B007P4V3G4 EBOK by Richard Huijing Page A

big hairy
succeed. He was already clutching the edges of the oval gap. But
the same white arm that first had helped him get as far as this, now
thrust him down unexpectedly.
    Never before had there been such cheering in the cave as when
this happened.
    The longer he viewed all this, the more his soul unravelled. He felt
himself go quietly mad. He felt regret over the food he had taken,
for he wished to die. He stretched himself out on the rock floor,
closed his eyes and resolved not to open them ever again. He
wept over the sight the world still proffered him now on parting.
He would turn away from it for good.
    That's the way he lay there a little while, the goings on around
him forced back to a distant clamour. Then a droplet fell on his
chest. The unexpectedness, the strangeness of this cleared his mind
completely and made him abandon his resolve at once. He opened
his eyes and looked straight up above. And lo: there was a
slavegirl right above him. And regarding her closely, things became
clear to him at once. She wept.
    Oh, what is it, that powerful thing that suddenly can come into
being between two people? A current? A force field? An invisible
ladder, in this case? He saw that, among all those women, she was
different. No less charming, but dazed and desperate like him. He
was the only one who saw this in the midst of the hellish uproar.
He could not see that she wept but her tear had reached him there.
A second one fell, on his shoulder.
    A great desire quivered throughout his being. If ever two
people must be united in this wilderness, they were the ones. He
jumped up and stretched his muscles, felt his strength return to
him as though by magic. Did she see him too? He looked up and
thought she did. Was that a smile breaking around her mouth?
Was that a gleam in her eye? Was it the case that they only
existed for one another now?
    With the eye of a hunter, he explored the steep rock face. Every
fissure, every ledge he perceived and then he plotted his way accordingly, like in the past, when reaching a nest of young
vultures was at stake. He gave a sign she would have to understand
if the same fire had been kindled within her. And she did understand, for in reply she crossed her arms in front of her chest, thus
indicating that she would pray for him the while.

    Now the alliance had been sealed. Who knows, she may already
have noticed him much earlier on, and her tears had been a call.
    Slowly, and uncertainly at first because of his emotion, he began
the ascent. As he rose higher and more perilously, the placement
of his hands, of his fingers, the support of his feet, the transfer of
his weight demanded all his attention. He was inconspicuous doing
this: he was one of the many. Only later on, at the edge of the
vaulting, did he attract general notice.
    Each time he had found sufficient support, he would rest for a
moment and look up, and the more clearly he could see her, the
more glorious she seemed to him. Now he could read his own,
huge desire in her face. No, it wasn't a game with her like it was
with the others, a game of cat and mouse, for beyond the radiance
of her love's glow he could see the fear, the fear of failure, of him
falling. But the others had to think that she, too, was luring him to
his death.
    There had been one perilous moment; not when, for the first
time, he saw her lips, her teeth, her nostrils, the wave in her hair,
not even when he could distinguish the pupils in her eyes, when
they switched focus from their faces to their eyes. All this was just
glorious.
    Dangerous was the moment when, for the first time, they could
call out to each other. He began, and when she answered him she
did so in his own language. She was one of his tribe!
    By a whisker, he avoided toppling right over backwards. His
entire body atremble, he clung to the rock and waited like this
until he'd calmed down.
    His language, his language! His language had not yet died: