Nancy Kress - Stalking Beans.pdf - Nancy Kress - margozap

Stalking Beans

Nancy Kress

SOMETIMES I TRY TO MAKE MY WIFE ANGRY.

I CLUMP in from the dairy in boots fouled by cow dung; I

let the hearth fire die; I spill greasy mutton on the fresh

cloth Annie insists on laying each night as if we were still

gentry and not the peasants we have become. I wipe my

nose with the back of my hand, in imitation of our

neighbors. I get drunk at the alehouse. I stay away all night.

It's like fighting a pillow. All give, and feathers

everywhere. Annie's pretty face flutters into wispy dismay,

followed by wispy forgiveness. "Oh, Jack, I understand!"

she cries and falls on my neck, her curls— that but for me

would be bound in a fashionable coif— filling my mouth.

"I know how hard our fall in the world is for you!" Never a

word about how hard it is for her. Never a word of anger.

Never the accusation,

You are to blame . Always, she invites me to sink into

her understanding, to lie muffled in it as in the soft beds we

once owned, to be soundlessly absorbed.

Sometimes it takes every fiber of my muscles not to hit

her.

Only when, drunk, I traded our best cow to a dwarf for

a sack of beans did Annie show a flash of the anger she

should feel by right. "You… did… what?" she said, very

deliberately. Her pale eyes sparkled and her thin, tense

body relaxed for one glorious moment into anger. I took a

step toward her and Annie, misunderstanding, cried, "Keep

away from me!" She looked wildly around, and her eye fell

on the shelf with our one remaining book, bound in red

leather and edged with gold. She seized it and threw it at

me. She missed. It fell into the fire, and the dry pages

blazed with energy.

But she couldn't make it last. A second later her

shoulders drooped and she stared at the fire with stricken

eyes. "Oh, Jack—I'm sorry! The book was worth more

than the cow!" Then she was on my neck, sobbing. "Oh,

Jack, I understand, I do , I know your pride has been so

badly injured by all this, I want to be a good wife to you

and understand…" Her hair settled into my mouth, over

my nose.

Desperate, I said, "I cast away the beans in the forest,

and vomited over them!"

"Oh, Jack, I understand! It's not your fault! You

couldn't help what happened!"

What kind of man can never help what happens to him?

I can't bring myself to touch her body, even by chance.

When one of us rolls toward the center of the sagging

mattress, I jerk away, as if touched by rot. In the darkest

part of the night, when the fire has gone out, I hear her

sobbing, muffled by the thin pillow that is the best, thanks

to my stupidity, we can now afford.

I get out of bed and stumble, torchless, into the woods.

There is no moon, no stars. The trees loom around me like

unseen giants, breathing in the blackness. It doesn't matter.

My feet don't fail me. I know exactly where I'm going.

She is taller than I am by perhaps a foot, and outweighs

me by thirty pounds. Her shoes are held together with

gummy string, not because she doesn't have better—the

closet is filled with gold slippers, fine calfskin boots,

red-heeled shoes with silver bows—but because this pair is

comfortable, and damn how they look. There is a food

stain on her robe, which is knotted loosely around her

waist. Her thick blond hair is a snarl. She yawns in my

face.

"Damn, Jack, I didn't expect you tonight."

"Is he here?"

She makes a mocking face and laughs. "No. And now

that you're here, you may as well come in as not. What did

you do, tumble down the beanstalk? You look like a dirty

urchin." She gazes at me, amused. I always amuse her. Her

amusement wakes her a little more, and then her gaze

sharpens. She slides one hand inside her robe. "Since he's

not here ..." She reaches for me.

It's always like this. She is greedy in bed, frank, and

direct. I am an instrument of her pleasure, as she is of

mine, and beyond that she asks nothing. Her huge breasts

move beneath my hands, and she moans in that open

pleasure that never loses its edge of mockery. I ease into

her and, to prolong the moment, say, "What would you do

if I never climbed the beanstalk again?"

She says promptly, "Hire another wretched dwarf to

stalk another drunken bull." She laughs. "Do you think

you're irreplaceable, Jack?"

"No," I say, smiling, and thrust into her hard enough to

please us both. She laughs again, her attention completely

on her own sensations. Afterwards, she'll fall asleep, not

knowing or caring when I leave. I'll wrestle open the

enormous bolted door, bang it shut, clump across the

terrace to the clouds. It won't matter how much noise I

make; she never wakes.

The morning air this high up is cool and delicious. The

bean leaves rustle against my face. A bird wheels by, its

wings outstretched in a lazy glide, its black eyes bright with

successful hunting, free of the pull of the earth.

Annie is crying in the bedroom of our cottage. I'm not

supposed to know this, since she thinks I'm still at market

with this week's eggs and honey. I poke at the fire, adding

up weeks in my head. They make the right sum. Annie

must have her monthly flow again, our hopes for a child

once more bleeding out between her legs.

I creep quietly out of the cottage to the dairy and sit

heavily on a churning cask. I should go to her. I should

take her in my arms and reassure her, tell her that maybe

next month… But I can't go to her like this. The edge of

my own disappointment is too sharp; it would cut us both.

I sit on the churning cask until the two remaining cows low

plaintively outside their byre.

Inside the cottage Annie has lit the candles. She flies

around the dingy room, smiling brightly. "Stew tonight,

Jack! Your favorite!" She starts to sing, her voice straining

on the high notes, her eyes shining determinedly, her thin

shoulders rigid as glass.

The tax collector stands in my dairy, cleaning his

fingernails with a jeweled dagger. I recognize the dagger. It

once belonged to my father. Lord Randall must have given

it to this bloated cock's comb for a gift, in return for his

useful services. The tax collector looks around my cottage.

"Where is that book you used to have on that wooden

shelf, Jack?"

Once he would never have dared address me so. Once

he would have said "Master John." Once. "Gone," I say

shortly. "One less thing for you to tax."

He laughs. "You've still luxury enough here, compared

to your neighbors. The land tax has gone up again, Jack.

You owe three gold pieces instead of two. Such is the

burden of the yeomanry."

I don't answer. He finishes with his nails and sheathes

the dagger. In his fat face his eyes are as shiny as a bird of

prey. "By Thursday next, Jack. Just bring it to the castle."

He smiles. "You know where it is."

Annie has appeared in the doorway behind us. If he

says to her, as he did last time, "Farewell, pretty Nan," I

will strike him. But he bustles out silently, and Annie pulls

aside her faded skirts to let him pass. The skirts wouldn't

soil his stolen finery; Annie has washed and turned and

mended the coarse material until her arms ache with

exhaustion and her skin bleeds with needle pricks. She

turns to watch the tax collector go, and for one

heart-stopping moment her body dips and I think she's

going to drop him a mocking, insolent curtsy. But instead

she straightens and turns to me.

"It's all right, Jack! It wasn't your fault! I understand!"

Her arms are around my neck, her hair muffling my

breath.

Her name is Maria. Seven times I have climbed the

beanstalk, and I've only just learned it. "Why did you need

to know it before?" Maria said lazily. "You're not exactly

carrying my favor into battle." She laughs her mocking

laugh, the low chuckle that says, This is not important, but

it's amusing nonetheless .

I love her laugh.

"If I know your name is Maria," I argue lightheartedly, "I

can call you that when I demand something. I could say, to

give an instance, 'Maria, rub my back.' 'Maria, take off

your shift.' "

"And do you wish me to take off my shift?"

"It's already off," I say, and she laughs and rolls over on

her stomach, her enormous breasts falling forward onto the

rumpled sheets. For once she hasn't fallen asleep. On the

bedside table is a half-eaten orange, the skin dried and

wrinkled as if it had been there several days. Maria yawns

mockingly.

"Shall I put my shift back on so you can take it off

again?"

"Do you want to?"

"I don't mind," she says, which is her answer to almost

anything. She puts a hand on me, and a shudder of

pleasure pierces from groin to brain. Maria laughs.

"What an amorous poppet you are."

"And how good you are to be amorous with, lux vitae ,

Maria," I tell her. But even then she doesn't ask me my

other name, just as she has never asked my circumstances.

Does it strike her as odd that a man dressed like a peasant

can flatter her in Latin?

She reaches for her shift, puts it on, and then proceeds

to take it off so slowly, so teasingly, lifting a corner over

one thigh and lowering a strap off one shoulder, bunching

the cloth between her legs, mocking me from under

lowered lashes, that I can barely keep my hands off her

until she's ready. Not even when I was who I was, before,

not even then had I ever known a woman so skilled in

those arts of the body that are really the arts of the mind.

When at long last we are sated again, and she is drifting off

to sleep, I impulsively say to her, "You are extraordinary in

bed. I wish I could take you back down with me."

Immediately a cold paralysis runs over my spine. Now

I've done it. Now will come the start of feminine hope, the

fumblingly hidden gleam of possession, the earnest,

whispered half-promise designed to elicit promises from

me: Oh, do you think someday we actually might be

together …

I should know better. Instead, Maria gives me her

mocking smile, rich with satisfaction. "Ah, but that would

spoil everything. One always does most stylishly the things

one cares nothing about. Don't you even know that, you

ignorant boy?"

In another moment she's asleep.

I get out of her bed and start for the door. But in the

corridor I stop.

I have never explored the rest of the castle. What I

Nancy Kress - Stalking Beans.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: