Beautiful Losers. Leonard Cohen
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again the Aunts plotted.
-We will set a trap for the Shy One. We will tell her nothing!
It was a lovely night for the simple ceremony, which involved nothing more than a young man entering his bride’s cabin, sitting beside her, and then receiving from her a gift of food. This was the complete ceremony, the participants having been chosen without consultation by an agreement between their respective families.
-Sit still, Catherine, all the chores are done, darling, we don’t need any more water, winked the Aunts.
-How cold it is tonight, Aunts.
The autumn moon sailed over Indian Canada, and the Three-Whistle Bird discharged his song like aimless vertical arrows from the black branches. Tcheue! Chireue! Tzeuere! A woman drew a wooden comb through her thick hair, stroke after stroke, as she mumbled phrases of a monotonous mourning chant.
-…walk with me, sit beside me on a mountain…The world moved closer to its little fires and pots of
soup. A fish leaped out of the Mohawk River, and hovered above its splash till the splash sank away, and still the fish hovered.
-Well, look who’s here!
The great shoulders of a young hunter filled the doorway. Catherine looked up from her wampum, blushed, and returned to her work. A smile played on the sensual lips of the handsome brave. He licked his lips with a long red tongue, tasting traces of the meat he had killed and on which he had but lately feasted. Such a tongue! wondered the Aunts, digging their knuckles into their crotches under their sewing. Blood rushed into the young man’s groin. He inserted one hand under the leather and seized himself, warm handful, thick as a swan’s neck. He was here, the man awaited! He crossed like a cat to where the girl squatted, shivering, working the tiny shells, and he sat beside her, deliberately stretching his body so that thigh and hard buttock were presented to her view.
-Heh-heh, said one Aunt.
A strange fish hovered above the waters of the Mohawk River, luminous. All at once, and for the first time, Catherine Tekakwitha knew that she lived in a body, a female body! She felt the presence of her thighs and knew what they could squeeze, she felt the flower life of her nipples, she felt the sucking hollowness of her belly, the loneliness of her buttocks, the door ache of her little cunt, a cry for stretching, and she felt the existence of each cunt hair, they were not numerous and so short they did not even curl! She lived in a body, a woman’s body, and it worked! She sat on juices.
-I’ll bet he’s hungry, said another Aunt.
So bright! the fish which rose over the river. She felt in her imagination the circle of this hunter’s strong brown arms, the circles he would force through the lips of her cunt, the circles of her breasts pressed flat under him, the circle of her bite marks on his shoulder, the circle of her mouth lips in blowing kisses!
-Yeah, I’m starving.
The circles were made of whips and knotted thongs. They bound her, they choked her, they tore her skin, they were shrinking necklaces of fangs. Her tits were bleeding. She was sitting on blood. The circles of love tightened like a noose, squeezing, ripping, slicing. Little hairs were caught in knots. Agony! A burning circle attacked her cunt and severed it from her crotch like the top of a tin can. She lived in a woman’s body but- it did not belong to her! It was not hers to offer! With a desperate slingshot thought she hurled her cunt forever into the night. It was not hers to offer to the handsome fellow, though his arms were strong and his own forest magic not inconsiderable. And as she thus disclaimed the ownership of her flesh she sensed a minute knowledge of his innocence, a tiny awareness of the beauty of all the faces circled round the crackling fires of the village. Ah, the pain eased, the torn flesh she finally did not own healed in its freedom, and a new description of herself, so brutally earned, forced itself into her heart: she was Virgin.
-Get the man some food, commanded one beautiful Aunt ferociously.
The ceremony must not be completed, the old magic must not be honored! Catherine Tekakwitha stood up. The hunter smiled, the Aunts smiled, Catherine Tekakwitha smiled sadly, the hunter thought she smiled shyly, the Aunts thought she smiled slyly, the hunter thought the Aunts smiled greedily, the Aunts thought the hunter smiled greedily, the hunter even thought that the little slit in the head of his cock smiled, and maybe Catherine thought her cunt was smiling in its new old home. A strange luminous fish smiled.
-Smack, smack, yum, said the hunter inarticulately.
Catherine Tekakwitha fled the squatting hungry people. Past the fires, the bones, the excrement, she rushed through the door, past the palisade, through the smoky village, into the vaults of the birch trees standing palely in the moonlight.
-After her!
-Don’t let her get away!
-Fuck her in the bushes!
-Give her one for me!
-Hoo hoo hoo!
-Eat hair pie!
-All the way!
-Turn her over and do it for me!
-Cover her face with a flag!
-Drive it home!
-Hurry!
-The Shy One flies!
-Screw her in the ass!
-She needs it bad!
-Tcheue! Chireue! Tzeuere!
-Up to the hilt!
-In the armpit!
-…walk with me, sit beside me on a mountain…
-Puff! Puff!
-Do her a favor!
-Screw the pimples off her!
-Gobble it!
-Deus non denegat gratiam!
-Piss in it!
-Come back!
-Algonquin hussy!
-Stuck-up Frenchie!
-Shit in her ear!
-Make her say uncle!
-That way!
The hunter entered the woods. He would have no trouble finding her, the Shy One, the One Who Hobbled. He had followed swifter game than she. He knew every trail. But where was she? He plunged forward. He knew a hundred soft places, beds of pine needle, couches of moss. He stepped on a twig and cracked it, the first time in his life! This was turning into a very expensive fuck. Where are you? I won’t hurt you. A branch struck him in the face.
-Ho ho, the voices of the village drifted on the wind.
Above the Mohawk River a fish hovered in a halo of blond mist, a fish that longed for nets and capture and many eaters at the feast, a smiling luminous fish.
-Deus non denegat gratiam.
When Catherine Tekakwitha got home the next morning the Aunts punished her. The young hunter had returned home hours ago, humiliated. His family was enraged.
-Lousy Algonquin! Take that! And that!
-Pow! Sock!
-You’ll sleep beside the shit from now on!
-You’re not part of the family any more, you’re just a slave!
-Your mother was no good!
-You’ll do what we say! Slap!
Catherine Tekakwitha smiled cheerfully. It wasn’t her body they were kicking around, not her belly the old ladies jumped on in the moccasins she had embroidered. She looked up through the smoke hole while they tormented her. As le P. Lecompte remarks, Dieu lui avait donné une âme que Tertullien dirait ‘naturellement chrétienne.’