The covenant - James A. Michener [28]
Of it she made herself a skirt, the first seen in this village, and when she wrapped it about her slim waist and pirouetted by the lake, her dark breasts gleaming in the sunlight, she made herself a girl apart.
'They say you were brave at the hunt,' she said to Nxumalo as she danced by when he lingered at the silent weaving shelter.
'Rhinos are hard to find.'
'And hard to kill?' As she posed this question, she swung away from him, aware that as her skirt flared outward it showed to fine advantage.
'The others did the killing,' he said, entranced by her gentle movements.
'I kept watching to the east,' she said. 'I was afraid.'
He reached for her hand, and they sat looking across the lake at the desultory animals who wandered down for a midday drink: a few antelope, two or three zebra, and that was all. 'At dusk,' he said, 'that shore will swarm.'
'Look!' she cried as a lazy hippopotamus half rose from the waters, jawed mightily, then submerged.
'I wish the strangers in far lands wanted hippo teeth instead of rhino horns,' Nxumalo said. 'Much easier to do.' Zeolani said nothing, and after a while he touched her skirt, and then, almost as if he were driven to speak, he blurted out: 'When I am gone I'll remember this cloth.'
'It's true, then? You've decided to go?'
'Yes.'
'The old man talked and talked . . . and you believed him?'
'I'll go. I'll see the city. And I'll come back.'
Taking her by the hands, he said fervently, 'When I traveled with the Old Seeker we came upon a fine land and I thought, "We'll leave the lake to my brothers ... to tend their cattle and their fields. Zeolani and I will find a few good hunters and we . . .'
She did not coyly repeat the we, for she knew well what Nxumalo had been thinking, because she, too, had contemplated moving away from this village and starting a new one with her hunter-husband. Instead of speaking, she took his hand, drew it close to her naked breast, and whispered, 'I shall wait for you, Nxumalo.'
After the next hunt, in which Nxumalo brought down four more rhinos, the young lovers found many opportunities to discuss their uncertain future. 'Can't I go to Zimbabwe with you?' Zeolani asked.
'So far! The way uncertain. No, no.'
They decided upon a course fraught with danger, but their love had matured at such a dizzy speed that they were eager to risk the penalties. At Zeolani's signaling they wandered by different routes into the savanna east of the village to a spot hidden by the two small hills shaped like a woman's breasts, and there they made love repeatedly, even though it could mean the end of his trip to Zimbabwe if she became pregnant. If word of such condition circulated, the tribe would condemn her for having known a man without sanction and everyone would know who the man must have been, and they would be severely punished.
There, between the hills, they kept their trysts, and fortune was with them, for there was no pregnancy. Instead, there developed a deepening love, and as the day approached when Nxumalo must march north with the tribute, their last meetings assumed a mournful cast that could not be dispelled.
'I will walk behind you,' the girl said, 'and come into Zimbabwe as if by accident.'
'No, it's man's work,' said this boy of sixteen.
'I will wait for you. You are the only one I will ever live with.'
They went boldly to one of the hills south of the village and looked west toward the spot that Nxumalo had chosen many months ago. 'It lies far beyond. There's a small stream and many antelope. When I was sleeping there I heard a rustle, so I opened one eye. It could have been an enemy. What do you suppose it was?'