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.