Our eternal curse II

by Simon Rumney

  She had never seen herself, other than her distorted reflection in the water, yet she knew that she must be pleasing to the eye. With just a look, or a smile, she had been able to win anybody over.

  Her mother could do the same, and she was very pretty, so Julii surmised that she must be pretty too. 'So why didn't her pink-white man think she was pretty like everyone else?'

  Julii knew that her very light-colored strawberry blond hair was unusual for her tribe. It was not as beautiful as the straight, shiny black hair of the others, and she also knew that the wave that made it flow over her shoulders was peculiar. 'Is this why her shiny pink-white man did not warm to her?'

  She knew that her round eyes were not as beautiful as her mother's wide, thin eyes. She also knew that her body, made strong by hard work and running down animals in the forest, was not as dark as her peers. But it was appealing to men, because the men of her tribe looked at her just as they looked at her mother.

  Ringwind also looked at her in a way that told her she must be pretty. 'So why can't her shiny pink-white man see that?'

  She wasn't just a thing to be looked at either. She was the leader of her peers when it came to intelligence and cunning. She was very nearly as good at Ringwind at hunting, and he was the best among the young ones in all of her small generation.

  No-one had ever been able to resist her cheeky craftiness, but she could also think, and plan, and do things that only men were supposed to do. Julii knew that she must be a young woman with much to offer, but she did not flaunt it because she was also modest like her mother.

  Now her shiny pink-white man, the only man who excited her and made her feel like a woman not a girl, was forcing her to flaunt those offerings in a clumsy attempt to overcome his deeply held contempt. Grasping at straws, Julii looked for ways to change his mind. 'He has not seen the sun for many days.' 'Maybe sunshine will make him happy.'

  Julii tried to help him up and get him outside, but he pushed her hands away as though they were somehow unclean.

  'How could that be?' 'How can he be so cruel after everything she had done for him?' 'After all of the unreserved feelings she held for him?'

  She had not even bothered to build a protective mental barrier because he looked so nice, and kind, and he would be grateful to her because she saved his life. 'She had not even considered he may cause her pain.'

  The shiny pink-white man tried to stand by himself and fell face first into the compacted mud of the tipi floor. Julii's instinctive reaction was, 'good, he deserved it', while in the same moment his pain became hers. 'How could she like someone so much but want him to suffer at the same time?'

  She had to help him. 'He needs my help, so I must help.'

  Bracing herself for more rejection, Julii steadied his arm as he tried to lift himself. He did not push her hands away this time. He let Julii help him back to the deer hide bed where he lay breathing heavily.

  'How could he be out of breath after moving once and for such a short distance?' 'Was he a weak man?' 'No, his body was strong, very strong.'

  Julii had studied every inch of it for days, and everything about his body was tantalizing. In fact, his body tempted her in ways she had never been tempted before. 'Stop this!' 'He doesn't deserve my care!' 'He has made his feelings very clear!' 'But I should clean his face'.

  Reaching towards him with a damp hide cloth caused the shiny pink-white man to move with the speed of a snake, just as he had on the day she had found him by the waterhole. Unlike that first day, she had no broken leg to punch, so his grip around her birthmark remained strong and showed no sign of letting go.

  His touch, though brutal and unkind, sent hot charges up her arm into her body. She gulped in breaths of air. Her chest pounded like it did on the days she ran after deer with her father. 'How could she be out of breath when she had not even moved?'

  Her shiny pink-white man pulled Julii powerfully towards him. His intention was unclear and a little chilling but it excited her. He was hurting her wrist, but she was not thinking of the pain as he pulled her closer and closer. 'Was it her lips he needed?' 'Had he been harboring the same fantasies as her?'

  At the last moment, when he could have kissed her lips, he moved to speak into her ear between gasping breaths. She had no way of understanding his words, but the movement of his lips brushing her ear sent more fire coursing throughout her body.

  The unbearably heat just came upon her for no reason and she felt wet in the place between her legs. For a fleeting moment Julii believed she had begun her bleed or even lost control of her water but no, this was that wonderful feeling, the feeling she had felt in her dreams. 'Dreams!' Julii's wonder turned to panic. 'That is why he seems so familiar.'

  The shiny pink-white man was familiar to her because he had been in her recurring dreams long before she met him. It was an oh-so vivid and real dream that frightened her. It was the dream she was too afraid to talk about, even with her mother. In the dream, her pink-white man had not been wearing the gray covering and his hair was longer, but it was him. He was standing on a strange huge canoe with a white hide that billowed in the wind, while crossing a great body of water. 'How could this man be in her dreams?'

  Julii came back from her confused thoughts to find his lips still speaking unintelligible noises right next to her ear. He was clearly trying to communicate with her but nothing made any sense. 'How could that be?' 'She was the keeper of the words.' 'She knew all of the words in the world.'

  Rudely interrupting her shiny pink-white man, she asked him a question. She used the most basic words, as though she were talking to a child, words that anyone of the children in her tribe would understand. But her shiny pink-white man had no idea what she was saying. 'Was he simple?'

  One of Julii's cousins was simple. He never really made words that people could understand. Her father said it was because his parents were too closely related. 'Were her shiny pink-white man's parents too closely related?'

  'Her shiny pink-white man must have parents.' 'Why had she not thought about that before?' 'If he had parents, did he have an entire tribe?' 'Were there many more people somewhere out there in the world?' 'If so, did they speak another language?'

  The thought of learning another language was too exciting. Julii just wanted to get started right-away. Her shiny pink-white man started speaking again, but this time he pointed to the long shiny thing that hung from the hide belt that Julii had removed from around his waist. 'Why did it have to be that shiny thing?'

  It was the hollow container for his long knife. It looked exactly like the long shiny knife but thicker. Julii was embarrassed. 'Of all the shiny things he could have pointed at, why did it have to be that one?'

  She had told her father not to take the long knife. She knew the shiny pink-white man would be unhappy when he woke up. And now he was, and she was the one left in the tipi to deal with his disappointment and, quite probably, anger.

  She watched her pink-white man as he repeated words that sounded like: "Where is my sword?"

  He said them slowly this time so that the sounds were not all joined together. The tone of his voice and the gaps between the sounds helped Julii understand that he was trying to use words to ask a question.

  "Where is my sword?" Julii tried a disarming smile as she repeated his words and pointed at the shiny hollow thing in the shape of the long shiny knife.

  Her pink-white-man did not smile back. He just pointed and nodded.

  Julii felt panic rising inside as she told her disapproving shiny pink-white man how she pleaded with her father not to use the long knife to collect firewood.

  He didn't understand, and that only compounded her feelings of panic. Julii had to walk out of the tipi for a moment. While outside, she had an idea.

  Returning with a piece of firewood, she made a chopping motion with her hand on the wood.

  His face confirmed her fears. He was angry. More angry than she had seen anyone in her tribe. 'She should have protested, fought harder,
to stop her father taking the long shiny knife.' 'This is all my fault!'

  Her pink-white man was becoming reddish-white and his words were growing louder. He had obviously found reserves of energy from deep within himself. 'Surely, that had to be a good sign.' 'Signs of recovery.'

  He was talking rapidly. Even if she had been able to understand the individual words, he was speaking far too fast for Julii to understand. All she caught were the now familiar sounding: "red nigger!"

  Those two words had been among his first, so they must be important. 'Were they a greeting?' 'No, they were said in anger.' Julii repeated his words, "red nigger".

  She liked the sound of the words, so she smiled and repeated them again. "Red nigger."

  The shiny red-white man's anger turned to a laugh but it was not a fun laugh. It was a cruel laugh. Her shiny red-white man's first laugh should have brought comfort to Julii but it didn't.

  There was no humor in it. It was a horrible combination of contempt, anger and scorn. 'Why was he so complicated when her feelings for him were so unmistakably simple?'

  Julii wanted to understand why he laughed so obscenely. She wanted to communicate with him some more but he just fell back onto the deer hide bed and passed-out.

  Learning

  Julii's shiny pink-white man was laying on his back in the sun beside the river and his long, not so shiny, knife was laying on the ground beside him. 'When he woke up, he would have no more need to be angry.'

  Julii still fretted a little because his horse was still being used to carry firewood. She had asked her father to return the horse as well as the long knife, but her father said the white man could not ride because he was injured and, anyway, he wouldn't mind.

  Her father also said that he was feeding and caring for the horse so he had a right to use it. He said that her pink-white man should be grateful for all the help and food he had received.

  She could not argue too aggressively; it was her father and Ringwind who she had talked into carrying her pink-white man out to the waterhole, and it was her father and Ringwind who would have to return him to the tipi at the end of the day.

  'So, use of the horse will be a fair trade for their time and effort, wouldn't it?' 'Or would it?'

  Julii did not know how her pink-white man would react. She had no way of explaining this complicated, yet straightforward, justification for using his horse, so she sat silently and watched him sleep on the riverbank.

  Looking at his well-developed muscles, Julii began to wonder if she should have taken her father's advice and let Ringwind stay.

  'What if the pink-white man woke up and wanted to hurt her with the long knife?' 'The very long knife that her father had damaged while cutting down a tree.'

  Fretting once again, Julii picked up the long shiny knife for the hundredth time that morning and ran her finger over the damaged blade. The once very sharp edge of the long knife was now very dull and had a large fragment missing from it. 'Would he notice?' 'Of course he would!'

  'Should she tell him it was like that when she found him?' 'No!' 'Why had her father placed her in such a predicament?'

  The long knife had been so beautiful on the day of the pink-white man's arrival, apart from the blood, but now it was imperfect.

  Fearing her shiny pink-white man's reaction, Julii slid the long knife back into the long hollow thing that had the same shape as the long knife.

  After a moment's thought, she removed the long knife to look at the damage again. It was still there and the worry was driving her to distraction. Sliding the long knife back into its cover, Julii moved it further away from her pink-white man's hand.

  'Now, he would have to move to reach it.' 'Even if he moved with the speed of a snake again, she would have time to run away.' She felt confident that she could do it because she was the fastest of her peers and his leg had not yet fully healed.

  Julii noticed that her shiny pink-white man's face was turning red in the sun. 'That was interesting.' 'Was he becoming angry in his sleep?' 'No.' 'He was turning red because of exposure to sunlight.'

  She wondered if her pale brown skin would be a light pinkish white color like his if she stayed out of the sun. 'Her skin had always been a lot lighter than everyone else in her tribe.' She imagined herself with pinkish white skin color like him but it felt wrong. 'She wouldn't want to be so insipid.' 'Her brown skin, even though it was lighter than most in her tribe, was a far healthier color than his pale skin.'

  She felt guilty about judging him by something so far out of his control as the tone of his skin. She knew that he could not have any control over that. Then she realized she would never be pinky-white like him. She had helped her mother give birth to five children and they all had darker skin despite having never even seen the sun.

  As she poked him with her finger, Julii thought she saw signs of him waking. It was nice to think that she knew him well enough to know one of his signs.

  'Yes, his eyes were opening.' He was looking at her with some kind of new expression. 'What was it?' 'No longer disdain or anger or hate.' 'What was it?' 'It was surrender.'

  Julii had seen that same look in the eyes of many dying deer. 'Does he think I am going to kill him?' She spoke to put him at his ease and comfort him but the tone of his reply showed no sign of understanding. His unintelligible words sounded sharp and unfriendly as he said: "Where am I?"

  Julii could tell that these were three individual words but she could not understand any of them. She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders to tell him so.

  The pink-white -man thought for a moment, then he had an idea. Tapping his chest he said: "Robert".

  Why had she not thought of using her name? 'This was just embarrassing!' 'His name is Robert!' 'Of course!' 'Start with something common to both. Like a name!'

  She had been rehearsing all kinds of words that were going to impress him but he had simply used his name.

  Her ego a little bruised, Julii tapped her own chest and said, "Julii".

  Robert repeated the word. "Julii".

  'Now he had the simple yet effective idea of repeating her name.' 'Why had she not thought of repeating his name?' 'Was she becoming slow like the child of too closely-related parents?' She wondered how much of a fool her pink-red-white man must believe her to be. 'This was so embarrassing!'

  Julii searched for signs of derision on his face, but he just pointed to the sun and spoke in a mater-of-fact way. "What day is this?"

  Then, "How long have I been here?"

  Julii understood that these were questions because of his tone. Looking up at the sun, she searched for the clue that would give his questions meaning.

  She wanted to impress him with her intelligence but there were no clues in the sun and, once again, the words were unknown to her. Her awkward situation was made worse by the brightness of the sun momentarily blinding her. Now she was sitting on the ground rubbing her eyes like a stupid child. 'What is happening?'

  In search of something impressive to do or say, Julii ran her mind through everything she knew about her pink-red-white man.

  'What did she know?' 'The fact that he spoke different words meant there must be others out there who listen to, and understand, those words.' 'This man, Robert, had obviously not been out there alone.'

  'Therefore, he must have come from another tribe.' 'Choose an object common to both tribes and compare the words.'

  Feeling very clever with herself, Julii pointed to her hair and said: "hair".

  He immediately understood what she was trying to do. He pointed to his hair and said something unintelligible.

  Julii was happy. She did not feel so stupid anymore. There was definitely another way of forming words and all she had to do was learn them all.

  'This was incredible.' 'This was an opportunity to learn a whole new set of words.' She pointed to the sky and said: "Sky".

  Once again, he pointed up and said something unintelligible, but now she had four of his words: “sword”, “Robert”, “
hair” and “sky”. This was going to be simple and a whole lot of fun.

  Reluctant respect

  Ringwind had never liked the sleeping Robert, but after he woke up, he developed an even deeper hatred of Julii's pink-white man. She would have been very happy to share her shiny pink-white man with her best friend, but Ringwind would not even make the effort to try talking to Robert.

  Quite literally, a world of learning was right there at his fingertips but Ringwind was too rude to join in.

  She had never seen Ringwind be mean before, but now, whenever he found the opportunity, Ringwind was rude to her Robert.

  Luckily, Robert would never understand what Ringwind was saying about him because her pink-white man had absolutely no interest in learning Julii's words.

  Every day she would pump him for more of his words and he would happily talk for hours but, much to her amazement, he had no interest in learning hers.

  'How could he miss such a wonderful opportunity to learn?' It made no sense to Julii but it did give her more time to learn from him. She felt a little selfish but it wasn't as though she hadn't tried to teach her words while spending every free moment with him.

  It annoyed her that she still had to fetch water, skin the jack rabbits, and butcher the deer that Ringwind and her father killed. She no longer enjoyed doing any of it. She no longer sat with the other girls and laughed about Ringwind and the other boys. All she wanted to do was get back to her Robert.

  The girls teased her. They said she was in love with Robert. Julii told them that her only interest in him was learning his words. It surprised her how stressful not telling the truth could be. She had never not told the truth before; she had never needed to not tell the truth before. Everyone in her tribe knew what everyone else was doing and thinking, so not telling the truth had never made any sense before.

  Things then got much more complicated when not telling the truth once, as it led to having to not tell the truth a second and third time. Julii had not prepared herself for her not telling the truth leading to the need for more not telling the truth.