If only they could make a machine small enough to cool the air in the Daimler, she thought, like the one in the railway coach, and then she burst out laughing. nens: I must be getting soft! She remembered how, with the two old Bushmen who had rescued her, she had travelled on foot through the terrible dune country of the Namib and they had been forced to cover their bodies with a plaster of sand and their own urine to survive the monstrous heat of the desert noons.
Why are you laughing, Mater? Shasa demanded.
just something that happened long ago, before you were born. 'Tell me, oh please tell me. He seemed unaffected by the heat and the dust and the merciless jolting of the chassis.
But then why should he be? She smiled at him. This is where he was born. He too is a creature of the desert.
Shasa took her smile for acquiescence. Come on, Mater.
Tell me the story. Pourquoi pas? Why not? And she told him and watched the shock in his expression.
Your own pee-pee? He was aghast.
That surprises you? She mocked him. Then let me tell you what we did when the water in our ostrich-egg bottles was finished. Old O'wa, the Bushman hunter, killed a gemsbok bull with his poisoned arrow and we took out the first stomach, the rumen, and we squeezed out the liquid from the undigested contents and we drank that. It kept us going just long enough to reach the sip-wells. Mater! That's right, cheri, I drink champagne when I can, but I'll drink whatever keeps me alive when I have to., She was silent while he considered that, and she glanced at his face and saw the revulsion turn to respect.
What would you have done, cheri, drunk it or died? she asked, to make sure the lesson was learned.
I would have drunk, he answered without hesitation, and then with affectionate pride, You know, Mater, you really are a crackerjack. It was his ultimate accolade.
Look! She pointed ahead to where the lion-coloured plain, its far limits lost in the curtains of mirage, seemed to be covered with a gauzy cinnamon-coloured veil of thin smoke.
Centaine pulled the Daimler off the track and they climbed out onto the running-board for a better view.
Springbok. The first we have seen on this trip. The beautiful gazelle were moving steadily across the flats, all in the same direction.
There must be tens of thousands. The springbok were elegant little animals with long delicate legs and lyre- shaped horns.
They are migrating into the north, Centaine told him.
There must have been good rains up there, and they are moving to the water. Suddenly the nearest gazelles took fright at their presence and began the peculiar alarm display that the Boers called pronking'. They arched their backs and bowed their long necks until their muzzles touched their fore hooves, and they bounced on stiff legs, flying high and lightly into the shimmering hot air while from the fold of skin along their backs they flashed a flowing white crest of hair.
This alarm behaviour was infectious and soon thousands of gazelle were bounding across the plain like a flock of birds. Centaine jumped down from the running-board and mimicked them, forking the fingers of one hand over her head as horns and with the fingers of the other showing the crest hair down her back. She did it so skilfully that Shasa hooted with laughter and clapped his hands.
Bully for you, Mater! He jumped down and joined her, and they pranced in a circle, until they were weak with laughter and exertion. Then they leaned against the Daimler and clung to each other for support.
Old O'wa taught me that, Centaine gasped. He could imitate every animal of the veld. When they drove on she let Shasa take the wheel, for the crossing of the plain was one of the easier stretches of the journey and he drove well. She lay back in the corner of her seat and after a while Shasa broke the silence.
When we are alone you are so different. He searched for the words. You are such jolly good fun. I wish we could just be like this forever. Anything you do too long becomes a bore, she told him gently. The trick is to do it all, not just one thing. This is good fun but tomorrow we will be at the mine and there will be another type of excitement for us to experience and after that there will be something else. We'll do it all, and we will wring from each moment the last drop it has to offer. Twenty-man-Jones had gone ahead to the mine while Centaine stayed on for three days in Windhoek to go over the paperwork with Abraham Abrahams. So he had alerted the servants at the rest houses as he passed through.
When they reached the last stage that evening, the bath water was so hot that even Centaine who enjoyed her bath at the correct temperature for boiling lobster was forced to add cold before she could bear it. The champagne was that marvelous 1928 Krug pale and chilled to the temperature she preferred, just low enough to frost the bottle, and though there was ice, she would not allow the barbaric habit of standing the bottle in a bucket of it.
Cold feet, hot head, bad combination for both men and wine, her father had taught her. As always she drank only a single glass from the bottle and afterwards there was the cold collation that TWentyman-jones had provided for her and stored in the paraffin refrigerator, fare suitable for this heat and which he knew she enjoyed - rock lobster from the green Benguela Current with rich white flesh curled in their spiny red tails and salad vegetables grown in the cooler highlands of Windhoek, lettuce crackling crisp, tomatoes crimson ripe and pungent onions purple tinted, then, as the final treat, wild truffles gleaned from the surrounding desert by the tame Bushmen who tended the milk herd. She ate them raw and the salty fungus taste was the taste of Kalahari.
They left again in the pitch darkness before dawn, and at sunrise they stopped and brewed coffee on a fire of camel-thorn branches; the grainy red wood burned with an intense blue flame and gave to the coffee a peculiar and delicious aroma. They ate the picnic breakfast that the rest-house cook had provided and washed it down with the smoky coffee and watched the sunrise smearing the sky and desert with bronze and gilding it with gold leaf. As they went on, so the sun rose higher and drained the land of colour, washing it with its silver-white bleach.
Stop here! Centaine ordered suddenly, and when they climbed up onto the roof of the Daimler and stared ahead, Shasa was puzzled.
What is it, Mater? Don't you see it, cheri? She pointed, 'There! Above the horizon. It floated in the sky, indistinct and ethereal.
It's standing in the sky, Shasa exclaimed, discerning it at last.
