Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/121

Rh smile came on to his face. Behind the smile lay a soft, strange malignancy.

‘Because our men are the fire and the daytime, and our women are the spaces between the stars at night,’ he said.

‘Aren’t the women even stars?’ she said.

‘No. We say they are the spaces between the stars, that keep the stars apart.’

He looked at her oddly, and again the touch of derision came into his eyes.

‘White people,’ he said, ‘they know nothing. They are like children, always with toys. We know the sun, and we know the moon. And we say, when a white woman sacrifice herself to our gods, then our gods will begin to make the world again, and the white man’s gods will fall to pieces.’

‘How sacrifice herself?’ she asked quickly.

And he, as quickly covered, covered himself with a subtle smile.

‘She sacrifice her own gods and come to our gods, I mean that,’ he said, soothingly.

But she was not reassured. An icy pang of fear and certainty was at her heart.

‘The sun he is alive at one end of the sky,’ he continued, ‘and the moon lives at the other end. And the man all the time have to keep the sun happy in his side of the sky, and the woman have to keep the moon quiet at her side of the sky. All the time she have to work at this. And the sun can’t ever go into the house of the moon, and the moon can’t ever go into the house of the moon, in the sky. So the woman, she asks the moon to come into her cave, inside her. And the man, he draws the sun down till he has the power of the sun. All the time he do this. Then when the man gets a woman, the sun goes into the cave of the moon, and that is how everything in the world starts.' 8