It has been said. She will be again. She will return.
At that moment she will surrender herself to the only company that will console her for something that will begin to be sketched in her dreams as “something lost.”
This her instinct will tell her. What is “lost” will be a timeless village that for her will forever be future, never it was but now it will be, because there she will live the happiness that was not lost, but will be found again.
How will it be, this thing that will be lost only to be found again?
It is what she will know best. If not the only thing, at least it will be the best thing she will know.
There will be a center in that place. Someone will occupy that center. It will be a woman like herself. She will see her and she will see herself, because she will have no other way to speak those terrible words I am without swiftly translating them into the image of the large figure sitting on the ground, covered with
rags and metal, objects that will be deemed valuable enough to be traded for meat and vessels, for herds and precious staffs to be traded for other things—of lesser value, she will add, but more necessary for living.
There will be little she will want for. The mother will send men to look for food, and they will return, panting and bleeding, with boars and deer slung across their shoulders, but sometimes they will come back frightened, loping on four feet, and that will be when the father stands up and shows them, this way, standing, forget the other way, that is behind us, now we will be like this, on two feet, this is the law, and first they will stand up, but when the mother again settles her broad buttocks on the throne they will gather around her, they will embrace her and kiss her, they will pat her hands, and she will make signs with her fingers on the heads of her children, and she will repeat what she will always say, This is the law, you will all be my children, I will love all of you the same, none will be better than another, this will be the law, and they will weep and they will sing with joy and they will kiss the seated woman with great love, and she, the daughter, will join in the warm act of love, and the mother will repeat, ceaselessly, You are all equal, this will be the law, everything shared, whatever we need to live and be happy, love, protection, threat, courage, love again, all of you always …
Then the mother will ask her to sing, and she will wish that the protection she will always need will be forthcoming, that is what she sings.
She sings that she wants the company she will always long for.
She sings that she wants to avoid the dangers she will meet along the road.
Because from now on she will be alone and she will not know how to defend herself.
Before, we all had the same voice, and we sang without need to force ourselves.
Because she loved us all the same.
Now has come the time of a single chief who organizes punishments and rewards and tasks. This is the law.
Now has come the time to send away the women and to deliver them to other villages to avoid the horror of brother and sister fornicating together. This is the law.
Now has come a new time in which the father commands and indicates his preference for the oldest son. This is the law.
Before we were equal.
The same voices.
She will miss them.
She will begin to imitate what she hears in the world.
In order not to be alone.
She will be guided by the sound of a flute.