An hour later they made out his tiny form far ahead, and when they at last came up with him, he smiled a broad welcome and with a sweep of his arm announced grandly, O'wa has led you unerringly to the sip-wells of the elephant with one tusk."The origins of the name were lost far back in the oral history of the San. O'wa swaggered shamelessly as he led them down the gentle slope of the river bed.
It was a wide water-course, but Centaine saw immediately that it was completely dry, filled with sand as loose and friable as that of the dune country, and she felt her spirits drop sharply as she looked about her.
The winding serpentine water course was about a hundred paces wide, cutting through the gravel beds of the plain, and although there was no water, both banks were dark with much denser plant growth then the and flats beyond. The scrub was almost waist-high, with an occasional dull green bush rising above the rest. The San were chattering brightly, and H'ani followed closely behind her husband as he strutted about importantly in the sand of the river bed.
Centaine sank down, picked up a handful of the bright orange-coloured sand and let it trickle through her fingers disconsolately. Then for the first time she noticed that the river bed was widely trampled by the hooves of the gemsbok, and that in places the sand had been heaped as though children had been digging sandcastles. O'wa was now examining one of these piles critically, and Centaine dragged herself up and went to see what he had found.
The gemsbok must have been digging in the river bed, but sand had trickled into the hole, almost filling it. O'wa nodded sagely, and he turned to H'ani.
This is a good place. Here we will make our sip-well.
Take the child and show her how to build a shelter. Centaine was so thirsty and heat-lashed that she felt dizzy and sick, but she slipped off the strap of her bag and wearily climbed the river bank after H'ani to help her cut whippy saplings and thorny branches from the scrub.
in the river bed they quickly erected two rudimentary shelters, sticking the saplings into the sand in a circle, bending them over to meet on top and roofing one of them with branches and the other with the stiff, stinking gemsbok skin. They were the most primitive shelters, without sides and floored with river sand, but Centaine flopped gratefully into the shade and watched O'wa.
Firstly he removed the poisoned heads from his arrows, handling them with elaborate care, for a single scratch would be fatal. He wrapped each arrowhead in a scrap of raw hide and packed them into one of the pouches on his belt.
Then he began to fit the reed arrows together, sealing the joints with a ball of acacia gum, until he had a single length of hollow reeds longer than he was tall.
Help me, little flower of my life, he sweetened H'ani blatantly, and with their hands they began to dig together in the sand. To prevent the sand running back into the hole, they made it funnel-shaped, wide at the top and gradually narrowing until O'wa's head and shoulders disappeared into it, and at last he started throwing up handfuls of darker, damp sand.
Deeper still he dug, until H'ani had to hold him by the ankles while his entire body was jammed in the hole. At last, in response to muffled cries from the depths, she passed the long hollow reed down to him.
Upside down in the well, O'wa placed the open end of the reed carefully and then fitted a filter of twigs and leaves around the open end of it to prevent it becoming clogged. With both the women hauling on his ankles, they drew him out of the narrow well, and he emerged coated with orange sand. H'ani had to clean out his ears and brush it from the corms of his grey hair, and from his eyelashes.
Carefully, a handful at a time, O'wa refilled the well, leaving the filter and reed undisturbed, and when he was finished, he patted the sand down firmly, leaving a short length of the end of the reed pipe sticking out above the surface.
While O'wa put the finishing touches to his well, H'ani chose a green twig, stripped off the thorns and peeled it.
Then she helped Centaine unplug the egg-bottles and set them out in a neat row beside the well.
O'wa stretched himself out, belly down on the sand, and placed his lips over the end of the reed tube. H'ani squatted beside him attentively, the row of egg-bottles within reach and the peeled green twig in her hand.
I am ready, hunter of my heart! she told him, and O'wa began to suck.
From under her shelter Centaine watched as O'wa turned himself into a human bellows; his chest swelled and subsided, seeming to double in size with each hissing intake of air, and then Centaine could sense the impediment of a heavy load in the tube. O'wa's eyes closed tightly, disappearing behind a network of baggy wrinkles, and his face darkened with effort to the colour of toffee.
His body pumped and pulsated, he swelled like a bull frog and shrank and swelled again, straining to draw a heavy weight up the long thin reed tube.
Suddenly he made a mewing sound in his throat without breaking the rhythm of his powerful suctions, and H'ani leaned forward and gently fitted the peeled twig into the corner of his mouth. A diamond-bright drop of water bubbled out between O'wa's lips and slid down the twig; it quivered on the tip for an instant and then dropped into the egg-bottles that H'ani held below it.
Good water, singer of my soul, H'ani encouraged him. Good sweet water!
And the flow from the old man's mouth became a steady silver dribble, as he sucked it in and let it run on the exhale.
The effort required was enormous, for O'wa was lifting the water over six feet, and Centaine watched in awe as he filled one egg-bottle, then another, and still a third without pause.
H'ani squatted over him, tending him, encouraging him, adjusting the twig and the bottles, cooing to him softly, and suddenly Centaine was struck with a strange feeling of empathy for this pair of little old people. She realized how they had been forged by joy and tragedy and unremitting hardship into a union so fast and strong that they were almost a single entity. She saw how the hard years had gifted them with humour and sensitivity and simple wisdom and fortitude, but most of all with love, and she envied them without rancour.
If only, she thought, if only I could be bound to another human being as these two are bound to each other! And in that moment she realized that she had come to love them.
At last O'wa rolled away from the tube and lay gasping and panting and shaking like a marathon runner when the race is run, and H'ani brought one of the egg-bottles to Centaine. Drink, Nam Child, she offered it to Centaine.
Almost reluctantly, achingly aware of the effort that had gone into reaping each priceless drop, Centaine drank.
She drank sparingly, piously, and then handed the bottle back.
Good water, H'ani, she said. Though it was brackish and mingled with the old man's saliva, Centame now understood completely that the San definition of good water was any fluid which would sustain life in the desert.
She rose and went to where O'wa lay in the sand.
Good water, O'wa. She knelt beside him, and she saw how the effort had drained him, but he grinned up at her and bobbed his head, still too tired to rise.
Good water, Nam Child, he agreed.
Centaine unfastened the lanyard from around her waist and held the knife in both hands. it had saved her life already. It might do so again in the hard days ahead, if she kept it.
Take, O'wa, she offered it to him. Knife for O'wa. He stared at the knife, and the dark, blood-suffused tones of his wrinkled face paled, and a great devastation seemed to empty all expression from his eyes.
Take, O'wa, Centaine urged him.
It is too much, he whispered, staring at the knife with stricken eyes. It was a gift without price.