Page 89 - BraveNewWorld

IDPH 89

His heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole. He was empty. Empty,
and cold, and rather sick, and giddy. He leaned against the wall to steady him-
self. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous. Like drums, like the men singing for
the corn, like magic, the words repeated and repeated themselves in his head.
From being cold he was suddenly hot. His cheeks burnt with the rush of blood,
the room swam and darkened before his eyes. He ground his teeth. “I’ll kill
him, I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him,” he kept saying. And suddenly there were more
words.

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage
Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed.
The magic was on his side, the magic explained and gave orders. He stepped
back in the outer room. “When he is drunk asleep .” The knife for the meat was
lying on the floor near the fireplace. He picked it up and tiptoed to the door
again. “When he is drunk asleep, drunk asleep .” He ran across the room and
stabbed-oh, the blood!-stabbed again, as Popé heaved out of his sleep, lifted his
hand to stab once more, but found his wrist caught, held and-oh, oh!-twisted.
He couldn’t move, he was trapped, and there were Popé’s small black eyes, very
close, staring into his own. He looked away. There were two cuts on Popé’s left
shoulder. “Oh, look at the blood!” Linda was crying. “Look at the blood!” She
had never been able to bear the sight of blood. Popé lifted his other hand-to
strike him, he thought. He stiffened to receive the blow. But the hand only took
him under the chin and turned his face, so that he had to look again into Popé’s
eyes. For a long time, for hours and hours. And suddenly-he couldn’t help it-he
began to cry. Popé burst out laughing. “Go,” he said, in the other Indian words.
“Go, my brave Ahaiyuta.” He ran out into the other room to hide his tears.
“You are fifteen,” said old Mitsima, in the Indian words. “Now I may teach you
to work the clay.”
Squatting by the river, they worked together.

“First of all,” said Mitsima, taking a lump of the wetted clay between his hands,
“we make a little moon.” The old man squeezed the lump into a disk, then bent
up the edges, the moon became a shallow cup.

Slowly and unskilfully he imitated the old man’s delicate gestures.
“A moon, a cup, and now a snake.” Mitsima rolled out another piece of clay
into a long flexible cylinder, trooped it into a circle and pressed it on to the rim
of the cup. “Then another snake. And another. And another.” Round by round,
Mitsima built up the sides of the pot; it was narrow, it bulged, it narrowed again
towards the neck. Mitsima squeezed and patted, stroked and scraped; and there
at last it stood, in shape the familiar water pot of Malpais, but creamy white
instead of black, and still soft to the touch. The crooked parody of Mitsima’s,

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