The Burning Shore - Smith Wilbur - Страница 88
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Silly old woman, you chatter like the brainless spotted guinea fowl, while the meat spoils. He snatched up the knife. Envy was an emotion so alien to his nature that O'wa was deeply unhappy and not really certain of the reason why, but the thought of handing the knife back to the girl filled him with a corrosive anger that he had never known before. He frowned and muttered as he dressed out the viscera of the bull, cutting thin slices of the rubbery white tripes and chewing them raw as he worked.
It was midmorning before they had festooned the branches of one of the dead trees with long ribbons of bright scarlet gemsbok meatf and the heat built up so swiftly that the meat darkened and dried out almost immediately.
It was too hot to eat. Between them H'ani and Centaine spread the wet gemsbok skin over a framework of dead branches and they huddled under this tent-like structure, taking refuge from the sun, cooling their bodies with the evaporating fluids of the gemsbok's secondary stomach.
At sundown O'wa took out his fire sticks and began the laborious process of coaxing a spark from them, but impatiently Centaine took the ball of dry kindling from him. Up to that time she had always been too intimidated by the little San and her own feeling of total inadequacy to make any show of initiative. Now, somehow, the crossing of the dunes and her part in the gemsbok hunt emboldened her, and she laid out the kindling and the knife and flint with the San looking on curiously.
She struck a shower of sparks into the kindling and stooped quickly to blow it into the flame. The San shrieked in amazement and consternation, and backed away in superstitious awe. Only once the fire was burning steadily could Centaine reassure them, and they crept back and marvelled over the steel and the flint. Under Centaine's tutelage, O'wa at last succeeded in striking sparks, and his joy was spontaneous and childlike.
As soon as the night brought relief from the heat of the sun, they prepared a feast of broiled liver and tripes and kidneys wrapped in the lacework of white fat that had enclosed the intestines. While the women worked at the fire, O'wa danced for the spirit of the gemsbok, and as he had promised, he leaped as high as he had done when he was a young man, and he sang until his voice cracked and failed. Then he squatted down at the fire and began to eat.
The two San ate with the fat greasing their chins and running down on to their cheeks; they ate until their stomachs were distended and bulged out like balloons, hanging down on their laps; they went on eating long after Centaine was gorged and satiated.
Every once in a while Centame was sure they were faltering, as their jaws slowed and they blinked at each other like sleepy owls in the firelight. Then O'wa would place both hands on his bulging stomach and roll on to one buttock, his wrinkled face contorted, and he would grunt and strain until he was able to clap off a resounding fart. Across the fire, H'ani would answer him with a squealing blast every bit as ear-splitting, and they both hooted with laughter and crammed more meat into their mouths.
As Centaine drifted off into sleep with her own stomach stuffed with meat, she realized this orgy was a natural reaction of a people accustomed to privation faced suddenly with a mountain of food and no means of preserving it. When she woke at dawn they were still feasting.
With the sun the two San lay under the tent of gemsbok hide, their bellies distended, and snored through the heat, but at sunset they blew up the fire and began feasting again. By this time what remained of the gemsbok was smelling high and strong, but this seemed if anything to stimulate their appetite.
When O'wa rose to stagger out of the firelight on private business, Centaine saw that his buttocks which had been slack and sagging and wrinkled when they came down from the dunes, were now tight and round and polished.
Just like a camel's hump, Centaine giggled, and H'ani giggled with her and offered her a slice of the belly fat, cooked brown and crisp.
Once again they slept through the day like a nest of pythons digesting the gargantuan banquet, but at sunset with the carrying bags packed with the hard black strips of dried gemsbok meat, O'wa led them eastwards across the moonlit plain. He carried the folded gemsbok skin balanced on his head.
Gradually the plain over which they travelled altered in character. Amongst the fine desert grasses there appeared scraggy little scrubs, not as high as Centaine's knee, and once O'wa stopped and pointed ahead at a tall ghostly shape that crossed with a high-stepping trot ahead of them in the night, a dark body fringed with fluffy white, and only as it disappeared into the shadows did Centaine realize that it was a wild ostrich.
At dawn O'wa spread the gemsbok hide as a surishelter and they waited out the day. At sunset they drank the last drops of water from the egg-bottles, and the San were quiet and serious as they set out again. Without water, death was only hours away.
At dawn, instead of going into camp immediately, O'wa stood for a long time examining the sky, and then he ranged in a half-circle ahead of their track, like a gundog quartering for the bird, lifting his head, turning it slowly from side to side, his nostrils sucking at the air. What is O'wa doing?
Centaine asked. Smell. H'ani snuffled to show her. Smell water. Centaine was incredulous. No smell water, H'ani."Yes! Yes!
Wait, you see. O'wa reached a decision. Come! he beckoned, and the women snatched up their satchels and hurried after him.
Within an hour Centaine realized that if O'wa was mistaken, then she was dead. The egg-bottles were empty, the heat and the sun were sucking the moisture out of her, and she would be finished before the real burning heat of noon fell upon them.
O'wa broke into a full run, the gait that the San calledthe horns, the run of the hunter when he sees the horns of his quarry on the skyline ahead, and the women under their burdens could not try to match him.
An hour later they made out his tiny form far ahead, and when they at last came up with him, he smiled a broad welcome and with a sweep of his arm announced grandly, O'wa has led you unerringly to the sip-wells of the elephant with one tusk."The origins of the name were lost far back in the oral history of the San. O'wa swaggered shamelessly as he led them down the gentle slope of the river bed.
It was a wide water-course, but Centaine saw immediately that it was completely dry, filled with sand as loose and friable as that of the dune country, and she felt her spirits drop sharply as she looked about her.
The winding serpentine water course was about a hundred paces wide, cutting through the gravel beds of the plain, and although there was no water, both banks were dark with much denser plant growth then the and flats beyond. The scrub was almost waist-high, with an occasional dull green bush rising above the rest. The San were chattering brightly, and H'ani followed closely behind her husband as he strutted about importantly in the sand of the river bed.
Centaine sank down, picked up a handful of the bright orange-coloured sand and let it trickle through her fingers disconsolately. Then for the first time she noticed that the river bed was widely trampled by the hooves of the gemsbok, and that in places the sand had been heaped as though children had been digging sandcastles. O'wa was now examining one of these piles critically, and Centaine dragged herself up and went to see what he had found.
The gemsbok must have been digging in the river bed, but sand had trickled into the hole, almost filling it. O'wa nodded sagely, and he turned to H'ani.
This is a good place. Here we will make our sip-well.
Take the child and show her how to build a shelter. Centaine was so thirsty and heat-lashed that she felt dizzy and sick, but she slipped off the strap of her bag and wearily climbed the river bank after H'ani to help her cut whippy saplings and thorny branches from the scrub.
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