The next instalment of Esha Ex, a novel-length work of new fiction, updated daily. For more details click here.
“How do you feel?” I asked. “Can I bring you anything?”
“How do you feel?” I asked. “Can I bring you anything?”
“No. That’s not the first time that’s happened. You’re just shocked because it’s the first time you’ve seen it. Every time we go to the villas it’s the same thing. And they say we’relike animals.”
“Your father shouldn’t make you do it.”
“You don’t understand. We wouldn’t survive without Father. Fifty years ago they used to show us naked at the zoo, the ‘he-shes’ and the ‘neither-nors’. Father travelled, looking for others like me. And he always knew where to find them – on the furthest dwelling in the settlement, even further out than the prostitutes’ houses. The parents are happy to let them go. The whole village washes its hands. Ruby and Orzala and the others, none of them are orphans.”
Through the wall I could hear music and the dancers and Sound Etc talking.
“How can you be cooped up like this?” I burst out.
I got up and I paced from the door to the bed and back. There was a thud and raised voices in the next room.
“Tell me – why do the sound guy and the timing guy and lighting guys stick with you? They can get work anywhere, with their skills.”
“They’re Father’s friends. They have loyalty to him. They all worked in the big electronics factory together, where I’m from. They formed a union because of the way they were treated by the bosses. No safety, no rights, no breaks. Anyone who complained got the sack. Anyone who fell below their quota got the sack. Father formed a union and one night a debate turned into a protest and the protest turned into a riot. The bosses came down hard and that was the end of that. Those guys will never find on-the-books work again.”
“What happened to the other union members? It couldn’t be just your father and the other three.”
“Ten were ‘subdued’ by factory security. Three died in police custody. Father and the others were beaten too – Father’s deaf in one ear.”
He dug inside his kitbag and pulled out some dates, squashed, wrapped in a napkin. He shared them with me and we ate them.
“When Father put the company together at first I hated having to share everything. But we’re stronger together.”
“He’s a good person,” I said cautiously.
“Saving eight people doesn’t make a difference in general.”
“Please don’t mind me asking – but what happened to your ma?”
“When it became known that I was ….as I am… they killed her for being a curse on the village. I was her first child – she was only fourteen. Father feels guilty. But I ask myself - what kind of man marries a girl who’s thirteen?”
“And what thirteen year old wants to do that?” I echoed.
But Lyceus didn’t want to talk about the past. His eye kept going towards the next room, wanting to rehearse and be with the others.
“I’m sorry I won’t get to see that temple boy show,” I said.
A tentative smile passed between us.
“You could show me a bit now,” I said.
His face lit up. It was odd, he was older than me by a few years but he seemed younger; Orzala, Shekhar and Ruby were much more grown-up by comparison.
I sat at the very of the bed, with Lyceus in front of me. He gave a bow and then a curtsey.
“I will be playing all of the roles for this performance,” he said. “I’ll talk you through the story. But it’s not the same without costumes and music.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll imagine it,” I said.
“This is the legend of a boy who was half mortal and half not. His mother was a goddess, the patron of laws, living in her temple and deciding how it was all to be. Mortals came to her, and she would decide, and whatever she decided was absolutely fair. Then one day a merchant came to the immortals’ place and the goddess fell in love with him at first sight, and he with her. And to the happy couple was born a son,” Lyceus went on, “but the other immortals rejected him because he was not fully mortal, only half, and they threatened to banish the mother from that place. On earth, the goddess only had a half-life, and her son would had a half-life, and they had to follow the merchant about.”
“And the father?” I asked.
Lyceus knelt at my feet. He shook his head dolefully.
“As the years drew on, he lost his money and began to feel bitter and confined. The time came when his son was meant to leave his mother’s protection and be trained to face the world, and he began to train him in sports and violence, to be a warrior and a soldier, to compete in the games – because those were warlike times. And he did this, despite the mother’s protestations and the son’s unwillingness. The father regained his fortune as a mercenary warrior and left them.”
“And what did the goddess do?” I asked clasping Lyceus’s hands where they rested on my knee.
“She waited, because she could do nothing else. The world of men mistrusted her, because they didn’t know where she came from, with no husband to speak for her. And the world of the gods laughed at her, for letting herself become such easy prey to human foibles. And so she existed in a half-and-half place, for souls that do not belong.”
“They thought the merchant would never return, but he did, and he wanted to claim what was his: his son. He stormed the half-and-half place, claiming that the mother had kidnapped the son, who he wanted by his side. The mother hid him in the temple, disguised as a girl.”
“But she knew that in granting him this protection, she was giving him up forever. Because the temple took children to train, and it never gave them back. The goddess left and rejoined her world, where the son was never mentioned, and was not to be mentioned, as though he never existed. But in the half-and-half place his singing and dancing were such that all in the place noticed, and so did a young woman who herself had been cast out there because she was a traveller, a vagabond in boys’ clothes, with no-one to speak for her. And she came to pay her respects – and they, too, fell in love.”
We both stood up. He curtseyed and I bowed and kissed the back of his hand. We sank down again.
“But the father tricked his son. He commissioned a performance. And he arrived at the temple with gifts of lavish props and costumes, and among them he put a shield and spear. The boy handled them easily and so the father knew who he was. He went to the boy’s room and demanded that he go with him. The boy resisted. But the father trapped him. He wove a fine net which he suspended from the ceiling of the boy’s room. And the boy knew he would never be free.”
“No! No! You can’t end it that way.”
“That’s how it ends.” Lyceus sat down in the bed and crossed his arms.
“Don’t be ridiculous. They have to survive,” I said. “That night, the lovers had a chance to meet in private for the first time. The young woman beseeched one of the temple guards, asking her to keep watch at the door. And so the lovers met, with what felt like all the time in the world.”
Lyceus looked thoughtful.
“That’s a good scene. A love duet,” he said.
“The night continued and the net fell, just as the father had planned, imprisoning the lovers,” I said. We were lying next to each other, staring at the ceiling. “The father burst in from where he had been hiding. He overpowered the guard – ”
“Good! A fight scene.”
“He locked the young woman in the room that had been meant for his son. And he dragged the son away from the half-and-half place and down, into the world of men and wars, far from the gods.”
“He strips the son of his girls’ dress and casts it aside, no he throws it aside and berates the son.”
“He dragged his son to the edge of the world,” I said, “and it grew colder and colder.”
“Agony,” said Lyceus keenly.
I propped myself up on one elbow:
“But the woman broke free, taking a torch and setting light to the door of the barricaded room. She burst through the flames.”
“Go on!” Lyceus urged me.
“And she went to search for him, walking all night, until she too left the half-and-half world and entered the world of mortals, where it was all so difficult and so cold. She found the boy, but he was nearly gone.”
Lyceus edged himself into my arms.
“Go on,” he said.
I leant over him in the smoky darkness. The air smelled singed: one or two of the candles must have burnt out.
“She held the flames of the torch high, and she embraced the boy. She took him up, and breathed fire into his body.”
Lyceus turned his face to me and I kissed him on the cheek. The last of the candles burned out with a tiny snuffing sound, then there was an intense smell of wax and charred air. I heard a door slam close by, and voices, but neither of us moved.
Our door opened, the hard white lights slashed back on, the room was suddenly full of all the dancers, and Bilal, talking and laughing and surrounding the bed. I turned around, blinking in the light. I had a moment to register the dancers’ dawning surprise and Bilal’s look of outrage which went beyond all reason, all argument and all words. He snatched me off the bed by my leg and dragged me out.