The Animal Wife (9 page)

Walking steadily, with long, even strides, he thought again. "We were feeding Bala's good will," he at last called back to us over his shoulder. "The marriage was difficult. The woman was married to someone else and had to get divorced from him before she could marry me. Just when people were starting to undo the marriage exchange for that first husband, the woman died. Some people said she hadn't truly been divorced and kept their gifts. So some of the gifts never went back where they belonged.

"Aal should have given up the necklace. She should have given it to the man being divorced. Since she didn't part with it then, she or someone should have given it to a man of my group when I married her kinswoman Pinesinger. But Aal wouldn't part with it. Aal doesn't know this, but she has made the necklace strong. Now it's a necklace without a rightful place. Whose is it? Someday, someone will figure out whose it is and demand it. Then Aal will lose the necklace, and the loss will be shaming. Bala won't spare her, though. When he sees who should own that necklace, he'll take it from Aal himself.

"But if someone of her lineage—someone such as you, Kori—married the right person in my group—someone such as Frogga or close to Frogga—then the men of my group should give Aal a very fine necklace. I think Bala could help Aal see how she could keep the very necklace she wears, but keep it with honor, as her right, not as she keeps it now, against reason and the wishes of many people. Kori, you will have Frogga."

Pinesinger turned to give me a teasing smile.
You'd rather have me,
her look said. But my mind was again forming an image of this Frogga who was to be my first wife, my own woman. Now, as well as long dark hair, I saw smooth skin and round dark eyes. No marriage gifts were in the image, and no other people, just my beautiful wife and me on a summer afternoon, alone on a plain. How quickly I forgot Father's Pinesinger after learning of my own Frogga!

***

That night was the last night we slept on the trail, on a moon-soaked grassy bank beside the water, where bats flew low over our heads and an owl's voice echoed from the ravine's walls. Mammoths had wallowed there. A wide mat of their shed winter hair had drifted against the riverbanks. Then dust had drifted over the mat, so it looked like solid ground. Mats of hair such as this had given the river its name, said Father. To warn Andriki and me, he told us that newcomers to the Hair very commonly mistook a mat for solid ground, stepped on it, and fell in. Pinesinger, who hadn't heard his warning, almost did this on her way to wash and drink. Andriki and I were watching, grinning, waiting for the splash. Too bad that she noticed the hair mat rippling.

After dark we ate sedge roots and a large fish we had found on a rock, as if an eagle had caught it and then been frightened away. The fish wasn't so sun-spoiled that cooking wouldn't help it. We roasted it in our fire as the bats flew in and out of the smoke.

Pinesinger talked gaily, telling stories about her kinswomen at the Hair, whom she hadn't seen since she was a child. Andriki talked with her cheerfully enough, but Father was in a strange, quiet mood. Pinesinger tossed a pebble at him to tease him. I thought that to be teased would make him happy, since in a way it was a promise of more play that night. But something was making him sad. After a long silence he said, "Kori!"

"Father?"

"Can you hear the bats?"

His question surprised me. "Yes," I said. "I hear them sometimes."

"Once I could hear them too," said Father. Again he fell silent. I waited. "Can you still see the star called the Mammoth Calf?" he asked after a while.

The moonlight had washed away most of the stars, but on another night I could have seen it—a tiny star beside a bigger star, the Mammoth Cow. "Yes, on a dark night," I answered.

"I see the calf and its mother as one star, very misty," said Father. "Can you see waterbears?"

Not for years had I looked for these tiny animals who live in the shallows of a river, but I thought I could still see one, though not at night. "I'll try to find one in the morning," I said, "if you like."

"No," said Father. "I was just wondering. I haven't seen one for so long I've almost forgotten about them."

I took a sharp stick and drew a huge waterbear for him on the sand—its fat body, its six legs, its claws, and its greedy mouth. Then I drew its food inside it, which no one believed that I had really seen. But I had: once I had held a waterbear on a grass stem in strong sunlight very close to my eyes. I had seen through its body, which was clear, almost like water, except for specks of dark food inside.

Father looked at my drawing but said nothing. His sadness puzzled me. What was the good, I wondered, of seeing the Mammoth Calf or waterbears, or of hearing bats? "Why does it matter?" I asked.

At first Father didn't want to answer. No one pressed him, but at last, after a long silence, he said, "People grow old."

Grow old? The tone of his voice gave me a strange feeling. I had spent all my life waiting to grow old like Father. If I did, I wanted to have the same things he had—a cave, women, hunting lands, in-laws. All this had won him Pinesinger, who each day seemed eager for night to come. Who cared about seeing a waterbear?

Certainly not Pinesinger. "You grew old," she said to Father. "But I can still see waterbears. Here's one!" She pointed at something on her palm.

Father laughed. "I'm not so old I can't make you eat whatever you have there," he said, reaching for her.

"Ah, no," she said, moving out of Father's way. "I help old men. I don't fight them."

Andriki laughed at Father, and Father laughed too. But I didn't. Father's sadness had given me a sadness, and I remembered all the things he had told me that day—things of the past that he had done to help his people. He had won Pinesinger, it was true, but he didn't know certain things about her. He didn't seem to know that she still thought of me, although anyone else would have seen it right away. Andriki saw it, I knew. Surely the rest of the people would see it too. What would they think of him? Of me? In Father's place, I would have been angry. But he had let Pinesinger soften him. When he was young and could hear the bats, could see the tiniest stars or the waterbears, what had he thought that life might hold for him? What did he see ahead for me?

I looked into the fire, watching the flames against the dark, fast-moving river, sad because of Father's sadness, sad too that our long trip was over and that what had been between me and Father would now change, when we were with his people in his well-known cave.

 

Late the next afternoon, when I was hungry and tired and wanting to camp and find food, we smelled smoke and a strong stench of carrion. Soon we heard flies, someone chopping with an ax, and a sudden clamor of voices, one of which called out Father's name. We had reached the cave. Someone had seen us, and people came hurrying out of the ravine, up a path that led onto the plain.

The people crowded around us, all talking at once. A very beautiful woman embraced Pinesinger rather stiffly. She was Yoi, Father's senior wife, of Pinesinger's lineage. Soon this beautiful woman caught a little boy by the upper arm and dragged him forward to show him to Pinesinger. The child was also of their lineage.

At the edge of the ravine I took off my pack and sat beside it, looking among the many people for the girl who might be Frogga. I saw several men talking with Father—his in-laws and half-brothers, I knew. I saw a group of women, one with straight, pale hair and sky-colored eyes like Father and Andriki. She was older than Father—she would be my Aunt Rin. She caught my eye and started toward me, but stopped on the way to greet Father.

I looked around at the other people, hoping to see my beautiful Frogga. I saw not one but two girls, one a little older than the other, both with glossy black hair. The two of them were in charge of several little children who were eyeing me unhappily, as children will when they notice a stranger. Not wanting to do anything wrong in front of my wife-to-be, I stared at my feet and sat still.

Near me a trail wide enough for mammoths led down the side of the ravine. Surely this was the trail Father had described, the trail used by mammoths to reach the water. From where I sat I couldn't see down it. I waited a long time for someone to greet me, if only my aunt, who was busily talking with Father, but at last I grew self-conscious at being ignored for so long. For something to do, I stood up and looked over the edge of the cliff.

Right below me was the egg-shaped back and bulging head of a mammoth half sitting, half lying, like a mammoth who has been asleep but is about to get up. Beside the mammoth stood a calf—a yearling. As I stared, amazed at the sight of a mammoth lying down so near where people live, the mammoth cow heaved herself once, heaved herself twice, as if to stand, and then, as if she couldn't stand up after all, rolled onto her side.

Then I saw that both her front legs were broken. Below her knees her leg bones showed like white spearheads in the holes they had pierced through her greatly swollen muscle and skin. The calf moved to stand behind her and began to twist the hair on her shoulder. She flung out her trunk at him.

Beyond, the shallow river ran through a floodplain strewn with the scattered bones and skulls of other mammoths. Some bones were bleached from years of weather. Others were in their carcasses, with hairy hide, dried hard like the carcass at Uske's Spring, clinging to them. So at last I saw what good summer hunting Father and his brothers had found, and I felt pride at belonging there. More food lay below me than I had ever seen in one place—enough for all the people of this cave and more besides. Rightly did Father call himself and his brothers feeders of foxes, men of meat.

I heard Father telling someone how I had come with him from Bala's camp at the Fire River. Then a huge man came to stand over me. Like Father, he had pale eyes and coarse, pale hair and red, raw patches on the bridge of his nose where the sun had peeled his skin. He was my Uncle Maral. I stood to greet him and saw beyond him that most of the rest of the people, with Pinesinger, Andriki, the two pretty girls, and all the little children, were going down the path to the cave in the side of the ravine. We followed. Uncle Maral took my pack and went ahead of me, carrying it for me into the cave.

When we began to move along the trail, the mammoth calf looked up at us, its trunk raised toward us, its ears spread. The mother, now propped on her left elbow, was also alert, her eyes open, her trunk searching. Soon she heaved again as if to stand, and when she couldn't, she rumbled. The calf trotted around to stand by her head.

Maral saw me watching. "Don't go down," he said. "The calf will chase you. And don't get into the big mammoth's reach."

"What plans do you have for them, Uncle?" I asked politely.

Maral laughed. "We'll eat them," he said.

But the mammoths couldn't be eaten yet, and I was hungry. I wondered what food the people ate while waiting for the meat. Smoke from the opening of the cave carried the smell of roasting onions. Just onions? I made up my mind that whatever the food, I would show no disappointment, although my mouth had started watering at the thought of the meat.

Hoping that the cooking would not take long, I followed Maral down the path into the cave, where most of the people were now gathered, listening to Father and Andriki tell of our trip. Many of the women wanted news of their kin on the Fire River, and forgot to pay attention to the roasting onions, which began to burn. I noticed the onions, though no one else did, but I was too shy to say anything. People might have thought me greedy. So I watched while the onions turned brown, then black, then flamed.

At last one of the pretty girls tried to beat out the flames with a stick, but she was much too late. She shoved the burned onions aside and in their place put five new onions. Soon a delicious smell came from them. My mind wandered back and forth between two questions: which of the pretty girls was Frogga, and how many people were the five little onions supposed to feed?

To take my mind off these questions, I tried to look around the cave. The walls were pale yellow sandstone and enclosed a huge, dim space, so high that a man could stand in it without touching the ceiling and so long that all of us, at night, would be able to lie down. Two fires were burning, but no one sat at one of them. All the people were crowded at the other, all talking at once to Father. Their voices echoed from the stone. Above the fires, black soot clung to the ceiling, and the handprints of children streaked the walls. In fact, the air in the cave smelled of soot and of children—of the urine and feces that little children cannot help but drop.

Although counting people is unlucky, I decided to do it anyway, although very privately, pressing a finger against my palm for each person I saw. In this way I counted five men besides Father and Andriki and ten women besides Pinesinger in the group in the cave. I could see which woman was Andriki's wife—she sat very close to him, pressing against him but not looking at him, and reaching now and then into a small skin bag to bring out fireberries, which she pushed into his hand. He tossed them one by one into his mouth as he went on talking. I already knew which woman was Yoi, Father's senior wife, and it pleased me that she had taken the place beside Father, crowding Pinesinger out of her way. Pinesinger looked sour and, perhaps for encouragement, kept glancing at me. But by now my mind was set for Frogga, so I ignored Pinesinger.

Suddenly the second group of onions turned black and burst into flames. Were we going to eat nothing? Now and then I could faintly hear one of the mammoths rumbling, still alive on the rocks below the cave. Again I thought of meat.

To pass the time before a third set of onions could be cooked, I counted the children. There were many of them, including babies hidden in their mother's shirts, and sooner or later I saw six. One was a little girl who had just learned to walk, which she did rather badly, as if she were about to fall forward with each wobbling step. A charm against diarrhea was tied around her belly on a string—her only clothing. She drooled, and her nose ran. When she saw me looking at her she stumbled toward me, then realized she didn't know me and stopped, unsure, to stare with wide eyes. Suddenly she glanced down between her feet. A puddle of urine was forming. This was more interesting than I was; she bent her head and her knees to watch the puddle grow. When it grew no more she turned herself around and tottered toward Maral, who caught her by the upper arm and pulled her into his lap. He kissed her. Then he noticed me watching the child, held her up, and said, "Frogga!"