Still, it'll be good enough for you to practice your reading on."
She took a last sip, set the cup down on the floor beside the bed, turned over on her side, hiccoughed once or twice and went to sleep.
He opened the book at random.
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty ...
The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song, beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried; like old Mitsima saying magic over his feathers and his carved sticks and his bits of bone and stone-kiathla tsilu silokwe si-lokwe silokwe. Kiai silu silu, tsithl-but better than Mitsima's magic, be- cause it meant more, because it talked to him, talked wonderfully and only half-understandably, a terrible beautiful magic, about Linda; about Linda lying there snoring, with the empty cup on the floor beside the bed; about Linda and Pope, Linda and Pope.
He hated Pope more and more.
A man can smile and smile and be a villain.
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain.
What did the words exactly mean? He only half knew.
But their magic was strong and went on rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as though he had never really hated Pope before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him.
But now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic.
These words and the strange, strange story out of which they were taken (he couldn't make head or tail of it, but it was wonderful, wonderful all the same)-they gave him a reason for hating Pope; and they made his hatred more real; they even made Pope himself more real.
One day, when he came in from playing, the door of the inner room was open, and he saw them lying together on the bed, asleep-white Linda and Pope almost black beside her, with one arm under her shoulders and the other dark hand on her breast, and one of the plaits of his long hair lying across her throat, like a black snake trying to strangle her.
Pope's gourd and a cup were standing on the floor near the bed.
Linda was snoring.
His heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole. He was empty.
Empty, and cold, and rather sick, and giddy.
He leaned against the wall to steady himself.
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous ... Like drums, like the men singing for the corn, like magic, the words repeated and repeated themselves in his head.
From being cold he was suddenly hot. His cheeks burnt with the rush of blood, the room swam and darkened before his eyes.
He ground his teeth.
"I'll kill him, I'll kill him, I'll kill him," he kept saying.
And suddenly there were more words.
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed ...
The magic was on his side, the magic explained and gave orders.
He stepped back in the outer room.
"When he is drunk asleep ..." The knife for the meat was lying on the floor near the fireplace.
He picked it up and tiptoed to the door again.
"When he is drunk asleep, drunk asleep ..." He ran across the room and stabbed-oh, the bloodl-stabbed again, as Pope heaved out of his sleep, lifted his hand to stab once more, but found his wrist caught, held and-oh, oh!-twisted.
He couldn't move, he was trapped, and there were Pope's small black eyes, very close, staring into his own.
He looked away.
There were two cuts on Pope's left shoulder.
"Oh, look at the blood!" Linda was crying.
"Look at the blood!" She had never been able to bear the sight of blood.
Pope lifted his other hand-to strike him, he thought.
He stiffened to receive the blow.
But the hand only took him under the chin and turned his face, so that he had to look again into Pope's eyes.
For a long time, for hours and hours.
And suddenly-he couldn't help it-he began to cry.
Pope burst out laughing.
"Go," he said, in the other Indian words.
"Go, my brave Ahaiyuta."
He ran out into the other room to hide his tears.
"You are fifteen," said old Mitsima, in the Indian words.
"Now I may teach you to work the clay."
Squatting by the river, they worked together.
"First of all," said Mitsima, taking a lump of the wetted clay between his hands, "we make a little moon."
The old man squeezed the lump into a disk, then bent up the edges, the moon became a shallow cup.
Slowly and unskilfully he imitated the old man's delicate gestures.