Eagle in the Sky - Smith Wilbur - Страница 75

• Предыдущая
• 75/90
• Следующая

light of the fallen lantern, the black blood spurted from her nose, and

the blows cracked against her skull, steady and unrelenting.  Long after

she was still and senseless he continued to beat her.  Then at last he

let her drop, and he stood up.  He went to the lantern and played the

beam in the grass.  The knife glinted up at him.

There is an ancient ceremony with which a hunt should end.  The

culminating ceremony of the gralloch, when the triumphant huntsman slits

open the paunch of his game, and thrusts his hand into the opening to

draw out the still-warm viscera.

Johan Akkers picked the knife out of the grass and set down the lantern

so the beam fell upon Debra's supine figure.

He went to her and, with his foot, rolled her onto her back.  The dark

black mine of sodden hair smothered her face.

He knelt beside her and hooked one iron-hard finger into the front of

her blouse.  With a single jerk he ripped it cleanly open, and her big

round belly bulged into the lantern light.  it was white and full and

ripe with the dark pit of the navel in its centre.

Akkers giggled and wiped the rain and sweat from his face with his arm.

Then he changed his grip on the knife, reversing it so the blade would

go shallow, opening the paunch neatly from crotch to rib cage without

cutting into the intestines, a stroke as skilful as a surgeon's that he

had performed ten thousand times before.

Movement in the shadows at the edge of the light caused him to glance

up.  He saw the black dog rush silently at him, saw its eyes glow in the

lantern light.

He threw up his arm to guard his throat and the furry body crashed into

him.  They rolled together, with Zulu mouthing him, unable to take a

grip with his injured jaws.

Akkers changed his grip on the hilt of the carving knife and stabbed up

into the dog's rib cage, finding the faithful heart with his first

thrust.  Zulu yelped once, and collapsed.  Akkers pushed his glossy

black body aside, pulling out the knife and he crawled back to where

Debra lay.

The distraction that Zulu had provided gave David a chance to come up.

David ran to Akkers, and the man looked up with the muddy green eyes

glaring in the lantern light.  He growled at David with the long blade

in his hand dulled by the dog's blood.  He started to come to his feet,

ducking his head in exactly the same aggressive gesture as the bull

baboon.

David thrust the barrels of the shotgun into his face and he pulled both

triggers.  The shot hit solidly, without spreadin& tearing into him in

the bright yellow flash and thunder of the muzzle blast, and it took

away the whole of Akkers head above the mouth, blowing it to

nothingness.  He dropped into the grass with his legs kicking

convulsively, and David hurled the shotgun aside and ran to Debra.

He knelt over her and he whispered, My darling, oh my darling.  Forgive

me, please forgive me.  I should never have left you.  Gently he picked

her up and holding her to his chest, he carried her up to the homestead.

Debra's child was born in the dawn.  It was a girl, tiny and wizened and

too early for her term.  If there had been skilled medical attention

available she might have lived, for she fought valiantly.  But David was

clumsy and ignorant of the succour she needed.  He was cut off by the

raging river and the telephone was still dead, and Debra was still

unconscious.

When it was over he wrapped the tiny little blue body in a clean sheet

and laid it tenderly in the cradle that had been prepared for her.  He

felt overwhelmed by a sense of guilt at having failed the two persons

who needed him.

At three o'clock that afternoon, Conrad Berg forced a passage of the

Luzane stream with the water boiling above the level of the big wheels

of his truck, and three hours later they had Debra in a private ward of

the Nelspruit hospital.  Two days later she became conscious once more,

but her face was grotesquely swollen and purple with bruises.

Near the crest of the kopje that stood above the homestead of Jabulani

there was a natural terrace, a platform which overlooked the whole

estate.  It was a remote and peaceful place and they buried the child

there.  Out of the rock of the kopje David built a tomb for her with his

own hands.

It was best that Debra had never felt the child in her arms, or at her

breast.  That she had never heard her cry or smelled the puppy smell of

her.

Her mourning was therefore not crippling and corrosive, and she and

David visited the grave regularly.  One Sunday morning as they sat upon

the stone bench beside it, Debra talked for the first time about another

baby.

You took so long with the first one, Morgan, she complained.  I hope

you've mastered the technique.  They walked down the hill again, put the

rods and a picnic basket into the Land-Rover and drove down to the

pools.

The Mozambique bream came on the bite for an hour just before noon and

they fought over the fat yellow wood grubs that David was baiting. Debra

hung five, all around three pounds in weight, and David had a dozen of

the big blue fish before it went quiet and they propped the rods and

opened the cold box.

They lay together on the rug beneath the outspread branches of the fever

trees, and drank white wine cold from the icebox.

The African spring was giving way to full summer, filling the bush with

bustle and secret activity.  The weaver birds were busy upon their

basket nests, tying them to the bending tips of the reeds, fluttering

brilliant yellow wings as they worked with black heads bobbing.

On the far bank of the pool a tiny bejewelled kingfisher sat his perch

on a dead branch above the still water, plunging suddenly, a speck of

flashing blue to shatter the surface and emerge with a silver sliver

wriggling in his outsize beak.  Hosts of yellow and bronze and white

butterflies lined the water's edge below where they lay, and the bees

flew like golden motes of light to their hive in the cliff, high above

the quiet pools.

The water drew all life to it, and a little after noonday David touched

Debra's arm.

The nyala are here - he whispered.

They came through the grove on the far side of the pool.  Timid and

easily spooked, they approached a few cautious steps at a time before

pausing to stare about them with huge dark eyes, questing muzzles and

widespread ears; striped and dainty and beautiful they blended with the

shadows of the grove.

The does are all belly now, David told her.  They'll be dropping their

lambs within the next few weeks.

Everything is fruitful.  He half-turned towards her and she sensed it

and moved to meet him.  When the nyala had drank and gone, and a

white-headed fish eagle circled high above them on dark chestnut wings,

chanting its weird and haunting cry, they made love in the shade beside

the quiet water.

David studied her face as he loved her.  She lay beneath him with her

eyes closed, and her dark hair spread in a shiny black sheet upon the

rug.  The bruise on her temple had faded to soft yellow and palest blue,

for it was two months since she had left hospital.  The white fleck of

the grenade scar stood out clearly against the pale bruising.  The

colour rose in Debra's cheeks, and the light dew of perspiration bloomed

across her forehead and upper lip and she made little cooing sounds, and

then whimpered softly like a suckling puppy.

• Предыдущая
• 75/90
• Следующая