Free The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels by William Golding Page B

might remember he heard what She Who Names The Women had said. There was no one at all within hearing. She dropped her hands and climbed upward to her bath.
    The pans were each a little higher than the next, perhaps by the length of a forearm. Each brimmed and let a film of water seep perpetually over the smooth surround into the next. Sometimes the film was thicker than usual, as if the earth had changes of mood; but always the pans were full. This fulness was a source of pleasure to Palm, who felt it as a rich thing, a foison, a generosity of water. She was grateful to the water, without personifying it. The bath invited her. She put her hands to her waist and loosed the grass skirt so that it fell round her feet. She thrust her hands under her hair to the nape of her neck. But when she laid the rows of clattering shells on the rock, she did not climb immediately and step down into the soothing heat. She knelt, pushed back her long hair and peered into a cooler pan. She let the sunlight fall on her face, held her breath and stared at the face that swam up from the darkness.
    “I am beautiful.”
    A tress fell and ripples made the face shake. She swept the hair back and stared down again. The dark eyes were huge, black patches, the face oval and neat. She put up a hand and felt its softness—felt too, though she could not see them, the beginnings of wrinkles by the mouth, the wrinkles of the neck where the shells had hidden them.
    “I am still beautiful. That—cannot be it.”
    From the forest and Place of Women came the chatter and laughter of the girls. The children were silent, sleeping in the shade. She Who Names The Women stood up briskly. She climbed three pans higher and tried the top one with a toe. She stepped in, biting her lower lip. She sank into the hot water and sweat burst out of her skin. She squatted, willing herself to wait until her skin accepted the pain and became accustomed to it. At last she relaxed, lay back and rested her head on the stone that had been put there for the purpose. Her hair spread; and slowly her body rose, pale brown and green in the clear water. She floated, all but her head that rested on the stone. Her graceful body was laid out at the surface like a diagram of womanhood. She shut her eyes. There was a gap with no time in it.
    From the shelter the woman hooted like an owl. Palm opened her eyes and thoughts formed immediately. Soon I shall have a baby to examine. A girl, I should think, from the way she was carrying. I hope—I hope whichever it is, we can keep it. I do not like——
    The unease was back, wide, deep, ungraspable as water. She sat up, smearing back her hair. She twisted and stared up through the vapour to where the white head and dark shoulders of the mountain loomed under its own smoke. Sometimes, she thought, the mountain looks up at the sky as if we weren’t here; and sometimes the mountain stares down—as if we weren’t here!
    She shook herself so that the water splashed.
    “A mountain is a mountain! Palm, you think like a man!”
    So briskly she ducked her head, tossed it so that the hot water streamed from her face and hair. She began to massage her face with her fingers, busied herself with her own body, but all the time her thoughts busied themselves in her mind. Nothing is wrong. You can be happy or sad, you can be nothing in particular when you are thinking of what is to be done. But you cannot be uneasy at what is.
    All the same, we are menaced.
    She stood up, stepped down into cooler water, ducked, then got out and sat down to let the sun dry her. She bowed her head and began to run her fingers through her hair again and again. Feelings are feelings; but each hair must lie smoothly by the next. Presently attend to the dressing of it, the greasing of the face, the shaping of nails with an appropriate stone.
    “Palm! Palm!”
    It was the child from the lookout, swaying and leaping down between the pans, her hands up for balance, grass skirt