The Books: “Sugar and Other Stories” – ‘The Dried Witch’ (A.S. Byatt)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

This excerpt is from “The Dried Witch”, another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories – by A.S. Byatt. This is an early version of one of Byatt’s fables. It has the sound of myth, or legend … there’s an impersonal tone to the narrator (which is quite different from the more chatty or subjective tones of many of her narrators – like the one in ‘Racine and the Tablecloth’, among others). The story takes place in a primitive society (primitive meaning: not modern, no dishwashers or cars, so just calm down) – perhaps in Africa – somewhere definitely hot. It’s not a Muslim community – the villagers believe in many gods. But it has the same hatred and suspicion of women. You just can’t win if you’re a woman. Everything is your fault. Infidelity? You brought it on. Sexuality is in women’s hands, completely. You’re raped? Your fault. The crime? Being a woman. Don’t try to win, you won’t be able to. Women are beheaded for being alone with a man who is not her relative. That fear hangs over all of the interpersonal relationships in the village. A-Oa is the heroine of our story … which feels like an analogy for menopause, but I may be reading too much into it. It feels like the devastation of not being OF USE anymore. A-Oa is a woman who has suffered extraordinary losses. She had four sons – all of whom died. Her husband went off to fight in some war – and never returned. The village now suspects that she is a “jinx”. She is bad luck. Not only is she bad luck – but she is purposefully malevolent. (She actually isn’t – but that’s how the village feels about her). She scares them. It’s like whatever bad luck hovers around her is catching. There’s also a fiery drought on. Everything is drying up. Is this the fault of the “jinx” too? The whole story has a malevolent feeling to it – A-Oa is blameless, yet is she? It’s almost like the demands of communal living insist on a literal interpretation of events – not too much room for grey areas. A-Oa has interactions with people full of subtlety, like we all do … but again: the literalists will take over, they turn everything ugly – those literal-minded people … and that’s what happens here. Meanwhile, A-Oa is also overwhelmingly aware of the dryness of her own body, the lack of saliva – it’s a torment.

I would say the story is about 5 or 6 pages too long. It loses its impact just a tiny bit …. the ending is powerful and terrible. Byatt could have gotten there quicker.

Here’s an excerpt.

Excerpt from from “The Dried Witch”, another short story from the collection Sugar and Other Stories – by A.S. Byatt.

The courtyards were busy and chattering: worshippers moved between greater and lesser temples, brown-robed monk ofs carried baskets of rain and vegetables, families squatted in the dust and argued. In the greater Temple were the huge figures of the Wise Ones, three and awful, taller and wider than the eye could ever see at once, so that it was as much as you could do to focus on a heavy knee, or monstrous, mountainous hand, or far away the three faces, up in the dark of the roofspace, staring quietly out over the heads of the worshipping ants, wonderfully, characteristically blank, bearing a family resemblance in their perfect stillness. The brass lamps were all at the level of the altars, which were themselves below the level of the vast feet, which were dusty but not travel-stained. This gave the illusion that the Wise Ones towered away for ever, out of sight, out of apprehension, out of form. A-Oak bought an incense stick from a monk, lit it, and stood it with the others on one of the smaller altars; she bowed repeatedly, and set out her dishes of beans and fruit before kneeling to pray, her black and silver hair in the dust. It seemed to her that she did not know how to pray or what to ask for. In the past she had asked for sons: or to be forgiven for whatever had caused the sons she had to sicken and fail. To one side of her, standing beside the altar, was a small squat brass boy, a fat and polished child, not dusty like everything else in the huge, smoky and rattling place, but gleaming where countless soft dark hands had touched and caressed him. He wore a small scarlet cloth on a string, just large enough to cover whatever he had between his legs. It was known that his touch brought luck, brought boy-children. On every previous visit A-Oa had touched him. When she was young and humorous she had tickled him like a lover, laughing back quietly at her husband; after the loss of the first child she had touched the warm metal with fearful fingertips. Once she had come with Da-Shin and had touched the boy furtively, laying her fingers over his metal ones, asking friendship, complicity. He had a smile that took up his whole face, curling both mouth and eyebrow corners. She tried to tell the Wise Ones that she was afraid, that she was not herself, that there were changes she couldn’t describe. All she was conscious of was the presence of the grinning boy, the sheen of countless handlings, gratified or denied, the dangling red cloth that was never lifted. She thought: when I am dead, this will be over, meaning by “this” the boy and all his works. The Wise Ones vouchsafed no relief, perhaps because she expected so little, was closed to their silent lines of life as her tongue and palate were to water.