What sort of culture, I wondered, allows its women to be so exhibited, to be displayed so brazenly, so publicly and conveniently, for the inspection of men? And what of the women? Have they, in their haughty displays, no inkling of how they appear to men? Do they wish to insult men? Do they wish to disturb and taunt men? Do they wish, in their frustration, to challenge men? Or do they long on some level to be taken in hand, and be done with as men please? Do they long on some level for the iron and the chain?
I remembered with chagrin how I had on my old world obtained gratification from teasing boys. Now I belonged to men.
The soldier released my hair, and my head came forward. I kept it lowered.
The platform on which I knelt was some twenty feet square, and the aperture within it was some four feet by five feet. It had slid out from the side of the citadel. It was large enough that one of the great birds could have landed on it. The tripodlike arrangement of beams which, with its pulley, facilitated the movement of the rope, could be set up or taken down. Above the track of the platform, swung back now, was a double gate. It was such that the platform, if the tripod of beams was not set up, could be extended or withdrawn without reference to it. In each of the double gates was a smaller opening which was now shut, though which only one person at a time might pass. Given these arrangements several permutations were possible, the most obvious being the gates shut and the platform withdrawn, the gates shut and the platform extended, and the gates open with the platform extended or withdrawn. I would not wish to have been on the platform if the gates were closed and the platform was withdrawn. I suddenly whimpered, for the platform began to move back, into the citadel. I did not dare rise, or course. I did look up and saw, as I passed under the wall, heavy and menacing, in a large, oblong overhead slot, the downward-pointing spikes of a great, barred barrier. One would not wish to have been beneath those spikes had they descended. Just behind that area was the inner threshold, which would be closed by the gates. With a rumble the platform stopped. It stopped well within the gate. This allowed the gates, if and when they would be closed, clearance of the tripod, that associated with the windlass. In this fashion the tripod might, if one wished, be kept in its braces. I think saw, rattling and heavy, the barred gate, with the spikes, descend. The spikes descended into sockets in a stone sill. I could now see the windlass. It was within the gate itself. The gates were then closed.
I knelt on the drawn-back platform. The gates were twice barred, with heavy beams. They slid slowly across the inner faces of the gate. They must have weighed hundreds of pounds. They were now secure within their monstrous iron brackets.
The gates were now closed, now barred. The gates were heavy and high. They must have been a foot thick. The exterior surfaces had been sheathed with nailed copper sheets, the intention of which, one supposes, was to resist fire.
I looked at the great gates.
How helpless I felt, kneeling on the platform, my upper body pinioned helplessly within that stout canvas sheath. It was so tightly buckled upon me that I could scarcely move my hands and arms within it. Too, it was buckled closely about my neck.
The beams of the platform were rough and heavy. They felt splintery beneath my knees and were the upper sides of my toes, as I knelt, now rested upon the. The bottoms of my feet burned from the ascent to the lower level. Here and there on the platform were deep gouges, were weapons might have struck, or the talons of the great birds.
I did not know where I was!
I had not asked to be brought here!
What was I doing here?
This was not even my world!
I was afraid.
How faraway then seemed my own world, and my past.
“I will tell them that you are here,” said one of the soldiers.
We were then, it seemed, expected.
This understanding did not ease my apprehensions.
What was I doing here?
Why could I not be as other girls, routinely processed, auctioned summarily off a block to the highest bidder, and then led, braceleted, barefoot, frightened, hopeful, to the domicile of my buyer, and new master?
How was it that I was so different?
We waited on the drawn-in platform.
It seemed we waited a long time.
It was hot in the sack, my hands and arms closely confined within it, but, on my bared legs I could feel the cool air of the mountains. The mountain air, too, moved my hair a little. I shook my head a little, to move the hair away from my eyes. Confined as I was I could not reach it with my hands.
“Steady, little vulo,” said one of the men.
He brushed the hair back from my face with his large hand. I looked up at him, gratefully, and then again put my head down. Masters are often kind to us, for we are so much theirs, and so helpless. But they are always the masters.
I was grateful for his small kindness.
A touch, a smile, a candy, a pastry, mean much to us.
We are kajirae.
On my old world I had lacked an identity. Perhaps we all did. On my old world roles and masks made do for identities, for realities. We were all told we were real, of course, but when we inquired as to what were, really, we were met with evasive answers; I suppose we were just supposed to know; when we went to touch those supposed realities, our hands passed through them. They weren’t really there. And if they were truly us, then we, too, were not there. But we knew we were real somehow, something beyond the masks, the roles. Not everyone wants to disappear behind a mask, or even to hide behind one. It seemed we were all waiting. Young, we were supposed to wait. Reality was around the corner. Existence and truth must be postponed yet another day. And so we waited, and distracted ourselves with sweets and lies. But where was the end of this? Were the older ones real either?
Could it be that the older ones, too, were waiting? Were they embarrassed to admit this? Were the parents real? Had they learned, in their longer lives, secrets they refused to reveal? It is a terrible thing to look behind a mask and see nothing. The masks can be voracious. How many scream, trapped within a mask? How many do not scream, unaware that they have become the mask, that now there is nothing left but the mask?
We awaited the return of the soldier.
How could I be here?
Was it not madness that I was here? But I was here.
Here, however, I had a reality. I had an identity. There were no problems with that matter here. No longer need I wait in some windy place, on some lonely bridge or busy street corner, hoping to meet myself. That rendezvous had now occurred. Here, at last, I was something, really. Here I had an identity. I was an identity as real as that of a dog or pig. I was kajira.