‘But if you move I will kill you,’ warned the bushman, and I took him at his word.
Xhai the old bushman came to my shoulder, and heaven knows I am no giant. He had the characteristically flattened features, with high cheekbones and oriental eyes, but his skin was dry and wrinkled, like an old yellow raisin. The wrinkling extended over his entire body as though he were covered with brittle parchment. The little peppercorns of hair on his scalp were smoky-grey with age, but his teeth were startling white and perfect, and his eyes were black and sparkling. I had often thought that they were pixie eyes, alive with mischief and intelligent curiosity.
When I told him how his friend had tried to kill us, he thought it an excellent joke and went off into little grunting explosions of laughter, at the same time shyly covering his mouth with one hand. The younger bushman’s name was Ghal, and he was married to one of Xhai’s daughters, so Xhai felt free to josh him mercilessly.
‘Sunbird is a white ghost!’ he wheezed. ‘Shoot him, Ghal, quickly! Before he flies away.’ Overwhelmed by his own humour, Xhai staggered in mirth-racked circles giving an imitation of how he thought a ghost would look as it flew away. Ghal was very embarrassed and looked down at his feet as he shuffled them in the dust. I chuckled weakly, the sound of flighted arrows very fresh in my memory.
Xhai stopped laughing abruptly, and demanded anxiously, ‘Sunbird. have you got tobacco?’
‘Oh. my God!’ 1 said in English.
‘What is it?’ Sally was alarmed by my tone, expecting that something else horrifying had happened.
‘Tobacco,’ I said. ‘We haven’t any,’ Neither Sally nor I used the stuff, but it is very precious to a bushman.
‘Louren left a box of cigars in the Land-Rover.’ Sally reminded me ‘Is that any use?’
Both Ghal and Xhai were intrigued with the aluminium cylinders in which the Romeo and Juliette cigars were packed. After I showed them how to open them and remove the tobacco, they cooed and chattered with delight. Then Xhai sniffed the cigar like the true connoisseur he was, nodded approvingly and took a big bite. He chewed a while and then tucked the wad of sodden cigar up under his top lip. He passed the stub to Ghal who bit into it and followed Xhai’s example. The two of them squatted on their haunches, positively glowing with contentment and my heart went out to them. It took so little to make them happy.
They stayed with us that night, cooking on our fire a meal of bush-rats threaded on a stick like kebabs, and grilled over the open coals without gutting or removal of the skin. The hair frizzled off in the fire and stank like burning rags.
‘I think I’m going to throw up,’ murmured Sally palely as she watched the relish with which our two friends ate, but she didn’t.
‘Why do they call you Sunbird?’ she asked later, and I repeated her question to. Xhai.
He jumped up and did his celebrated imitation of a sun-bird, darting his head and fluttering his hands. It was convincingly done, for bushmen are wonderful observers of nature.
‘They say that’s how I act when I get excited,’ I explained.
‘Yes!’ Sally exclaimed, clapping her hands with delight as she recognized me, and then they were all laughing.
In the morning we went to the cave together, all four of us, and in that setting the little men were completely at home. I photographed them, and Sally sketched them as they sat on the rocks by the pool. She was fascinated by their delicate little hands and feet, and their enlarged buttocks, a recognized anatomical peculiarity named steatopygia, which enabled them to store food like a camel stores water, against the contingencies of the wilderness. Ghal remarked to Xhai on the activity in which Sally and I had been engaged beside the pool when he discovered us the previous day, and this led to much earthy comment and laughter. Sally wanted to know the source of it, and when I told her she blushed like a sunset, which was a pleasant change, for I am usually the blusher.
The bushmen were enthusiastic over Sally’s sketches, and this enabled me to lead them naturally to the rock paintings.
‘They are the paintings of our people,’ Xhai boasted. ‘This has been our place from the beginning.’
I pointed out the portrait of the white king and Xhai explained frankly, without any of the reserve or secrecy I had expected.
‘He is the king of the white ghosts.’
‘Where did he live?’
‘He lives with his army of ghosts on the moon,’ Xhai explained - and my critics accuse
We discussed this at some length, and I learned how the ghosts fly between moon and earth, how they are well disposed towards the bushmen, but care should be taken as the common forest devils will sometimes masquerade as white ghosts. Ghal had mistaken me for one of these.
‘Have the white ghosts ever been men?’ I asked.
‘No, certainly not.’ Xhai was a little put out by the question. ‘They were always ghosts, and they have always lived on the moon and these hills.’
‘Have you ever seen them, Xhai?’
‘My grandfather saw the ghost king.’ Xhai avoided the question with dignity.
‘And this, Xhai,’ I pointed out the drawings of the stone wall with its chevrons and towers, ‘what is this?’
‘That is the Moon City,’ Xhai answered readily.
‘Where is it - on the moon?’
‘No. It is here.’
‘Here?’ I demanded, my blood starting to race. ‘You mean on these hills?’
