Текст книги "The Angels Weep"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 38 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

She was a dumpy little figure, of that indeterminate age that plain girls enter in their late twenties, and which carries them through to old age. She walked without pride, slumping as though to hide her breasts and the fact that she was a woman. Her skirt was bulky around her thick waist, and the low sensible shoes almost drew attention away from the surprisingly lovely lines of her calves and the graceful ankles.

She walked with her arms folded across her chest as though she was cold, even in the hot morning sunlight. She peered shortsightedly at the path through horn-rimmed spectacles, and her hair was long and lank, hanging straight and lustre less to hide her face, until she stood below the yacht side and looked up at Craig. Her skin was bad, like that of a teenager who was on junk food, and her face was plump, but with an unhealthy soft look, and a sick-room pallor.

Then she lifted the horn-rimmed spectacles from her face. The frames left little red indentations on each side of her nose, but the eyes, those huge slanted cat's-eyes with the strange little cast in them, those eyes so dark indigo blue as to be almost black they were unmistakable.

Jan, "Craig whispered. "Oh God, Jan, is it you?" She made a heartbreakingly feminine gesture of vanity pushing the lank dull hair off her face, and dropped her eyes, standing awkwardly pigeon-toed in the dowdy skirt.

Her voice barely carried up to him. "I'm sorry to bother you. I know how you must feel about me, but can I come up, please?" "Please, Jan, please do." He dragged himself to the rail and steadied the ladder for her.

"Hello," he grinned at her shyly, as she reached the deck level

"Hello, Craig." "I'm sorry, I'd like to stand up, but you'll have to get used to talking down to me." "Yes,"she said. "I heard." "Let's go down to the saloon. I'm expecting Bawu. It will be like old times." She looked away. "You've done a lot of work, Craig." "She's almost finished," he told her proudly.

"She's beautiful." Janine went down from the cockpit into the saloon, and he lowered himself after her.

"We could wait for Bawu," Craig said, as he placed a tape on the machine, instinctively avoiding Beethoven and selecting Debussy for a lighter happier sound. "Or we could have a drink right now." He grinned to cover his uneasiness and discomfort. "And quite frankly I need one right away." Janine did not touch her glass, but sat staring at it. "Bawu told me you were still working at the museum." She nodded, and Craig felt his chest constricted with helpless pity for her.

"Bawu will be here-" He searched desperately for something to say to her.

"Craig, I came to tell you something. The family asked me to come to you, they wanted somebody whom you knew to break the news." Now she looked up from the glass, "Bawu won't be coming today," she said. "He won't be coming ever again." After a long time Craig asked softly, "When did it happen?" "Last night, while he was sleeping. It was his heart." "Yes," Craig murmured. "His heart. It was broken I knew that." "The funeral will be tomorrow at King's Lynn, in the afternoon.

They want you to be there. We could go together, if you don't mind?"

The weather changed during the night, and the wind went up into the southeast bringing with it the thin cold drizzling guti rain.

They laid the old man down amongst his wives and children and grandchildren in the little cemetery at the back of the hills. The rain on the freshly turned red earth piled beside the open grave made it seem as though the earth were bleeding from a mortal wound.

Afterwards, Craig and Janine drove back to Bulawayo in the Land-Rover.

"I'm staying at the same flat," Janine said, as they drove through the park. "Will you drop me there, please?" if I am alone now, I'll just get sad drunk," Craig said. "Won't you come back to the yacht, just for a little while, please?" Craig heard the pleading in his own voice.

"I'm not very good around people any more," she said. "Nor am I," Craig agreed. "But you and I aren't just people, are we?" Craig made coffee for both of them, and brought it through from the galley. They sat opposite each other, and he found it difficult not to stare at her.

"I must look a sight," she said, abruptly, and he did not know how to answer her. "You will always be the most beautiful woman I have ever known!

"Craig, did they tell you what happened to me?" "Yes, I know."

"Then you must know that I am not really a woman any more. I will never be able to let a man, any man, touch me again." "I can understand that." "That's one of the reasons that I. never tried to see you again." "What are the other reasons?" he asked.

"That you would not wish to see me, to have anything to do with me." "That I don't understand." Janine was silent again, huddled on the bench seat, hugging herself with that protective gesture.

"Roly felt that way," she blurted. "After they were finished with me. When he found me there beside the wreck, when he realized what they had done to me, he could not even bear to touch me, not even to speak to me." "Jan-" Craig started, but she cut him off.

"It's all right, Craig. I didn't tell you to hear you deny it for me. I told you so that you would know about me. So that you would know that I have nothing left to offer a man that way." "Then I can tell you that, like you, I have nothing to offer a woman that way."

There was quick and real pain in her eyes. "Oh Craig, my poor Craig I didn't realize I thought it was just one leg.– "On the other hand, I can offer someone friendship and caring, and just about everything else." He grinned at her. "I can even offer a shot of gin." "I thought you didn't want to get drunk." She smiled back at him gently. "I said sad drunk, but we should give Bawu a little wake. He would have liked that." They sat facing each other across the saloon table, chatting in desultory fashion, both of them beginning to relax as the gin warmed them and gradually they recaptured some of that long-lost camaraderie that they had once enjoyed.

Janine explained her reasons for not accepting the invitation of Douglas and Valerie to live at Queen's Lynn. "They look at me with such pity, that I start to feel it all over again. It would be like going into a state of perpetual mourning." He told her about St. Giles', and the way he had absconded. "They say it's not my legs, but my head that prevents me from walking. Either they are crazy or I am I prefer to think that it's them." He had two steaks in the refrigerator, and he grilled them on the gas while she made a dressing for the salad, and while they worked he explained all the modifications that he had made to the layout of the yacht.

"With the roller boom, I would be able to shorten or make sail without leaving the cockpit," he chatted on. "I bet that I could manage her single-handed. It's a pity I'm not ever going to have the chance." "What do you mean?" She stopped with an onion in one hand and a knife in the other.

"My darling is never going to feel the kiss of salt water on her bottom," he explained. "They have impounded her." "Craig, I don't understand." "I applied to the exchange control authorities for a permit to ship her to the coast. You know what they are like, don't you?" "I've heard they are pretty rough," she answered.

"Rough? That's like calling Attila the Hun unkind. If you try to get out of the country, even as a legal emigrant, they allow you to take out only a thousand dollars" worth of goods or cash. Well, they sent an inspector round and he valued the yacht at two hundred and fifty thousand. If I want to take it out, I have to make a cash deposit of a quarter of a million dollars, a quarter of a million! I have a little over ten thousand dollars between me and prostitution, so until I come up with another two hundred and forty thousand, here I sit." "Craig, that's cruel. Couldn't you appeal? I mean in your special circumstances?" She stopped herself when she saw the little arrowhead of a frown appear between his eyes. Craig brushed over the reference to his disability.

"You can see their point of view, I suppose. Every white man in the country wants to get out before the big black baddies take over.

We would strip the country bare if there was no control." "But, Craig, what are you going to do?" "Stay here, I suppose. I don't have much alternative. I'll sit here and read His cock's Voyaging Under Sail and Mellor's Cruising Safe and Simple." "I wish there was something I could do to help." "There is. You can lay the table and hook a bottle of wine out of the cupboard." Janine left more than half her steak, and drank little of the wine, then she wandered across the saloon to examine his collection of tapes..

Taganini's Capricci," she murmured, "now I know you are a masochist." And then her attention was attracted to the neat square pile of the typescript on the shelf beside the tapes.

"What is this?" She turned the first few sheets, and then looked up at him. Those beautiful blue eyes in the once beautiful face, that was now swollen and distorted with fat and speckled about the chin with angry little blemishes, made his heart plunge. "What is it?" And then, seeing his expression, "Oh, I'm sorry. It's none of my business."

"No!" he said, quickly. "It's not that. It's just that I don't really know what it is-" He couldn't call it a book, and it would be pretentious to call it a novel. "It's just something I have been fiddling with." Janine riffled the edges of the sheets. The pile was over twelve inches deep. "It doesn't look like fiddling," she said, "To me it looks like deadly earnest!" "It's a story I have been trying to write down." may I read it?" she asked, and he felt panic rising in him. "Oh, it wouldn't interest you." "How do you know?" She lugged the huge typescript to the table. "May I read it?" He shrugged helplessly, "I don't think you will get far, but if you would like to try-" She sat down and read the first page.

"It's still very rough, you must make allowances, "he said.

"Craig, you still don't know when to shut up, do you?" she said, without looking up. She turned the page.

He took the plates and glasses through to the galley and washed them, then he made coffee and brought the pot to the saloon table.

Janine did not look up. He poured her a mug, and she did not look up from the page.

After a while he left her and slid through to his cabin. He stretched out on the bunk, and picked up the book he was reading from the bedside table. It was Crawford's Mariners" Celestial No6gation, and he began to wrestle distractedly with zenith distances and azimuth angles. He woke with Janine's hand on his cheek. She jerked her fingers away as he sat up hurriedly.

"What time is it?"he asked groggily.

"It's morning, I have to go. I didn't sleep all night. I don't know how I will get through work today." "Will you come back? "he demanded, coming full awake.

"I have to, I have to finish reading. I would take it with me, but I'd need a camel to carry it, it's so big." She stood over the bunk looking down at him, with a strange speculation in those slanted dark blue eyes.

"It's difficult to believe that was written by somebody I thought that I knew," she mused softly. "I realize that I really knew very little about you at all." She glanced at her watch. "Oh, my gosh! I have to fly!" She parked the VW under the mango trees beside the yacht a little after five o'clock that evening.

"I have brought the steaks," she called, "and the wine." She came up the ladder and ducked down into the saloon. Her voice floated up to him in the cockpit, "But you'll have to cook them. I can't spare the time, I'm afraid." By the time he got down into the saloon, she was already seated and completely engrossed in the massive typescript.

It was long past midnight when she turned the last page. When she had finished it, she sat quietly with her hands clasped in her lap, staring at the pile of paper silently.

Then when she looked up at him at last, her eyes were bright and wet with tears.

"It's magnificent," she said quietly. "It will take me a little time before I can get over it enough to talk about it rationally, and then I will want to read it again." The following evening, she brought a fat Cornish chicken. "It's range-fed," she told him. "One more steak and you would start growing horns." She made a coq all yin and while they ate, she demanded an explanation of the characters in his typescript.

"Was Mr. Rhodes really a homosexual?" "There doesn't seem to be any other explanation," he defended himself. "So many great men are hounded to greatness by their own imperfections." "What about Lobengula? Was his first love really a captured white girl? Did he commit suicide? And Robyn Ballantyne tell me more about her, did she impersonate a man to enrol in medical school? How much of that is true?" "Does it matter?" Craig laughed at her. "It's just a story, the way it might have been. I was just trying to portray an age, and the mood of that age." "Oh, yes, it does matter," she said seriously. "It matters very much to me. You have made it matter. It is as though I am a part of it you have made me a part of it all." That night when it grew late, Craig said simply, "I made up the bunk in the forward cabin, it seems silly for you to drive all that way home." She stayed, and the following evening she brought a valise which she unpacked into the stowage of the forward cabin, and they settled slowly into a routine. She had first use of the shower and heads in the morning while he made the breakfast. He did the cleaning and made up the bunks while she did the shopping and any other errands for him during her lunch break When she arrived back at the yacht in the evenings, she would change into a tee-shirt and jeans, then help him with the work on the yacht. She was particularly good at sanding and varnishing, she had more patience and dexterity than Craig did.

At the end of the first week, Craig suggested, "It would save you a bundle if you gave up that flat of yours." "I'll pay you rent," she agreed, and when he protested, "Okay, then, I get the food and liquor agreed?" That night just after she had doused the gaslight in her cabin, she called through the dark saloon to his stern cabin.

"Craig, do you know, this is the first time that I feel safe since-" She did not finish.

"I know how you feel," he assured her. "Goodnight, Skipper." Yet it was only a few nights later that he came awake to her screams. They were so anguished, so tormented and heartrending, that for seconds he could not move, then he tumbled from his bunk and sprawled on the deck in his haste to get to her. He fumbled and found the switch to the fluorescent tube in the saloon, and then clawed himself down the companionway.

In the reflected light from the saloon, he saw her crouched in one corner of the cabin. Her bedclothes were hanging in untidy festoons from the bunk, her nightdress was tucked up around her naked thighs and her fingers formed a cage across her terrified contorted face.

He reached for her. "Jan, it's all right. I'm here!" He wrapped both arms around her, to try and still those dreadful cries of terror.

Immediately she turned into a maddened animal, and she flew at him.

Her nails slashed down his forehead, and had he not jerked away, he would have lost his eye, the bloody parallel wounds ended in his eyebrow, and thick dark blood oozed into his -eye, half-blinding him.

Her strength was out of all proportion to her size, he could not hold her, and the harder he tried, the wilder she became. She sank her teeth into his bare forearm, leaving a crescent-shaped bite-mark deep in his flesh.

He rolled away from her, and instantly she crawled back into the corner, and crouched there, keening and blubbering to herself, staring at him with glittering unseeing eyes. Craig felt his skin crawl and itch with dread and his own horror. Once again he tried to reach her, but at first advance she bared her teeth like a rabid dog and snarled at him.

He rolled out of the cabin and dragged himself into the saloon.

Frantically he searched through the tapes and found Beethoven's "Pastoral." He pressed it into the slot and turned the volume up to the maximum. The magnificent music swamped the yacht.

Slowly the sounds from her cabin dwindled into silence, and then hesitantly Janine came into the companionway of the saloon. She held her arms crossed over her chest, but the madness was gone from her eyes.

"I had a dream," she whispered, and came to sit at the table.

"I'll make some coffee, "he said.

In the galley he bathed his scratches and bites with cold water, and took the coffee through to her.

"The music-" she started, and then she saw his torn face. "Did I do that?" "It doesn't matter," he said.

"I'm sorry, Craig," she whispered. "But you must not try to touch me. You see I am a little bit mad also. You mustn't try to touch me."

Comrade Tungata Zebiwe, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Information in the Cabinet of the newly elected government of Zimbabwe, walked briskly along one of the narrow gravel pathways that meandered through the lush gardens of State House. His four bodyguards followed him at a respectful distance. They were all former members of his old ZIPRA cadre, each of them hardened veterans whose loyalty had been tested a hundred times. Now, however, they had changed the camouflage dungarees of the bush war for dark business suits and sunglasses, the new uniform of the political elete.

The daily pilgrimage on which Tungata. was intent had become a ritual of his household. As one of the senior Cabinet ministers, he was entitled to luxurious quarters in one of the annexes of State House. It was an easy and congenial walk from there, through the gardens, past State House itself, to the indaba tree.

State House was a sprawling edifice with white walls and gables, arched in the tradition of the great homes of the Cape of Good Hope.

It had been built on the instructions of that arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes. His taste for the big and barbaric showed in the design, and his sense of history in his choice of the site for State House. It was built on the spot where Lobengula's kraal had once stood before it was destroyed by Rhodes" marauders when they rode in to take possession of this land.

Beyond the great house, not two hundred paces from its wide verandas, stood a tree, a gnarled old wild plum enclosed and protected by a fence of iron palings. This tree was the object of Tungata's pilgrimage. He stopped in front of the iron palings, and his bodyguards hung back so as not to intrude on this private moment.

Tungata stood with his feet apart and his hands clasped lightly behind his. back. He was dressed in a navy blue suit with a light chalk stripe. One of a dozen that Gieves and Hawkes of Savile Row had tailored for him during his last visit to London. It fitted his wide rangy shoulders to perfection and subtly emphasized his narrow waist and the length of his legs. He wore a snowy white shirt under it, his tie was maroon with the tiny buckle and bridle logo of Gucci picked out in blue. His shoes were by the same Italian house, and he wore his expensive Western clothes with the same ilan as his forefathers had worn the blue heron's feathers and royal leopard pelts.

He removed the gold-rimmed aviator-type Polaroid glasses from his face, and as part of his personal ritual, read the inscription on the plaque that was riveted to the palings.

"Beneath this tree Lobengula, the last King of the Matabele, held his court and sat in judgement." Then he looked up into the branches, as though in search of his ancestor's spirit. The tree was dying of old age, some of the central branches were black and dry, but from the rich red soil at its base new shoots were bursting into vibrant life.

Tungata saw the significance of that and he murmured to himself, "They will grow as strong as the great tree once was and I also am a shoot of the old king's stock." There was a light tread on the gravel path behind Tungata. He frowned as he turned, but the frown cleared as he saw who it was.

"Comrade Leila," he greeted the white woman with the pale intense face.

"I am honoured that you call me that, Comrade Minister," Leila came directly to him and held out her hand.

"You and your family have always been true friends of my people," he told her simply, as he took her hand. "Beneath this tree your grandmother, Robyn Ballantyne, met often with Lobengula, my great great-uncle. She came at his invitation to give him advice and counsel." "Now, I come at your invitation, and you must believe that I will always be yours to command." He released her hand and turned back to the tree, his voice had a quiet reflective quality.

"You were with me when the Umlimo, the spirit medium of our people, made her final prediction. I thought it was right that you should be there when that prediction is brought to fruition." "The stone falcons have returned to roost," Leila St. John agreed softly.

"But that is not all the Umlimo's prophecy. She foresaw that the man who brought the falcons back to Zimbabwe would rule the land as once did the Mambos and Monomatopas, as once did your ancestors Lobengula and great Mzilikazi." Tungata turned slowly to face her once more.

"That is a secret that you and I share, Comrade Leila." "It will remain our secret, Comrade Tungata, but you and I both know that there will be need during the difficult years that lie ahead for a man as strong as Mzilikazi was strong." Tungata did not reply. He looked up into the branches of the ancient tree, and his lips moved in a silent supplication. Then he replaced the gold-rimmed glasses over his eyes, and turned back to Leila.

"The car is waiting, "he said.

It was a black bullet-proofed Mercedes 500. There were four police motorcycle outriders and a second smaller Mercedes for his bodyguards. The small convoy drove very fast, with the police sirens shrieking and wailing, and the colourful little ministerial pennant fluttering on the front of Tungata's Mercedes.

They went down the three-kilo metre-long jacaranda lined driveway that Cecil Rhodes had designed as the approach to his State House, and then crossed the main commercial section of Bulawayo, flying through the red lights at the junctions to the geometrical grid of roads and avenues, past the town square where the wagons had laagered during the rebellion when Bazo's imp is had threatened the town, down along the wide avenue that bisected the meticulously groomed lawns of the public gardens, and at last turned off sharply and drew up in front of the modern three-storey museum building.

There was a red carpet laid down the front steps of the museum and a small gathering of dignitaries, headed by the Mayor of Bulawayo, the first Matabele ever to hold that position, and the curator of the museum.

"Welcome, Comrade Minister, on this historic occasion." They escorted him down the long corridor to the public auditorium. Every seat was already filled, and as Tungata entered, the entire gathering stood and applauded him, the whites in the gathering outdoing the Matabele as a positive demonstration of their goodwill.

Tungata was introduced to the other dignitaries on the speakers" platform. "This is Doctor Van der Walt, curator of the Southern African Museum." He was a tall balding man with a heavy South African accent. Tungata shook hands with him briefly and unsmilingly. This man represented a nation that had actively opposed the people's republican army's march to glory. Tungata turned to the next in line.

She was a young white woman, and she was immediately familiar to Tungata. He stared at her sharply, not quite able to place her. She had gone very pale under his scrutiny, and her eyes were dark and terrified as those of a hunted animal. The hand in his was limp and cold, and trembled violently still Tungata could not decide where he had seen her before.

"Doctor Carpenter is the curator of the Entomological Section."

The name meant nothing to Tungata, and he turned away from her, irritated by his own inability to place her. He took his seat in the centre of the platform facing the auditorium, and the South African Museum's curator rose to address the gathering.

"All the credit for the successful negotiation of the exchange between our two institutions must go to the honourable minister who today honours us with his presence." He was reading from a typed sheet, clearly anxious to have done with speaking and sit down again. "It was at Minister Tungata Zebiwe's initiative that discussions first took place, and he sustained these during the difficult period when we appeared to be making little or no progress. Our great problem was in setting a relative value on two such diverse exhibits. On one hand you had one of the world's most extensive and exhaustive collections of tropical insects, representing many decades of dedicated collecting and classification, while on the other hand we had these unique artefacts from an unknown civilization." Van der Walt seemed to be warming to his subject enough to look up from his prepared script. "However, it was the honourable minister's determination to regain for his new nation a priceless part of its heritage that at last prevailed, and it is to his credit entirely that we are gathered here today." When at last Van der Walt sat down again, there was a polite splattering of applause, and then an expectant silence as Tungata Zebiwe rose to his feet. The minister had an immense presence, and without yet uttering a word, he transfixed them with his smoky unwavering gaze.

"My people have a saying that was passed down from the wise ones of our tribe," he started in his deep rumbling voice. "It is this. The white eagle has stooped on the stone falcons and cast them to earth.

Now the eagle shall lift them up again and they will fly afar. There shall be no peace in the kingdoms of the Mambos or the Monomatopas until they return. For the white eagle will war with the black bull until the stone falcons return to roost." Tungata paused a moment, letting his words hang between them, heavy with portent. Then he went on. "I am sure all of you here know the story of how the bird statues of Zimbabwe were seized by Rhodes" plunderers, and despite the efforts of my ancestors to prevent it, how they were carried away southwards across the Limpopo river." Tungata left the podium and strode to the curtained-off section at the back of the speakers" platform. "My friends, my comrades," he turned to face them once more.

"The stone falcons have returned to roost!" he said, and drew aside the curtains.

There was a long breathless silence and the audience stared avidly at the serried rank of tall soapstone carvings that was revealed.

There were six of them, and they were those that Ralph Ballantyne had lifted from the ancient stone temple. The one that his father had taken on his first visit to Zimbabwe thirty years before had burned in the pyre of Groote Schuur. These six were all that remained.

The soapstone -from which each of the birds was carved was of a greenish satiny texture. Each bird' crouched on top of a plinth that was ornamented by a pattern of intermeshed triangles like the teeth in a shark's jaw. The statues were not identical. some of the columns supported crocodiles and lizards that crawled up towards the bird image that surmounted it.

Some of the statues had been extensively damaged, chipped and eroded, but the one in the centre of the line was "almost perfect. The bird was a stylized raptor, with its long blade like wings crossed over its back. The head was proud and erect, the cruel beak hooked and the blind eyes haughty and unforgiving. It was a magnificent and evocative work of primitive art, and the crowded auditorium rose as one person in spontaneous applause.

Tungata Zebiwe reached out and touched the head of the central bird. His back was turned to his audience so that they could not see his lips move, and the applause drowned his whisper.

"Welcome home," he whispered. "Welcome home to Zimbabwe. Bird of my destiny." you do not want to go!" Janine was shaking "Now with fury. "After all the pains I have gone to, to arrange this meeting.

Now you simply do not want to go!" "Jan, it's a waste of time." "Thank you!" She put her face closer to his. "Thank you for that. Do you realize what it would cost me to face that monster again, but I was prepared to do it for you, and now it's a waste of time." "Jan, please-" "Damn you, Craig Mellow, it's you who are a waste of time, you and your endless cowardice." He gasped and drew away from her.

"Cowardice," she repeated deliberately. "I say that, and I mean it.

You were in too much of a blue funk to send that bloody book of yours to a publisher. I had literally to tear it away from you and send it off." She broke off, panting with anger, searching for words sharp enough to express her fury.

"You are afraid to face life, afraid to leave this cave you have built for yourself, afraid to take the chance of somebody rejecting your book, afraid to make any effort to float this thing you have built." With a wide, extravagant gesture she indicated the yacht. "I see it now, you don't really want to get onto the ocean, you prefer to hide here, swilling gin and covering yourself with dreams. You don't want to walk, you prefer to drag yourself around on your backside it's your excuse, your grand cast-iron excuse to dodge life." Again she had to stop for breath, and then she went on. "That's right, put that little-boy look on your face, make those big sad eyes, it works every time, doesn't it? Well, not this time, buster, not this time. They have offered me the job of curator at the South African Museum. I'm to see the collection safely installed in its new home, and I'm going to take it. Do you hear me, Craig Mellow? I'm going to leave you to crawl around on the floor because you're too damned scared to stand up." She flung herself out of the saloon and into the forward cabin.