Tell me, she whispered, tell me everything. How is she? How did you know where to find me? Where is Anna now? When will I see her? Lothar laughed again. His teeth were very white. So many questions! He drew the stool to her cot. Where shall I begin? Begin with Anna, tell me all about her. He talked and she listened avidly, watching his face, asking another question as soon as one was answered, fighting off the weakness of her body to revel in the sound of his voice, in the intense pleasure of hearing glad tidings of the real world from which she had been so long excluded, of communicating with one of her own kind and looking on a white and civilized face again.
The day was almost gone, the evening gloom filling her little shelter when Shasa let out a demanding shout and Lothar broke off.
He is hungry."I will feed him if you will leave us a while, Mijnheer."No, Lothar shook his head. You have lost your milk.
Centaine's head jerked as though the words were a blow in her face, and she stared at him while thoughts tumbled and crowded in her mind. Up to that moment she had been so wrapped up in listening and questioning that she had not considered that there was no other woman in the camp, that for six days she had been entirely helpless, and that somebody had tended her, washed her and changed her, fed her and dressed her wounds. But his words, such an intimate subject spoken of in direct fashion, brought all this home to her, and as she stared at him, she felt herself begin to blush with shame. Her cheeks flamed, those long brown fingers of his must have touched her where only one other man had touched before. She felt her eyes smart, as she realized what those yellow eyes of his must have looked upon.
She felt herself burning up with embarrassment, and then incredibly with a hot and shameful excitement, so that she had difficulty breathing, and she lowered her eyes and turned her head away so that he could not see her scarlet cheeks.
Lothar seemed to be entirely unaware of her predicament. Come on, soldier, let's show mama our new trick. He lifted SHasa and fed him with a spoon, and Shasa bounced on his lip and said, Hum! Hum! as he saw each spoonful coming, and then launched himself at it with mouth wide open. He likes you, Centaine said.
We are friends, Lothar admitted, as he removed the heavy coating of gruel from Shasa's forehead and chin and ears with a damp cloth.
You are good with children, Centaine whispered and saw the sudden biting pain reflected in the darkening gold of his eyes.
Once I had a son, he said, and placed Shasa at her side, then picked up the spoon and empty bowl and went to the doorway.
Where is your son? she called softly after him, and he paused in the opening, then turned slowly back to her. My son is dead, he said softly.
She was ripe and over-ripe for love. Her loneliness was a hunger so intense that it seemed it could not be assuaged, not even by those long languid conversations under the awning of the wagon tent when, with Shasa between them, they talked away the hottest hours of those lazy African days.
Mostly they discussed the things she held dearest, music and books. Although he preferred Goethe to Victor Hugo and Wagner to Verdi, these differences gave them grounds for amusing and satisfying dispute. in those arguments she discovered that his learning and scholarship far exceeded her own, but she strangely did not resent it.
it merely made her more attentive to his voice. It was a marvelous voice; after the clicking and grunting of the San language, she could listen to it for the lilt and cadence as though it were music in itself.
Sing for me! she ordered, when they had for the moment exhausted a particular topic. Both Shasa and I command it.
Your servant, of course! he smiled, and gave them a mocking little bow, then he sang without any selfconsciousness.
Take the chick and the hen will follow you Centaine had often heard Anna repeat the old proverb, and when she watched Shasa riding around the camp on Lothar's shoulder, she realized the wisdom behind it, for her eyes and her heart followed both of them.
At first she felt quick resentment whenever Shasa greeted Lothar with cries of Da! Da! That name should have been reserved for Michael alone. Then with a painful stab she remembered that Michael was lying in the cemetery at Mort Homme.
After that it was easy to smile when Shasals first attempts at walking unaided on his own two legs ended with a precipitous and headlong return to earth and he bawled for Lothar and crawled to him, seeking comfort.
It was Lothar's tenderness and gentleness with her son that nudged her affections and her need for him forward, for she recognized that beneath that handsome exterior he was a hard man and fierce. She saw the awe and respect in which his own men held him, and they were tough men themselves.
just once she witnessed him in a cold, killing rage that terrified her as much as it did the man against whom it was directed. Vark Jan, the wrinkled yellow Khoisan, in indolence and ignorance had ridden Lothar's hunting horse with an ill-fitting saddle and galled the creature's back almost to the bone. Lothar had knocked Vark Jan down with a fist to the head, and then cut the jacket and shirt off his back with razor strokes from his sjambok, a five-foot whip of cured hippo-hide, and left him unconscious in a puddle of his own blood.
The violence had appalled and frightened Centaine, for she had witnessed every brutal detail from where she lay on her cot beneath the awning. Later, however, when she was alone in her shelter, her revulsion faded and in its place was a trembly feeling of exhilaration and a heat in the pit of her stomach.
He's so dangerous, she thought, so dangerous and cruel, and she shivered again and could not sleep. She lay and listened to his breathing in the shelter beside hers, and thought about how he must have undressed her and touched her while she was unconscious, and her flesh tingled at the memory and she blushed in the darkness.
In startling contrast the next day he was gentle and tender, holding her injured leg in his lap while he snipped the threads of cotton and plucked them from her swollen, inflamed flesh. They left dark punctures in her skin, and he bent over her leg and sniffed the wound.
It's clean now. That redness is only your body attempting to rid itself of the stitches. It will heal swiftly now they are gone. Lothar was right. Within two days she was able, with the help of the crutch he had whittled for her, to make her first foray out of the canvas shelter.
My legs feel wobbly, she protested, and I am as weak as Shasa. You'll soon be strong again. He placed his arm around her shoulders to steady her, and she trembled at his touch and hoped he would not notice and withdraw his arm.
They paused by the horse lines and Centaine petted the animals, stroking their silky muzzles and revelling in that nostalgic horse odour.
I want to ride again, she told him.
Anna Stok told me you were a skilled horsewoman she told me you had a stallion, a white stallion. Nuage. Tears prickled her eyes as she remembered, and she pressed her face against the neck of Lothar's hunting horse to hide them. My white cloud, he was so beautiful, so strong and swift.
Nuage, Lothar took her arm, a lovely name. Then he went on, Yes, you will ride again soon. We have a long journey ahead of us, back to where your father-in-law and Anna Stok will be waiting for you. It was the first time she had considered an end to this magical interlude, and she pulled away from the horse and stared at him over its back. She didn't want it to end, she didn't want him to leave her, as she knew he soon would.
I'm tired, she said. I don't think I am ready to start riding just yet. That evening as she sat under the awning with a book in her lap, pretending to read, while watching him from under her lowered lids, he looked up suddenly and smiled with such a knowing glint in his eye that she blushed and looked away in confusion, I'm writing to Colonel Courtney, he told her, sitting at the collapsible travelling bureau with the pen in his hand smiling across at her, I will send a rider back to Windhoek tomorrow, but it will take him two weeks or more to get there and back. I am letting Colonel Courtney know when and where we can meet, and I have suggested a rendezvous for the i9th day of next month. She wanted to say, So soon? but instead, she nodded silently.