12
PARTISAN REVIEW
brothers live. I thought a long time then, and often afterwards of how
They make a heap of sticks, and put the fire into the sticks, and then small
bits of wood onto the flames. Sometimes one person sits by the fire and
watches it and puts in more and then more sticks. They all sit around the
fire and talk. Sometimes as we do, telling each other things, but it is not
always like us. Sometimes one talks a long time, and the others sit and do
not talk, but then They open Their mouths wide and make sounds that
are like when we are afraid or shout to each other, or are like the Noisy
Bird that tells us when the tiger is corning. But they are not afraid I think.
They seem pleased. Do we do this? I have been watching us and listening
but we are not the same. We never sit a long time while one speaks. We
only say, There is a honey tree. Or, Be careful there's a steep place. Or, If
you do that I'll bite you. Sometimes Their talk is nothing like ours, but
more like birds talking together or like a tiger singing when the moon is
full. Sometimes when my brothers are not near I try to make sounds like
Theirs but all I make is sounds like a pig or bear. Then I am sad. I have
been sad often since I first went down the mountain and saw Them.
Sometimes I wish I had never found Their place and seen Them because
my heart hurts so much.
Why are They different? How are They different? Sometimes I think,
in every way, but then I think, They are the same shape, and we walk the
same way.
When I first saw Them I thought, But They are like us, and then af–
terwards I knew They were not. I see Them and I see us more clearly
than I did at the beginning.
In the cold time after when I first saw Them I was with my brothers
in the cave while the snow was falling outside, and we were keeping
warm, and I thought, But we do keep warm though we do not have the
fire as They do. We have hair over us that keeps us warm. And then I
thought, But They do have a covering, like a bark or like the leaves we
hold over our heads when it is hot. All the cold months I thought about
Them and the covering They have, and then when the warm came again
I hid behind rocks and looked down at the river and I saw the Female
alone at the river. She did not have the covering on her. She had taken it
off. I saw she had hair only on her head and lower down where she will
give birth. She is smooth all over, a brown colour like the inside of a
thorn-tree bark, and she shines. The hair on her head is very long and
smooth like black grass, or like the long hair on the necks of Their big
animals.
It
is soft and long, not stiff and reddish, like ours. It was only
then I saw how different it was to be smooth and without hair all over.
That is why They use the fire to warm them. Without the fire They
would die, even with the coverings, which are made of something I do
not know. I kept thinking how different They are. I looked into the pool
