LITMIR.BIZ

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Which had been their standing exchange as long as I remember.

      Once, before I was born, so goes the story, Lo Hawk grew disgruntled with village life and left. Rumors came back: he’d gone to a moon of Jupiter to dig out some metal that wormed in blue veins through the rock. Later: he’d left the Jovian satellite to sail a steaming sea on some world where three suns cast his shadows on the doffing deck of a ship bigger than our whole village. Still later: he was reported chopping away through a substance that melted to poisonous fumes someplace so far there were no stars at all during the year-long nights. When he had been away seven years, La Dire apparently decided it was time he came back. She left the village and returned a week later—with Lo Hawk. They say he hadn’t changed much, so nobody asked him about where he’d been. But from his return dated the quiet argument that joined La Dire and Lo Hawk faster than love.

      “. . . must preserve,” Lo Hawk.

      “. . . must change,” La Dire.

      Usually Lo Hawk gave in, for La Dire was a woman of wide reading, great culture, and wit; Lo Hawk had been a fine hunter in his youth and a fine warrior when there was need. And he was wise enough to admit in action, if not words, that such need had gone. But this time Lo Hawk was adamant:

      “Communication is vital, if we are ever to become human beings. I would sooner allow some short-faced dog who comes from the hills and can approximate forty of fifty of our words to make known his wishes, than a mute child. Oh, the battles my youth has seen! When we fought off the giant spiders, or when the wave of fungus swept from the jungle, or when we destroyed with lime and salt the twenty-foot slugs that pushed up from the ground, we won these battles because we could speak to one another, shout instructions, bellow a warning, whisper plans in the twilit darkness of the source-caves. Yes, I would sooner give La or Lo to a talking dog!”

      Somebody made a nasty comment: “Well, you couldn’t very well give her a Le!” People snickered. But the older folk are very good at ignoring that sort of irreverence. Everybody ignores a Le anyway. Anyway, the business never did get settled. Towards moondown people wandered off, when somebody suggested adjournment. Everyone creaked and groaned to his feet. Friza, dark and beautiful, was still playing with the pebbles.

      Friza didn’t move when a baby because she knew how already. Watching her in the flicker (I was only eight myself) I got the first hint why she didn’t talk: she picked up one of the pebbles and hurled it, viciously, at the head of the guy who’d made the remark about “Le.” Even at eight she was sensitive. She missed, and I alone saw. But I saw too the snarl that twisted her face, the effort in her shoulders, the way her toes curled—she was sitting crosslegged—as she threw it. Both fists were knotted in her lap. You see, she didn’t use her hands or feet. The pebble just rose from the dirt, shot through the air, missed its target, and chattered away through low leaves. But I saw: she threw it.

      Each night for a week I have lingered on the wild flags of the waterfront, palaces crowding to the left, brittle light crackling over the harbor in the warm autumn. TEI goes strangely. Tonight when I turned back into the great trapezoid of the Piazza, fog hid the tops of the red flagpoles. I sat on the base of one nearest the tower and made notes on Lobey’s hungers. Later I left the decaying gold and indigo of the Basilica and wandered through the back alleys of the city till well after midnight. Once I stopped on a bridge to watch the small canal drift through the close walls beneath the night-lamps and clotheslines. At a sudden shrieking I whirled: half a dozen wailing cats hurled themselves about my feet and fled after a brown rat. Chills snarled the nerves along my vertebrae. I looked back at the water: six flowers—roses—floated from beneath the bridge, crawling over the oil. I watched them till a motorboat puttering on some larger waterway nearby sent water slapping the foundations. I made my way over the small bridges to the Grand Canal and caught the Vaporetto back to Ferovia. It turned windy as we floated beneath the black wood arch of the Ponte Academia; I was trying to assimilate the flowers, the vicious animals, with Lobey’s adventure—each applies, but as yet I don’t quite know how. Orion straddled the water. Lights from the shore shook in the canal as we passed beneath the dripping stones of the Rialto.

      Writer’s Journal, Venice, October 1965

      In a few lines I shall establish how Maldoror was virtuous during his first years, virtuous and happy. Later he became aware he was born evil. Strange fatality!

      Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautreamont),

      The Songs of Maldoror

      All prologue to why Lo Easy, Lo Little John, and Lo me don’t herd goats no more.

      Friza started tagging along, dark and ambiguous, running and jumping with Little Jon in a double dance to his single song and my music, play-wrestling with Easy, and walking with me up the brambly meadow holding my hand—whoever heard of La-ing or Lo-ing somebody you’re herding goats with, or laughing with, or making love with. All of which I did with Friza. She would turn on a rock to stare at me with leaves shaking beside her face. Or come tearing towards me through the stones; between her graceful gait and her shadow in the rocks all suspended and real motion was. And was released when she was in my arms laughing—the one sound she did make, loving it in her mouth.

      She brought me beautiful things. And kept the dangerous away. I think she did it the same way she threw the pebble. One day I noticed that ugly and harmful things just weren’t happening: no lions, no condor bats. The goats stayed together; the kids didn’t get lost and kept from cliffs.

      “Little Jon, you don’t have to come up this morning.”

      “Well, Lobey, if you don’t think—”

      “Go on, stay home.”

      So Easy, Friza, and me went out with the goats.

      The beautiful things were like the flock of albino hawks that moved to the meadow. Or the mother woodchuck who brought her babies for us to see.

      “Easy, there isn’t enough work for all of us here. Why don’t you find something else to do?”

      “But I like coming up here, Lobey.”

      “Friza and me can take care of the herd.”

      “But I don’t mi—”

      “Get lost, Easy.”

      He said something else and I picked up a stone in my foot and hefted it. He looked confused, then lumbered away. Imagine, coming on like that with Easy.

      Friza and I had the field and the herd to ourselves alone. It stayed good and beautiful with unremembered flowers beyond rises when we ran. If there were poisonous snakes, they turned off in lengths of scarlet, never coiling. And, ah! did I make music.

      Something killed her.

      She was hiding under a grove of lazy willows, the trees that droop lower than weeping, and I was searching and calling and grinning—she shrieked. That’s the only sound I ever heard her make other than laughter. The goats began to bleat.

      I found her under the tree, face in the dirt.

      As the goats bleated, the meadow went to pieces on their rasping noise. I was silent, confused, amazed by my despair.

      I carried her back to the village. I remember La Dire’s face as I walked into the village square with the limber body in my arms.

      “Lobey, what in the world . . . How did she . . . Oh, no! Lobey, no!”

      So Easy and Little Jon took the herd again. I went and sat at the entrance to the source-cave, sharpened my blade, gnawed my nails, slept and thought alone on the flat rock. Which is where we began.

      Once Easy came to talk to me.

      “Hey, Lobey, help us with the goats. The lions are back. Not a lot of them, but we could still use you.” He squatted, still towering me by a foot, shook his head. “Poor Lobey.” He ran his hairy fingers over my neck. “We need you. You need us. Help us hunt for the two missing kids?”

      “Go away.”

      “Poor Lobey.”

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