'The Naming Of Parts'

Short Stories by Christopher Long
00-02-1998

A Glimpse Of Childhood – (Fr)

Introducing The English Knight – (Fr)

The Boy Who Knew Too Little – (Fr)

The Knight At The Crossroads – (Fr)

The Knight Who Saw Too Much – (Fr)

The Knight's Garden – (Fr)

The Knight And The Damsel – (Fr)

The King's Fortress – (Fr)

The Knight And His Silver Bowl – (Fr)

The French translation of 'The Naming of Parts'

THE NAMING OF PARTS

By Christopher Long

Anatomists and gynaecologists have appropriated too many beautiful words which were once among the most lovely of all first-names. Although now relegated to a nether world, where they perform humble duties, these names have noble origins which deserve to be better known.

CLITORIS

Once there was a young and beautiful princess who was forever bored and constantly demanding that her maids find somebody to entertain her. A succession of story-tellers, acrobats and dancers were ordered to perform for her but none succeeded in pleasing her.

One day, watching from her window, the princess saw a young goat-herd delivering milk to the palace dairy and ordered that he be brought before her.

"What is your name and how can you entertain me?" she asked.

"My name is Clitoris," the boy replied, "but I can't imagine how I might entertain you. I live alone on the hills with my goats and meet no-one. I know only how to entertain myself."

And from under his shirt he produced a simple flute.

"Really?" said the princess as she waved her maids from the room. "Then why should you not play it for me."

"Because only I can hear its music," the boy replied.

"You shall play for me all the same," said the princess, taking him into a private room. Some hours later the boy emerged and the maids went in to find the princess looking entirely contented for the first time in her life."

"But we heard no music from your chamber," said the astonished maids.

"I'm sure you didn't," the princess replied. "The melody is in his imagination and, since it is intended for his amusement alone, that is where it remains."

"Then how did he please you?" they asked.

"He showed me how to play a flute and that a princess as much as a goat-herd may possess within the folds of her cloak a small source of great beauty and pleasure requiring no performers and no audience."

PERINEUM

As dusk fell in the broad valley below the Mont Chenis pass, in the foothills of the Alps, three cohorts of the Roman army lay sheltering from the driving rain huddled behind their shields and drawing their blankets more tightly around them.

Among the lines of men only two figures moved. One was the tall silhouette of their commander, restlessly pacing the lines and deep in thought. The other was a young boy who was rousing one grumbling soldier after another, selling them bread from a leather bag. Eventually the two met.

"Where are you from, boy?" the commander asked.

"From Susa, my lord," replied the boy nervously and pointing to where the mountain torrent could be heard crashing over boulders among a small cluster of cottages now lost in the gloom of the valley below.

"Then you can help me," the commander said. "If you will leave my men to sleep and instead climb to the head of the pass above us, I will buy all the bread you can supply if you can tell me the strength of the forces that await us on the other side."

Leaving his bag at the commander's feet the boy set off into the dark and by dawn had reached the summit of the pass from where he surveyed the opposing forces. Following the commander's instructions he sat just below the skyline and set about counting the horses and supply carts far below. Suddenly he heard a noise beside him. Crouching in the long grass he saw a boy a little younger than himself watching him nervously. At first neither of them knew what to say.

"What are you doing here," the older boy asked at last.

"Nothing... just looking for rabbits," the other replied uncertainly.

"Where are you from?"

"From... from over there. From the gorge."

"What gorge?"

"The great gorge. Haven't you heard of it? It's the deepest gorge in the world with fortresses on the cliffs."

"I might have done... actually, I'm from Susa."

"Where's Susa?"

"It's a great city. Everyone lives in great houses and has a horse and the people speak many languages and you can buy red fish which come from the sea."

"In the gorge you can find fish longer than a man's arm," the younger boy replied.

They were silent for a while until the older boy asked:

"Did you happen to pass the army below?"

"I saw it a little," the younger boy said idly, kicking at a pebble. "But it's very big. Ten thousand men and a thousand horses at least." And then after a silence he added: "And they say there's a Roman army approaching? Did you happen to see it on your way?"

"Well of course," the older boy replied. "It's so big that it fills the whole valley and there are twenty-thousand men and three thousand horses and the Emperor is there."

After a while and with nothing more to say to each other the boys nodded farewell and set off back the way they had come.

Later that morning the commander listened intently as he heard that the enemy were at least ten thousand strong with a thousand horses and had behind them a well-defended gorge.

"My boy, you have served Rome well today," he said. "We would have no chance against such odds. This must be the limit of our ambitions. We must hope they never discover how small our forces are compared with theirs. Here's money for your bread but first tell me your name."

"Perineum from Susa," the boy replied.

"Ah well, young Perineum from Susa," mused the commander with a smile, "you will forever be the boy who stood valiantly between honour and ignominy."

FUNDUS & VULVA

When Fundus told his mother that he intended to marry Vulva she wept inconsolably.

"She may look pretty and she may appear sweet to you now," she said, "but believe me she will make you miserable, she'll bleed you dry and work you to an early death. I know you won't believe what I say, but I'm a woman as well as your mother and I tell you she has acquisitive eyes and mean lips. Look at her clothes and jewellery! You'll be a beast of burden for the rest of your life."

But Fundus ignored his mother's warnings just as surely as she ignored the fact that he was probably the laziest and most feckless son any mother could have had the misfortune to bear. He and Vulva were duly married and in no time at all everything his mother predicted turned out to be true.

For a few brief years his nagging, harridan of a wife drove the idle man out of their house each day to labour at ever more mundane and demeaning work. And every evening she would stand at the door to take the wages from his hand while she planned how this too might be spent satisfying her vanity in the market square, ensuring that she was the envy of every woman in the town.

Then, one evening, the master of the local quarry arrived at Vulva's door to say that Fundus, the most useless and idle man it had ever employed, had died of exhaustion. His body was lying on the steps of the church, awaiting its burial. Vulva said it was typical he should chose to die just when they hadn't a penny to their names and so the quarry-master grudgingly gave her five pounds.

But Vulva's disappointments were not over. The priest informed her that Fundus had expressed a formal wish for his grave to be marked with a large stone. In planning for his death, it seemed, he had for once in his life been thorough. The stone was to be engraved in Latin, first with his date of birth, then with his name and finally the date of his death.

And the cost? "Well," said the priest, rubbing his chin, "three pounds for the plot, two pounds for the stone and the engraving at one shilling per letter." Vulva, with only five pounds in the world, howled in protest. But the priest explained that her husband's wishes were binding and that the only solution was a pauper's grave below the walls in a dank area into which flowed the effluent of all the city's sewers.

As she contemplated the shame that awaited her, the priest was calculating the cost of the stone with its lettering. And still, it seemed, five pounds would not quite cover the cost. But if just one letter were removed from the inscription, all would be well. Few people in the city read Latin, he told her.

Every day, to the end of her long life, Vulva had to listen to the women in the market taking some pleasure in reminding her that one day she would find peace beside her husband. And every year the stone sank a little deeper into the damp ground beneath the city walls until only the word 'anus' – and which should have read 'annus' – could be seen.