Work! she ordered.
Centaine worked as quickly as the old woman, listening to her chattering happily and understanding only an occasional word as they hurried from plant to plant.
This is a blessing indeed, the spirits are kind to send the water-smoke from the sea. Now the crossing to the Place of All Life will be less arduous. Without the watersmoke we might have perished. They have made the road smooth for us, Nam Child, perhaps your baby will be born at the Place of All Life. What a prodigious benevolence that would be. For then your child would have the special mark of the spirits upon him for all his life, he would be the greatest of hunters, the sweetest of singers, the nimblest of dancers and the most fortunate of all his clan. Centaine did not understand, but she laughed at the old woman, feeling lighthearted and happy, and the sound of her own laughter startled her, it had been so long and she replied to the old woman's chatter in French.
I had begun truly to hate this harsh land of yours, H'ani. After all the anticipation I had to see it, after all the wonderful things that Michel told me and all the things I had read about it, how different it all was, how cruel and how malicious. Hearing the tone of her voice, H'ani paused with the wet wad of fur poised over the egg-bottle and looked at her quizzically.
Just now was the first time I have laughed since I have been in Africa. Centaine laughed again, and H'ani giggled with relief and returned her attention to the bottle. This day Africa has shown me its first kindness. Centaine lifted the sodden fur to her lips and sucked the cold sweet dew from it. This is a special day, H'ani, this is a special day for me and my baby. When all the egg-bottles were brimming full and carefully replugged, they indulged themselves, drinking the dew until they were satiated, and only then did Centaine look around her and begin to appreciate what the fog meant to the plants and creatures of the desert.
Bright red ants had come up from their deep nests to take advantage of it. The worker-ants scurried from plant to plant, sucking up the droplets so that their abdomens swelled and became translucent, on the point of bursting before they disappeared back into the burrows. At the entrance to each burrow a cluster of other ants were assembled, the wedding party to see off the breeding queens and their consorts as they lifted into the foggy air on paper-white wings, fluttering off, most of them to die in the desert, but a very few of them to survive and found new colonies.
The sand lizards had come down from the dunes to feast an the flights of ants, and there were small rodents, gingery-red in colour, that hopped down the valley floor on overdeveloped hindlegs like miniature kangaroos.
Look, H'ani, what is this? Centaine had discovered a strange insect the size of a locust which was standing on its head in an exposed position. The dew condensed in silver droplets on its shiny iridescent armour plating, then trickled slowly down the grooves in the carapace and were channelled into the creature's hooked beak.
Good eat, H'ani told her and popped the insect into her mouth, crunched it up and swallowed it down with relish.
Centaine laughed at her, You dear, funny old thing. Then she looked around at the small secret life of the desert. What an enchanted land Africa is! At last I can understand a little of what Michel tried to explain to me. With an African abruptness that no longer surprised Centaine, the mood changed. The curtains of fog peeled away, the sun struck through and within minutes the gem-like droplets of dew had vanished from the stoneplants. The ants disappeared into their burrows, sealing the entrances behind them, and the sand lizards scurried back into the slippery dunes, leaving the dismembered paper wings of the flying ants they had devoured to blow idly on the small offshore wind.
At first the lizards, still chilled by the fog, basked on the sunny front of the dunes, but within minutes the heat was oppressive and they ran across the ridges of the slipface to shelter on the shady side, Later, when the noon sun dispelled all the shadows, they would dive below the surface and swim down through it to the cooler sands beneath.
H'ani and Centaine shouldered their carrying bags and, bowed under the weight of the egg-bottles, went down to the beach. O'wa was already at the camp and he had a dozen fat lizards impaled on a stick of driftwood, and a goodly bag of the gingery desert rats laid out on the flat stone beside the fire.
Oh, husband, what an intrepid provider you are. H'ani laid down her carrying bag the better to praise the old man's efforts. Surely there has never been a hunter of all the San to match your skills! O'wa preened quite unashamedly at the old woman's blatant flattery, and H'ani averted her face for a moment and her eyes flashed a message to Centaine in the secret language of womankind.
They are little boys, her smile said clearly. From eight to eighty, they remain children. And Centaine laughed again and clapped her hands and joined in H'ani's little pantomime of approbation.
O'wa good! O'wa clever! And the old man bobbed his head and looked solemn and important.
The moon was only four or five days from full, so that after they had eaten, it was bright enough to throw purple dark shadows below the dunes. They were all still too excited by the fog visitation to sleep, and Centaine was trying to follow and even join in the chatter of the two old San.
Centaine had by now learned the four click sounds of the San language, as well as that glottal choke which sounded as though the speaker was being strangulated.
However, she was still struggling to understand the tonal variations. The different tones were almost undetectable to the Western ear, and it was only in the last few days that Centaine had even become aware of their existence.
She had puzzled over the way H'ani seemed to repeat the same word and showed exasperation when Centaine had obviously not been able to detect any difference in the pronunciations. Then, quite suddenly, as though wax plugs had been removed from her ears, Centaine had heard five distinct inflexions, high, middle, low, rising and falling, that changed not only the sense of a word but the relationship of the word to the rest of the sentence.
It was difficult and challenging and she was sitting close to H'ani so she could watch her lips, when suddenly she let out a surprised gasp and clutched her stomach with both hands.
It moved! Centaine's voice was filled with wonder. He moved, the baby moved! H'ani understood immediately and she reached out swiftly and lifted Centaine's brief tattered skirt and clasped her stomach. Deep in her body there was another spasm of life, Ai! Ai! shrilled H'ani. Feel him! Feel him kick like a zebra stallion! Fat little tears of joy squeezed out of her slanted Chinese eyes and as they ran down the deep corrugated wrinkles on her cheeks, they sparkled in the light of the fire and the moon. So strong, so brave and strong!
Feel him, old grandfather. O'wa could not refuse such an invitation, and Centaine, kneeling in the firelight with her skirts lifted high over her naked lower body, felt no embarrassment at the old man's touch.
This, announced O'wa solemnly, is a most propitious thing. It is fitting that I should dance to celebrate it. And Uwa stood up and danced in the moonlight for Centaine's unborn infant.
The moon dipped into the dark, slumbrous sea, but already the sky over the land was turning to the colour of ripe orange at the approach of day and Centaine lay for only a few seconds after she awoke. She was surprised that the two old people still lay beside the dead ash of last night's fire, but she left the camp hurriedly, knowing that that day's trek would begin before sunrise.
At a discreet distance from the camp she squatted to relieve herself, then stripped off her rags and ran into the sea, gasping at the cold invigorating water as she scrubbed her body with handfuls of sand. She pulled her clothing over her wet body and ran back to the camp. The old people were still wrapped in their leather cloaks and lying so still that Centaine felt a moment of panic, but then H'ani coughed throatily and stirred.