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the bed. One of the women was holding her wrists. Another was lying across her
legs, so that she couldn't kick. The third was hitting her with a whip. Once, twice,
three times; and each time Linda screamed. Crying, he tugged at the fringe of the
woman's blanket. "Please, please." With her free hand she held him away. The whip
came down again, and again Linda screamed. He caught hold of the woman's
enormous brown hand between his own and bit it with all his might. She cried out,
wrenched her hand free, and gave him such a push that he fell down. While he was
lying on the ground she hit him three times with the whip. It hurt more than
anything he had ever felt like fire. The whip whistled again, fell. But this time it was
Linda who screamed.
"But why did they want to hurt you, Linda?'' he asked that night. He was crying,
because the red marks of the whip on his back still hurt so terribly. But he was also
crying because people were so beastly and unfair, and because he was only a little
boy and couldn't do anything against them. Linda was crying too. She was grown up,
but she wasn't big enough to fight against three of them. It wasn't fair for her
either. "Why did they want to hurt you, Linda?"
"I don't know. How should I know?" It was difficult to hear what she said, because
she was lying on her stomach and her face was in the pillow. "They say those men
are their men," she went on; and she did not seem to be talking to him at all; she
seemed to be talking with some one inside herself. A long talk which she didn't
understand; and in the end she started crying louder than ever.
"Oh, don't cry, Linda. Don't cry."
He pressed himself against her. He put his arm round her neck. Linda cried out.
"Oh, be careful. My shoulder! Oh!" and she pushed him away, hard. His head
banged against the wall. "Little idiot!" she shouted; and then, suddenly, she began
to slap him. Slap, slap &
"Linda," he cried out. "Oh, mother, don't!"
"I'm not your mother. I won't be your mother."
"But, Linda & Oh!" She slapped him on the cheek.
"Turned into a savage," she shouted. "Having young ones like an animal & If it
hadn't been for you, I might have gone to the Inspector, I might have got away.
But not with a baby. That would have been too shameful."
He saw that she was going to hit him again, and lifted his arm to guard his face.
"Oh, don't, Linda, please don't."
"Little beast!" She pulled down his arm; his face was uncovered.
"Don't, Linda." He shut his eyes, expecting the blow.
But she didn't hit him. After a little time, he opened his eyes again and saw that
she was looking at him. He tried to smile at her. Suddenly she put her arms round
him and kissed him again and again.
Sometimes, for several days, Linda didn't get up at all. She lay in bed and was sad.
Or else she drank the stuff that Popé brought and laughed a great deal and went to
sleep. Sometimes she was sick. Often she forgot to wash him, and there was
nothing to eat except cold tortillas. He remembered the first time she found those
little animals in his hair, how she screamed and screamed.
The happiest times were when she told him ahout the Other Place. "And you really
can go flying, whenever you like?"
"Whenever you like." And she would tell him about the lovely music that came out
of a box, and all the nice games you could play, and the delicious things to eat and
drink, and the light that came when you pressed a little thing in the wall, asd the
pictures that you could hear and feel and smell, as well as see, and another box for
making nice smells, and the pink and green and blue and silver houses as high as
mountains, and everybody happy and no one ever sad or angry, and every one
belonging to every one else, and the boxes where you could see and hear what was
happening at the other side of the world, and babies in lovely clean
bottles everything so clean, and no nasty smells, no dirt at all and people never
lonely, but living together and being so jolly and happy, like the summer dances
here in Malpais, but much happier, and the happiness being there every day, every
day. & He listened by the hour. And sometimes, when he and the other children
were tired with too much playing, one of the old men of the pueblo would talk to
them, in those other words, of the great Transformer of the World, and of the long
fight between Right Hand and Left Hand, between Wet and Dry; of Awonawilona, who
made a great fog by thinking in the night, and then made the whole world out of
the fog; of Earth Mother and Sky Father; of Ahaiyuta and Marsailema, the twins of
War and Chance; of Jesus and Pookong; of Mary and Etsanatlehi, the woman who
makes herself young again; of the Black Stone at Laguna and the Great Eagle and
Our Lady of Acoma. Strange stories, all the more wonderful to him for being told in
the other words and so not fully understood. Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven
and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean
bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World
Hatcheries and Awonawilona.
Lots of men came to see Linda. The boys began to point their fingers at him. In the
strange other words they said that Linda was bad; they called her names he did not
understand, but that he knew were bad names. One day they sang a song about
her, again and again. He threw stones at them. They threw back; a sharp stone cut
his cheek. The blood woudn't stop; he was covered with blood.
Linda taught him to read. With a piece of charcoal she drew pictures on the wall an
animal sitting down, a baby inside a bottle; then she wrote letters. THE CAT IS ON
THE MAT. THE TOT IS IN THE POT. He learned quickly and easily. When he knew
how to read all the words she wrote on the wall, Linda opened her big wooden box
and pulled out from under those funny little red trousers she never wore a thin little
book. He had often seen it before. "When you're bigger," she had said, "you can
read it." Well, now he was big enough. He was proud. "I'm afraid you won't find it
very exciting," she said. "But it's the only thing I have." She sighed. "If only you
could see the lovely reading machines we used to have in London!" He began
reading. The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo. Practical
Instructions for Beta Embryo-Store Workers. It took him a quarter of an hour to read
the title alone. He threw the book on the floor. "Beastly, beastly book!" he said, and
began to cry.
The boys still sang their horrible song about Linda. Sometimes, too, they laughed
at him for being so ragged. When he tore his clothes, Linda did not know how to
mend them. In the Other Place, she told him, people threw away clothes with holes
in them and got new ones. "Rags, rags!" the boys used to shout at him. "But I can
read," he said to himself, "and they can't. They don't even know what reading is." It
was fairly easy, if he thought hard enough about the reading, to pretend that he [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]