She patted his arm and spoke as to a child.
“There! Better?”
Some of the confusion left him; and because of this he found indignation stir in him. He opened his mouth to speak, but she saw, and forestalled him.
“You shouldn’t have come hunting us poor women when the Sky Woman has a full belly! Who knows what dreams she would send you?”
A little of yesterday’s grief came back to him.
“It was none of my fault—they drove me away from the hunt.”
“Why?”
The grief swelled.
“The root is warped, the branch twisted! Charging Elephant fell on his face before a gazelle——”
She made an impatient gesture.
“You have a weak ankle. We all know that!”
“The gazelle leapt over me as I fell!”
She squatted back. She frowned and spoke thoughtfully and as if he were not there.
“I understand. You should have gone down the river. But it is very difficult to tell, in these cases where the foot is not turned right over at birth—oh, now, come, Leopard Man!”
She knelt forward and peered into his face.
“You mustn’t be frightened! You didn’t go down the river! See—the river is there and you are here!”
The grief of yesterday boiled up and swamped everything else. He put his head back, howled, and the tears shot out of his eyes.
“They called me Chimp!”
Then her arms were round him and he was sobbing against her shoulder. Her hands caressed his back.
“There, there!” she said, “there, there, there——”
And all the time, her own shoulders shook.
Presently his sobs died away. She took his smudgy chin in her hands and lifted it.
“They’ll forget,” she said. “You’ll see, my little Leopard Man. Men can forget anything. They’ll have a new song or tune or saying. They’ll have a new joke to tell over and over again, or a bright stone to show, or a strange flower, or a splendid new wound to boast about. Why—you’ll forget your dream, too, won’t you?”
“Dream?”
“Last night—all the confusion. The Sky Woman sent it. About the Lodge of the——”
He looked at the ground, glumly.
“I shan’t forget.”
“Oh yes you will!”
He glanced up briefly, then down again.
“There is too much song—too many leaves in the forest—too many words like dust—they’d never believe it—never. How could they?”
She came close and spoke earnestly.
“Listen, Chi—Listen, Charging Elephant. The Leopard Men wouldn’t believe it. You said that.”
“Well?”
“Aren’t you a Leopard Man?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then,” said She Who Names The Women, “you can’t believe it either, can you?”
Chimp inspected this. There was a long silence.
She sat back, legs tucked under her, weight on one hand, palm spread out. The other hand was making little marks on the ground with the point of one finger. She watched her finger.
“In any case,” she said at last, “I don’t think I should talk about my dream with the others. Particularly not with Stooping Eagle and Firefly. You see, Stooping Eagle and Cherry, and Firefly and Little Fish——”
“Cherry? Little Fish?”
There was another long silence.
“Well,” she said at last. “Well, I see.”
The confusion was simplifying in him. It was a dream; and it left him looking at the cruelty of the Leopard Men.
“Clonk.”
“What?”
“Clonk. My ankle says clonk.”
He looked up at her—for comfort perhaps. But she had turned her head sideways and was staring at the fat bag in its tripod. The wry smile was back. Her words meant nothing.
“And I go clonk inside. But you can’t look into a baby’s head.”
She glanced back at him, then down at her fingers on the earth.
“When I have a baby——”
Instantly the goosepimples were back.
“What is that to do with me?”
“Oh nothing, nothing, of course! The Sky Woman does it all by herself! However, I haven’t had a baby since my Leopard Man was killed by the sun. Strange, is it not? But now——”
He tried to understand her.
“Now?”
She sat up and passed a hand over her forehead.
“I have dreams, too. But they mean nothing. Nothing, nothing. What threatens us? The Sky Woman is—who knows what she is, or what we are, except that we are like nothing else? Charging Elephant—the dream, your dream——”
“Well?”
He saw that she was changing colour, a flush was spreading over her breast, her neck, her cheeks.
“When I brought you here, it was—not wholly bad?”
He remembered the place with no teeth, the darkness that took away fear.
“No. No.”
The flush came and went in her cheeks.
“You see—you may—that is—Charging Elephant, you may be my Leopard Man. When you return from the hunt, you may come to the hut and—if you like, that is.”
He thought of the Leopard Men, their awe of She Who Names The Women. A great lightness took the place of the grief in him. He spoke gruffly, to hide his new joy.
“If you like.”
The flush died away from her cheeks. She knelt forward and spoke with quiet dignity.
“Charging Elephant, you may rub noses.”
A girl’s voice was crying somewhere beyond the hide curtains.
“Palm! Palm! Oh Palm!”
The Namer Of Women leapt to her feet and went quickly to the curtains.
“Stay outside!”
“Palm!”
“What is it?”
“They are coming back—Palm. The Leopard Men! They are at least a day early, Palm!”
She Who Names The Women stood silent, her hands pressed against her cheeks. She looked quickly at Chimp then took her hands away.
“Listen—Minnow. Tell the others. Clear everything away——”
“We’re doing it!”
She Who Names The Women called after her.
“Everything, mind! Not a trace!”
Chimp had begun to move round. He searched over the earth.
“My loinguard—where is it?”
“How should I know! Up by the pans I suppose!”
“I can’t——”
“You must go—you must go!”
“How? Where?”
“Oh——!”
“Naked!”
“Wait. I’ll see how far away they are——”
She hurried through the curtains and the trees, quickly she climbed by the pans. A belt and loinguard lay floating in the first of them. She fished it out, then stared over the plain under her lifted hand. The Leopard Men were nearer even, than Minnow had said. If she had allowed herself to think that her ears were still girl-keen, she could have believed that she heard their chant. Even so, she could see how they walked in single file and how every few paces they jerked their sticks in the air.
“Rah! Rah! Rah!” said She Who Names The Women bitterly, “Rah! Rah! Rah!”
She blinked in the light, shaded her eyes more closely. She saw that two of the hunters carried a pole between them. A burden hung from the pole. She examined the size of the burden, the colour——
“Oh changeless Sky Woman! Not another leopard!”
She went quickly back to the Place of Women and threw his loinguard at him.
“Put it on and go.”
“Where? How?”
She beat her head with her fists.
“Haven’t I trouble enough? Go! Jump in the river—then wade along and up through the woods——”
“I’ll go——’
“And don’t you think I’m going to have a man under my feet all the——”
He went sousing into the water, his loinguard in one hand. He came up and waded, shuddering. The last he saw of her there, she was standing by the tripod with a coconut shell in her hand. Then he was busy in weeds and hanging boughs. He pulled himself up in mud, stood under the trees and dressed himself. When it was secure, he walked casually through the woods and came out on rocks. He sidled round the settlement, up by the Hot Springs in the rising vapour, then down the other side. He could see the procession of the Leopard Men approaching the open space before the settlement. Girls and women were dancing, running forward, embracing their men and dressing them with flowers. The children were dancing and flinging flowers and clapping their hands. The men sang and hoisted their spears and an ancient Leopard Man stood before his hut, leaning on his spear and nodding and laughing out of his toothless mouth. The sun was hardly brighter than the occasion. Chimp stole down and round and inserted himself in the tail of the procession behind Beautiful Bird. The leopard hung upside down from four paws and dripped. Beautiful Bird turned, laughing, saw Chimp and embraced him!
“Where was Charging Elephant? We found the trail again! We killed his mighty leopard! We sang round the fireflower but there was no Charging Elephant and no flute! There was a storm of weeping!”
Firefly looked back, as he held his girl in the crook of his arm.
“Where was the Song of the Wind? We lived in a rain-cloud!”
Dragonfly came close, shyly, and put his hand in Chimp’s. Chimp burst into tears.
There was a sudden silence. Chimp glanced up through his tears and saw where all were looking. The Namer Of Women, the Woman Namer, She Whose Heart Is Loaded Down With Names was coming across the open space from the Place of Women. She swayed like a palm. White shells clinked delicately on her throat, her ankles, her wrists. Her long, dark hair fell smoothly and modestly over her breasts, her grass skirt rustled. She put one foot behind her, spread her hands on either side. She bent her knees and her head. She straightened up and folded her hands before her. She smiled sweetly.
“Welcome, mighty Leopard Men! What pack, what herd, what pride is swifter, fiercer? And welcome to my Leopard Man, Charging Elephant, who goes to my hut when he wills!”
In his daze, Chimp heard a shout. The Leopard Men were all round him, flowers struck him in the face until Stooping Eagle kissed him.
She spoke again.
“Where have you been, Charging Elephant? The nights have been long and lonely!”
A great delight and strength rose up, up out of his loins. He took the spear from Dragonfly, hoisted it and stamped with his good foot. The song burst out of him.
“I am Water Paw! I am Wounded Leopard!”
Stooping Eagle and Furious Lion were forcing him down. He knelt. The Elder of Elders lifted his spear, then laid it on Chimp’s shoulder.
“Water Paw! Wounded Leopard!”
He wept so much, even when he stood up, that he could not see the Namer Of Women but he heard her when she spoke again.
“So go to your secret place, mighty Leopard Men. Take the awful strength of the leopard with you, while we women wonder, and cower; and humbly prepare you a feast of nourishing termite soup, and of dried fish, roots and fruit, and cool, clear water.”
“Rah! Rah! Rah!”
So everything ended happily and all changes were for the best. The mountain did not erupt for more than a hundred thousand years; and though the eruption overwhelmed the spa that had grown up round the Hot Springs, by that time there were plenty of people in other places, so it was a small matter.
Envoy Extraordinary
1. The Tenth Wonder
The curtains between the loggia and the rest of the villa were no defence against the eunuch’s voice. His discourse on passion was understandably but divinely impersonal. It twisted and soared, it punched the third part of a tone suggestive of a whole man’s agony, it broke into a controlled wobble, dived, panted neatly in syncopation for breath. The young man who stood against one of the pillars of the loggia continued to roll his head from side to side. There were furrows in his forehead as deep as youth could make them and his eyelids were not screwed up but lowered as if they were a weary and unendurable weight. Beyond and below him the garden was overwhelmed with sunset. A glow, impersonal as the eunuch voice, lay over him, but even so it was possible to see that he was exquisite to look at, tall, red-haired and gentle. His lips fluttered and a sigh came through them.
The old man who sat so restfully by the other pillar of the loggia looked up from his work.
“Mamillius.”
Marnillius shrugged inside his toga but did not open his eyes. The old man watched him for a while. The expression on his face was difficult to read, for the sunlight was reflected from the stone pavement and lit him upside down so that the nose was blunted and an artificial benevolence lay about the mouth. There might have been a worried smile under it. He raised his voice a little.
“Let him sing again.”
Three notes of a harp, tonic, sub-dominant, dominant, foundations of the universe. The voice rose and the sun continued to sink, with remote and unimpassioned certainty. Mamillius winced, the old man gestured with his left hand and the voice ceased as if he had turned it off.
“Come! Tell me what is the matter.”
Mamillius opened his eyes. He turned his head sideways and looked down at the gardens, level after declining level of lawn that yew, cypress and juniper shadowed and formalized, looked listlessly at the last level of all, the glittering sea.
“You would not understand.”
The old man crossed his sandalled feet on the footstool and leaned back. He put the tips of his fingers together and an amethyst ring sparkled on one of them. The sunset dyed his toga more gorgeously than the Syrians could manage and the broad, purple fringe looked black.
“Understanding is my business. After all, I am your grandfather, even though you are not from the main trunk of the imperial tree. Tell me what is the matter.”
“Time.”
The old man nodded gravely.
“Time slips through our fingers like water. We gape in astonishment to see how little is left.”
Mamillius had shut his eyes, the furrows were back and he had begun to roll his head against the pillar again.
“Time stands still. There is eternity between a sleep and a sleep. I cannot endure the length of living.”
The old man considered for a moment. He put one hand into a basket at his right, took out a paper, glanced at it and threw it into a basket on his left. Much work by many expert hands had gone to giving him the air of clean distinction he cut even before that garden and in that light. He was perfected by art, from the gleaming scalp under the scanty white hair to the tips of the tended toes.
“Millions of people must think that the Emperor’s grandson—even one on the left-hand side—is utterly happy.”
“I have run through the sources of happiness.”
The Emperor made a sudden noise that might have been the beginnings of a shout of laughter if it had not ended in a fit of coughing and a nose-blow in the Roman manner. He turned to his papers again.
“An hour ago you were going to help me with these petitions.”
“That was before I had begun to read them. Does the whole world think of nothing but cadging favours?”
A nightingale flitted across the garden, came to rest in the dark side of a cypress and tried over a few notes.
“Write some more of your exquisite verses. I particularly liked the ones to be inscribed on an eggshell. They appealed to the gastronome in me.”
“I found someone had done it before. I shall not write again.”
Then for a while they were silent, prepared to listen to the nightingale: but as if she were conscious of the too-distinguished audience she gave up and flew away.
Mamillius shook out his toga.
“Mourning Itys all these years. What passionate unintelligence!”
“Try the other arts.”
&n
bsp; “Declamation? Gastronomy?”
“You are too shy for the one and too young for the other.”
“I thought you applauded my interest in cooking.”
“You talk, Mamillius, but you do not understand. Gastronomy is not the pleasure of youth but the evocation of it.”
“The Father of his Country is pleased to be obscure. And I am still bored.”
“If you were not so wonderfully transparent I should prescribe senna.”
“I am distressingly regular.”
“A woman?”
“I hope I am more civilized than that.”
This time the Emperor was unable to stop himself. He tried to untwist the laughter out of his face but it convulsed his body instead. He gave up and laughed till the tears jerked out of his eyes. The colour in his grandson’s face deepened, caught up the sunset and passed it.
“Am I so funny?”
The Emperor wiped his cheeks.
“I am sorry. I wonder if you will understand that part of my exasperated affection for you is rooted in your very—Mamillius, you are so desperately up-to-date that you dare not enjoy yourself for fear of being thought old-fashioned. If you could only see the world through my regretful and fading eyes!”
“The trouble is, grandfather, I do not even want to. There is nothing new under the sun. Everything has been invented, everything has been written. Time has had a stop.”
The Emperor tossed another paper into his basket.
“Have you ever heard of China?”
“No.”
“I must have heard of China twenty years ago. An island, I thought, beyond India. Since then, odd fragments of information have filtered through to me. Do you know, Mamillius, China is an Empire bigger than our own?”
“That is nonsense. A contradiction in nature.”
“But true, none the less. I sometimes fall into a daze of wonder as I imagine this ball of earth held, as it were, in two hands—one light brown and the other, according to my information, jaundice yellow. Perhaps at last man will be confronted with his long-lost twin as in that comedy.”
The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels Page 11