Guthridge, George Florance - The Quiet.txt

by The Quiet(Lit)

and danced for joy. Even the Whites danced. A miracle! people said. I thought about the honey badger caught during kuma, and was afraid. I felt alone. In spite of my fear, perhaps because of it, I did a foolish thing. 1 slept away from the others.

  In the night, the quiet again touched me. Num uncurled in my belly. I did not beckon it forth. I swear I didn't. I wasn't even thinking about it. As I slept, I felt my body clench tight. In my dreams 1 could hear my breathing-shallow and rapid. Fear seized me and shook me like the twig of a ni-ni bush. I sank into the earth. Tuka and Kuara were standing slumpshouldered at the water hole where we had danced. Kuara was wearing the head of a wildebeest; the eyes had been carved out and replaced with smoldering coals. "Run away, Mother," he kept saying.

  I awoke to shadows. A fleeting darkness came upon me before I could move. I glimpsed Gai grinning beneath the moon. Then a hand was clapped over my mouth.

  Doctor Stefanko returns after I've finished the hut. She and Gai bring warthog and kudu hides, porcupine quills, tortoise shells, ostrich eggs, a sharpening stone, an awl, two assagai blades, pots of Bantu clay. Many things. Gai grins as he sets them down. Doctor Stefanko watches him. "Back on Earth, he might not have remained a bachelor if your people hadn't kept thinking of him as one," she tells me as he walks away. Then she also leaves.

  Later, she brings Kuara.

  He comes sprinting, gangly, the grass nearly to his chin. "Mama," he shouts, "Mama, Mama," and I take him in my arms, whirling and laughing. I put my hands upon his cheeks; his arms are around my waist. Real. Oh, yes, so very real, my Kuara! Tears roll down my face. He looks hollow-eyed, and his hair has been shaved. But I do not let concern stop my heart. I weep from joy, not pain.

  Doctor Stefanko again reminds me he's here on a trial basis only. Then she leaves, and Kuara and I talk. He babbles

  about a strange sleep, and Doctor Stefanko, and Gai, as I show him the camp. We play with the knobs Doctor Stefanko' showed me; one of them makes a line of small windows blink on in the slight angle between wall-sky and ceiling-sky. The . windows look like square beads. There, faces pause and peer.Children. Old men. Women with smiles like springhares. People of many races. I tell him not to smile or acknowledge their presence. Not even that of the children. Especially not the, children. The faces are surely ghosts, I warn. Ghosts dreaming of becoming Gwi.

  We listen to the voice Doctor Stefanko calls the monitor. It is singsong, lulling. A woman's voice, I think. "U and Kuara, the latest additions to Carnival, members of the last Gwi tribal group, will soon become accustomed to our excellent accommodations," the voice says. The voice floats with us as we go to gather roots and wood.

  A leguaan pokes its head from the rocky kranze, listening. Silently I put down my wood. Then my hand moves slowly. So slowly it is almost not movement. I grab. Caught! Kuara shrieks and claps his hands. "Notice the scarification across the cheeks and upper legs," the voice is saying. "The, same is true of the buttocks, though like any self-respecting, Gwi, U will not remove her kaross in the presence of others except during the Eland Dance." I carry the leguaan wiggling to the hut. "Were she to disrobe, you would notice tremendous= fatty deposits in the buttocks, a phenomenon known as steatopygia. Unique to Bushmen (or'Bushwomen,' we should say), ` this anatomical feature aids in food storage. It was once believed that . . ."

  After breaking the leguaan's neck, I take off the kaross of genuine gemsbok and, using gui fiber, tie it in front of my hut. . It makes a wonderful door. I have never had a door. Tuka and I slept outside, using the tshushi for storage. Kuara will have a door. A door between him and the watchers.

  He will have fire. Fire for warmth and food and U to sing beside. I gather kane and ore sticks and carve male and female, then use galli grass for tinder. Like Tuka did. "The Gwi-

  a

  are marked by a low, flattened skull, tiny mastoid processes, peppercorn hair, a nonprognathous face . . ." I twirl the sticks between my palms. It seems to take forever. My arms grow sore. I am ready to give up when smoke suddenly curls. Gibbering, Kuara leaps about the camp. I gaze at the fire and grin with delight. But it is frightened delight. I will make warmth fires and food fires, I decide as I blow the smoke into flame. Not ritual fires. Not without Tuka.

  I roast the leguaan with eru berries and tsha-cucumber, which seems plentiful. But I am not Tuka, quick with fire and laughter; the fire-making has taken too long. Halfway through the cooking, Kuara seizes the lizard and, bouncing it in his hands as though it were hot dough, tears it apart. "Kuara!" I blurt in pretended anger. He giggles as, the intestines dangling, he holds up the lizard to eat. I smile sadly. Kuara's laughing eyes and ostrich legs . . . so much like Tuka!

  "The Gwi sing no praises of battles or warriors," the voice sing-says. I help Kuara finish the leguaan. "They have no history of warfare; ironically, it was last century's South African War, in which the Gwi did not take part, that assured their extinction. Petty arguments are common (even a nonviolent society cannot keep husbands and wives from scrapping), but fighting is considered dishonorable. To fight is to have failed to . . ." When I gaze up, my mouth full of lizard, there are no faces in the windows.

  At last, dusk dapples the grass. Kuara finds a guinea-fowl feather and a reed; leaning against my legs, he busies himself making a zani. The temperature begins to drop. I decide the door would fit better around my shoulders than across the tshushi.

  A figure strides out of the setting sun. I shield my eyes with my arm. Doctor Stefanko. She smiles and nods at Kuara, now tying a nut onto his toy for a weight, and sits on a log. Her smile remains, though it is drained of joy. She looks at me seriously.

  "I do hope Kuara's presence will dissuade you from any more displays such as you exhibited this afternoon," she tells

  me. "Surely you realize that if . . . well, if problems arise, we may have to take the boy back to the prep rooms until . .

  until you become more accustomed to your surroundings." She taps her forefinger against her palm. "This impetuousness' of yours has got to cease." Another tap. "And cease now."

  Head cocked, I gaze at her, not understanding.

  "Taking off your kaross simply because the monitor said you do not." She nods knowingly. "Oh, yes, we're aware when= you're listening. And that frightful display with the lizard!

  She makes a face and appears to shudder. "Then there's the' matter with the fire." She points toward the embers. "You're' supposed to be living here like you did back on Earth. At least during the day. Men always started the fires."

  "Men were always present." I shrug.

  "Yes. Well, arrangements are being made. For the time being, stick to foods you don't need to cook. And use the heating system." She goes to the rock and, on hands and knees, turns one of the knobs. A humming sounds. Smiling and rubbing her hands over the fire, she reseats herself on the log, pulls a photograph from her hip pocket, and hands it toy me. I turn the picture right side up. Doctor Morse is standing with her arm across Gai's shoulders. His left arm is around her waist. The Land Rovers are in the background.

  "Impetuous," Doctor Stefanko says, leaning over and clicking her fingernail against the photograph. "That's exactly what Doctor Morse wrote about you in her notebooks. She considered it a virtue." Again she lifts her brow. "We do not." Then she adds proudly, "She was my grandmother, you know. As you can imagine, I have more than simply a professional interest in our Southwest African section here at Carnival."

  I start to hand back the photograph. She raises her hand, halting me. "Keep it," she says. "Think of it as a wedding present. The first of many."

  That night, wrapped in the kaross, Kuara and I sleep in each other's arms, in the tshushi. He is still clutching the zani, though he has not once thrown it into the air to watch it spin

  down. Perhaps he will tomorrow. Tomorrow. An ugly word. I lie staring at the dark ground, sand clenched in my fists. I wonder if, somehow using devices to see in the dark, the ghosts in the sky-windows are watching me sleep. I wonder if they will watch the ni
ght Gai climbs upon my back and grunts throughout the marrying thing.

  Sleep comes. A tortured sleep. I can feel myself hugging Kuara. He squirms against the embrace but does not awaken. In my dreams I slide out of myself and, stirring up the fire, dance the Eland Dance. My body is slick with eland fat. My eyes stare rigidly into the darkness and my head is held high and stiff. Chanting, I lift and put down my feet, moving around and around the fire. Other women clap and sing the kia-healing songs. Men play the gwashi and musical bows. The music lifts and lilts and throbs. Rhythm thrums within me. Each muscle knows the song. Tears squeeze from my eyes. Pain leadens my legs. And still I dance.

  Then, at last, num rises. It uncurls in my belly and breathes fire-breath up my spine. I fight the fear. I dance against the dread. I tremble with fire. My eyes slit with agony. I do not watch the women clapping and singing. My breaths come in shallow, heated gasps. My breasts bounce. I dance. Num continues to rise. It tingles against the base of my brain. It fills my head. My entire body is alive, burning. Thorns are sticking everywhere in my flesh. My breasts are fiery coals. I can feel ghosts, hot ghosts, ghosts of the past, crowding into my skull. I stagger for the hut; Kuara and U, my old self, await me. I slide into her flesh like someone slipping beneath the cool, mud slicked waters of a year-round pan. I slide in among her fear and sorrow and the anguished joy of Kuara beside her.

  She stirs. A movement of a sleeping head. A small groan; denial. I slide in further. I become her once again. My head is aflame with num and ghosts. "U," I whisper. "I bring the ghosts of all your former selves, and of your people." Again she groans, though weaker; the pleasure-moan of a woman

  making love. Her body stretches, stiffens. Her nails rake Kuara's back. She accepts me, then; accepts her self. I fill her flesh.

  And bring the quiet, for the third time in her life. Down and down into the sand she seeps, like ga go rain soaking into parched earth, leaving nothing of her self behind, her hands around Kuara's wrists as she pulls him after her, the zani's guinea-fowl feather whipping behind him as if in a wind. She passes through sand, Carnival's concrete base, moon rock, moving ever downward, badger-burrowing. She breaks through into a darkness streaked with silver light; into the core of the moon, where live the ancestral dead, the ghosts of kia. She tumbles downward, crying her dismay and joy, her kaross fluttering. In the center of the hollow, where water shines like cold silver, awaits Tuka, arms outstretched. He is laughing-a shrill, forced cackle. Such is the only laughter a ghost can know whose sleep has been disturbed. They will dance this night, the three of them: U, Tuka, Kuara.

  Then Tuka will teach her the secret of oa, the poison squeezed from the female larvae of the dung beetle. Poison for arrows he will teach her to make. Poison for which Bushmen know no antidote.

  She will hunt when she returns to Gai and to Doctor Stefanko.

  She will not hunt animals.