‘Can you believe that, “I cannot do it for food”?’
‘She has learnt very bad manners.’
‘I feel trouble, Nani. And now, with this child in her belly, she will be difficult. Your husband’s brother had trouble like that with his wife in the beginning, remember? She ran away every time she found out she had a baby growing in her belly.’
‘She only had two children, Tau.’
‘Yes, but she stayed away from one moon to the next. Kwa’s brother was thinking of leaving her and taking someone else. We must prepare the leaves to bring the baby down and give it to her right away.’
Inside the new skerm, Zokho sat miserably on the kaross. The sun was still on an upward climb and she was in for an unbearable day in the cloistering heat. Although Toma was just outside, he would only come inside when the fires were lit in the evening. It was customary for her to wait like this by herself. No adults would come with him, only some of his friends who would sit with them at the fire till morning. She looked at the gifts placed in the skerm: a digging stick from Limp Kao, tortoise shell plates from Kabas, the steenbok cloak from Karees and an ostrich egg container from Toma. The creamy eggshell reminded her of Roeloff’s smooth skin, and she remembered the night in the kitchen. Never would she forget how she had felt. How he had reacted. The rapidity with which his heart beat. Eyes were the deliverers of the heart, the old people said, and Roeloff spoke with his: grey like the rainy season when he was troubled, bright as the sky when he laughed. She was not of the dust and the wind like his brother said, to be trampled and blown away. She was like a shiny stone he’d found, interested in how she was made. That was his nature. Curious. Always wanting to know things. But why was she thinking of him? How would it help her tonight when Toma entered the skerm and claimed her? Roeloff was far away, in another world. He had let her go. He wasn’t Sonqua. Would never be. He spoke the language and played at being one of them, but he was what he was and would always be: the son of a white man. This was where she belonged. At her own hearth, with her own people. The women were right; you couldn’t have what was out of your reach. She’d once liked Toma, and she would like him again. Soon she would light his fire and have his children arguing over the milk in her breasts.
‘The grass here has been disturbed,’ Koerikei said, reaching the area where the women said they’d seen animal tracks. ‘There are the gemsbok droppings over there.’ He stuck his finger into the crust, examining the spoor. ‘Broad and pointed. Female.’
Toma inspected it. Urine in front of the faeces indicated a male. The urine patch here was on top and slightly behind. And the spoor was fresh; she probably wasn’t far away. He hoped not. They’d failed in their last two attempts to catch eland and needed desperately to bring food to camp.
‘We can’t let this one get away, our people are hungry.’
‘We’ll go in over there. Keep downwind.’
The hunters bent low and crept stealthily through the grass. A short while later they saw twigs moving on a bush up ahead and came upon the fawnish-grey antelope with the black stripe. They had seen lions and hyenas impaled on those long horns, and they weren’t taking any chances. Dropping silently to their knees, they got ready to aim. The sudden alarm call of a bird shrieked over their heads, and the gemsbok bolted. Cursing the interfering bird, they released their arrows. Toma’s found its mark and the gemsbok fled with the arrowhead lodged in its belly. The hunters gave chase into a clearing, over sand and bush, then back in among the boulders. Poison worked swiftly in the softness of the belly, and the afternoon found them still in pursuit, creeping up on the weakened gemsbok panting under a tree. The animal tried wearily to ward them off with its horns, but it had lost its strength and was no match for the hunters who quickly beat it to death with a stone.
‘Your arrow got him, Toma, make the cut.’
Toma knew the honour bestowed on him; knew, that, despite his age, he was next in line after Koerikei. The leader had to be many things, not just accurate with his arrow. Toma had been told that his ability to decipher spoor over rock and stone was as legendary as his old father’s, his eyesight better than anyone’s. His people had lived mostly on berries and tubers and plants during the dry months, and the last failed attempts had disheartened them. They would know it was his arrow that had provided the camp with their first real food in almost two seasons. Would it change Zokho’s feelings towards him, make him more important in her eyes? She was growing bigger every day with their child. He wasn’t sure when it would come although from her appearance it looked like it might any day. The meat from the gemsbok would strengthen her.
He made the cut, then the arrowheads were dug out and examined to establish ownership, the animal quickly skinned and disembowelled.
Toma took out the liver, divided it in three, and handed a piece each to Koerikei and Kwa. They ate it warm, with the blood dripping down their chins and arms, then proceeded to the serious business of cutting up the carcass. The sun was on its downward journey when they left for camp with the meat slung over their shoulders.
The women saw them in the distance and started the fires. The group had swelled to nineteen, and at Koerikei’s hearth, the meat was again divided and redivided until everyone had a share. Choice cuts were roasted, the stomach cleaned of grasses and thorns, blobs of faeces squeezed out of intestines turned inside out with a stick, the rest of the meat cut into strips and hung from branches to dry. The feast went on far into the night and they ate until they lay blown up like those swollen snakes they’d seen at the big river after a feed.
Outside her skerm, Zokho moved restlessly on her side. She’d had cramps all day, and a knife-like jab in the lower abdomen made her suddenly gasp with pain.
Tau heard the catch in her breath and turned. Zokho’s face was sweaty and strained, and she was propped up on her elbows, her hips cradled in the shallow pit she’d scooped out of the soft sand. The leaves Tau and Nani had ground into powder and put in her food hadn’t worked, and Zokho’s belly had grown round as a melon. Tau knew her time was at hand. Toma knew, too, she saw, from the way he’d turned. Had he worked it out? Tau tried not to look too obviously at them. She and Nani felt Toma had been greatly deceived. Toma had proved himself an able provider, fulfilling his role, but he was not a contented mate, and most days looked like a hurt fly over Zokho who refused him sexual pleasure and ignored her duties, running off with Karees to play.
She mashed some dried herbs together, and took it over. Zokho, bent double with a contraction, waved it away.
‘Give it to him, I don’t want it.’
‘You’ll need your strength. Don’t be so stubborn. Take it.’
‘No!’
The others tried not to look. Everyone knew of the couple’s discord—Toma’s patience, Zokho’s childishness. And now she was being disrespectful to Tau, who’d treated her like her own daughter. Still, they understood. It was her first child; she was acting out of fear.
‘I’ll leave it here. Take it. The pains will get worse.’
All this Karees noted from the entrance of her parents’ skerm. Her mother had taken responsibility for Zokho, but Zokho could be very disagreeable. Karees knew why; Zokho had told her things. Having lived on a farm, she had experience that no one else had and Karees never tired of hearing about the big woman pretending to be Zokho’s mother, giving her food. She particularly liked the stories about the old hunter and Eyes of the Sky. It seemed odd to her, this bond between the mountain man and the white boy, and strange for Zokho to want to be friends with him. Girls played games with boys, they didn’t want to just be with them, like Zokho said. And why with someone so different from them? What had Zokho found so exciting that she was willing to ruin everything with Toma—Toma, who wasn’t only a good hunter, but was possessed of such humour and tolerance? If she had one like him, she would take care not to lose him.
Karees watched Zokho get up and walk slowly into the bush. Zokho wasn’t laughing now. No one could go in her place. No one could take on that pain. Now Zokho had to go and squeeze out that baby by herself in the bush. Karees pulled her kaross tightly about her, eyes fixed on the darkness beyond. She waited, straining her ears, but there were no cries of pain, no sign of mother and child. It was a night for stories and dancing around the communal fire, but it was a still camp as they all waited for Zokho to reappear.
The fires cast their circles of light, the night chilled, and Tau got up from her hearth to go and investigate. She came upon Zokho, frantic with pain, squatting on a patch of grass. Zokho had chosen her birthing spot well, with her back to a thorn bush so she could see oncoming danger.
‘This pain is killing my insides.’
Tau kneeled down and put her hand between Zokho’s legs.
‘The head’s there, it’s almost over.’
‘I can’t push any more.’ Zokho squeezed her eyes closed against the pain. ‘It’s not coming out.’
‘You have to be strong. Take a deep breath and push!’
Zokho was racked with a contraction.
‘Come, Zokho, now!’
With Tau’s comforting hand on her shoulder, Zokho dug her heels into the grass and bore down hard into the ground. A trickle of blood collected at her heels, and the night air fractured with her screams.
‘He’s coming!’ Tau eased out the head. ‘One more.’
At the first rush of air into its lungs, the infant cried, and Tau went quickly to work, biting off the umbilical cord. As she lifted him into her arms, the moonlight fell on his face.
‘Aaiee!’
‘What is it, let me see.’
‘It’s better not to, he’s dead.’
