A Cruel Passing of Innocence Read Online Free PDF Page A

the black girl, whose name Nassara discovered was Ugimba, eventually mumbled something in her ear, but she could not understand her words. For some time now she had felt the girl becoming restless, her breasts moving agitatedly against her back, yet it was not she, Ugimba, who was suffering pain from the whip, as both Nassara and Belithza were. Nevertheless, it seemed that Ugimba was in discomfort, growing more restless with every lurch of the beast beneath them, and she squirmed agitatedly behind Nassara. Then suddenly she groaned, her breath coming quickly, and she shuddered against Nassara’s back.
    Not understanding at first, Nassara felt a sudden flow between her own buttocks, flooding down around her thighs and cascading down her legs, and she realised the cause of the girl’s discomfort, her bladder unable to sustain the pressure any longer. They had been without a break for many hours, and the poor girl whimpered words of apology in Nassara’s ear, choking back tears of shame. But Nassara gently and kindly squeezed Ugimba’s arm, which encircled her waist so earnestly. Now Nassara’s mind was focused on her own growing discomfort, her own bladder aching for release.
    The youth leading the beast by a rein walked just ahead of it, seemingly unaffected by the distance of the journey, his bare feet oblivious to the hot sand, as though accustomed to such exertion and extremity of heat. Sometimes he hummed quietly to himself, or mumbled, or spat into the dust. At other times he would hang back, walking beside the beast, glancing slyly up at the three half-exposed legs of the girls, ever ready for any mischievous torment of his charges. Now he saw the flood of warm liquid running down, and laughing gleefully he pointed at the trickling wetness. Then turning and walking backwards he fumbled for the vent in his ragged clothing, pulling out his puny flesh, thrusting it upward as high as he could, and he began to urinate, laughing inanely as his feet scuttled backwards in the sand, leaving a fresh trail of steaming wetness as they went.
    Nassara looked away, forcing herself to close her eyes again, making her mind go blank to shut out the nagging, growing pressure in her belly and the ache that seemed to consume every part of her weary body. She ventured a glance at the shackled men, herded along like cattle, trying to take her thoughts off her pressing discomfort.
    Some of them seemed near to the end of their endurance, shuffling along in a daze, scarcely seeing or caring and almost delirious with the heat and thirst. Once one of them stumbled to the ground, making the others stop abruptly, pulled up by the sudden pressure on their collars. The horseman was immediately upon him, lashing out indiscriminately with his whip, making the others move on, dragging the fallen prisoner to his feet by the cruel tautness of the chain.
    Eventually Nassara could no longer take the pressure in her bloated abdomen and she let go, gasping her apology to Belithza, who felt the rush of the flood around her buttocks and thighs, and mumbled that Nassara should have no shame for nature’s work.
    It was nightfall by the time the convoy came upon its destination. Single-storey mud huts nestled untidily around each other. Smoky oil lamps flickered at the open doorways, and a pervasive odour of dung and cooking hung over the place. There was another smell too, that was unfamiliar to Nassara – a kind of salty richness in the air. It was cooler here, too, and nudging at the folds of her headdress was a pleasant breeze that came from her right, and there, opening out beyond a fringe of nearby palm trees, was a black expanse she could not at first identify.
    Then with a twinge of shock she realised they had come to the sea, something she’d never seen before. As far as she knew it could have been the edge of the world, and a lifetime away from her village that not so long ago had been the centre of her life.
    A number of men