I remember that bright, unusually warm autumn day. Gazing out the window, I saw Jonas and other workers fixing the road. It was the first time I paused to think how strange it was that none of them sat in class with us. There weren’t many of them in the city. Whenever I spotted one in the street, I could hardly stop myself from staring, even though we all knew it was rude. True, some said they didn’t mind. They were surrounded by superstition. That they were not equally intelligent, for instance, so there was no point in educating them too much. That they could turn savage if not properly supervised. That’s what Brigita said, and her face became very strange as she spoke those words. I was skeptical. Animals act according to their nature. It’s not their fault that they have sharp fangs and hooked claws. But I didn’t dare contradict Brigita, even though she studies from the same books as we do.
Ingrida was sitting in front of me, and when I glanced at her long, gleaming hair, it occurred to me that she resembled Jonas in some way. The thought seemed so absurd that I didn’t even follow it further. As if she had heard it, Ingrida turned and winked at me with a mischievous green eye. It made my chest twinge. I don’t know why I was the one she chose as her friend, but it made me very happy. She said it was because I didn’t believe her, and it puzzled me. So I felt ashamed for having dared to think such nonsense about her and Jonas.
I had a chance to follow that thread of thought on Saturday, market day, when my mother and I were sitting behind the stall, selling vegetables and fruit from our farm. I spotted Jonas from afar as he made his way toward us. He looked out of place among the women busy with their shopping. He did, however, have one advantage – being physically stronger, men could carry heavier loads. I had never seen Jonas up close before, so I studied him with curiosity. He differed from the others of his kind. His face was different, I decided. His hair was reddish, his skin pale and lightly freckled. A few of the townswomen – Ingrida among them — also took pride in their red hair.
Jonas’s hands were incredibly large, furrowed with bulging light green veins. Mother often said that this was what hard physical labor did to a person – and men were made for it. Mother stared at Jonas. Her eyes shone with a dangerous, unrecognizable glint. The canvas of our tent cast a dense shadow, separating us from the customer. The sky was piercingly clear.
Jonas tensed strangely and dropped a few tomatoes. Mother bent down to pick them up, but instead of putting them into the bag, she handed them to him, her fingers brushing his knuckles. Their hands touched for a moment. A shiver ran down my spine. I quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed. The danger passed when Mother withdrew her palm. Jonas took the vegetables and said goodbye quietly. Once everything had been sold, we returned home. A sweet scent of leaves and chestnuts rose from the ground, tinged with the breath of oncoming frost. The car climbed slowly up the hill where our beautiful little wooden house stood brooding. Almost all the houses were designed for two or three people, except for the multistory buildings in the city center. Once, in a photograph, I had seen an enormous apartment block, like a gray cardboard box in which a little girl had cut out small windows. No wonder humanity had been so unhappy in those days that people sometimes killed themselves, leaping from those very windows.
The town was so small that a car was unnecessary, yet we had one; it proved useful for farm work. Way past its prime, it would take ages at the charging station. Mother managed the minor repairs on her own or asked for help from the women who worked on the farm and had a better understanding of machinery.
A few maple trees grew beside the house, already shedding golden and red leaves, which we didn’t sweep from the path because they were so pleasant to look at.
When we returned home, the fading sun filled the kitchen with molten-copper light. The bouquet in the vase had left a sweet fragrance hanging in the air. I drew a deep breath and let it out.
We prepared dinner in silence, though we usually listened to the news.
“Mother, why did you touch his hand?”
“I didn’t,” she denied.
“You did.”
Mother stopped slicing the vegetables and looked at me intently. I had noticed similar things in town before, but they hadn’t mattered so much then.
She chose her words carefully, though she normally never needed to.
“Sometimes I feel lonely.”
“But there are so many women around. Why would you…” I didn’t finish the sentence, because it wasn’t clear what had happened.
“It’s different.”
“You’re not with one of them… are you?” I peeled a potato, not daring to raise my eyes. The long strip of skin curled in a perfect, unbroken spiral before dropping into the bowl.
Mother laughed.
“Well, don’t you know?”
In truth, I did know. At least in theory. They taught us about it at school. And yet I could not understand why something had suddenly become opaque. I raised my eyes to Mother. In the half-light, her face was light blue, filled with gentle sadness. Her hands hung at her sides and one foot was poised as if ready to step forward, though there was nowhere to go. As though there was something missing. And yet we had everything.
Back then, I could not have imagined that it would be Jonas who, many years later, would prompt me to write about the Western city as I remembered its order and its way of life.
***
Ingrida lived in the town hall with her mother and some ten women who worked there. Some oversaw the household, and others handled various administrative tasks. We were all a little afraid of Aurelija, Ingrida’s mother. Her voice carried command; there was power in her gestures. Ingrida didn’t yet possess those qualities, but the girls already looked at her as a future leader, the one who would inherit Aurelija’s position. Women usually came into such roles through elections, yet no one doubted that this would be Ingrida’s fate as well. Among all of them, she stood out less for her appearance than for her maturity and subtlety.
I often went to visit my friend. I liked the bustle of her home – the steady stream of women pouring through the doors, each intent on settling one matter or another that required greater or lesser approval or support from the community. A few of them hovered about as well, sweeping the yard, pruning the trees in spring, mending fences, or carrying out other tasks that we could just as easily have done ourselves. But we had to allow them to feel like useful members of the community. To tell the truth, not many women saw them that way. They said aloud that we were equal, though they believed otherwise.
The square, with its round ancient cobblestones, had been undergoing endless repairs for quite some time. I walked slowly, watching with curiosity as the new tiles were being laid. Sweaty and flushed, the workers wiped their faces, even though the day wasn’t very warm. In the middle of the square stood a damaged statue of a woman with one hand pressed to her chest. No one knew what it represented.
I stepped into the vast vestibule of the town hall, which hosted celebrations and dances during the colder months. The floors were laid with worn dark wooden boards, and a lingering scent of flowers hung in the air, even though there were none there today. I ran up the wide staircase to Ingrida’s room. Tucked behind the curtain, she sat in a patch of sunlight on the wide, low windowsill, reading. I parted the curtain and sat down opposite her. From my backpack, I pulled out Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We often spent time like that, and afterwards we would discuss what we had read. I longed, someday, to see Aurelija’s library, for I had heard it contained rare books. They were not forbidden. Things were not forbidden, only forgotten. Later, Aurelija would tell me that this was far more effective.
I couldn’t seem to concentrate.
“Listen… Have you ever wondered that they have mothers too?”
“Well, of course. They didn’t just appear out of thin air,” my friend replied without raising her eyes from her book.
“But the women they live with usually aren’t their mothers,” I persisted.
Ingrida sighed and closed the book. A shadow of irritation passed over her face; she clasped her hands and cracked her knuckles. She often did that when something displeased her. It didn’t affect me. That wasn’t what I was asking. I was asking what lay behind all of it.
“Yes, and?”
“Why is that?”
“Someone has to live with them,” Ingrida said, beginning to suspect that my questions concealed something, and a note of doubt crept into her voice.
I wouldn’t let it go:
“Then why not with their mothers? We all live with ours. At least until we find a partner. Is living with them a punishment – or the opposite?”
Ingrida shot me a strange look.
“What do you think?”
“Someone must want to live with them. It seems that my mother… Just don’t tell anyone!”
My friend’s eyes widened; for a moment I regretted having said anything. She gently touched my hand.
“Don’t worry. I won’t.”
A noise broke out downstairs, something fell with a crash, and a woman cried out sharply, the words indistinct. We exchanged glances, jumped down from the windowsill, and hurried noisily down the stairs toward the kitchen, where the commotion was coming from. Even before we entered, we noticed drops of blood leading into the room.
In the kitchen, Jonas sat on a chair, pale as a ghost. Morkus stood stiffly beside him, along with several women, while Aurelija knelt at Jonas’s side. One of the clerks brought a first-aid kit and handed it to the leader. She opened the case, found the disinfectant and a curved medical needle threaded with suture. All of us were trained in first aid and would have been able to stitch the wound, so I was surprised that it was Aurelija performing the task rather than one of the others.
Jonas’s left forearm had been badly slashed. He must have been cutting tiles for the square with Morkus when the accident happened. Shuddering, yet unable to look away, I watched the procedure. Ingrida looked on the verge of fainting. I pulled a chair away from the table and seated my dazed friend in it. She held her breath as if Aurelija was stitching not Jonas’s arm but her own. Jonas began to cry without a sound, biting his lip to keep from sobbing out loud. Large tears rolled down his dusty face, leaving shining tracks behind them. I was astonished. We had been taught that most of them didn’t experience emotions the way we did, and that those they did feel – usually anger – they were unable to control. We had also been told that they lacked the innate ability to recognize their own feelings, which was essential for a harmonious life in the community. I had never seen any of them cry.
Jonas wiped his tear-filled eyes, and I felt sorry for him. It was not his fault that he had been born one of them and labored every day at the endless construction sites and farm work. Besides, he was very young, though I found it difficult to tell their age at that time. I think he must have been about eighteen.
Once she was done, Aurelija wiped her damp forehead and rose heavily. Her legs must have gone numb.
“I didn’t notice when it slipped from my hands…” Jonas tried to explain in a hoarse voice, but no one paid attention.
“Stay here until you feel better,” said Aurelija. “Take him to your room, Ingrida,” she added, turning to her daughter. But my friend remained stiff in her chair, as if she hadn’t even heard her mother.
“What if his hand had been cut off? What then? And what if…” she spoke quietly, then louder. “He’s always getting hurt! This work isn’t right for him!”
She looked as though she were about to cry, though it was anger rather than sorrow.
Aurelija looked at her daughter indifferently.
“This isn’t about you. We’ll talk later.”
Ingrida sprang to her feet, struck the table with her hand, and ran out of the kitchen.
Aurelija watched her leave without blinking. Then she suddenly turned to me.
“Take Jonas to Ingrida’s room and see to him if he needs anything. I have to go out, but I’ll be back soon.” She gave Morkus a meaningful nod and, turning on her heel, strode out of the kitchen with her entire entourage.
I didn’t understand which of us was in charge. Morkus lingered in the dim light, his arms crossed over his chest, staring at me. Then he lowered his head and gave a faint smile. He was the oldest in the room. I was only fifteen at the time.
“I need to get back to work,” he said, patting Jonas on the shoulder. “We’ll see each other later.”
Jonas turned to Morkus with a silent plea, but he only shook his head.
“We have to finish today, and we’re short on workers. There’s a girl here, if anything,” he added, jerking his chin in my direction.
My cheeks burned.
“Come on, Jonas,” I muttered, gesturing for him to follow.
He rose sluggishly – he looked as though he might faint – and followed me upstairs. I was so lost in thought that I didn’t notice him reaching for Ingrida’s door handle. He knew which room was hers.
“You’re terribly dirty,” I said as we stepped inside. “If you’re going to sit down anywhere, take off your clothes.”
My voice must have sounded too commanding, because Jonas began pulling off his shirt so quickly, as if Aurelija herself had ordered him. He winced when the fabric caught on his wound.
“Wait! I’ll help you.”
I stepped closer, and he involuntarily took a step back – almost funny, when you think about it: he wasn’t tall, yet he still towered over me. I was smaller than most girls my age; my development had been slow. Jonas could have knocked me to the ground with a single blow. Beside him, I looked like a child.
“Don’t be stupid,” I said as gently as I could and stepped forward again.
He reeked of sweat. He stood rigid and motionless, his head lowered. I couldn’t imagine even the most timid among us behaving that way.
“All right, all right – you can probably manage yourself,” I said, though I was curious to see his strange, flat body. “I’ll bring you some water.”
He nodded without lifting his eyes.
In the kitchen, Ingrida was sitting stiffly again, as if glued to her chair. Morkus was nowhere to be seen.
I filled a glass with water and was about to head upstairs when Ingrida lowered her head onto the table.
“I don’t know how she can do it,” she said. “Just leave to attend to business.”
“So what? Why do you care so much? Nothing’s happened to Jonas, even if he’s acting like he’s about to die. I’ve had much worse cuts than that,” I reminded her, thinking of the scar that runs across half my right arm.
She looked at me with such anger that I realized I’d been terribly foolish.
“He’s my brother,” said Ingrida.
One of the last flies of the season buzzed restlessly below the ceiling. Muffled voices of the workers returning from their afternoon break came in from the street. Morkus was shouting.
I had heard that word before. Not in real life, but in old books. Ingrida covered her mouth with her hand.
“Forget it. I didn’t say that.”
“As if I could,” I snapped, unsettled by what had just happened. I had no wish to keep talking. I took the water to Jonas. He was lying on Ingrida’s bed with his eyes closed. Bold of him. Perhaps he was pretending to sleep. I was unsure what I was supposed to do next – after all, it was the leader herself who had ordered me to see to him. I parted the curtains, intending to go on reading. I made myself comfortable, but my thoughts drifted at the edges. The noise in the yard distracted me. Outside the window, Morkus was arguing with the women from the construction crew. He threw his gloves to the ground and, spreading his arms in exasperation, sat down on a tidy stack of tiles. Morkus was one of those men – yes, I avoided using that word, for it sounded like a curse – who embodied all the worst traits attributed to their sex, the very traits that had led to the Last War. I couldn’t understand how our geneticists had allowed Morkus to be born. Admittedly, I also didn’t know if qualities such as volatility and anger were genetically determined or the result of upbringing. In the laboratory, the best fertilized eggs were carefully selected and then carried to term by women who wished to have children. Each woman was given one chance, unless she declined. In that case, the honor was passed on to one who desired more offspring. Every woman had to accept the risk that the lot might fall to her to bear a male child. Such was the price we paid to live in this society. Population control was essential if the community was to meet all its needs. That was what we were taught at school. During sexual intercourse, fertilization occurred only rarely, which is why we needed artificial means. In this way, we could regulate the sex of newborns and create only as many men as were required to sustain the population. Occasionally, a woman conceived naturally, but in our society, by unspoken rule, such matters were not discussed. Most of the time, no one ever found out. I learned that only much later.
Morkus rose from the stack of tiles and returned to work. In many respects, he met the most desirable genetic standards – he was very tall, strong, seemingly made for construction and welding, the kinds of jobs men usually performed. And yet I was beginning to suspect that there existed another quality that determined one’s aptitude for a given task, a quality unrelated to physical attributes.
It is said that the world is better without men. There were no wars – the wars they used to start and in which they themselves perished, taking many women with them. Community life was better organized, from ecological planning to the care of psychological well-being. And yet I now felt the urge to question these things. Even when the sight of Morkus reminded me why all of it was said to be true. Perhaps that was precisely why he was needed – as a bad example, a reminder of why we could not allow the male population to grow.
Watching the workers outside, I nearly dozed off. The sun was already sinking lower in the sky when Aurelija entered the room.
“Hello again,” she said quietly.
I turned. Jonas was no longer asleep. He was sitting up in bed, leaning against the wall.
“You probably have a few questions,” said Aurelija. “Ingrida must have let something slip.” She sat down on the bed and looked at Jonas. I couldn’t tell which of us she was addressing.
“I…” I began, suddenly aware that I hadn’t had any water in a long while and hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
“It will be worse if you start asking others and learn about it indirectly. It’s no great secret. Many people know. Jonas is my son.”
“Your son?” I managed to climb down from the windowsill. My legs had gone numb and my head was spinning.
“A male child.”
“Yes… yes, I remember. A brother – a male sister?”
Aurelija laughed.
“You could say that.”
Jonas shifted uneasily beneath the blankets.
“And why…” I ventured, though I was still standing at a distance, by the window, as if the fading light might shield me from this strange conversation. My mother would not have wanted Aurelija to tell me these things. She had always tried to protect me, though I had never felt in danger. For the first time, I began to sense that there was another side to things – some distant, indistinct horror I had glimpsed in Jonas’s face. In truth, I didn’t even know what I wanted to ask the leader. She, perhaps, sensed that as well.
“Many things seem self-evident because you’ve grown up in an environment where a certain story is told to you,” she said. “Why the world is the way it is. Why we behave as we do. So many things are merely imposed, and in fact have almost no real foundation.”
I wasn’t sure I fully understood what she was saying in such abstract terms, yet her words caught hold of me.
“So it’s possible to create your own story?”
“Not only possible, but necessary,” she replied, gracefully tucking a loose strand of her wavy hair behind her ear. “Otherwise, you will always skim the surface and never reach the depths. What you can’t see is often the very air you breathe.
“The depths…”
I wanted those depths. They would become my aspiration. I gripped the edge of the windowsill, feeling the slick wood beneath my fingers. Then I remembered that Jonas was still in the room. He had been listening, but saying nothing. Suddenly our eyes met. His eyes, so much like Ingrida’s, glimmered with sadness, as if he had grasped something in Aurelija’s words that I had not.
