Chimp that was here leapt to his feet and yelled as if he had been struck with a whole bunch of thorns. Then he was falling, falling, down, down, scraping and bumping. He grabbed at rocks with his hands and felt his skin tear. His feet found lodgment and he stayed, his face sideways against stone. The birds were swirling and crying round him.
Gradually the birds went and there was nothing but a silent place, made of stone and milky light. He licked his torn fingers and inspected the dark blood on his knees. Below him, his spear and his bone flute lay in a bush where his involuntary movement had knocked them. He climbed down, thrust the bone flute through his belt and took the spear in his left hand. He waited, staring round him over the forest and the plain. The Sky Woman sat in the very top of her tree. All at once, he knew that the hunting group was there somewhere, far off and indifferent. He knew that he was one thing by itself, Chimp That Is Here. Feelings swelled in his belly as if he were with child of them. They overwhelmed. He lifted up his voice and howled at the mountains and the Sky Woman, at the forests and the plain, as if he were not a Leopard Man but a dog. He was careless of danger and the tears dropped off his face. He howled again and again and the cliff mocked him with its voice. He beat his head with his fist and felt nothing. Even the birds accepted his grief, at the end, without the comment of voice or wing. They did no more than stir in their nests as the dog voice howled and the cliff howled back.
At last he could howl no more. He whimpered instead and the whimper lay on the surface of a grief that was deep as ever. Then, as if something had come to be born, the feelings were clear in their message. They gave him a knowledge, a certainty. He began to run clumsily along below the cliffs; and as he ran, he whimpered.
“Ma! Ma!”
V
The Sky Woman was halfway down her tree, yet so bright was she that she had the sky to herself, save for one icy sparkle of light above the mountains where the sunset had been. Chimp no longer ran fast, but trotted and still whimpered every now and then. He had remembered things that slowed him—one, that when the Sky Woman was in full belly, children went to the huts and stayed there, while unguessable things occupied the girls and the mothers. Moreover he remembered that he had no mother himself, since she had died—accidentally, of course, as so often happened to the daunting, mysterious creatures. This did not matter to him much, and never had; but now, he felt the lack of her without understanding what she might have done to take away this pain. Nor had he a woman of his own, which was unusual, but happened too. Those hunters who had no women thought of it as a stroke of good luck, when they thought of it at all. Yet he was trotting towards the women, drawn, in his extremity; and when he had got so used to the pain that it was a thing there, like a wound, he began to feel a certain caution as if he were a man approaching a lair. His shadow followed him and his foot held up. This too was strange enough but there was a reason for it. He was running along the skirts of rock. Upended strata sloped up from his left to his right. The slope was just enough to force his foot up on the right side, against the weakness. This fact was another that kept him trotting and seemed in some obscure way to be forcing him towards the place where he was no longer wholly certain he wanted to be.
At last he could see the cloud of steam that hung over the Hot Springs. He slowed to a crouching walk that brought his limp back. He held his spear, as if he might have to use it at any moment. He moved towards the river and the open place where the children played. Everything was still, everything silent. He went close, till at last he could hear the ripple of water.
A baby whimpered in one of the shelters, and an old man coughed somewhere, tuss, tuss, tuss. He stood, crouched on the bleached earth and the goosepimples rose all over him. He licked his lips and looked round him slowly, saw the trees round the Place of Women and flinched away. He took a step or two towards the safety of the plain then stopped. Suddenly, for no reason at all, he remembered the Namer of Women and his hair prickled.
The rising vapour above the Hot Springs had changed. It had not changed while he watched; but there was something different about it that had been there all the time he ran through the open space and he had not noticed it before. The Sky Woman shed her light through it and on it, as she shed light on everything. But the vapour was lit from below, as if there were a fire, kindled impossibly in water. From that direction, as from a local sunset, the cloud was coloured dull pink—so dull a pink, the eye could not stay with it, but saw it for a moment then had to wait until the colour seemed to flow back again. And now—as if his ears had gone up there among the pans with his eyes—he heard a faint sound, high and complex. He dismissed this sound because it was impossible, like the fire. He put one foot back and lifted the spear by his shoulder. He began to move forward, hunting fashion. He gulped, and ran forward to the rise where the first pan was, with a white Sky Woman caught in it. He climbed soundlessly; and in each pan, a white Sky Woman danced. He went faster from pan to pan until he reached the open space before the Lodge of the Leopard Men and the pink light of the fire spilled over him so that his face shook.
The leopard skin that had kept the entrance inviolate was down on the rock at his feet. The impossible sound was indeed the laughter of women. He leapt into the entrance and his hair stood up as if he faced a rhino in rut.
The fire burned on the floor in the middle of the pan and the women lay, squatted, lounged round it. In his first glimpse—a glimpse that froze everything like a lightning flash—he saw two girls, little more than children, holding leopard skulls with two hands against their mouths. The noise, the babble, screech, giggle, chatter, scream, was brighter than the fire. Opposite him, and leaning against the inner pan where the leopard skulls had been, was She Who Names The Women, Namer of Women, She Whose Heart is Loaded Down With Names. She held a skull in her right hand. She held it by its fangs and liquid ran out of it. She was leaning back, one hand supporting her. She was laughing and the light of the fire flowed in her eyes through her tangled hair. She saw him, she screamed with laughter. She lifted the skull in her hand over her shoulder with a woman’s gesture and hurled it at him. The skull flipped sideways out of the pan, the length of a man from his face. He cried out, half in outrage, half in terror.
“No!”
But there were faces turned towards him, firelit faces, faces moon-whitened, with sparkling eyes, white teeth and a maze of floating hair. Shrieks, laughter and words rose together.
“A man! A man!”
They were tumbling over each other, foul stuff spilling from scattered skulls so that the fire spat, hissed and died down. Faces rose up among the shrieks and hands clutched at him. He threatened the faces with his spear, dropped it, then stumbled back and fled. He found himself only a pace from the boiling water and only just swayed round it. He ran down to the next pan, but the laughter and the white faces were there, so that he turned back. He blundered into a knot of soft flesh that would not be untied. There was noise, there were arms of blunt flesh that wound round him like the strings of a bolas. They were screeching to him and to each other. His belt and loinguard went away as if they themselves had elected to. He was being forced down and there was more soft flesh to receive him. His loins refused them in hatred and dread; but their hands were clever, so clever, so cruel, so cunning. In the noise he heard his own cry of pain fly up and up——
“Hoo-oo-oo-oo!”
Up and up his cry went away from the pain that stayed behind between his legs and stiffened him. He was down on the soft flesh, the soft wetness and terror of teeth. Half of him tried to get away from the terror and the weight of soft arms holding him down; and half of him was thrusting and jerking like an animal wounded in the spine. Then he and sheness entered the dreadful place and cried out together and small teeth met in his ear. But there might be teeth, there would be teeth waiting in that wet place and when half his body had jerked its will, he tore himself away. The arms allowed him for a moment but then they caught him again.
“Me! Me!”
br /> Shrieks, laughter, babble, and the merciless skill of hands——
“Hoo-oo-oo-oo!”
There was no way out, but through, compelled to go once more into the place of darkness where the wet flesh had its will. Then he lay, his ears singing among the white women sprawled on rocks, the laughing, hiccuping girls. He felt blood on his neck, tasted it in his mouth. The woman smell was all round, hung on his flesh, hung in his beard and under his nostrils. He tried to get up but his arms and legs were held. A white leopard skull was approaching his face backwards, he turned his face away from the foul smell in the skull. It was forced against his mouth and he clenched his teeth and pressed his lips together. But a hand stole over his forehead and two fingers closed on his nose so that his mouth gaped open for air. His ears sang so that he could hardly hear their laughter; and then the dreadful liquid was slopped in his mouth. He gulped and gagged and struggled against blunt flesh but more liquid slopped in, more and more so that his chest contracted and blew the last of it out in spray. Then he collapsed back against rock, faint, in the binding arms, the laughter, the unmeaning talk, the kisses, small bites and caresses. A hand came from nowhere and wiped his face with hair.
There was silence, except for the singing in his ears. He hiccuped like a white girl and opened his eyes. Someone was approaching over the rocks and the Sky Woman lit her softly from the side. She came swaying, her long grass skirt rustling, the shells making a tiny noise on her breast. She staggered once in her swaying, but still came on towards him. Hair draggled over one side of her face and was caught among the shells. She was laughing without a sound and her eyes were dark and seemed to take the marrow from his bones. She came closer and the women who held him giggled as if the joke would never end. She was beginning to kneel down between his feet. She knelt, laughing soundlessly, leaned forward on her left hand and her hair fell on his thigh.
He cried out.
“No!”
The giggles turned to laughter and the hands held him fast. She shot out her right hand like a snake.
“Hoo-oo-oo-oo!”
When he came down with his cry, back down to the rocks and arms, something had happened—and not between his legs. The foul-smelling drink had warmed itself in his belly. He could feel it glowing and about to burn. It sent up a flame that reached nearly inside his head. Another leopard skull appeared, backwards and pressed against his mouth, another hand closed his nose. He gulped and gulped again, then blew out another spray. The fire shot up and the inside of his head was visited by a puff of flame. Suddenly, he understood that he had never noticed how beautiful She Who Names The Women was, how exquisite and exciting was her smell, how white and young her body, how clever and to be consented to, her hands! The women were letting him go and laughing and he heard himself laugh with them as the flames licked up round his head and down, warmingly, exhilaratingly between his legs. She was letting him go too; and laughing, he seized her hand to put it back. But she avoided him gently then beckoned. Another skull appeared and he shook his head but she would not be denied. Her soft face with its huge eyes came close to him, she gurgled with laughter, in her voice that was deeper than the voice of girls, and spoke.
“Drink, little Leopard Man!”
It was such a joke and she was so gentle he could do nothing but please her. He gulped again and again, therefore, spluttered and choked. Then they were laughing together, she was holding his hand and pulled him after her. He went with her, on fire, with the world moving round him. Even when he saw where she was leading him he felt no terror. It was as if a ravine had opened between him and his dread of the Women’s Place. She lurched against him and it was natural that his arm should go round her waist. She laughed with him and he thought it was the lurch that made her laugh. They came to the barrier of hide sewn with awful shells and he shouted and struck it with his fist. She lifted it and he blundered in. She came behind him, pulled him round. She came close and her laughter gurgled like a little spring. He could see nothing but the glossy water of the river and She Who Names The Women, who was so young and beautiful, outlined against it. She pressed close. She kissed him with her lips and tongue, she laid her breasts against the blood on his chest. His mouth searched after hers when she let him go and he could not find it. He looked round for her but there was nothing to see but a strange shape by the river’s edge—a shape from which the foul—but not so foul—smell came reeking. Then he saw her dark figure appear beside it. She thrust her arm in, lifted it, held something to her face and stood there drinking. She took the thing down from her face and threw it—again with the womanish gesture—into the river. She turned round and though the darkness hid her face he knew she was looking for him. She made her body move like a snake from feet to head so that he knew without seeing, her softness and wetness and warmth. He saw the outline of her grass skirt collapse round her feet. She stepped out of it into the darkness and vanished. He looked round him.
“Where are you?”
Her laughter gurgled again, softly, like a little spring. The water comes up with never a bubble, it wells, dances to itself night and day and lets flow a stream of clearness and life for the grasses and the flowers.
“Here.”
He knelt down. His head was in the woman smell of her hair and neck. Her warm arms stroked his back, there were no teeth—only dark closenesses into which he throbbed and sank. Thought went from him, and the very possibility of fear. The end was like a beginning, and it merged softly with sleep.
VI
The Sky Woman went down, taking her light with her, and the ripples of the river lit from the other direction. In the trees round the Place of Women, a bird began to strike his incessant note. The ringdoves spoke and the rock pigeons. A fish leapt. The sunlight crept down the trees and touched the hide curtains on one side, slid down, shone from the polished top of a clumsy bench—examined a multitude of shapes, bundles of plants, vessels of coconut shell or bark. The light touched the earth, moved to a foot, an ankle with a callous. It found other feet, warmed a leg, a thigh. Outside the hide curtains the day went about its business in full swing. The sunlight found a face.
Chimp rolled away from the light. He was conscious first of himself, coming from a darkness without dreams, then of himself surrounded by a faint and unaccustomed ache as if he had been too long in the sun. It was the strangeness of these feelings that opened his eyes before he had remembered anything. But when he had opened them his mouth fell open too. There was an unquestionably female back in front of him with black hair straggled over it. He sat up with a jerk, so that the faint ache in his head jerked too, and looked round him. He leapt to his feet.
The Namer of Women groaned, said something and rolled over. She sat up and smeared the hair from her face. She was neither young nor beautiful. The dust of the place was on her face and her body and her hair tangled as a briar. She blinked, put one hand to her forehead and screwed up her face. She opened her eyes again and looked round slowly. Her eyes passed across Chimp, so that he backed away, his hands between his legs. She looked at the tripod with the hanging skin and she went still, as if she were looking at a poisonous snake. She licked her lips and muttered.
“Now you’ve done it!”
She looked at him with a hatred that lifted the goosepimples on his skin.
“You naked ape!”
He stayed frozen—not even enough in control of himself to be wary. She looked down at her own body and the hatred went out of her face. She bit her lip.
“Two of us.”
She got up and went to the edge of the river. She did not sway like a palm, she was not gracious and graceful, she staggered as she went. She took a shell, knelt down, scooped up water and drank again and again. She threw water over her face and body till she dripped with it.
Chimp remembered everything. Devastation fell on him out of the sky. He lay down, his face against the earth. He could not even weep.
Presently he saw feet by his face, and the ends of a grass skirt
. Her voice sounded mild.
“Well, we must think what to do. Sit up!”
He rolled over and squatted, his hands still between his legs. He muttered.
“My loinguard——”
The feet went away and he heard her voice by the river.
“How should I know?”
He looked cautiously sideways. She was reaching into the skin that hung from the tripod. She brought up a coconut shell and drank from it. He smelt the stuff, and his face twisted with disgust. He could find no words anywhere and stared down at the ground again. There was a time, while he heard her moving about—heard a rubbing, a washing, the swish of hair. The feet came back, and there was no dust on them. Her skirt rustled and spread on the ground as she knelt in front of him.
“Well? Aren’t you going to look at me?”
He lifted his head. She was the Name Giver again, the shells white on her splendid breasts, the hair no longer smeared across her face. The tears welled from his eyes and he said the only words he could find out of the confusion.
“I shall die.”
“Come now! Who said anything about dying? Only women die!”
He looked down again.
“I shall die.”
A hand touched his arm.
“A mighty hunter die? You might be killed, indeed. It is your glory, is it not? But die! Why—if mighty hunters believed they all died, think how lonely they would be! No man could bear it!”
Timidly, he looked up. She was smiling. She was younger once more. Her eyes were young and taking charge of her face. Among all the mysteries and confusions that had overwhelmed him, there rose another—that She Who Names The Women could look at him with a face that was at once smiling and sad.