Nakoa's Woman (29 page)

She kicked over the water paunch.

He smiled. “We will ride to the river for water. You see, your strength is returning!”

She hid her face. “I am a fool!” she whispered.

“Yes,” he agreed.

“You don’t understand English!”

“I understand you.”

“Dear God, what will I do?”

“Ride to the river.”

He helped her mount the bay, and he mounted Kutenai, and the two horses walked easily to the river. In the fresh running water they filled two paunches, and then rode back along the deserted trail. The land was so quiet, so fearsomely, awfully quiet. The shadow of the burial grounds stretched out from behind them, and weighed heavily upon Maria. She looked sadly at the ground, at the abandoned prairie Anatsa would not walk again when the new camp was made.

“You can go and see her,” Nakoa said. “You can see how peacefully she sleeps.”

“I don’t want to see her dead.”

“If that is all there was, this sleeping—then you would see how gently it came to her. If there is more than sleeping, then do not feel sadness at what you cannot know.”

“You said that when the medicine drum stopped for me, you were just a vessel to hear it beat again. Why would it be different for you than for Apikunni?”

“We were unmated. I was not whole.”

“You could lose me then, after…”

“When the circle is completed, wholeness can take loss with more strength. Until we have met, each of us will be empty.”

“What if we cannot meet?”

“We both will suffer and wail at our denial.”

That night they slept again upon separate couches, and she watched the lodge fire flicker lazily upon the shadowed walls. “Nakoa,” she asked, “when will we join the others?”

“Before the first snows. We will join them as they are ready to seek the prairie again. The camp stays in the mountains all the moon of the falling leaves, and then the camp divides, and separate blood bands seek the winter shelter that cannot protect a whole village.”

“Where is this?”

“Usually along the river bank, where the land offers protection from winter wind.”

“Then why do we ride to the mountains at all? If we are just to return to the prairie …?”

“I thought you would be lonely and would want to hear the drums and see Apeecheken and Sikapischis before we were alone for the winter. We can visit your friends and stay in the mountains if you would like. I know a beautiful warm and sheltered valley. We could spend the winter alone—there.”

“All right.”

“It is a beautiful valley,” he repeated softly. “I would like to be there with you when the snows leave it, and spring comes again.”

In the spring, would she be carrying his child?

“While we wait for you to grow strong,” he continued, “we will walk and ride together. I will show you how to find the camas root, and how to cook it. I will show you how the Blackfoot builds snares for the deer and the antelope, and how the Indian makes caches. We will gather roots and berries, and you can ride with me when I hunt, and learn the dressing of meat.”

And so it was. He was adamant about her working. He made her move, walk, ride, and she became so tired that she accepted each night’s sleep immediately.

The old Maria emerged from the shadows and relished the rich earth, the wind, and the sun upon the long prairie grass. She gained weight. Her breasts became full again, and her face bloomed with beautiful color. They became good friends. They laughed together, and talked. He sensed her moods with fearful omniscience, and stood firmly between her and the pathways of the past.

He was friend and teacher. He showed her how to roast entrails Indian fashion, turning them inside out before stuffing them so that the sweet fat covering the intestine was confined to the meat in roasting; how to cook meat with wild parsnip to bring out its natural juices; how to gather the camas root and to cook it in deep pits lined with sweet grass; how to start a fire without coals by using rotten touchwood and rubbing it up and down a sinew bow until an ember was started. She helped him build snares, rubbing the rawhide rope with buffalo tallow to disguise human smell, and they made caches for food by digging a hole four feet deep, lining the bottom with stones, and covering the top with a heavy slab. They cached food in trees, with rattles tied to the parfleche bags to keep small animals away, and they used parfleche bags as caches in water, and anchored them securely with heavy stones. They made fresh pemmican, adding peppermint leaves and wild cherries to the meat Nakoa hunted. He showed her the difference between game and war arrows, and taught her safety and caution upon the trail. He showed her how to read sign of man, the stirrings of the forest animals, and how to make camp in the open and still keep it hidden from a distance, for a lodge must be erected where no enemy could approach it secretly, and still be hidden as much as possible. They lit their cooking fires in the midday, for the wind was strongest then to dissipate the smoke, and there was no glare to serve as guide in the darkness. Their trails followed sheltered ravines and avoided hilltops even in Blackfoot territory.

More than a month had passed since they had been left alone in the village. The moon had grown in size and had become full again, lighting the prairie like day. Indian summer clung to the land, but sometimes in the mountain wind Maria thought she felt the first touch of fall.

One night when the moon had risen early they walked after their meal. He held her hand as he had done long ago. There was an urgency in his touch, and he allowed himself to study her.

“You are contented,” he said. “You have finished seeking shadows.

Maria looked at the abandoned village site, and the warm quiet prairie. “I feel at peace,” she answered.

“I am grateful for this. Numbness is gone if your feelings have returned.”

She smiled. “Tonight I am even content with both Marias. You said I would have to accept two the lady in the waters—whichever one of us was the image.”

“You do not have to destroy what you accept. And fighting within the self is fighting an unmatched foe. You do not believe the woman who wanted me was a whore?”

She immediately became wary. “Whatever she was, she was the loser. Her begging did her no good.”

“The victorious one led her to Siksikai.”

“No! Nakoa, you rejected me! I did not reject you! Do you think I will ever forget that night? In the moonlight before my Father, you took her.”

“I could not take what I did not want. Do not speak to me of Nitanna, Maria. She is gone.”

“No,” Maria shuddered. “I will see my own wedding dress, and I will see you walk by me and follow Nitanna all the rest of my life.”

“You will limit your vision to this one incident?” he asked her angrily.

“Yes.”

“Then you have vision as limited, the one patch of sky, as the warm and beautiful woman you assigned to the river. You are then not at peace, and you will never know serenity.”

“I would among my own kind!”

He looked stunned. “This is the first time you have wanted the white man.”

“Why was I in the burial grounds?”

“You were following the path of a child. You were not seeking escape from me, but from growing up.”

“To grow up, must I become a whore?”

“I was not making you a whore. I was taking you as my woman. Not all women are whores.”

“I was to wait for you after you had been making love to Nitanna.

That would make me a whore. Nakoa, I was so wild to have you. I loved you so much!”

“Is that why you went to the burial grounds rather than to my couch?”

“I told you I would be your only wife. I told you, you had to choose between us.”

“No. I had told you that my marriage this moon was not one of my choosing. I told you that Nitanna meant nothing to me beside my feeling for you. You fled from the woman you keep buried that has more blood than you. Because you tried to deny her life she rose and almost destroyed you. Maria, you have not accepted anything. How could you ever become a whore when you cannot even accept yourself?” His black eyes were searching hers earnestly. “This other woman you will not know, Maria, would go to her love even after ten wives. She would follow her feelings past every rule that had been sacred to her heart.” Now desire for her was plain upon his face.

She stopped walking and looked up at him. “You expect to sleep with me tonight,” she said tonelessly. “You think I have healed enough for this.”

“Yes.” His voice was just as flat as her own.

“You will bring me pain!”

“No. I will be gentle.”

She trembled violently. “I do not want this. I cannot bear to be raped again!”

“I will not rape you. We love each other. We are man and wife.”

They had reached the lodge. She bowed her head. “I will not,” she said softly. “I can’t.”

She walked away from him, back toward the river. The moon was rising in gentle majesty, and she wept bitterly before its poignant beauty. This was the most beautiful of all nights when she was to become a bride to Nakoa. The moon should be shining for them in holy grace. Such a short time ago she had exulted with unbearable happiness at the thought of becoming his bride. Anatsa had loved Apikunni so deeply and now she was dead, lying dead beneath the tender moon, and Maria was alive and yet she could not accept the man that loved her.

It was dark when she returned. He had started the fire; it gleamed through the lodge skins even in the moonlight. She wished that he had left the lodge dark. She did not want him to see her, and she did not want to see him when he possessed her. She opened the doorflap and went to him neither in chastity nor lust. She entered the tipi without innocence or desire, to receive the man she had wanted more than anything in the world before all feeling had been taken away from her.

Chapter Twenty Six

She stood uncertainly by the lodge door. “I don’t like the fire,” she said.

“Does all warmth bother you?”

“I do not like its light. If you are going to have me, I do not want to see it.”

“Then close your eyes. I do not seek darkness.”

Fury suddenly choked her. “Do you want me to take off my clothes?”

“Do you want me to start undressing you too?”

“That is not what I meant!”

He removed his shirt and leggings and lay upon the couch. He stretched contentedly and closed his eyes.

“What are you going to do?” Maria asked, still unable to make herself leave the door.

He opened his eyes in annoyance. “I am trying to go to sleep.”

“You said I was to sleep with you!”

“In time,” he murmured. “In time you will.”

“You said now! Tonight!”

He opened his eyes again. “I have changed my mind,” he said. He turned away from her and fell asleep almost immediately.

Maria went to the fire and looked into the greedy flames. When they died, she went to her couch. He slept with his face as happy as a child’s. She lay down and tried to sleep, but his peaceful breathing almost drove her insane. How could he have said such a thing and then go to sleep? He had fallen asleep right away just to make her feel rejected. Never, never would she give him gratification. The fire had sunk to coals and she couldn’t see him clearly. She sprang out of bed and replenished it. At the noise she made, he stirred and a smile settled upon his lips.

“Beast!” she snarled.

She went back to her couch and turned coldly away from him. The wind had come up, and she echoed its wailing. She wanted to go home. She wanted her own kind. She wanted to follow the lullaby of her mother, to put her head upon the soft leaves of her mother’s grave. There was no disgrace in this. Forget Atsitsi and her silly sugar titty. Forget Nakoa and Mequesapa’s song of acceptance. What had it brought to Siyeh?

Here, upon her couch, within the sound of her husband’s breathing, death would be sweet. Yet in the burial grounds when death had been so close, she could not accept it and had wanted only Nakoa. One can see the same thing as another, but from where each stood, the same thing was not the same at all.

Tears slid down her cheeks. Why couldn’t he know her loneliness? Why didn’t he hold her and give her comfort?

She stretched out flat upon her back and felt her breasts pushing against the buffalo robe. “Beautiful body—all waste!” Atsitsi had said. Maria felt her body cautiously, running her hand from breast to thigh. She remembered how beautiful he had made her feel at the river, how unashamed of her nakedness. Her face grew hot; she threw off the suffocating robe. Nitanna stood before her in the lodge, her lips curled in disdain. Her mouth was cruel and thin, but he had taken her. Maria saw him holding her, caressing her, kissing her lips as he had kissed her own.

“Whore!” Maria said to the tall and beautiful Indian girl.

“And what am I?” she asked herself, for she felt a growing desire for Nakoa she could not restrain. He had said that she would have to free the woman of the waters. Then rise from the muck and mire, and feel cool rain upon your eager lips! Let the rain wash the hair back from the pale face and slide unchecked from naked breasts! Reflecting waters cannot return the heat of the sun, and her heart was hammering against her flesh.

“Nakoa!” she called softly, but he gave no sign of hearing her. In the firelight he was handsome. His face, his naked breast, his long hands were handsome. Never was a man more a man than this Indian who would die bound by nothing. She had sought the escape of deep waters, but with his strong hands he had blocked her way to them.

At the river she had lain naked with him and had asked for his lovemaking, but he had stopped and left her craven.

Outside of his lodge she had made his face wet and agonized with desire, but he had resisted and left her empty.

Beside his marriage tipi he had walked by her and had gone to Nitanna’s bed.

“Nakoa!” she said again, and saw that he was awake. In a rapture of rage she threw the robe to the floor. The burning fire made the lodge a violent red, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. She moved to the fire and standing near it took off her dress. Firelight danced upon her breasts, her hips and thighs. He lay as still as sculptured stone.

Maria moved seductively, her hair partially hiding her breasts. He sat up.

“No,” he said. “It will not be this way.”

She laughed, her long black hair catching the red of the flames. “Nitanna was nothing!” she said scornfully. “Look at me—and see a woman!”

“I do not want you like this!”

“Like what?” she asked and went swiftly to him. Before he could answer, she covered his mouth with her own and caressed him with her hands. Is the male stronger? Does the male have all the strength? Let the male crumble and fall before a woman, and she will have all the power in the skies!

He was no longer protesting. He trembled beneath her touch, and then his body became as seeking as her own. “I will be gentle,” he whispered, kissing her face, her eyelashes and her throat. The air shimmered all around them; the fire burned against the torrents raining from the skies. “Culentet, culentet, my beautiful“—but she stopped his words. “I will be gentle,” he promised again, but already she was defeating him, driving him wild with the unchecked force of his passion. His awful strength led him blindly on; the months of painful abstinence rose within him and riding the crest of blinding desire, he came brutally into her. In holding her and loving her so deeply he uttered low cries of protest, but he could not stop. He possessed all of her; she was so swept up in his caress that at first she did not know the pain of his penetration. When she felt the throbbing and the agony from Siksikai’s knife again, she looked up into her husband’s face in triumph. She had proved that all men were like Siksikai that in their love they mutilated. She lay pinioned beneath him in pain, and if blood came again she would be in complete victory.

When he had finished and saw what he had done, he looked at her still and suffering face in disbelief. He moaned and pressed his head against her breasts. He said nothing. He was a stranger to himself, and now they were neither friends nor lovers. But no bleeding came. He held her tenderly in his arms and once when she thought him asleep she saw tears touching his eyelashes. By cold dawn no word had passed between them, and still she did not bleed. Where was the proof of her suffering?

In the morning he prepared their food and fed her. With his face still tormented, he treated her with herbs and warm water, and she lay too inert for modesty. Her pain was strong, and it was the only thing she had to cling to.

But she healed rapidly, and the pain was of short duration.

“Nakoa,” she said one morning. “Let me go.”

“Go where?”

“Back to my people.”

“Your people are dead.”

“Let me go back to my old life.”

“That is impossible.”

“Let me try!”

“I cannot.”

“You want me here to rape again!” she said furiously.

“You were not raped.”

“You hurt me!”

“You used me to hurt yourself.”

“Aren’t you sorry that you caused me pain?”

“Yes. But the price has been paid.” He looked at her tenderly. “Maria, even in your seeking of revenge for my marrying Nitanna, do you not feel the force that brings us together?”

“What do you mean that I sought revenge?”

“You seduced me into taking you the way I did.”

She laughed scornfully. “I seduced you?”

He became angry. “Maria, do not make me a fool! Twice you have begged for my penetration in rage. Outside this lodge, before my marriage to Nitanna you almost dragged me down in the dirt to lie with you. And what did you do before the fire? You awakened me so I could see you take off your clothes. How did you move when you were naked—where did your hands caress me when I was kissing you?”

Maria turned away from him. “I did not mean to do those things,” she said.

“You speak softly now. The woman who begged for me last night did not speak softly, and she did not speak with only her tongue.” He began to stroke her hair, and she warmed to his gentleness. He kissed her lips and began to hold her so that she knew he meant to make love to her. There was no way of refusing him. She was his wife and was no longer virgin to him. Yet she would not be ready for him. With her rage gone, so was all passion and when he could postpone his entry no longer she remained passive within his embrace. Now he made love to her tenderly, with all lust stemmed, all savagery masked; the victorious male could lie hidden and subdued. When he could postpone shuddering climax no longer she still remained apart from his lovemaking.

He tried to awaken passion within her again. Many times he desired her, but she never knew his pleasure. Upon her bed, in the forest in the shadow of the trees, she could not refuse him, but neither did she accept him. He could not restrain himself to tenderness all of the time. She felt the growing wildness in him, the depth of his seeking. “Meet me, Maria,” he cried.

“I can’t! I can’t!” she sobbed, and at his withdrawal, turned away from him. “I can’t help it,” she said. “Siksikai drained me of my womanhood. There is nothing left but a shell. How can you ask me to respond to another bloody knife?”

“My love is not an instrument of destruction,” he said simply, and put on his clothes. “If you cannot meet me, I will leave you alone until you can.” He then abstained from her. Again they slept separately. They rode together, and even bathed together, for he would not give her privacy at the lake. He watched her nakedness with obvious pleasure, but in no way did he suggest that they resume lovemaking. The weather suddenly turned stifling hot, and on one burning day they sought sanctuary in a mountain meadow. While the horses grazed in the open they slept together where shade from thick trees and high ferns cooled them from the hot afternoon. They slept together long and peacefully and both awakened at the same time. Maria looked up above them at the moving of the ferns. Light filtered softly through them giving her an illusion of resting in deep water.

“I wanted to die,” she said to Nakoa. “But you wouldn’t let me. I was sinking into a beautiful shadow like this.”

“I will not let you die,” he said firmly, as if she were still fighting to live.

“And you will not let me go?”

“I am not able to do this.”

She sighed and lay still.

He studied her face. “You have grown even more beautiful,” he said.

She looked quickly away.

“Why do you not like your beauty?” he asked.

“I do not know of my beauty,” Maria said shortly. “It is of no importance anyway.”

“If you do not know of it, it is very important.”

“I know. That which is not accepted is haunting.”

“Yes.”

“The two women again. Tell me about them—they seem to interest you so!”

“I want the girl and the woman to be one. Your beauty awakens a man’s desire and acquaints you with the power of your breast. You do not want this, for breasts belong to a woman. Maria, see yourself as a woman! The part of yourself you starve will be fed. What you reject in love will rise in hate! Maria, how can you be such a fool about yourself?”

“I am not a whore! I am not a slut! Do you think I am dirty Meg?”

“Who is this woman?”

“A slut my father had when my mother was dying!” Maria sat up, her chin quivering in spite of herself. “I saw it!” she cried. “Every filthy part of it—when he first climbed on her—and I was horrified, I ran away to our orchard—where I was sick.”

Nakoa sat up and gently touched her lips. “This Meg might have been a strong woman, Maria. She might have given your father strength to bear your mother’s dying.”

“By sinning like that?”

“What is sinning?”

“Doing the work of the devil!”

“Your devil helped them both at that time. Your mother would have died harder knowing your father’s grief. Did she like to bring your father pain?”

“Never!”

“Did he like to bring her pain?”

“Not before my mother became ill.”

“Then this Meg worked with the devil and helped them both.”

“You don’t even know the devil.”

“Is this another god only the white man knows? Do you think we do not know evil and hurt to others? Must every man talk with the white man’s tongue? Because he has such a big mouth must the whole world use it?” His eyes were snapping with fury.

“There is beauty and sacredness in holy marriage! My father defiled my mother and their marriage by making love to Meg!”

“Does any man have the power to do all of that?”

“Nakoa, by taking Nitanna you defiled me! I wanted you in sacred marriage because I loved you with all of my heart.” Her voice trembled with emotion. “I had a dream of our marriage. We were married in the white man’s church, the place where he seeks closeness with the Great Spirit. I wore white because I was pure of any man before you, and we walked down a long aisle together—a long row of white flowers that stretched from the prairie into the church—it was so beautiful—so close to my God—” She put her hands over her face and wept. “I thought my love was met—but look at the way it was! You walked by me to crawl upon another woman! How could my God have any part—how could He ever know sacred marriage between us!” Weeping harder she rocked back and forth in utter desolation.