There Was A People

By Jonah Rye

'But the folk turned their ear to a different sound, that did not lift but shook them, took them down, led them to imagine the unimaginable, to conceive the inconceivable, commit the impossible. The folk banished music . . . They banished light.'

Hope, despair and magic, courage and betrayal, love and promises in the time of genocide.

'Biding our time, abiding them, waiting for someone to do something, someone to come to their senses, to be reasonable, biding, abiding, we let it happen, made it happen. We abetted them.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonah Rye
• Release date: Aug 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463700259

Jonah Rye

Jonah Rye is the author of Dhamma, the novel, and Good-Bye, Audrey. He writes from Southeast Asia and the US west coast.

Book preview

There Was A People

Jonah Rye

There Was A People

First published May 2017

Copyright © 2017 by Jonah Rye

Smashwords Edition

Cover design by the author

For TL,

and for Ka

Contents

Beach

First Sight

Exhibition

Promise

City Of The Future

Beach

Diminutive and vivacious she was. There was something. It added swirl, a roll to her gait, it added purpose. It never showed but to her closest friends, and when she was tired. Her friends forgot, but it loomed forever in her mind.

Gracious affable, and overlooked. When she was alone, her doubts reared, ghosts of inadequacy, being different. Not whole. Her father assured her there was nothing wrong with her, she was an angel, and he’d tell the story of the holy man who wrestled with God and was marked with the same sign, holy man who became a nation. And the greatest of the apostles, her mother insisted, was so cursed – she had been made special by God.

But, for what God had done, she was embarrassed and ashamed, and she tried mightily to deny it, striving always to cover it, to be, like everybody else, normal. She feared being discovered. Recognized. Accused. Not normal, cannot do, cannot be, like everybody else. So she worked at it. She adapted, choreographed and manipulated her parts to work ensemble.

She worked hard in school and she was a perfect daughter and sister. To her few friends, she was a perfect comrade. She meant, one day, to be a perfect wife for a perfect husband, to raise her own family of whole healthy children. To know love, perfect love.

Or die spinster, at home. Alone.

She went away to university, big university, big city, where she would broaden her mind, open her mind and being to new experiences, new ideas, new impulses. Yet her interactions were increasingly limited or closed. Her professors never called on her and she could tell they had read her papers only superficially and reflexively graded them down. In their lectures, they derided her people, the Other – they had proof.

There were places she’d like to go, with a friend, to enjoy a meal in a restaurant, or a simple glass of wine or cocoa, but there were fewer opportunities, fewer places. It was true that the keeper of an establishment wouldn’t know, but if it was posted would she want to be there anyway? Mostly, she was alone. She felt alone, she felt apart. Her friends were fewer, so many had left with the evictions. It was fine, sometimes, to have a chance to be quiet, thoughtful, but she was alone more and more, like it or not. Few people wanted even to acknowledge her, to return a greeting.

At the end of the school year, there was a man. They spent time together, took walks, went dancing. When they parted for summer, they kissed and promised. She did not hear from him until a few days before the new school year began.

This second year would be a special one. No further measures had been taken and she was settled again. She was grateful for her few friends, regular normal friends who treated her like a regular normal friend, and she cared for this man.

She hadn’t been swimming since she was a child. She hadn’t had much strength then, she’d struggled to stay afloat, listing to the side. On the beach, children, in the way of children, pointed and cried out, they shrieked – Mother, why?!

She never went back, and she took to wearing long dresses.

She was a woman now, strong and smart. Confident, making a new start. No one knew or could have known.

She’d grown up imagining life as a spinster, dreaming of happiness bound to another but who would want her? Now she could see a loving man and, one day, a family.

So, she said yes. Just the two of them, the last days of summer. A fine start, exciting, an omen.

Streetcar climbed its rails up out of the city to the outermost station where the dunes began. It was a balmy glorious day, white clouds bulging heavy piled up and towered in Heaven. They would protect her, from too much sun. A wagon took them from the last station, horse plodding road adrift with sand. The last hundred metres they walked narrow trail, up slipping shifting dune, plunging down, and up slipping shifting. The vegetation changed to small and stunted, bent and shaped to the will of sea and wind. Beach grass, sharp wicked blades, licked her leg.

At the top of the last dune, she stood breathless before the grand open reach of the sea, glittering silver sea, towering columns of white clouds cast across the dome of Heaven. She had waited. They were alone at last and the day, their day, their life, stood before them.

She thought of her mother and father, her family, who she missed dearly all the while she was away and acutely these first weeks. And she began to doubt. Father would never have allowed this, alone on the beach with a man she hardly knew, and she not even dressed polite, in blouse and flimsy sarong tied with a single knot and, underneath, bold swim dress. They’d kissed, and promised, but she didn’t know him. He was interested and it thrilled her. Seized by his good looks and charm, his wanting her, she was infatuated. He had read Lawrence and read passages to her. She became Lady Chatterley fleeing her oppressor.

Glib and good looking he was, but it was Lawrence who had disarmed her. Florid, wild, direct. Lurid, unbounded. The poet spoke to her, beseeched her, implored her, and together their passion mounted. Small on the dune, no one in sight – even the man disappeared – alone and humble before silver sea and broad bright sky, she gave herself to the poet, immortal poet in her memory, in her breast, and to the day, to mammoth white clouds towering against infinite blue sky, to broad dappled sea.

The man seized her, gripped her hips and pulled her, took her to him. She lay her head back on his chest, heard the pounding of the surf on the sand, the pounding of her heart. She turned to him and they kissed. He pressed her to him.

She pulled away and fled, skipped down the dune, dune slipping under her, dropping her two three feet with every step.

He came after her, slid down the dune and caught her hand and together they glided to the beach. At the foot of the dune, they laid a blanket and disappeared into tall sharp grass.

Propped on his elbow, his arm over her belly, he blocked the sky. ‘For me, you are beauty. For you, my affection is unlimited. You complete me. I will have you.’ He pressed her close and she turned, looked into the sharp tall grass that surrounded them, that hid the grand open reach of silver sea. In the last weeks of the school year, he had wooed and courted and pressed her furiously. Now he continued, promised to honor and protect her, nothing could make him turn from her, he must have her. He uttered a cheap parody of Lawrence, stirred love and lust together, his own desire giving fuel to his words. He would take her, he must.

She had fallen hard in those weeks. Fallen for his court, his woo, his Lawrence. Then the man, his words and ardor, were no more. And she was alone.

They lay surrounded by the wicked shafts of grass. So far from home, longing for this man, but longing too for her father and mother, tell her what to do. Torn between her desire and her need to be sure, to wait.

‘I missed you. I hoped you would be in touch, you would correspond with me. You have a gift of words, of speech.’ But it was Lawrence’s gift. She so wanted to be Lady Chatterley, to be free, to be beautiful, desired, a woman wanted.

He lay on his side, watching her. She knew that he too had been touched by the poet, charmed, but his words came from somewhere else, came fast, tumbled out. ‘Great change is afoot. We, the elect, the historic masters of this land, are embarked on nothing less than the birth of an epoch, a new epoch. The barren ideals of free thinking and democracy are exposed. We throw them out, sweep away the liberal secular state and begin anew, with the afterbirth a new nation. We whelp history,’ he snatched breath, ‘and give it suck. We seize the rock of our destiny and reclaim our history. We, the elect, the masters,’ he gasped, ‘create a new nation, a new epoch, a new higher man, by returning to the old, to our tradition, our values, our culture. You will join us. I’ve thought about it, weighed it, tested it. I will have you. You and I will march together in the new epoch. We are enough alike. The blood of my root will carry us. We look good together, right together. You can see it. And people will see it, when they see me, see you with me, they will see, you are a beauty,’ he panted. ‘Seize this opportunity.’

‘Well, it isn’t Lady Chatterley, is it?’ She boosted herself up on her elbows, looked at him, looked out at the broad blue. ‘Can we swim first?’

‘Yes,’ he sat up, ‘but hold. I’ve been thinking a good deal about this. About the new epoch, about real profound change, about who will take us there and who must go, who will be left out. We are embarked upon nothing less than the erection of the new man, chosen, appointed anointed by God. Not all are welcome at the table, not all are fit to take up the work and bring it about. Some, many, must be left out. The time comes.’ He looked down on her, ‘Come with me to the table. I will make you citizen.’ He clambered onto her, straddling her belly, ‘I will have you,’ knelt on her arms, pinned them down, held them back. ‘I will,’ his hand framed her cheek, ‘I must have you!’ He laid his hands on her breasts, ‘I take you, citizen, I claim you. Now. I will have you!’ He leaned down, kissed her, pressed her, long and hard.

‘Do I have a vote, citizen?’ She thrust her belly up, bucked, and cast him to the side. ‘Getting hot,’ she sat up. ‘Let’s swim.’ She got up, stood over him, turned and faced the sea, stood before sea and sky and towering columns of clouds, and the dunes disappeared, and the man in the sharp grass. She stood in the presence of the creative. Great open, great possibility, great longing. Great freedom.

She walked, hips rolling, to the sea, water tossing in white glittering rushes on the shore. At surf’s edge, her chest flushed with passion, she dropped her blouse. The cool of the sea beckoned. She released the knot of her sarong and let it fall at her feet. Shy and more exposed than ever in her life, wearing only her swim dress, but holding her body taut and proud, wanting so to be free, taste liberty, alone and trusting and vulnerable, here with this man. She turned her head to him, smiled, turned and walked into the water. Waist deep, she turned.

He ran to the surf, tossed off his clothes, all but his trunks, and faced her. She knelt down and the water came up to her neck. He flung off his trunks and stalked in, watched her looking, solemn.

Water crested against him, he went to her. She backed, went deep and waited, wanted, Lady Chatterley wanted her man. But did she love him, want forever with him? He was pleasant and polite, unbridled in his passion. No one had ever paid her attention. She had never been desirable, or desired, and he surely desired her. Did she trust him? She didn’t know him. His talk about the new man and the failure of democracy jarred her. Anointed? Who was it that would be left out? Didn’t she know? Didn’t he? He was young, impressionable, but he was educated. Was he serious? He was good looking. He cared about her, he lusted. They were here together, the beach was deserted, the dunes, the sea, no one anywhere in sight. Times were changing and, after all, Lady Chatterley didn’t stay with the man, did she? Oh, she could answer