When it is done with love—and you yourself have spoken of the loving heart—it can be an exquisite pleasure."
"Done how with love?" she asked, sounding interested.
"Well... the loving can start long before a pole of flesh is involved. You know that you have a loving heart, but you may not know that you also have a kinú. It is infinitely more capable of being loved than that of the most emotional oyster. It is there."
I pointed to the place, and she seemed immediately to lose interest.
"Oh, that," she said again. She unwound her single garment and shifted to move her abdomen into a moonbeam, and with her fingers she parted the petals of her tipíli, and looked incuriously at her pearl-like xacapíli, and said, "A child's plaything."
"What?"
"A girl learns very young that that little part of her is sensitive and excitable, and she makes much use of it. Yes—as you are doing now with your fingertip, Tenamáxtli. But, as a girl matures, she grows bored with that childish practice and finds it unwomanly. Also, our Kukú has taught us that such activity depletes one's strength and endurance. Oh, a grown woman does it once in a while. I do it myself—exactly as you are doing it to me this moment—but only for relief when I feel tense or ill-humored. It is like scratching an itch."
I sighed. "Itching and push-pull and constipation. What awful words you use to speak of the feeling that can be the most sublime of feelings. And your aged Kukú is wrong. Lovemaking can invigorate you to much greater strength and satisfaction in every other thing you do. But never mind that. Just tell me. When I fondle you there, is it like your own scratching of an itch?"