Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [85]
“Playthings, flimsies, some pretty things we make for a moment. They’re called butterflies. But objects we make for daily use, we make to last. It would be a pity to use up scarce copper or steel on a machine that worked poorly.”
“Ummmm. Luxury items are made for once only and the necessities to last?”
“Not exactly.” Luciente stopped in front of a glass wall that mirrored them to admire her dress, turning to and fro like a child in a new suit. “Luxuries fall into two categories: circulating and once-only. Look, they’re playing web. There’s Jackrabbit and Bolivar.”
About ten people were playing with long luminous cords, which they fixed somehow at intervals and wove in and out so that a great dully glowing web was created in which people got caught. A box would be built around them before they were aware or could dash out, and then they were apparently a prisoner until embraced and let out when everybody was so trapped but one. Jackrabbit was hopping among the strands, leaving a nimble zigzag wake.
“Circulating luxuries pass through the libraries of each village—beautiful new objects get added and some things wear out or get damaged. Costumes, jewelry, vases, paintings, sculpture—some is always on loan to our village. And always passing on. Some are for personal wearing, at feasts and rituals. Some are for enjoyment in the children’s house, the meetinghouse, the fooder, the labs, the diving gear factory. Outside as we walk around.”
“But you have to give them back. You don’t get to keep anything for yourself! It all belongs to the government?”
“We pass along the pleasure, Pepper and Salt. Think, for my birthday last year I wore a sable cloak like the Queen of the Night. I have worn emeralds and for a month a Michelangelo hung where I could see it every day. All the pleasure I can suck from these things I’ve had and pass on to pleasure others!”
Bolivar was about to be enclosed in a box. Quickly Jackrabbit leaped forward and was sealed in with him. The others laughed and called out. Jackrabbit and Bolivar embraced in the fictitious confines of the cell, the walls of luminous rope. Connie could feel that Luciente was not pleased. Jealousy like a damp wind, she could feel it. She was sad for Luciente. So they did feel jealousy here. Both young men were dressed alike, naked except for knee-length cloaks thrown back. Each had painted on his chest an elaborate flower, Jackrabbit’s a lush peony, Bolivar’s a trumpeting pale lily. Luciente forgot what she had been saying, forgot her bouncy explanations, and her eyes brooded on them twinned in the web, their slender bodies embracing naked under the rippled backs of the cloaks. Bolivar had been Jackrabbit’s lover long before Luciente; Bolivar was older than Jackrabbit but much younger than Luciente, who stood fingering the chiffon of her dress, clumsy before their straight, supple, lithe alikeness, feeling cast out from the luminous web of their play.
She took Luciente’s arm, as Luciente had so often seized hers, and pulled her firmly downhill in the other direction. “Show me more. So many people. Are they only from Mattapoisett and Cranberry?”
Luciente peered into her face, and her black eyes said she understood Connie’s kindness. Gently Luciente brushed her lips against hers. “No. It was a feast only for Cranberry and us—the dinner part. But the afternoon games were for everybody and this evening people are here from all the towns in Mouth-of-Mattapoisett. Whoever feels like partying with us.”
Feeling she had intruded on Luciente’s privacy, which she could hardly avoid when they were linked, she wanted to give her friend a piece of her own life. “Tomorrow my niece Dolly is going to visit me for the first time since I been in.”
“Niece Dolly … Ah, person you protected from per seller in a situation of brutality and exploitation! I recall. You’re keening to see per?”
“Yes …”
“Good. Let love flow between you. You must forgive Dolly for betraying you, and Dolly must forgive you for trying to save per and failing, no?”
“I’m excited. She’s broken