It was pleasantly distracting. “Does this mean women have no anger of their own?”
She laughed again. “No. All things have anger. But women have many uses for their anger. And men have more anger than they can use, too much for their own good.”
“How can one have too much of the desire to live and grow and make?” I asked. “It seems more would be better.”
Penthe shook her head, brushing her hair back with one hand. “No. It is like food. One meal is good. Two meals is not better.” She frowned again. “No. It is more like wine. One cup of wine is good, two is sometimes better, but ten . . .” She nodded seriously. “That is very much like anger. A man who grows full of it, it is like a poison in him. He wants too many things. He wants all things. He becomes strange and wrong in his head, violent.”
She nodded to herself. “Yes. That is why anger is the right word, I think. You can tell a man who has been keeping all his anger to himself. It goes sour in him. It turns against itself and drives him to breaking rather than making.”
“I can think of men like that,” I said. “But I can think of women too.”
“All things have anger,” she repeated with a shrug. “A stone does not have much compared to a budding tree. It is the same with people. Some have more, or less. Some use it wisely. Some do not.” She gave me a wide smile. “I have a great deal, which is why I am so fond of sex and fierce in my fighting.” She bit at my chest again, less playfully this time, and began to work her way up to my neck.
“But if you take the anger from a man in sex,” I said, struggling to concentrate, “doesn’t that mean the more sex you have, the more you want?”
“It is like the water one uses to prime a pump,” she said hotly against my ear. “Come now, I will have all of it, even if it takes us all day and half the night.”
We eventually moved from the grassy field to the baths, and then to Penthe’s house of two snug rooms built against the side of a bluff. The moon was in the sky and had been watching us for some time through the window, though I doubt we showed her anything she hadn’t seen before.
“Is that enough for you?” I said breathlessly. We were side by side in her pleasantly capacious bed, the sweat drying off our bodies. “If you take much more of it, I might not have enough anger left to speak or breathe.”
My hand lay on the flat plane of her belly. Her skin was soft and smooth, but when she laughed I could feel the muscles of her stomach jump, going hard as sheets of steel.
“It is enough for now,” she said, exhaustion plain in her voice. “It would upset Vashet if I left you empty as a fruit with all the juice pressed out.”
Despite my long day, I was oddly wakeful, my thoughts bright and clear. I remembered something she had said earlier. “You mentioned that a woman has many uses for her anger. What use does a woman have for it that a man does not?”
“We teach,” she said. “We give names. We track the days and tend to the smooth turning of things. We plant. We make babies.” She shrugged. “Many things.”
“A man can do those things as well,” I said.
Penthe chuckled. “You have the wrong word,” she said, rubbing at my chin. “A beard is what a man makes. A baby is something different, and that you have no part of.”
“We don’t carry the baby,” I said, slightly offended. “But still, we play our part in making it.”
Penthe turned to look at me, smiling as if I had made a joke. Then her smile faded. She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me for another long moment. “Are you in serious?”
Seeing my perplexed expression, her eyes grew wide with amazement and she sat upright on the bed. “It is true!” she said. “You believe in man-mothers!” She giggled, covering the bottom half of her face with both hands. “I never believed it was true!” She lowered her left hand, revealing an excited grin as she gestured amazed delight.
I felt I should be irritated, but I couldn’t quite muster the energy. Perhaps some of what she said about men giving away their anger had some truth to it. “What is a man-mother?” I asked.
“Are you not making a joke?” she asked, one hand still half-covering her smile. “Do you truly believe a man puts a baby in a woman?”
“Well . . . yes,” I said a little awkwardly. “In a manner of speaking. It takes a man and a woman to make a baby. A mother and a father.”
“You have a word for it!” she said, delighted. “They told me this too. With the stories of dirt soup. But I never thought it a real story!”
I sat up myself at this point, growing concerned. “You do know how babies are made, don’t you?” I asked, gesturing serious earnestness. “What we have been doing for most of the day is what makes a baby.”
She looked at me for a moment in stunned silence, then dissolved helplessly into laughter, trying to speak several times only to have it overwhelm her again when she looked up at the expression on my face.
Penthe put her hands on her belly, prodding it as if puzzled. “Where is my baby?” She looked down at her flat belly. “Perhaps I have been sexing wrong these years.” When she laughed, the muscles across her stomach flickered, making a pattern like a turtle’s shell. “I should have a hundred babies if what you say is true. Five hundred babies!”
“It does not happen every time there is sex,” I said. “There are only certain times when a woman is ripe for a baby.”
“And have you done this?” she asked, looking at me with mock seriousness while a smile tugged at her mouth. “Have you made a baby with a woman?”
“I have been careful not to do such a thing,” I said. “There is an herb called silphium. I chew it every day, and it keeps me from putting a baby in a woman.”
Penthe shook her head. “This is more of your barbarian sex rituals,” she said. “Does bringing a man to the flowers also make a baby where you come from?”
I decided to take a different tack. “If men do not help with making babies, how do you explain that babies look like their fathers?”
“Babies look like angry old men,” Penthe said. “All bald and with . . .” She hesitated, touching her cheek. “. . . with face lines. Perhaps the old men are the only ones making babies then?” She smirked.
“What about kittens?” I asked. “You have seen a litter of kittens. When a white cat and a black cat have sex, you get kittens both white and black. And kittens of both colors.”
“Always?” she asked.
“Not always.” I admitted. “But most times.”
“What if there is a yellow kitten?” she asked.
Before I could put together an answer, she waved the question away. “Kittens have little to do with this,” she said. “We are not like animals. We do not go into season. We do not lay eggs. We do not make cocoons, or fruit, or seeds. We are not dogs or frogs or trees.”
Penthe gave me a serious look. “You are committing a false thinking. You could as easily say two stones make baby stones by banging against each other until a piece breaks off. Therefore two people make baby peoples in the same way.”
I fumed, but she was right. I was committing a fallacy of analogy. It was faulty logic.
Our conversation continued along this vein for some time. I asked her if she had ever known a woman to get pregnant who had not had sex in the previous months. She said she didn’t know of any woman who would willingly go three months without sex, except those who were traveling among the barbarians, or very ill, or very old.
Eventually Penthe waved a hand to stop me, gesturing exasperation. “Do you hear your own excuses? Sex makes babies, but not always. Babies look like man-mothers, but not always. The sex must be at the right time, but not always. There are plants that make it more likely, or less likely.” She shook her head. “You must realize what you say is thin as a net. You keep sewing new threads, hoping it will hold water. But hoping does not make it true.”
Seeing me frown, she took my hand and gestured comfort into it as she had before in the dining hall, all the laughter gone out of her face. “I can see you think this truly. I can understand why barbarian men would want to believe it. It must be comforting to think you are important in this way. But it is simply not.”