of clothes in it and stood aside to rest a second. Burying his clothes was not a symbol to him of burying his former self; he only knew he wouldn’ t need them any more. As soon as he got his breath, he pushed
the displaced dirt over the hole and stamped it down with his foot. He discovered while he did this that
he still had his shoes on, and when he finished, he removed them and threw them from him. Then he
picked up the loose bulky object and shook it vigorously.
In the uncertain light, one of his lean white legs could be seen to disappear and then the other, one arm
and then the other: a black heavier shaggier figure replaced his. For an instant, it had two heads, one
light and one dark, but after a second, it pulled the dark back head over the other and corrected this. It
busied itself with certain hidden fastenings and what appeared to be minor adjustments of its hide.
For a time after this, it stood very still and didn’ t do anything. Then it began to growl and beat its chest;
it jumped up and down and flung its arms and thrust its head forward. The growls were thin and
uncertain at first but they grew louder after a second. They became low and poisonous, louder again,
low and poisonous again; they stopped altogether. The figure extended its hand, clutched nothing, and
shook its arm vigorously; it withdrew the arm, extended it again, clutched nothing, and shook. It