stupid girl, I could have done it a dozen times over by now, though what makes you think you are so enticing is beyond me. I made it quite clear last night, when you pranced about without your clothes, that I have no interest whatsoever in your skinny little body. Go!” Mutinously I dropped the sheet and pulled the sheath on over my head.
“I did not prance,” I retorted, and sweeping the curtain aside, went out into the blinding sunshine.
The side of the barge was four steps away and I paused, blinking and taking in what I saw. We were moving ponderously but at a good pace in the middle of the river. Sand-banks dotted with ragged palms slid by, and beyond them a collection of mud houses huddled on the edge of dry, cracked fields. A brown ox, knee-deep in the murky shallows, had its head down and was drinking. A naked peasant boy with a stick in his grasp, as dun-coloured as his beast, stared at us as we glided past him. In the distance the desert hills shimmered golden in the heat haze. The sky was white-hot. As I turned rather shyly forward to where the oarsmen moved to and fro and the captain sang the rhythm, the village dropped away to be replaced by empty land cut by a path that meandered beside the Nile. I was disappointed. I might have been looking at Aswat and its environs from my father’s fishing boat.
The deck was hot under my bare feet. The oarsmen ignored my progress but the captain on his stool, under his canopy, favoured me with a brisk nod. I walked to where the graceful prow curved up and inward, over my head, and leaned out. Crystal wavelets folded back from the barge’s assault, and above my head the flag bearing the imperial colours, blue and white, cracked in the prevailing north wind of summer. The breeze, hot though it was, felt good on my skin after the close confines of the cabin. Ahead, the river made a slow curve and vanished out of my sight so I retreated to the wall of the cabin where, as Hui had said, a white linen awning had been erected for me. Cushions had been strewn on the deck under it. I lowered myself into the shade with a sigh of satisfaction. Now was not the time to think of Aswat, to allow homesickness to invade me. Better to consider how desperately I had wanted to leave, how the gods had answered my prayers. I examined the vague guilt that stole over me as I relaxed, and realized that it was due to unaccustomed idleness. My mother would not have approved of me lolling here on plump satin like a pampered noblewoman while the oarsmen heaved and grunted under my eyes. Soon I will go aft and look at the helmsman on his perch in the stern, I told myself, but indolence had me in its gentle grip and I surrendered to it happily.
Perhaps I dozed, for it seemed that the sun had moved swiftly towards the west when my master called me sharply from beyond the curtain. I hurried to obey his summons, noticing as I did so that the placid, dreamlike shoals and banks of the river were changing. We were slipping by a house the like of which I had never seen before. It had its own watersteps as though the inhabitant was a god, and the tree-dotted land around it was a startling green. That meant many servants to haul water from the shrinking Nile. I glimpsed pillars, white as washed bones, and a portion of stone wall. Casting a glance further forward I saw another estate in the distance. Suddenly I was a foreigner in my own country, an uncouth peasant girl with dirt under her fingernails and not the slightest conception of how life might be lived by the people in those ethereal mansions. This time, as I came into Hui’s presence, I bowed.
He was lying on the cot draped in a sheet, and I could see that the linen under him was soaked with his sweat. I could hardly breathe for the thickness of the air and the stench of his odour under which was a faint hint of jasmine. Fleetingly I was reminded of the lyings-in I had attended with my mother. Many of the cramped mud rooms had smelled like
“I did not prance,” I retorted, and sweeping the curtain aside, went out into the blinding sunshine.
The side of the barge was four steps away and I paused, blinking and taking in what I saw. We were moving ponderously but at a good pace in the middle of the river. Sand-banks dotted with ragged palms slid by, and beyond them a collection of mud houses huddled on the edge of dry, cracked fields. A brown ox, knee-deep in the murky shallows, had its head down and was drinking. A naked peasant boy with a stick in his grasp, as dun-coloured as his beast, stared at us as we glided past him. In the distance the desert hills shimmered golden in the heat haze. The sky was white-hot. As I turned rather shyly forward to where the oarsmen moved to and fro and the captain sang the rhythm, the village dropped away to be replaced by empty land cut by a path that meandered beside the Nile. I was disappointed. I might have been looking at Aswat and its environs from my father’s fishing boat.
The deck was hot under my bare feet. The oarsmen ignored my progress but the captain on his stool, under his canopy, favoured me with a brisk nod. I walked to where the graceful prow curved up and inward, over my head, and leaned out. Crystal wavelets folded back from the barge’s assault, and above my head the flag bearing the imperial colours, blue and white, cracked in the prevailing north wind of summer. The breeze, hot though it was, felt good on my skin after the close confines of the cabin. Ahead, the river made a slow curve and vanished out of my sight so I retreated to the wall of the cabin where, as Hui had said, a white linen awning had been erected for me. Cushions had been strewn on the deck under it. I lowered myself into the shade with a sigh of satisfaction. Now was not the time to think of Aswat, to allow homesickness to invade me. Better to consider how desperately I had wanted to leave, how the gods had answered my prayers. I examined the vague guilt that stole over me as I relaxed, and realized that it was due to unaccustomed idleness. My mother would not have approved of me lolling here on plump satin like a pampered noblewoman while the oarsmen heaved and grunted under my eyes. Soon I will go aft and look at the helmsman on his perch in the stern, I told myself, but indolence had me in its gentle grip and I surrendered to it happily.
Perhaps I dozed, for it seemed that the sun had moved swiftly towards the west when my master called me sharply from beyond the curtain. I hurried to obey his summons, noticing as I did so that the placid, dreamlike shoals and banks of the river were changing. We were slipping by a house the like of which I had never seen before. It had its own watersteps as though the inhabitant was a god, and the tree-dotted land around it was a startling green. That meant many servants to haul water from the shrinking Nile. I glimpsed pillars, white as washed bones, and a portion of stone wall. Casting a glance further forward I saw another estate in the distance. Suddenly I was a foreigner in my own country, an uncouth peasant girl with dirt under her fingernails and not the slightest conception of how life might be lived by the people in those ethereal mansions. This time, as I came into Hui’s presence, I bowed.
He was lying on the cot draped in a sheet, and I could see that the linen under him was soaked with his sweat. I could hardly breathe for the thickness of the air and the stench of his odour under which was a faint hint of jasmine. Fleetingly I was reminded of the lyings-in I had attended with my mother. Many of the cramped mud rooms had smelled like
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