In the Beginning (9 page)

He could not do it: this also was something which required a special skill and long practice. But fire no longer alarmed him, and he threw on more sticks to increase the blaze. Va remembered she had once thought how good it would be to teach Dom things . . . how long ago that was!

The scent of roasting pig rose pungently in the air. Dom was ravenously hungry, and began to gnaw a piece before it was really cool enough to handle, pulling it away as it burned his mouth, but as compulsively bending forward to chew it again. When
the first edge had been taken off his appetite, he indicated to Va that she could have one of the other pieces which he had dragged out of the embers. She accepted this time, her own hunger unbearably sharpened by the smell. It was the first meat she had eaten since she left the village.

Later she wept. It was not from any particular recollection of grief, but from a sadness that suddenly and unaccountably overwhelmed her. Dom stared at her, puzzled, then came to where she sat. He spoke in his own language, his voice friendly rather than harsh. When she went on weeping he put his hand on her shoulder. She jerked away and threw it off, and expected him to hit her; but he only looked at her and shook his head in bewilderment.

Next day they saw people. Dom saw them first—his hunter's eyes were sharper than hers—and said something in a whisper that was a warning, fastening a hand on her wrist. He pointed, and she looked in that direction. It was open country, mostly rolling grassland studded with thorn bushes and now and then a small tree. Figures moved against the distant horizon: she counted more than ten of them.

She could see they were men, but that was all.
They carried things in their hands but at this distance it was impossible to make out what they were. Not clubs of bone like Dom's, at least. They might be stone knives, or something quite different.

So they were not Dom's tribe, who anyway could not possibly have come so far south yet. They might be people like her own: people with skills, who lived in huts and grew corn and vegetables and kept livestock; people who made tools, and pots out of clay; people who laughed and sang. If she were to cry out they might come and rescue her from Dom, and then she could live with them.

But she could not be sure of that. It might be that even though not Dom's tribe they were equally savage and cruel. She might only be exchanging this brute she knew for many she did not. She followed Dom's lead, therefore, and kept silent. They watched the men pass across their field of vision and go away to the west. Not until some time afterward did Dom indicate that it was all right for them to go on. Va, as always, followed him, a few paces behind.

• • •

One morning when he unloosed her she noticed that her belt was frayed at the point where it had been
looped about her neck. She thought about this during the day, examining the frayed place surreptitiously when Dom's eyes were not on her. That night she stayed awake after Dom slept, and twisted her head until she could get that bit of the belt between her teeth. She chewed at it, careful to make no sound or movement which might wake him.

Although frayed the leather was very tough. Her jaw soon ached but she forced herself to keep on, resting awhile and chewing again. Her mouth was filled with the sour leather taste, which sickened her stomach. She heard night sounds all round: a jackal howled, briefly waking Dom, and she had to stop until he was once more soundly asleep. She knew that having started she must go through with it. Otherwise he would notice the marks of her teeth on the belt, and not only beat her but tie her more securely in the future.

She could scarcely believe it when the belt parted at last; and she lay there with the leather's sourness against her tongue and her heart pounding. She listened and heard Dom's breathing, steady and deep. Very carefully, moving barely an inch at a time, she shifted herself away from him. Once he groaned, and
she froze into immobility, expecting a shout and a blow. Nothing happened. Gradually it became pos­sible to move less cautiously, and so faster. She crawled through long grass and at last, trembling, stood erect.

She could just make out Dom's sleeping form—she watched apprehensively but he did not stir. The night was very dark, but there was a silvery glow in the east which showed where the moon would rise. Va walked in that direction, treading lightly and warily long after she was sure that the sound of her footsteps could not reach him. When the moon came up she had been walking for more than half an hour.

At last she was free of him. The moonlight fell on a vast sea of grass whose crest waved softly in a breeze: nothing moved anywhere. He could not find her now, could not possibly track her in country such as this. She had only to walk on, and by morning she would be completely and finally beyond his reach.

To the east, continuing the path which she had already taken? There the plain stretched away with
no sign of anything to break the emptiness. West was no good because it would bring her back close to Dom, and south was the direction in which he had been taking her and in which, once he had given up looking for her, he himself would most probably go. North—the way they had come? But what was there for her there, except a trail of remembered misery that led, in the end, to her ruined home and the savages who had destroyed it?

East then—but what was there for her there, either? What was there for her anywhere? And she would be alone, having to find her own game if she wanted meat, and hunt and kill it. She had none of Dom's strength and skill in things like that; nor his keen eyes to spy out animals, or men for that matter, before she herself was seen.

Va stood unmoving in the moonlight. She was free of Dom, but what good was the freedom? She hated him as much as ever but at this moment, staring into the limitless dark, she knew she also needed him. Perhaps it would have been better to die with her people, but she had not died. She was alive and wanted now to go on living. It would be so much
harder to do that on her own than with Dom's help; perhaps impossible.

She turned back, retracing her path. It was not easy with so few landmarks, but she saw a solitary bush she recalled, a jutting tooth of rock, a dead tree. It took her an hour to get to the place where he lay.

He was sleeping still. She went forward cautiously and stood over him. In the moonlight she saw the club and beyond it the knife, out of reach when she had been tied to him but no longer so. She could pick it up and stab him before he woke, avenging in his blood the blood of her father and brother. It was what she had most wanted to do, and nothing now stood in her way. She could kill him with a ­single thrust. And be alone.

She looked down at him and felt tears in her eyes, tears not of grief but of anger at her helplessness. Still careful not to wake him, she lay down at his side as she had done before.

When she awoke it was light and Dom was bending over her. He pointed to the severed belt and she bowed her head, prepared for the beating which must follow.

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

D
OM 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: