Flight from Neveryon by Delany Samuel R

Author:Delany, Samuel R. [Delany, Samuel R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780575119260
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-09-28T20:00:00+00:00

4.11 If a mid-twentieth-century orthodox Freudian could return to Kolhari and present Nari with the theory of ‘penis envy’ (to explain her girlish desire for a son) and ‘sublimation’ (to explain her new success in her work), though myself I think the analysis would be false, Nari, a primitive woman in a superstitious time, would probably find the notion intriguing, even plausible.

There were a number of such fables about in that land in those days – especially among the barbarians.

* * *

4.2 Twenty-five years old, Zadyuk was the middle of three brothers. (Kudyuk – a different Kudyuk from Nari’s former petty-thief boyfriend – two years older than Zadyuk, had been gone from Kolhari six years now and had more than likely come to a bad end; he was seldom mentioned in his family. Namyuk, a year younger, had had a string of not terribly good jobs and a few times actually had got himself in trouble. He lived in the Spur, was going from bad to worse, and didn’t seem to care.) All three boys had been born in Kolhari, Zadyuk in the month of the Finch. Their father was a barbarian from the south. Their mother, half barbarian, was herself actually born in the city. Zadyuk’s parents’ life in Kolhari predated the coming of the Child Empress to the High Court of Eagles, and they clearly had mixed feelings about the most recent influx of southerners.

Zadyuk worked as a sandal maker at one of the leather stalls in the New Market, where, last year, he’d had an interesting bit of luck. The sandals he made were popular with the students out in Sallese. One evening, when he’d taken a wagon load of laundry out to the school for Nari (she was between drivers), in the yard among the school’s three buildings he saw a student wearing not the usual sole-with-straps (or, more usual, going barefoot), but rather the full, somewhat baggy leather foot-coverings that workers on rough and stone-filled construction sites used around the city.

Just then another boy recognized him from town as a sandal maker and approached: ‘Do you make shoes like that?’ the boy asked.

Zadyuk said: ‘Sure. Do you like them?’ Then he grinned. ‘Come on down to our stall. In the New Market. You know where it is.’ The next morning he went into the leather stall early and made two pairs by opening: they took more leather but were simpler to make than the interweave of straps and buckles that were the stylish sandals of that day.

Toplin was in for his the hour the market opened.

Over the next three months Zadyuk sold over a hundred pairs of ‘work shoes’ to students. Zadyuk had begun that month as a worker at the stall of an aging boss who seldom came in. By the end of it, he was foreman of a stall of his own, employing three more leather-crafting artisans. And had been since.

But at Zadyuk’s counter, the youngsters did not have to put up with

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