It did not come though, and after a moment she looked up. He was staring at her, his face not fierce but smiling, and he touched her shoulder in the way which showed his approval. He knew she had tried to run away but changed her mind. He smiled and Va dropped her head again, hating him more than ever.
9
DOM HAD NOT BEEN ABLE to understand what it was that ailed Va. He presumed it had to do with the tribe’s attack on the village, but that after all was something over and done with. She herself had come to no hurt through it: in fact he had rescued her from his father and the other hunters. It was true that he had beaten her—for running away and then for trying to drown him in the pool—but a beating was no more than any woman must expect, and for much lesser crimes than those.
There was no reason for her to keep up her sullenness, refusing the half of the rabbit’s leg which he had offered her after she had shown how to burn it in the fire and make it taste good, having to be cuffed into naming things, sitting silent or weeping at the end of each day’s trek. But reason or no, he learned to keep a close eye on her. After he had her make him the knife, he was prepared for her attempt to get it out of his belt and attack him with it. He surprised her groping hand, and then beat her again. He knew, though, by the look in her eye, that she had still not learned her lesson, and on other nights was careful to put the knife beyond her reach.
But the morning came when he awoke and felt a difference that for a moment or two he could not comprehend. It was not the presence but the absence of something—of the feeling of restriction to which he had grown accustomed since he had been tying Va each night to his belt. He missed the tug of another body as he turned over in the bed of grass.
He twisted round quickly, to see first, reassuringly, Va’s sleeping figure; a moment later the severed strip of leather. Examining it, he saw the marks of teeth and realized what she had done. But she had not run away—she lay peacefully asleep beside him—nor attacked him while he lay defenseless. His club was where he had had left it, and the stone knife, too.
So at last she knew her place: that she was to be his mate and serve him as a woman should. It had taken her a long time to come to it, but now everything would be all right. Since she had not run away nor attacked him this time, he could be certain she would not do so. She might yet disobey or do foolish things and need to be beaten, but that was not important. What mattered was that she was his woman, and knew it.
He ought, he supposed, to beat her for chewing through the strap: clearly she had meant to run away, even though in the end she had thought better of it. A woman must obey, a man enforce obedience—that was the law of the tribe, handed down through the generations. But after pondering he decided against doing that. She had learned her lesson, and he could overlook this final defiance. He remembered the two days they had spent together in the wood and told himself that soon things would be like that time again. All they needed was to find a rich land, like the valley.
So Dom smiled instead of beating her, and patted her shoulder to show she was forgiven. He could not understand why she turned her face from him, but he was sure that everything was going to be all right.
• • •
But as they went on south they found no country as rich as that of the valley, and Va’s attitude did not change. It was true he no longer tied her to him at night. And he had her make a second knife: it was better than the first so Dom took it, but he gave Va the first to keep, no longer fearing she might use it against him. They walked together, Va obediently a few paces behind, and ate together, and at night slept together. Yet she never smiled.
Gradually they came to understand each other’s speech. The language they used was a mixture of those of both their peoples, but mostly that of Va’s because she would only speak briefly, in answer to questions: the questions came from Dom and so the words themselves came from Va.
Once, while they rested after feeding well on a small deerlike animal he had run down and killed, he tried to get her to sing for him. He did not remember what the word for singing was, and tried to mimic the act as he had done that time in the wood. Then she had laughed at him, and afterward sung; now she only stared in sullen silence. When he beat her for that she wept but did not sing, and Dom’s own heart was not in the beating. He had a strange thought—that there were some things, perhaps, which a person could not be made to do. Singing was one, and smiling another. When he was with the tribe, of course, there had been no songs and very few smiles. He did not think much about the tribe these days, and it was not easy to recall what that life had been like.
It came to him, as another new thought, that if beating did no good then kindness might. He did not really know what he meant by kindness: there had been no word for such a thing in his old language, and if there was one in Va’s she had not told it to him. But it was to do with helping, as Va had helped him when she found him lying sick. If he helped Va, she might smile at him.
So instead of taking the first and best of the meat from the next kill he made, as a hunter should, he gave it to Va. She looked at him uncomprehendingly, but he persisted and made her eat it. She did as she was told and took the meat, but did not smile. Another time he found flowers, white with golden hearts, growing in clumps near the place where they halted for the night. Va watched as he threaded them together into a necklace, but when he offered it to her she did not put it over her head but let it drop in the dust.
Dom was very angry when she did that. She deserved a beating, he thought, for refusing something which he had made and given to her. He raised his hand and she stared at him, flinching slightly but defiant. Maybe you could not force someone to take a gift, either, he thought, and his hand fell harmlessly to his side.
Their traveling took them onto higher land. There were huge pointed hills whose tops were white with a brightness they had never seen before, dazzling the eyes when the sun reflected from it. The days grew short and cold, the nights long and colder still. They shivered and clung together for warmth under their meager covering of skins, but though Va slept close to him at night, during the day nothing changed. There was sullenness always—no smiling, no words from her beyond what must be used.
One day she was attacked by a leopard. They had been drinking at a water hole overhung by trees, and Dom had failed to notice the leopard that lay crouched along a branch. It leaped at Va with a single coughing roar. She saw it in midair and tried to jump away, but its claws raked her shoulder and side. Dom had moved the instant she did, but forward not back, swinging his club with a roar of anger of his own. It was a lucky blow because he was unready and unsighted: he caught the leopard on the back of the neck and smashed it to the earth. Then he leaped on it, squalling and struggling still, and found its throat with his knife.
They stayed several days in that place while Va’s wounds were healing. Dom himself did all the things that were necessary—skinning and jointing the leopard and roasting its flesh over a fire he made, and finding healing herbs to put on her wounds as she had once done for him. In the end, after the leopard’s skin had dried in the sun, he gave it to her to wear, though it was the finest skin he had ever seen. She said nothing, and her expression did not change.
The cold grew sharper: it was as though the air had teeth. All one night they shivered, unable to sleep; and in the morning a whiteness drifted down out of the sky, soft like birds’ feathers but melting damply on the skin. This, Dom guessed, was the same whiteness which lay on the tops of the high hills. It came down thicker and thicker, covering the ground so that their feet made holes in it as they walked. There was no sun—only a gray sky from which whiteness drifted, drifted.
Dom knew they must find refuge from it, and from the bitter cold. It would have been good to have one of the tree-caves there had been in the village, but failing that he must look for an ordinary cave. So he searched among the foothills and found one at last. It was a poor thing compared with the Cave
where the tribe had lived in the rainy seasons: a place that one must stoop to enter and that was little more than a dozen feet in depth, but it offered shelter from the biting edge of the wind. They huddled together there and watched the snow, whirling now as the wind got up, blanket the valley below them.
It went on snowing most of the day. When it stopped late in the afternoon, Va went out and in the dwindling light hunted for dead wood beneath the snow. Although this was woman’s work Dom went after her, and they brought sticks and branches back to the cave, and Va made a fire, coaxing the damp wood into smoke and, with painful slowness, into flame. They had no food but they sat close up against the fire and tried to warm themselves; then retreated to the back of the cave and lay together for comfort.
Next morning the air was a little less cold and the snow had disappeared, but Dom feared the possibility of its return. He felt he had been lucky in finding the cave and might not easily find another; so he told Va that they would stay where they were until the cold season was over. He went out hunting that day and came back, exultant, with a couple of rabbits. The fire had died down, but Va brought it to life again from the embers; while he was absent she had also gathered more wood and stacked it inside the cave. That was sensible of her, he thought, because the wood could be found more easily when it was not hidden by snow, and also because it would stay dry in the cave. He patted her shoulder, but she did not look at him.
They were there many weeks. The snow returned and stayed longer, and the cold deepened. One morning they went out to the stream from which they drank, and found it rimmed with thin plates of rock that one could see through. Dom broke some off and looked at the sun through it. It was so cold that it stung his fingers: he dropped it and saw it splinter.
The jagged edges were as sharp as the stone knife, sharper, and he wondered if perhaps Va could fashion a knife out of them; but they were so brittle that they cracked under the smallest weight. All the same he took several pieces back to the cave with him and left them near the fire. He was astonished later to see them turning into water.
Hunting was difficult and they very often went hungry, living chiefly on roots which Va found and grubbed up. It was a hard time, harder than any they had known since they had been together. They saw little of the sun. Even in the cave it was always cold, despite the fire which Va managed to keep burning. Then Dom fell ill.
He awoke one morning shivering. When he tried to move his legs were stiff and did not want to do the things his mind told them. He got up and went out of the cave into the snow, but fell down. Va came and looked at him.
“I am heavy,” he said. “My legs are heavy.”
She stared down at him. “You must come back into the cave.”
“No.” He shook his head weakly. “I must hunt. We need meat.”
“You are ill,” she said. “You lack the strength for hunting. You must rest until your strength comes back.”
He had to have the help of her hand to get to his feet, and of her arm to get back into the cave. Va lay beside him and covered them both with skins and warmed him with her body, but he still shivered. Later she went out and found roots and made him eat them, but the sickness did not go. His head was burning hot, and she brought snow cupped in her hands and rubbed it gently against his forehead to cool him.
Dom had strange and monstrous dreams, worse than those he had when he was ill with the wound in his leg. In one, which came back over and over again, it was the day of the killing in the village; but he was fighting against the tribe, not with them. He saw the huge figure of his father, swinging the great club, and started to bow his head in automatic obedience before he realized that Va was there, too, and the club was raised to strike her down. Then, crying out in the dream, he rushed with his own club against his father, but knew he could not hope to beat him—no one could overcome such a mighty hunter. He cried out again, this time in despair, and felt his father’s club smash against his skull.
His head throbbed as though from a real blow, and he called out hoarsely for Va. She knelt beside him, and cooled him as she had done before. He said:
“I could not save you from him.”
“Rest,” she said. “You are ill.”
He took her hand and held it, small and cold in his hot grasp.
“Do not leave me, Va,” he said. “Even though I could not save you, do not leave me.”
But next morning when he awoke she was gone. He called her name a score of times, and no answer came. Hours seemed to go by while he drifted between fevered sleep and a wakefulness in which he knew his strength was ebbing. After a time he ceased to call for her. She had left him, he thought, because she too knew he was dying. He would no longer be able to find meat for her or protect her from wild beasts like the leopard; so she had gone away, as a woman must, to look for another man who could do those things.
With this in mind Dom prepared himself for death, hoping it would come soon. The fire died down from blaze to guttering glow and light ebbed from the sky beyond the cave mouth. He heard a noise outside and wondered if it was a hyena seeking prey: a dying man would serve it very well. Not until the figure loomed above him in the dimness did he recognize it as Va.
He cried out in astonishment and gladness. With more amazement still he saw that somehow she had contrived to kill a rabbit which she had brought back with her. She built the fire up with sticks and skinned the rabbit and jointed it. When it was cooked she gave it to him, sitting by him and holding his head and feeding him with the tender meat.
She gave him half the rabbit then and the remainder the following morning, taking none of it for herself. During the next few days his strength began to come back. Within a week he was well enough to go hunting himself and kill a small pig, which he surprised with others, grubbing for food beneath the snow.
In the feast that followed Dom insisted that Va take the choicest morsels. Later as they sat by the fire with full bellies, he said:
“You saved me, Va. Without your help I would have died.”
She sat hunched and silent. Dom said:
“Sing for me, Va.”
She looked at him and looked away; he saw loathing in her glance.
• • •
The snows melted at last, and two weeks went by without a further fall. The days were getting longer, the nights less cold. Dom said, one morning:
“The cave has protected us from the bad season, but now the bad season is over. This is a poor land, with not much game. It is time for us to go on, to find a place like your valley.”
Va did not answer; it was almost as though she had not heard what he said. But when he went on she followed as usual, a few paces in the rear.
So they traveled south again, finding game where they could and living on roots the rest of the time. Twice they saw other people, hunters by the look of them, and on each occasion Dom was careful to keep away, and to take cover until they had passed. He knew they could not be his own tribe, even though one lot of hunters carried clubs of bone. It made no difference who they were because to any tribe he was a stranger, to be killed on sight as he would have killed a stranger in the old days.
The law of the tribe said “kill the stranger”—but it said other things as well. It said “beat your women so that they submit to the man who is their master.” It had not been so with Va—he had beaten her but in her heart she had still defied him. Was he her master, after all? He did not know, but he knew what he most wanted—not that she should fear him but that she should smile, and sing as she had sung in the wood. He no longer beat her but the smiles and songs had not come and, he thought unhappily, never would.
• • •
They came down out of the hills and Dom stared in wonder. He saw water—such an expanse of it as he could not have dreamed existed, water that stretched out for more than a mile in front of them. It lay in shadow under a cloudy sky but as they got nearer su
nlight broke through, turning the chill gray-green to gold-dazzling blue. With every step forward it seemed to increase in extent. They descended the last slope and stood on the shore of the lake, and the immensity of it was awesome.
They stayed there many days, always within sight of the great water. The warm season was coming back; there were rains occasionally which soaked them but they dried off quickly in the sun. At last Dom felt his full strength returning after his sickness in the winter.
But though the place itself was attractive, the prospects of game were poor: he found no rabbits and few wild pig. There were roots in plenty and trees which later might bear fruit—now they were pink and white with blossom—but not much chance of getting meat. The game, he decided, must range farther south; and if they did not come to so vast a water hole as this it meant the whole land there must be well watered. It was time for them to go on again.
When he had come to this conclusion, he told Va. It was a sunny morning and they were eating roots, along with the young green shoots of a plant which grew in abundance near the lake. His stomach longed for the richness of meat.
Va did not answer him but that was not uncommon. He stood up, expecting her to do the same, but she remained squatting a few feet away. He said:
“We are going on, to look for game. Come, Va.”
She spoke then. “I am staying here.”
“No.” Dom shook his head. “We must go on.”
“I cannot.” Her eyes stared blankly at him. “I am heavy.”
He remembered how his own limbs had been heavy, in the cave. He said:
“If you have a sickness I will look after you, as you looked after me. It is the warm season now, and the sickness will soon be over. Then we will go on.”
“No. I shall stay in this place.”
Dom looked at her, puzzled. She rose from her squatting position and stood in front of him. She placed her hand on the curve of her belly.