202
DORIS LESSING
We left the small kopje behind, and now a big one rose ahead.
The hollow between the two was the place Mrs. Boothby had said
was visited by pigeons. We struck off the track to the foot of the big
kopje, in silence. I remember us walking, silent, with the sun stinging
our backs. I can
see
us, five small brightly-colored young people,
walking in the grassy vlei through reeling white butterflies under a
splendid blue sky.
At the foot of the kopje stood a clump of large trees under which
we arranged ourselves. Another clump stood about twenty yards
away. A pigeon cooed somewhere from the leaves in this second
clump. It stopped at the disturbance we made, decided we were
harmless and cooed on. It was a soft, somnolent drugging sound,
hypnotic, like the sound of cicadas, which-now that we were listen–
ing-we realised were shrilling everywhere about us. The noise of
cicadas is like having malaria and being full of quinine, an insane
incessant shrilling noise that seems to come out the ear-drums.
Soon one doesn't hear it, as one ceases to hear the fevered shrilling
of quinine in the blood.
"Only one pigeon," said Paul. "Mrs. Boothby has misled us."
He rested his rifle barrel on a rock, sighted the bird, tried without
the support of the rock, and just when we thought he would shoot,
laid the rifle aside.
We prepared for a lazy interval. The shade was thick, the grass
soft and springy and the sun climbing towards midday position. The
~
kopje behind us towered up into the sky, dominating, but not
oppressive. The kopjes in this part of the country are deceptive.
Often quite high, they scatter and diminish on approach, because they
consist of groups or piles of rounded granite boulders; so that stand-
ing at the base of a kopje one might very well see clear through a
crevice or small ravine to the vlei on the other side, with great, top–
pling glistening boulders soaring up like a giant's pile of pebbles. This
kopje, as we knew, because we had explored it, was full of the earth–
works and barricades built by the Mashona seventy, eighty years
before as a defence against the raiding Matabele. It was also full
of magnificent Bushmen paintings. At least, they had been magnifi–
cent until they had been defaced by guests from the hotel who had
amused themselves throwing stones at them.
"Imagine," said Paul. "Here we are, a group of Mashona, be-
