“What pleasure does it give you, Dad?”
Phaed smiled, a lubricious smile, his tongue touching the corners of his lips. “I like it,” he said. “You learn to like it.”
Days and nights went by. One time Phaed went away for ten or twelve days, leaving Sam chained beside a store of food, reminding Sam before he went that if Sam yelled or attracted attention, the Awateh would be glad to hear of it. He left Sam another book of doctrine, The Doctrine of Freedom, telling him to learn it. Sam sat at a dirty window, peering down into the street, silent as a ghost, reading to himself. He was a ghost, he told himself, haunting this old building. People had been born here once. Nothing good was born here now.
“What is the place of women in the creation of the One God?”
“Women have no place. They are not followers of God, they are merely processes by which followers may be created. They are to be kept private, kept quiet, kept healthyuntil they have borne children, and then they may be disposed of.”
“What are the numbers of those who will acknowledge the One God in the last days?”
“If there is one, and that one the only living one, one is enough.”
“What is the reward of the Faithful?”
“Paradise.”
“Are there women in Paradise?”
“There are virgins in Paradise, for the pleasure of the Faithful, but they are not human women.”
“I suppose you want that explained, too.” Phaed sneered.
“What are these women in Paradise, Dad?”
“Pure virgins.”
“You mean always?”
“Always. Every time a man takes one, she’s a virgin. No other man has ever had her or ever will.”
“Why would that please a man?”
“She’s yours. She’s tight, and it hurts her, and she cries out. Those little cries. The virgins have no thoughts. They never talk, they just sing or make those noises. Your Mam used to cry like that, at first.”
Sam swallowed and chose to ignore this. “Then the women of Paradise are nothing but dolls, manikins, things for you to rape. Don’t you want more than that?”
“What more than that is there, boy?”
“Don’t you want to know her thoughts? Don’t you want to know what she is?”
“Why would I care?” asked Phaed. “She’s a woman. Nothing about her would interest me. The Almighty knows that. Why else would he put pure brainless virgins in Paradise?” He watched Sam then, seeing the expression on his face, and then he laughed, mockingly. “When I married your mam, boy, I thought I’d come close to having one ahead of time!” And he roared with laughter again.
Sam swallowed anger. “But you care for her! I know you do!”
Phaed snapped, angrily. “I do what’s convenient, boy. Perhaps soon now it will be more convenient for me to remember she left me and made me a mockery.”
Sam shook his head. “You let her go, Dad. She asked you to come with her. Why pretend now that you cared?”
“Why not pretend whatever I like if it makes my life easier? We learn that, you see, we Faithful. We learn to say to ourselves whatever we need to say to make the task easy. We learn to say, ‘For God and Voorstod,’ when we blow up some old lady in the toilet or some schoolyard full of children. We wouldn’t necessarily do it for ourselves, you see, but we can do it for God and Voorstod. It’s the same thing with your mam. It may make it easier for me if I say she betrayed me.”
“But it’s not true,” blurted Sam, unable to keep quiet.
“ ‘What I say ten times is true.’ That’s one of our proverbs. We teach the young men to fill their heads with such words. Prayers. Chants. Endless circles of noise. The same sounds repeated over and over until they fill the mind. ‘Resolution is the weapon of God; thought is the enemy of resolution; words keep thought out; therefore, learn words,’ say the Scriptures. Even on Manhome, our sons learned words, by rote, to keep them from the dangers of thinking. What God wants followers who think and doubt? The Almighty wants Faithful, who obey!”
Time seemed endless. Day succeeded day. Sam counted, and lost count, and counted again. At least ninety days, he thought. Certainly no less than eighty. Sam learned Scripture. Sam learned doctrine. He believed none of it, but he learned it. Between the harsh lessons he made resolutions, what he would do and say when he returned to Hobbs Land. When he returned to Maire and Sal and even China. The things he would be sure to say to the women. The things he would be sure to do for the women. So they would know he cared for them.
He had thought his pronouncement of his commitment was enough. “Marry me, China,” he had said, in effect. What he had meant was, “Marry me so I can stop wooing you, stop worrying about you, stop being jealous of you. Marry me so I can put you in a box and punish you if you climb out.”
And the same with Maire, and Sal. “Here’s your birthday bouquet, Mam, now take this ration of reassurance and don’t bother me for a season. Here’s a Harvest gift, Sal, now do not pester me for more.”
So much easier that way, to put them in boxes and consider that the lids would keep them safe and away from other suitors, other sons, other brothers. Particularly easy when they had no other sons, no other brothers.
Though, a voice whispered, they might find them, somewhere. Blood kinship was not the only tie of the heart.
A night came at last when they went to the roof and there were no bodies in the square, a night when Phaed kept losing his place in the book, getting angry, putting down his whip, then looking for it, and being unable
