by Wilbur Smith
H'ani's hands reached down between her legs from behind and lifted the baby out of her sight. Instantly Centaine felt a devastating sense of deprivation, but she was too weak to protest. She felt a gentle twitching and tugging on the umbilical cord as H'ani handled the child, and then suddenly there was a furious squalling howl. It struck Centaine to the heart.
Then H'ani's laughter joined in chorus with the angry bawls. Centaine had never heard a sound of such unequivocal joy.
Oh, listen to him, Nam Child. He roars like a lion cub! Centaine waddled around awkwardly, hampered by the fleshy ropes dangling from her own body and still linking her to the infant. He was struggling in H'ani's hands, all wet and defiant, his face red with anger and his bee-stung eyes tight closed, but his toothless pink mouth wide as he howled his outrage.
A boy, H'ani? Centaine panted wildly.
Oh yes, H'ani laughed, by all means, a boy, and with the tip of her forefinger she tickled his tiny penis. it stuck out stiffly as though to endorse his anger, and at H'ani's touch released a powerful arcing jet of urine.
Look! Look! H'ani choked with laughter. He pisses on the world. Bear witness, all the Spirits of this place, a veritable lion cub has been birthed this day. She offered the squirming red-faced infant to Centaine.
Clean his eyes and nose, she ordered, and, like a mother cat, Centaine did not need further instruction.
She licked the mucus from the tiny swollen eyelids, from his nostrils and mouth.
Then H'ani took the child, handling him with familiar expertise, and she tied off the umbilical cord with the soft white inner bark threads of the mongongo tree, before severing it with a quick slash of her bone knife. Then she rolled the end of the tube in the medicinal leaves of the wild quince and bound it in place with a rawhide strip around his middle.
Sitting on the soiled gemsbok skin, in a puddle of her own blood and amniotic fluids, Centaine watched her work with shining eyes. Now! H'ani nodded with vast self-satisfaction.
He is ready for the breast. And she placed him in Centaine's lap.
He and Centaine needed only the barest introduction.
H'ani squeezed Centaine's nipple and touched the milkwet tip to the infant's lips, and he fastened on it like a leech, with a noisy rhythmic suction. For a few moments Centaine was startled by the sudden sharp sympathetic contractions of her womb as the child suckled, but this was lost and forgotten in the wonder and mystery of examining her incredible accomplishment.
Gently she unfolded his fist and marvelled at the perfection of each tiny pink finger, at the pearly nails, each no bigger than a grain of rice, and when he suddenly seized her finger in the surprisingly powerful grip, he squeezed her heart as well. She stroked his damp dark hair, and as it dried it sprang up into ringlets. It awed her to see the pulsing movement under the thin membrane that covered the opening of his skull.
He stopped suckling and lay quiescent in her arms, so she could take him from her breast and examine his face.
He was smiling. Apart from the puffy eyelids, his features were well formed, not squashed and rubbery like those of the other newborn infants she had seen. His brow was broad and deep and his nose was large. She thought of Michael, no it was More arrogant than Michael's nose and then she remembered General Sean Courtney. t That's it! she chuckled aloud. The true Courtney nose.
The infant stiffened and broke wind simultaneously both fore and aft, a trickle of her milk dribbled from the i corner of his mouth, and instantly he began to hunt for I the nipple again, mouthing demandingly, rolling his head from side to side. Centaine changed him to her other arm, and guided her nipple into his open mouth.
Kneeling in front of her, H'ani was working between Centaine's knees. Centaine winced and bit her lip as the afterbirth came free, and H'ani wrapped it in the leaves of the elephant-ear plant, tied it with bark and scampered away into the grove with the bundle.
When she returned, the child was asleep in Centaine's lap, with his legs splayed and his belly tight as a balloon.
If you permit, I will fetch O'wa, H'ani suggested. He will have heard the birth cries. Oh, yes, fetch him quickly. Centaine had forgotten the old man, and now was delighted at the opportunity to exhibit her marvelous acquisition.
O'wa came shyly and squatted a little way off, showing the usual masculine lack of temerity when faced with the feminine mystery of birth.
Approach, old grandfather, Centaine encouraged him, and he shuffled closer on his haunches and peered solemnly at the sleeping child.
What do you think? Centaine asked. Will he be a hunter? As skilful and brave a hunter as O'wa?
O'wa made the little clicking sound reserved for those rare occasions when he was at a loss for words, and his face was a web of convoluted wrinkles like that of a worried Pekinese lap dog. Suddenly the child kicked out strongly and yelped in his sleep, and the old man dissolved into uncontrolled giggles.
I never thought I would see it again, he wheezed, and gingerly reached out and took a tiny pink foot in his hand.
The child kicked again and it was too much for O'wa.
He sprang up and began to dance. Shuffling and stamping, circling the mother and child on the gemsbok skin, around and around he went, and H'ani controlled herself for three circuits, then she too leaped to her feet and danced with her husband. She followed him, with her hands on his hips, leaping when he leaped, twitching her protruding backside, performing the intricate stamp and double shuffle, and singing the chorus to O'wa's praise song: His arrows will fly to the stars and when men speak his name it will be heard as far and H'ani came in with the chorus. -And he will find good water, wherever he travels, he will find good water.
O'wa squeaked and jerked his legs and made his shoulders shake.
His bright eye will pick out the game when other men are blind.
Effortlessly he will follow the spoor over rocky ground -And he will ri. nd good water, at every camp site he will find good water -prettiest maidens will smile and tiptoe to his camp fire in the night And H'ani reiterated in her reedy singsong: -And he will find good water, wherever he goes, he will find good water.
They were blessing the child, wishing upon him all the treasure of the San people, and Centaine felt that her heart would break with love for them and for the small pink bundle in her lap.
When at last the old people could dance and sing no more, they knelt in front of Centaine.
As the great-grandparents of the child, we would like to give him a name, H'ani explained shyly. Is it permitted? Speak, old grandmother. Speak, old grandfather. H'ani looked at her husband and he nodded encouragement. We would name the child Shasa. Tears prickled Centaine's eyelids as she realized the great honour. They were naming him after the most precious, life-sustaining element in the San universe. Shasa, Good Water. Centaine blinked back the tears and smiled at them.
I name this child Michel Shasa de Thiry Courtney, she said softly, and each of the old people reached out in turn and touched his eyes and mouth in blessing.
The sulphurous, mineralized waters of the subterranean pool were possessed of extraordinary qualities. Every noon and evening Centaine soaked in their heat, and the manner in which her birth injuries healed was almost miraculous. Of course, she was in superb physical health, without an ounce of superfluous fat or flesh upon her, and Shasa's neat lean body and the ease of his delivery was a consequence of this. Furthermore the San looked upon parturition as such a routine process that H'ani neither pampered her, nor encouraged her to treat herself as an invalid.
Young muscles, elastic and well exercised, swiftly regained their resilience and strength. Her skin, not overstretched, was free of stria, and her belly swiftly shrank back into its greyhound profile. Only her breasts were swollen hard with copious milk, and Shasa gorged and grew like one of the desert plants after rain.
Then again there was the pool and its waters.
It is strange, H'ani told her, the nursing mothers who drink this water always grow children with bones
as hard as rock and teeth that shine like polished ivory. It is one of the blessings of the spirits that guard this place. At noon the sun struck through one of the apertures in the domed roof of the cavern, a solid white shaft of light through the steam-laden air, and Centaine loved to bask in it, moving across the pool as the beam swung, to keep in its charmed circle of light.
She lay chin-deep in the seething green water, and listened to Shasa snuffling and mewing in his steep. She had wrapped him in the gemsbok skin and laid him on the ledge beside the pool where she could see him merely by turning her head.
The bottom of the pool was lined with gravel and pebbles. She scooped up handfuls of them and held them up in the sunlight, and they gave her a special kind of pleasure for they were strange and beautiful. There were veined agates, waterworn and smooth as swallows eggs, stones of soft blue with lines of red through them, or pink or yellow, and Jaspers and carnelians in a hundred shades of burgundy, shiny black onyx and tiger's eyes of gold barred with iridescent waves of shifting colour.
I will make a necklace, for H'ani. A gift to thank her, from Shasa! She began to collect the prettiest stones with the most interesting and unusual shapes.
I need a centrepiece for the necklace, she decided, and she dredged handfuls of gravel and washed them in the hot green waters, then examined them in the sunlight until at last she found exactly what she was searching f or.
It was a colourless stone, clear as water, but when it caught the sunlight it contained a captive rainbow, an internal fire that burned with all the colours of the spectrum . Centaine spent a long lazy hour in the pool, turning this stone slowly in the beam of sunlight to make it flash and sparkle, staring into its depths with delight, watching it explode into wondrous cascades of light. The stone was not large, only the size of one of the ripe mongongo fruit - but it was a symmetrical many-sided crystal, perfect for the centrepiece of the necklace.
She designed H'anils necklace with infinite care, spending many hours while Shasa nursed at her breast, arranging and rearranging her collection of pebbles until at last she had them in the order which most pleased her. Yet still she was not entirely satisfied, for the colourless central stone, so sparkling and regular in shape, made all the other coloured stones seem somehow drab and uninteresting.
Nevertheless, she began to experiment in stringing the pebbles in a necklace and here she immediately encountered problems.
One or two of the pebbles were so soft that by dint of persistent effort and many worn-out bone augers she was finally able to drill a stringing hole through them. Others were brittle and shattered, and others again were too hard. In particular, the sparkling crystal resisted her best efforts, and remained absolutely unblemished after she had broken a dozen bone tools upon it.
She appealed to O'wa for assistance, and once he understood what she was working on, he was boyishly enthusiastic. They experimented and met with failure a dozen times before they finally worked out a means of cementing the harder stones on to the plaited sansevieria twine with acacia gum. Centaine began to assemble the necklace, and almost drove O'wa to distraction in the process, for she discarded fifty lengths of twine.
This is too thick, she would say. This is not strong enough. And Uwa, who, when working on his own weapons and tools, was also a perfectionist, took the problem very seriously.
Finally Centaine unravelled the hem of her canvas skirt and by plaiting the threads with the sansevieria fibres, they had a string for the necklace that was fine and strong enough to satisfy both of them.
When the necklace was at last finished, O'wa's selfsatisfaction could not have been more overbearing had he conceived, planned and executed the project entirely on his own. It was a more of a pectoral than a necklace, with a single string around the back of the neck and the stones woven together in a plate-like decoration which hung on the breast with the big crystal in the centre, and a mosaic of coloured agates and jaspers and beryls surrounding it.
Even Centaine was delighted with her handiwork.
It's turning out better than I had hoped, she told O'wa, speaking in French and holding it up and turning it to catch the sunlight. Not as good as Monsieur Cartier, she remembered her father's wedding gift to her mother which he had allowed her to wear on her birthdays -but not too bad for a wild girl's first effort in a wild place! Th y made a little ceremony of the presentation, and H'ani sat beaming like a little amber-coloured hobgoblin while Centaine thanked her for being such a paragon of a grandmother and the best midwife of the San, but when she placed the gift around the old woman's neck it seemed too big and weighty for the frail wrinkled body.
Ha, old man, you are so proud of that knife of yours, but it is as nothing to this, H'ani told O'wa as she stroked the necklace lovingly. This is a true gift. Look you! Now I wear the moon and the stars around my throatV She refused to remove it. It thumped against her breastbone as she wielded her digging stick or stooped to gather the mongongo nuts. When she crouched over the cooking fires, it dangled between the empty pouches of her swinging dugs. Even in the night as she slept with her head cradled on her own bare shoulder, Centame looked across from her own shelter and saw the necklace shining on her chest, and it seemed to weigh the little old body down to the earth.
Once Centaine's preoccupation with the necklace was over, and her strength and vitality fully recovered after childbirth, she began to find the days too long and the rock cliffs of the valley as restrictive as the high walls of a prison.
The daily routine of life was undemanding, and Shasa slept on her hip or strapped to her back while she gathered the fallen nuts in the grove or helped H'ani bring in the firewood. Her menses resumed their course, and she itched with unexpected energy.
She had sudden moods of black depression, when even H'ani's innocent chatter irritated her, and she went off alone with the baby. Though he slept soundly through it all, she held him on her lap and spoke to him in French or English. She told him about his father and the chateau, about Nuage and Anna and General Courtney, and the names and the memories instilled in her a deep and undirected melancholy. Sometimes in the night, when she could not sleep, she lay and listened to the music in her head, the strains of Afda or the songs the peasants sang in the fields at Mort Homme during the vendange.
So the months passed and the seasons of the desert rotated. The mongongo tree flowered and fruited again, and one day Shasa lifted himself on to hands and knees and to the delight of all set off on his first explorations of the valley. Yet Centaine's mood swung more violently than the seasons, her joy in Shasa and her contentment in the old people's company alternating with blacker moods when she felt like a life prisoner in the valley.
They have come here to die, she realized as she saw F how the old San had settled into an established routine, i but I don't want to die, I want to live, to live! H'ani watched her shrewdly until she realized it was e, and then told Uwa, Tomorrow Nam Child and I tim are going out of the valley. Why, old woman? O'wa looked startled.
He was entirely contented and had not yet thought about leaving.
We need medicines, and a change of food. That is no reason to risk passing the guardians of the tunnel We will go out in the cool of the dawn, when the bees are sleepy, and return in the late evening, besides, the guardians have accepted us. O'wa started to protest further, but she cut him short.
It is necessary, old grandfather, there are things that a man does not understand. As Hlani had intended, Centaine was excited and happy with the promised outing, and she shook H'ani awake long before the agreed hour. They slipped quietly through the tunnel of the bees, and with Shasa bound tightly to her back and her carrying satchel stung over one shoulder, Centaine ran down the narrow valley and out into the endless spaces of the desert like a schoolchild released from the classroom. Her mood lasted through the morning and she and H'ani chattered happily as they moved through the forest, searching and digging for the roots that H'ani said she needed.
In the heat of the noonday they foun
d shelter under an acacia, and while Centaine nursed the baby, H'ani curled up in the shade and slept like an old yellow cat. Once Shasa had drunk his fill, Centaine leaned back against the trunk of the acacia and dozed off as well.
The stamp of hooves and horsey snorts disturbed her, and she opened her eyes, but remained absolutely still.
With the breeze behind them, a herd of zebra had grazed down upon the sleeping group, not noticing them in the waist-high grass.
There were at least a hundred animals in the herd newly born foals with legs too long for their fluffy bodies and w th smudged chocolate-coloured stripes not yet set into definite patterns, staying close to their dams and staring around at the world with huge dark apprehensive eyes, older foals quick and surefooted as they chased each other in circles through the trees, the breeding mares, sleek and glossy, with stiff upstanding manes and pricked ears, some of them huge with foal, milk already swelling in their black udders. Then there were the stallions with powerful bulging quarters, necks arched proudly as they challenged each other or snuffled one of the mares, reminding Centaine vividly of Nuage in his prime. Barely daring to breathe, she lay against the acacia trunk and watched them with deep pleasure. They moved down still closer, she could have reached out and touched one of the foals as it gambolled past her. They passed so close that she could see that each animal was different from the others, the intricate patterns of their hides as distinct as finger-prints, and the dark stripes were shadowed by a paler orangey-cream duplicate, so that every animal was a separate work of art.
As she watched, one of the stallions, a magnificent animal standing twelve hands and with a bushy tail sweeping below his hocks, cut a young mare out of the main pack of the herd, nipping at her flanks and her neck with square yellow teeth, heading her off when she tried to circle back, pushing her well away from the other mares, but closer to the acacia tree, before he started to gentle her by nuzzling her neck.
