The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur. Страница 78

The girl had already used up a full day's adult ration. She replugged the ostrich egg, and though Centaine pleaded and stretched out both hands appealingly, she replaced it firmly in the leather carrying satchel.

Just a little more, please, Centaine whispered, but the old woman ignored her and turned to her companion.

They argued, using their hands, graceful birdlike gestures, fluttering and flicking their fingers.

The old woman wore a headband of flat white beads round her neck and upper arms. Around her waist was a short leather skirt and over one shoulder a cape of spotted fur. Both garments were made from a single skin, unshaped and unstitched. The skirt was held in place by a rawhide girdle from which were suspended a collection of tiny gourds and antelope-horn containers, and she carried a long stave, the sharp end of which was weighted by a pierced stone.

Centame lay and watched her avidly. She recognized intuitively that her life was under discussion, and that the old woman was her advocate.

All that you say, revered old grandfather, is undoubtedly true. We are on a journey, and those who cannot keep up and endanger the rest, must be left. That is the tradition. Yet, if we should wait that long, H'ani pointed to a segment of the sun's transit across the sky which was approximately an hour! then this child might find enough strength and such a short wait would put us in no danger. O'wa kept making a deep glottal sound and flicking both hands from the wrist. It was an expressive gesture that alarmed Centaine.

Our journey is an arduous one, and we still have great distances to travel. The next water is many days; to loiter here is folly. O'wa wore a crown on his head, and despite her plight Centaine found herself intrigued by it, until suddenly she realized what it was. In a beaded rawhide headband the old man had placed fourteen tiny arrows. The arrows were made of river reeds, the flights were eagles feathers, and the heads, which were pointed sykwards, were carved from white bone. Each barb was discoloured by a dried paste, like freshly made toffee, and this it was that recalled to Centaine the description from Levaillant's book of African travels.

Poison! Centaine whispered. Poisoned arrows. She shuddered, and then remembered the hand-drawn illustration from the book. They are Bushmen. These are real live Bushmen! She managed to push herself upright, and both the little people looked back at her.

Already she is stronger, H'ani pointed out, but O'wa began to rise.

We are on a journey, the most important journey, and the days are wasting. Suddenly H'ani's expression altered. She was staring at Centaine's body. When Centaine sat up, the cotton blouse, already ragged, had caught and exposed one of her breasts. Seeing the old woman's interest, Centaine realized her nudity and hastily covered herself, but now the old woman hopped close to her and leaned over her.

impatiently she pushed Centaine's hands aside and with the surprisingly powerful fingers of her narrow, delicatelooking hands, she pressed and squeezed Centaine's breasts.

Centaine winced and protested and tried to pull away, but the old woman was as determined and authoritative as Anna had been. She opened the torn blouse and took one of Centaine's nipples between forefinger and thumb and milked it gently. A clear droplet appeared on the tip and H'ani hummed to herself and pushed Centaine backwards on to the sand. She put her hand up under the canvas skirt, and her little fingers prodded and probed skilfully into Centaine's lower belly.

At last Hlani sat back on her heels and grinned at her mate triumphantly.

Now you cannot leave her, she gloated. It is the strongest tradition of the people that you cannot desert a woman, any woman San or other, who carries new life within her. And O'wa made a weary gesture of capitulation and sank down to his haunches again. He affected an aloof air, sitting a little detached as his wife trotted down to the edge of the sea with the weighted digging stick in her hands. She inspected the wet sand carefully as the wavelets swirled around her ankles and then she thrust the point of the stick into the sand and walked backwards, ploughing a shallow furrow. The point of the stick struck a solid object beneath the sand and H'ani darted forward, digging with her fingers, picked out something and dropped it into her carrying bag. Then she repeated the process.

Within a short time she returned to where Centaine lay and emptied a pile of shellfish from her bag on to the sand. They were double-shelled sand clams, Centaine saw at once, and she was bitterly angry at her own stupidity.

For days she had starved and thirsted as she had hobbled over a beach alive with these luscious shellfish.

The old woman used a bone cutting tool to open one of the clams, holding it carefully so as not to spill the juices from the mother-of-pearl-lined shell, and she passed it to Centaine. Ecstatically, Centaine slurped the juices from the half-shell and then dug out the meat with her grubby fingers and popped it into her mouth.

Bon! she told H'ani, her whole face screwed up with exquisite pleasure as she chewed, Trs bon! H'ani grinned and bobbed her head, working on the next clam with the bone knife. it was an inefficient tool that made the opening of each shell a laborious business and broke chips of the shell on to the body of the clam that gritted under Centaine's teeth. After three more clams, Centaine groped for her clasp knife and opened the blade.

O'wa had been demonstrating his disapproval by squatting a little apart and staring out to sea, but at the click of the knife blade his eyes swivelled to Centaine and then widened with intense interest.

The San were men of the Stone Age, but although the quarrying and smelting of working iron were beyond their culture, O'wa had seen iron implements before. He had seen those picked up by his people from the battlefields of the black giants, others that had been taken secretly from camps and bivouacs of strangers and travellers, and once he had known a man of the San who had possessed an implement as this girl now held in her hand.

The man's name had been Xja, the clicking sound at the back of his teeth that a horseman makes to urge on his steed, and Xja had taken O'was eldest sister to wife thirty-five years before. As a young man, Xja had found the skeleton of a white man at a dry water-hole at the edge of the Kalahari. The body of the old elephant hunter had lain beside the skeleton of his horse, with his long four-to-the-pound elephant gun at his side.

Xja had not touched the gun, because he knew from legend and bitter experience that thunder lived in this strange magical stick, but gingerly he had examined the contents of the rotting leather saddle-bags and discovered such treasures as Bushmen before him had only dreamed of. Firstly there was a leather pouch of tobacco, a month's supply of it, and Xja had tucked a pinch under his lip and happily examined the rest of the hoard. Quickly he discarded a book and a roll of cardboard, which contained small balls of heavy grey metal, they were ugly and of no possible use. Then he discovered a beautiful flask of yellow metal on a leather strap. The flask was filled with useless grey powder which he spilled into the sand, but the flask itself was so marvellously shiny that he knew no woman would be able to resist it. Xja, who was not a mighty hunter nor a great dancer or singer, had long pined after the sister of O'wa who had a laugh that sounded like running water. He had despaired of ever catching her attention, had not even dared to shoot a miniature feather-tipped arrow from his ceremonial love bow in her direction, but with his shiny flask in his hand he knew that at last she would be his woman.

Then Xja found the knife, and he knew that with it he would win the respect of the men of his tribe for which he longed almost as much as he longed for the lovely sister of O'wa. It was almost thirty years since O'wa had last seen Xja and his sister. They had disappeared into the lonely wastes of the dry land to the east, driven from the clan by the strange emotions of envy and hatred that the knife had evoked in the other men of the tribe.