Sexing the Cherry Read Online Free PDF Page B

serpents, the very beast that drove us all from Paradise and makes us still to sin. These beasts are so wily that if they hear the notes of a snake-charmer they lay one ear to the earth and stopper up the other with their tails. Would I could save myself from sin by stoppering up my ears with a tail or any manner of thing.
    I am a sinner, not in body but in mind. I know what love sounds like because I have heard it through the wall, but I do not know what it feels like. What can it be like, two bodies slippery as eels on a mud-flat, panting like dogs after a Pig?
    I fell in love once, if love be that cruelty which takes us straight to the gates of Paradise only to remind us they are closed for ever.
    There was a boy who used to come by with a coatful of things to sell. Beads and ribbons hung on the inside and his pockets were crammed with fruit knives and handkerchiefs and buckles and bright thread. He had a face that made me glad.
    I used to get up an hour early and comb my hair, which normally I would do only at Christmas-time in honour of our Saviour. I decked myself in my best clothes like a bullock at a fair, but none of this made him notice me and I felt my heart shrivel to the size of a pea. Whenever he turned his back to leave I always stretched out my hand to hold him a moment, but his shoulder-blades were too sharp to touch. I drew his image in the dirt by my bed and named all my mother's chickens after him.
    Eventually I decided that true love must be clean love and I boiled myself a cake of soap...
    I hate to wash, for it exposes the skin to contamination. I follow the habit of King James, who only ever washed his fingertips and yet was pure in heart enough to give us the Bible in good English.
    I hate to wash, but knowing it to be a symptom of love I was not surprised to find myself creeping towards the pump in the dead of night like a ghoul to a tomb. I had determined to cleanse all of my clothes, my underclothes and myself. I did this in one passage by plying at the pump handle, first with my right arm and washing my left self, then with my left arm and washing my right self. When I was so drenched that to wring any part of me left a puddle at my feet I waited outside the baker's until she began her work and sat myself by the ovens until morning. I had a white coating from the flour, but that served to make my swarthy skin more fair.
    In this new state I presented myself to my loved one, who graced me with all of his teeth at once and swore that if only he could reach my mouth he would kiss me there and then. I swept him from his feet and said, 'Kiss me now,' and closed my eyes for the delight. I kept them closed for some five minutes and then, opening them to see what had happened, I saw that he had fainted dead away. I carried him to the pump that had last seen my devotion and doused him good and hard, until he came to, wriggling like a trapped fox, and begged me let him down.
    'What is it?' I cried. 'Is it love for me that affects you so?'
    'No,' he said. 'It is terror.'
    I saw him a few months later in another part of town with a pretty jade on his arm and his face as bright as ever.

    In the morning the young girl, whose name was Zillah, told me she had been locked in this tower since her birth.
    This is not a tower,' I said. 'It is a house of some stature but nothing more.'
    'No,' she said. 'You are mistaken. Go to the window.'
    I did as she asked, and looked down a few feet over a street setting up for market. Women in leather aprons were piling radishes on wooden stalls, a priest was blessing a cargo of Holy Relics, while a saintly man, come early, was arguing over the price of a rib.
    It was a fine morning; the air smelt of lemons.
    As I looked down a stallholder turned his face and stared directly at me. I waved and smiled but he gave no sign of recognition. It did not trouble me; people are nervous of strangers.
    'Is it not terrifying?' said Zillah.
    Then I knew she must be having a game with me and I