...of expression

Oya came too. At first, shyly, she would sit on a stone at the entrance to Ibusun, looking at the garden. Whenever Maou drew near, she ran away. There was something both wild and innocent about her at the same time which frightened Elijah, and he looked upon her as a witch. He wanted to chase her away by throwing stones at her, and he called her bad names.
One day Maou was able to approach her and take her by the hand; she led her into the garden. Oya did not want to go into the house. She sat outside on the ground, against the stairs leading to the terrace, in the shade of the guava trees. She stayed there with her legs crossed, her hands resting flat against her blue dress. Maou had tried to show her some magazines, as she had done with Marima, but Oya wasn't interested. She had a strange look in her eyes, smooth and hard as obsidian, full of an unfamiliar light. Her eyelids lifted up towards her temples, drawn with a fine edging exactly like the Egyptian masks, thought Maou. Maou had never seen a face of such purity - the arc of her eyebrows, the height of her forehead, her lips with the trace of a smile. And above all these almond-shaped eyes, the eyes of a dragonfly or a cicada. When Oya's gaze came to rest upon her, Maou shuddered, as if through her gaze were filtered thoughts extraordinarily distant and clear, images of a dream.
Maou tried to speak with her through sign language. She vaguely remembered certain gestures. Whenever, as a child in Fiesole, she passed the deaf-mute children from the hospice, she would look at them, fascinated. To say "woman" she pointed to her hair, to say "man," her chin. For "child" she made a gesture with her hand as if patting the head of a very small child. For other gestures she made things up. To say "river" she made the motion of flowing water, to say "forest" she spread her fingers in front of her face. In the beginning Oya looked at her with indifference. Then she too began to speak. It was a game that lasted for hours. On the steps of the staircase, in the afternoon, before the rain, it was a good time. Oya showed Maou all sorts of gestures to express joy, fear, to ask questions. Her face grew lively, her eyes shone. She made funny faces, imitated people, the way they walked, their comical expressions. She made fun of Elijah because he was old and his wife was so young. They both laughed. Oya had a particular way of laughing, soundlessly, her mouth opening over her very white teeth, her eyes narrowed like two slits. Or, if she was sad, her eyes would cloud over and she would curl into a ball, her head bent over, her hands on the back of her neck.

[Onitsha, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]