The Book of Strange New Things(96)

‘My mother very impor???an??? woman,’ he said at last. ‘For me.’

In this second sojourn among the Oasans, God took care to keep Peter’s experiences in balance. His first death was followed, not too long afterwards, by his first birth. A woman called ????? – not a Jesus Lover, evidently – was having a baby and Peter was invited to the delivery. Jesus Lover One, his escort, implied that this was a great honour; it was certainly a surprise, because he’d never been formally acknowledged by the settlement’s unbelievers. But this was an event so joyous that the usual reticence was put aside and the entire Oasan community was united in hospitality.

The contrast between the death and the birth was striking. Whereas the body of Lover One’s mother had lain unattended in a back yard, mourned by no one except her son, left in solitude to attract insects, then treated as if it was nothing more than a vegetable patch, the woman who was about to give birth was the focus of an enormous amount of fuss. The streets leading to the house were remarkably busy, and everyone seemed to be heading for the same place. When Peter first saw the house, he thought it had caught fire, but the vapour wafting out of the windows was incense.

Inside, the expectant mother was not lying in a bed surrounded by medical equipment, or suffering the trials of labour under the supervision of a midwife, but walking around freely, socialising. Dressed in a snow-white variant of the Oasans’ usual attire – looser, thinner, more like a nightgown – she held court, accepting visitors’ congratulations one by one. Peter couldn’t tell if she was happy or anxious, but she was obviously not in pain, nor could he detect any swelling in her trim little body. Her gestures were elegant and formalised, like a medieval dance, with a whole host of partners. This was ?????’s Big Day.

Peter knew that the Oasans didn’t celebrate marriages. Their sexual pairings were private arrangements, so discreet as to be seldom alluded to. But the day of childbirth was a flagrantly public highlight in a woman’s life, a ritual exhibition every bit as extravagant as a wedding party. ?????’s house was heaving with well-wishers, dozens of bustling bodies dressed in bright colours. All the pencils in the Aquarelle set, thought Peter, as he strove to discern the difference between one robe and another. Vermillion, coral, apricot, copper, cerise, salmon – those were just some of the pinks he could put a name to; others were beyond his vocabulary. Across the room, weaving through the crowd, a person clad in pale violet was reunited with an old acquaintance clad in unripe plum, and only when they touched each other, glove to arm, did Peter see that two robes which he would otherwise have perceived as identical in colour were, in fact, unique. And so it went on, all over the house – people greeting each other, waving at each other, needing no more than a glance to know and be known. In the midst of this easily intimate hubbub, Peter appreciated he would need to develop a whole new relationship with colour if he was ever to recognise more than a couple of dozen individuals among this city’s multitudes.

It was a lovely party, Peter might have said, if he’d been asked to describe it for someone who wasn’t there. The only problem was, he felt surplus to requirements. Jesus Lover One had ushered him in, but kept meeting up with friends who drew him into conversations which, to Peter’s ears, were just gargles and wheezes. Asking for translations seemed rude and, in any case, there was no reason to suppose that a stranger would understand much of what was being discussed.

For a while he felt oafishly out of place, towering over everyone here, literally casting a shadow over them, and yet . . . irrelevant. But then he relaxed and began to enjoy himself. This gathering wasn’t about him: that was actually the beauty of it. He was privileged to observe, but he wasn’t on duty, nothing was expected of him; he was, for the first time since coming to Oasis, a tourist. So, he sat on his haunches in a corner of the room, allowed the blueish fog of incense to go to his head, and watched the expectant mother being garlanded with affection.

After what felt like hours of meeting and greeting, ????? abruptly signalled that she’d had enough. Exhaustion had apparently overcome her, and she sat on the floor, surrounded by a puddle of her gown’s white cloth. Her friends backed away as she pulled the hood off her head, revealing livid flesh sheened with sweat. She bent her head between her knees, as though she was about to faint or vomit.

Then the fontanelle in her head yawned open, and a large pink mass bulged out, glistening with frothy white lather. Peter jerked back in shock, convinced he was witnessing a violent death. One more convulsion and it was over. The baby was disgorged in a slithery spasm, sliding into the mother’s waiting arms. ????? raised her head high, her fontanelle puckering shut, the fleshy kernels of her face still livid. The whole room erupted in a whuffle of applause and a mass of voices joined forces to make an eerie cooing sound, as loud as a chord pumped out of a cathedral organ.

The baby was alive and well, already squirming to be released from its mother’s grasp. It had no umbilical cord and looked amazingly unlike a foetus: instead, it was a perfect miniature person, its arms, legs and head all in adult proportion. And, like a newborn horse or calf, it immediately tried to stand on its legs, figuring out the knack of balance even while its feet were still slippery with placental goo. The crowd applauded and cheered some more. ????? ceremoniously acknowledged the ovation, then set about cleaning the gunge off her child’s flesh with a damp cloth.

‘???????,’ she announced. Another great cheer went up.