11. THE PROSTITUTE'S LESSON

W return to Fil and her chosen profession

Who are you are what do you want? asked the voice.

She wanted to tell the truth. She wanted to explain how she had been duped, deceived, lied to, and by everyone. But could she? Would they not incarcerate her (for her own good, that’s how they’d explain it) in an asylum where her basic needs would be taken care of and she’d grow old and die in the fullness of time, unloved, uncared for, untouched…

I said, who are you and what do you want?

How could she reply honestly yet in a way the voice, whoever it was, male or fem, she couldn’t tell, would understand? After all, she’d come here of her own volition, had made her way after the disaster of last evening to beg forgiveness and take whatever rap over the knuckles she was due to.

Did they still do that to miscreants? Or was it fifty thousand volts these days? She almost hoped for the latter.

You will have to speak up sooner or later, and I can wait, for eternity if that’s how long it takes…

Isn’t eternity for ever? Was it right, that the owner of the voice could actually wait throughout the hugeness of eternity for her to speak/ Zoz had explained, or tried to, that eternity had never started and would never end. So the voice could wait beyond real time … beyond the awareness of men, beyond the lives of stars and planets, constellations and universes, and still be waiting long after she, Fil, was no more than wasted dust somewhere between the galaxies, floating like a cloud of insignificance from star to star until one of them gobbled it up and burped it out as a transient flare, one so minuscule that nobody would see it…

“I wanted to be a prostitute,” she whispered.

And she had. It was a living, probably the most respected of livings seeing as it involved actual employment and very little else did, unless you counted the hour each year spent in … what? She didn’t know, but it paid a person’s way through life and that was good enough for most people.

The voice was warm and embracing, like arms made of sound designed to cuddle and comfort the sick or dying… A high calling, the highest, offering succour to the lonely and unloved, being there for the weak and comfortless, what can you possibly say that will gainsay the nobility of your chosen life-task..?

She had to explain. She was barely trained and yet they’d plunged her in at the deep end. That had been all right until the worst had happened. And there could have been nothing worse, could there?

“It was Father Gyd,” she whispered.

A good Priest, and noble, the voice approved.

“I hadn’t been in the convent for above two days,” she whispered, “and everything was still new to me… other prostitutes comforted me and even played with me when they thought I was bored, and plans were afoot for my surgery, my scars, you know, but when Father Gyd came he said he liked me the way I was...”

A good man, and accepting of the odd blemish, the voice droned, meaningless, it seemed, for it didn’t seem to know what had occurred to cause her, Fil, so much distress.

“I want to die,” she breathed.

Of course you don’t! You are alive and beautiful” Father Gyd thinks so! He rates you above most prostitutes, it is in my memory banks… I know such things…

That brought her mind to a standstill. She’d come here, to face up to the highest of the high in the mysterious world of the Priestery, to seek solace for what had happened.

What had terrified her.

What had been the worst of all things that could happen, and it had happened to her. And this voice, this genderless soothing voice, didn’t seem to know.

“He’s dead,” she said, bluntly.

There was a pause. Maybe a pregnant pause. Some sort of pause, and then the voice changed. It became very different. From being without gender it became suddenly harsh. A witch’s voice, maybe, a harsh creation that had with every consonant a sibilance that shouldn’t be there.

Who’s dead?

It was out now, so she might as well carry on. It was forgiveness, or comfort, or something nice, that she was after, but first she needed to explain.

“He came to me and removed ever vestige of my clothing,” she began, nervously. “I was expecting some to do that, but Father Gyd seemed to be such an … honourable man...”

You find something dishonourable in prostitution, then? The hissing voice almost barked the question.

It puzzled her. Didn’t they know? Weren’t they aware that the whole world looked upon the calling of prostitution as being the perfect expression of care and love for strangers? And wasn’t everybody somebody’s stranger? Wasn’t that the glue that held society together? That every man should be able to play the best of games with someone?

“Not at all,” she replied, “it’s just that … he was my first and he got so excited as we went about first one and then another role-play, with him as Master and me as slave, just as he said he liked it, and when he reached … the moment, the sacred, highest moment … he gave out a huge gasp, the sort made by men when they’re drained, and then all of him, his arms, his legs, his whole body, went limp, and he stopped breathing...”

He is dead and at the farm, I have checked. The voice was most latter of fact as if it was just another moment in another day.

“But what about me?” she asked, “what do I do?”

You’re alive, aren’t you? No blame is attached to you if an old man can’t play the same games that he played in his youth? Just play on with other old men and hope it doesn’t happen again, though I warn you, it might. These things happen. Now go and have a good shower because, child, you need one…

© Peter Rogerson 21.04.19