The Burning Shore (43 page)

The little old woman was an extraordinary colour, she seemed to glow like amber in the sunlight, and Centaine thought of the polished bowl of her father’s meerschaum pipe which he had cured with such care. But this colour was even brighter than that, bright as a ripe apricot on the tree, and despite her weakness, a little smile flickered over Centaine’s lips.

Instantly the old woman who had been studying Centaine with equal attention, smiled back. The network of wrinkles constricted about her eyes, reducing them to slanted Chinese slits. Yet there was such a merry sparkle in those black shiny pupils that Centaine wanted to reach out and embrace her, as she would have embraced Anna.

The old woman’s teeth were worn down almost to the gums and were stained tobacco brown, but there were no gaps in them, and they appeared even and strong.

Who are you? Centaine whispered through her dark swollen dry lips, and the woman clicked and hissed softly back at her.

Under the loose wrinkled skin she had a small, finely shaped skull, and her face was sweetly heart-shaped. Her scalp was dotted with faded grey woolly hair that was twisted into small tight kernels, each the size of a green pea, and there was bare scalp between them. She had small pointed ears lying close to the skull like the pixies in Centaine’s nursery books, but there were no lobes to the ears, and the effect of sparkling eyes and pricked ears was to give her an alert, quizzical expression.

Do you have water? Centaine whispered. Water.

Please. The old woman turned her head and spoke in that sibilant clicking tongue to the figure behind her. He was almost her twin, the same impossibly wrinkled, apricot, glowing skin, the same tight wisps of hair dotting the scalp, bright eyes and pointed lobeless ears, but he was male. This was more than evident, for the leather loincloth had pulled aside as he squatted and a penis out of all proportion to his size hung free, the uncircumcised tip brushing the sand. It had the peculiar arrogance and half erect tension of the member of a man in full prime. Centaine found herself staring at it, and swiftly averted her eyes.

Water, she repeated, and this time Centaine made the motion of drinking. Immediately a spirited discussion flickered back and forth between the two little old people.

O’wa, this child is dying from lack of water, the old Bushwornan told her husband of thirty years. She pronounced the first syllable of his name with the popping sound of a kiss. Kiss-wa. She is already dead, the Bushman replied quickly. it is too late, Hlani. His wife’s name began with a sharp, explosive aspirate and ended with a soft click made with the tongue against the back of the top teeth, the sound that in Western speech usually signifies mild annoyance.

Water belongs to all, the living and the dying, that is the first law of the desert. You know it well, old grandfather. H’ani was being particularly persuasive, so she used the enormously respectful term old grandfather.

Water belongs to all the people, he agreed, nodding and blinking. But this one is not San, she is not a person.

She belongs to the others. With that short pronouncement O’wa had succinctly stated the Bushman’s view of himself in relation to the world about him.

The Bushman was the first man. His tribal memories went back beyond the veils of the ages to the time when his ancestors had been alone in the land. From the far northern lakes to the dragon mountains in the south, their hunting grounds had encompassed the entire continent. They were the aboriginals. They were the men, the San.

The others were creatures apart. The first of these others had come down the corridors of migration from the north, huge black men driving their herds before them. Much later, the others with skins the colour of fish’s belly that redden in the sun, and pale, blind-looking eyes had come out of the sea from the south. This female was one of those. They had grazed sheep and cattle on the ancient hunting grounds, and slaughtered the game which were the Bushman’s kine.

With his own means of sustenance wiped out, the Bushman had looked upon the domesticated herds that had replaced wild game on the veld. He had no sense of property, no tradition of ownership nor of private possession.

He had taken of the herds of the others as he would have taken of wild game, and in so doing had given the owners deadly offence. Black and white, they had made war upon the Bushmen with pitiless ferocity, ferocity heightened by their dread of his tiny childlike arrows that were tipped with a venom that inflicted certain, excruciating death.

In impis armed with double-edged stabbing assegais, and in mounted commandos carrying firearms, they had hunted down the Bushmen as though they were noxious animals. They had shot them and stabbed them and sealed them in their caves and burned them alive, they bad poisoned and tortured them, sparing only the youngest children from the massacre. These they chained in bunches, for those that did not pine and die of broken hearts could be tamed. They made gentle, loyal and rather lovable little slaves.

The Bushmen bands that survived this deliberate genocide retreated into the bad and waterless lands where they alone, with their marvelous knowledge and understanding of the land and its creatures could survive.

She is one of the others, O’wa repeated, and she is already dead. The water is only sufficient for our journey. H’ani had not taken her eyes off Centaine’s face, but she reproached herself silently. Old woman, it was not necessary to discuss the water. If you had given without question, then you would not have been forced to endure this male foolishness. Now she turned and smiled at her husband.

Wise old grandfather, look at the child’s eyes, she wheedled. There is life there yet, and courage also. This one will not die until she empties her body of its last breath. Deliberately, H’ani unslung the rawhide carrying bag from her shoulder, and ignored the little hissing sound of disapproval that her husband made. in the desert the water belongs to everybody, the San and the others, there is no distinction, such as you have argued. From the bag she took out an ostrich egg, an almost perfect orb the colour of polished ivory. The shell had been lovingly engraved with a decorative circlet of bird and animal silhouettes and the end was stoppered with a wooden plug. The contents sloshed as H’ani weighed the egg in her cupped hands and Centaine whimpered like a puppy denied the teat.

You are a wilful old woman, said O’wa disgustedly. It was the strongest protest the Bushman tradition allowed him. He could not command her, he could not forbid her.

A Bushman could only advise another, he had no rights over his fellows; amongst them there were no chiefs nor captains, and all were equal, man and woman, old and young.

Carefully H’ani unplugged the egg and shuffled closer to Centaine. She put her arm round the back of Centaine’s neck to steady her and lifted the egg to her lips. Centaine gulped greedily and choked, and water dribbled down her chin. This time H’ani and O’wa hissed with dismay, each drop was as precious as life blood. H’ani withdrew the egg, and Centaine sobbed and tried to reach for it.

You are impolite, H’ani admonished her. She lifted the egg to her own lips and filled her mouth until her cheeks bulged. Then she placed her hand under Cen tame’s chin, bent forward and covered Centaine’s mouth with her own lips. Carefully she injected a few drops into Centaine’s mouth and waited while she swallowed before giving her more. When she had passed the last drop into Centaine’s mouth, she sat back and watched her until she deemed that she was ready for more. Then she gave her a second mouthful, and later a third.

This female drinks like a cow elephant at a waterhole, O’wa said sourly. Already she has taken enough water to flood the dry riverbed of the Kuiseb. He was right, of course, H’ani conceded reluctantly.

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.