a long thin fish and he begin to see a glimmer of light ahead and he know he is now very close to her mouth, all he need is a last little crawl, and a skip, and a push, and then he will be right in. And he wiggle his long thin toes down there between the lips of her entrance to help him along the last stretch.
But just then the bobtail cannot hold it any longer and he give a thin, pinched little laugh, but that is enough. And the wife of the LordGod wake up and she start pinching, all the way from down there to up here, and she pinch and pinch Prickman until he is as long and thin as an intestine and he can’t breathe any more, and that is why he still look the way he look, a prick on the face of the rock. His father, the LordGod himself, pull him out from the woman, with a wet, slurping sound as his thick head break free, but that is too late. Prickman is as dead as a stone. Ouma Nella say that is why a man always feel like dying when he get as far as that, and that is how death come into the world. A real pity, say Ouma Nella. But there is a bit of joy in that dying too.
That is the story I remember as I lie on my back and look up at the overhang above me, until Willempie start fidgeting so much that I got to move out and give him my breast. But while he is sucking as greedy as a little pig, staring up at me with his two big blue eyes, all the walkers up there on the rock keep haunting me. All of them, Prickman and the long row of little men and the elands and the elephants. It give me a funny feeling, thinking of how long ago they were living around here, and how those of us who still live here know so little about that long-ago and faraway time. It’s the way I feel at Zandvliet when I sometimes lie awake at night and I go outside from Ouma Nella’s warm room to the yard, down to the Dwars River, and I lie down in the thick grass of the bank with my arms under my head so that I can look up at the stars spilled up there against the upended bowl of the sky, all the embers dropped by the dark god Gaunab in the dawn time of the world, the way Ouma Nella tell it in some of her other stories, that time he went to steal fire from Heitsi Eibib and had to run like a mad hare to get away before he got caught.
There are many creatures about on the earth and in the sky when on a night like that I lie on my back staring up at the teeming sky, and down here among the black bushes I hear the ghosts rustling as they go about their business, and I get so scared I can pee myself and yet I am not
dead
scared, because if you really think about it you know that they actually belong here, it is more their place than mine, I only been here for a while, but they been already here when the very first people was walking in these mountains. Now they all gone and only their shadows still rustle and fidget in the dry grass; it actually feel good to know you’re never quite alone, not really, there’s always the ghosts and the stars and the wind around you. And everything that is here come from a time on the other side of time.
I can sprinkle salt to scare off the ghosts. But I usually don’t do it. I prefer to be here with the ghosts, otherwise the world feel too empty So here I am with all my ghost friends. My shadow and I. He come with me wherever I go, usually when the sun shine, but even in the moonlight. Always and everywhere. How many times have I tried to run away from him. But he always stay with me. He copy everything I do. Sometimes I laugh at him. But he don’t listen. He just go on, day and night. In a way it feel good, because then we are not so alone. But when you think of how far away he come from, it must be from the time of the people-before-people. And darknesses he bring with him, they bring with them a fear that move right up in your legs, right into the inside of your thighs and it paralyse you. There is a darkness inside a shadow like this that I know nothing about, and I don’t want to know, a darkness like the one
But just then the bobtail cannot hold it any longer and he give a thin, pinched little laugh, but that is enough. And the wife of the LordGod wake up and she start pinching, all the way from down there to up here, and she pinch and pinch Prickman until he is as long and thin as an intestine and he can’t breathe any more, and that is why he still look the way he look, a prick on the face of the rock. His father, the LordGod himself, pull him out from the woman, with a wet, slurping sound as his thick head break free, but that is too late. Prickman is as dead as a stone. Ouma Nella say that is why a man always feel like dying when he get as far as that, and that is how death come into the world. A real pity, say Ouma Nella. But there is a bit of joy in that dying too.
That is the story I remember as I lie on my back and look up at the overhang above me, until Willempie start fidgeting so much that I got to move out and give him my breast. But while he is sucking as greedy as a little pig, staring up at me with his two big blue eyes, all the walkers up there on the rock keep haunting me. All of them, Prickman and the long row of little men and the elands and the elephants. It give me a funny feeling, thinking of how long ago they were living around here, and how those of us who still live here know so little about that long-ago and faraway time. It’s the way I feel at Zandvliet when I sometimes lie awake at night and I go outside from Ouma Nella’s warm room to the yard, down to the Dwars River, and I lie down in the thick grass of the bank with my arms under my head so that I can look up at the stars spilled up there against the upended bowl of the sky, all the embers dropped by the dark god Gaunab in the dawn time of the world, the way Ouma Nella tell it in some of her other stories, that time he went to steal fire from Heitsi Eibib and had to run like a mad hare to get away before he got caught.
There are many creatures about on the earth and in the sky when on a night like that I lie on my back staring up at the teeming sky, and down here among the black bushes I hear the ghosts rustling as they go about their business, and I get so scared I can pee myself and yet I am not
dead
scared, because if you really think about it you know that they actually belong here, it is more their place than mine, I only been here for a while, but they been already here when the very first people was walking in these mountains. Now they all gone and only their shadows still rustle and fidget in the dry grass; it actually feel good to know you’re never quite alone, not really, there’s always the ghosts and the stars and the wind around you. And everything that is here come from a time on the other side of time.
I can sprinkle salt to scare off the ghosts. But I usually don’t do it. I prefer to be here with the ghosts, otherwise the world feel too empty So here I am with all my ghost friends. My shadow and I. He come with me wherever I go, usually when the sun shine, but even in the moonlight. Always and everywhere. How many times have I tried to run away from him. But he always stay with me. He copy everything I do. Sometimes I laugh at him. But he don’t listen. He just go on, day and night. In a way it feel good, because then we are not so alone. But when you think of how far away he come from, it must be from the time of the people-before-people. And darknesses he bring with him, they bring with them a fear that move right up in your legs, right into the inside of your thighs and it paralyse you. There is a darkness inside a shadow like this that I know nothing about, and I don’t want to know, a darkness like the one
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