Текст книги "Rage"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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He straightened up as Moses came towards him.

'Can you give me a lift in to Braamfontein, comrade?" he asked, and Moses opened the door of the Buick for him, and they drove in silence for ten minutes before Joe said quietly, 'It is strange that you and I have never spoken privately." His accent was elusive, but The planes of his pale face above the short dark fringe of beard were flat and Slavic and his eyes were dark as tar pools. 'Why is it so strange?" Moses asked.

'We share common views,' Joe replied. 'We are both true sons of the revolution." 'Are you certain of that?" 'I am certain,' Joe nodded.

'I have studied you and listened to you with approval and admiration. I believe that you are one of the steely men that the revolution needs, comrade." Moses did not reply. He kept his eyes on the road, and his expression impassive, letting the silence draw out, forcing the other man to break it.

'What are your feelings towards mother Russia?" Joe asked softly at last, and Moses considered the question.

'Russia has never had colonies in Africa,' Moses answered carefully. 'I know that she gives support to the struggle in Malaya and Algeria and Kenya. I believe she is a true ally of the oppressed peoples of this world." Joe smiled and lit another Springbok cigarette from the flat maroon and white pack. He was a chain-smoker and his stubby fingers were stained dark brown.

'The road to freedom is steep and rocky,' he murmured. 'And the revolution is never secure. The proletariat must be protected from itself by the revolutionary guards." 'Yes,' Moses agreed. 'I have read the works of both Marx and Lenin." 'Then I was correct,' Joe Cicero murmured. 'You are a believer.

We should be friends – good friends. There are difficult days ahead and there will be a need for steely men." He reached over the back seat and picked up his attach case. 'You can let me out at th, central railway station, comrade,' he said.

It had been fully dark for two hours by the time Moses reached th camp in the gorge below the Sundi Caves and parked the Buick behind the Nissen hut that was the expedition's office and laboratory, and he went up the path to Tara Courtney's tent, stepping softly sc as not alarm her. He saw her silhouette against the canvas side. She was lying on her stretcher bed reading by the light of the petromax lantern, and he saw her start as he scratched on the canvas.

'Don't be afraid,' he called softly. 'It's me." And her reply was low but quivering with joy. 'Oh God, I thought you'd never come." She was in a frenzy for him. Her other pregnancies had always left her feeling nauseous and bloated, and the thought of sexual contact during that time had been repugnant. But now, even though she was over three months pregnant, her wanting was a kind of madness.

Moses seemed to sense her need, but did not try to match it. He lay naked upon his back on the stretcher, and he was like a pinnacle of black granite. Tara hurled herself upon him to impale herselfi She was sobbing and uttering little cries and yelps. At once both clumsy and adroit, her body, not yet swollen by the child within her, thrashed and churned above him as he lay quiescent and unmoving, and she went off beyond physical endurance, beyond the limits of flesh, insatiable and desperate for him, until exhaustion at last overcame her and she rolled off him and lay panting weakly, her chestnut hair darkened by her own sweat and plastered to her forehead and neck, and there was a thin pink co19uring of blood on the front of her thighs, so wild had been her passion.

Moses drew the sheet over her and held her until she had stopped shaking and her breathing had quietened, and then he said, 'It will begin soon – the date has been agreed." Tara was so transported that for a while she did not understand, and she shook her head stupidly.

'June the twenty-sixth,' Moses said. 'Across the land, in every city, all at the same time. Tomorrow I will be going to Port Elizabeth in the eastern Cape to command the campaign there." That was hundreds of miles from Johannesburg, and she had come to be near him. With the melancholy of after-love upon her, Tara felt cheated and abused. She wanted to protest but with an effort checked herself.

'How long will you be away?" 'Weeks." 'Oh Moses!" she began, and then warned by his quick frown, she relapsed into silence.

'The American woman – the Godolphin woman. Have you contacted her? Without publicity the value of our efforts will be halved." 'Yes." Tara paused. She had been on the point of telling him that it was all arranged, that Kitty Godolphin would meet him any time he wanted, but she stopped herself. Instead of handing her over to Moses and standing aside, here was her chance to stay close to him.

'Yes, I have spoken to her. We met at her hotel, she is eager to meet you but she is out of town at the moment, in Swaziland." 'That is no good,' Moses muttered. 'I had hoped to see her before I left." 'I could bring her down to Port Elizabeth,' Tara cut in eagerly.

'She will be back in a day or two and I will bring her to you." 'Can you get away from here?" he asked dubiously.

'Yes, of course. I will bring the television people down to you in my own car." Moses grunted uncertainly, and was silent while he thought about it, and then he nodded.

'Very well. I will explain how you will be able to contact me when you get there. I will be in the township of New Brighton, just outside the city." 'Can I be with you, Moses? Can I stay with you?" 'You know that is impossible." He was irritated by her persistence.

'No whites are allowed in the township without a pass." 'The television team will not be able to help you much if we are kept out of the township,' Tara said quickly. 'We should be close to you to be of any use to the struggle." Cunningly she had linked herself to Kitty Godolphin, and she held her breath as he thought about it.

'Perhaps,' he nodded, and she exhaled softly. He had accepted it.

'Yes. There might be a way. There is a mission hospital run by German nuns in the township. They are friends. You could stay there. I will arrange it." She tried not to let him see her triumph. She would be with him, that was all that was important. It was madness, but though her body was bruised and sore, already she wanted him again.

It was not physical lust, it was more than that. It was the only way she could possess him, even for a few fleeting minutes. When she had him locked in her body, he belonged to her alone.

Tara was puzzled by Kitty Godolphin's attitude towards her. She was accustomed to people, both men and women, responding immediately to her own warm personality and good looks. Kitty was different, from the very beginning there had been a cold-eyed reserve and an innate hostility in her. Very swiftly Tara had seen beyond the angelic, little-girl image that Kitty so carefully projected, but even after she had recognized the tough and ruthless person beneath, she could find no logical reason for the woman's attitude. After all Tara was offering her an important assignment, and Kitty was examining the gift as though it were a live scorpion.

'I don't understand,' she protested, her voice and eyes snapping.

'You told me we could do the interview here in Johannesburg. Now you want me to traipse off into the deep sticks somewhere." 'Moses Gama has to be there. Something important is about to take place–' 'What is so important.9' Kitty demanded, fists on her lean denimclad hips. 'What we agreed was important also." Most people, from leading politicians and international stars of sport and entertainment down to the lowest nonentity, were ready to risk slipping a spinal disc in their eagerness to appear for even the briefest moment on the little square screen. It was Kitty Godolphin's right, a semi-divine right, to decide who would be accorded that opportunity and who would be denied it. Moses Gama's cavalier behaviour was insulting. He had been chosen, and instead of displaying the gratitude which was Kitty Godolphin's due, he was setting conditions.

'Just what is so important that he cannot make the effort of common courtesy.9' she repeated.

'I'm sorry, Miss Godolphin, I can't tell you that." 'Well then, I'm sorry also, Mrs'Courtney, but you tell Moses Gama from me that he can go straight to hell without passing GO and without collecting his two hundred dollars." 'You aren't serious!" Tara hadn't expected that.

'I have never been more serious in my life." Kitty rolled her wrist to look at her Rolex. 'Now, if you will excuse me, I have more important matters to attend to." 'All right,' Tara gave in at once. 'I will risk it. I'll tell you what is going to happen–' Tara paused while she considered the consequences, and then asked, 'You will keep it to yourselL what I am about to tell you.9' 'Darling, if there is a good story in it, they wouldn't get it out of me with thumbscrew and hot irons – that is, not until I splash it across the screen myself." Tara told her in a rush of words, getting it out quickly before she could change her mind. 'It will be a chance to film him at work, to see him with his people, to watch him defying the forces of oppression and bigotry." She saw Kitty hesitating and knew that she had to think quickly.

'However, I should warn you, there may be danger. The confrontation could turn to violence and even bloodshed,' she said, and she had got it exactly right.

'Hank!" Kitty Godolphin shouted through to the lounge of her suite where the camera crew were strewn over the furniture like the survivors of a bomb blast, listening at full volume of the radio to the new rock 'n' roll sensation warning them to keep off his blue suede shoes.

'Hank!" Kitty raised her voice above Presley's. 'Get the cameras packed. We are going to a place called Port Elizabeth. If we can find where the hell it is." They drove through the night in Tara's Packard, and the suspension sagged under the weight of bodies and camera equipment.

In his travels around the country Hank had discovered that cannabis grew as a weed around most of the villages in the reserves of Zululand and the Transkei. In an environment that the plant found agreeable, it reached the size of a small tree. Only a few of the older generation of black tribesmen smoked the dried leaves, and although it was proscribed as a noxious plant and listed as a dangerous drug, its use was so localized and restricted to the more primitive blacks in the remote areas – for no white person or educated African would lower himself to smoke it – that the authorities made little effort to prevent its cultivation and sale. Hank had found an endless supply of what he declared to be 'pure gold' for the payment of pennies.

'Man, a sack of this stuff on the streets of Los Angeles would fetch a hundred thousand dollars,' he murmured contentedly as he lit a hand-rolled cigarette and settled down on the back seat of the Packard.

The heavy incense of the leaves filled the interior, and after a few draws Hank passed the cigarette to Kitty in the front seat. Kitty drew on the butt deeply and held the smoke in her lungs, as long as she was able, before blowing it out in a pale streamer against the windscreen. Then she offered the butt to Tara.

'I don't smoke tobacco,' Tara told her politely, and they all laughed.

'That ain't baccy, sweetheart,' Hank told her.

'What is it?" 'You call it dagga here." 'Dagga." Tara was shocked.

She remembered that Centaine had fired one of her houseboys who smoked it.

'He dropped my Rosenthal tureen, the one that belonged to Czar Nicholas,' Centaine had complained. 'Once they start on that stuff they become totally useless." 'No thanks,' Tara said quickly, and thought how angry Shasa would be if he knew that she had been offered it. That thought gave her pause and she changed her mind. 'Oh, all right." She took the butt, steering the Packard with one hand. 'What do I do?" 'Just suck it in and hold it down,' Kitty advised, 'and ride the glow." The smoke scratched her throat and burned her lungs, but the thought of Shasa's outrage gave her determination. She fought the urge to cough and held it down.

Slowly she felt herself relaxing, and a mild glow of euphoria made her body seem air-light and cleansed her mind. All the agonies of her soul became trivial and fell behind her.

'I feel good,' she murmured, and when they laughed, she laughed with them and drove on into the night.

In the early morning before it was fully light, they reached the coast, skirting the bay of Algoa where the Indian Ocean took a deep bite out of the continent, and the green waters were chopped to a white froth by the wind.

'Where do we go from here?" Kitty asked.

'The black township of New Brighton,' Tara told her. 'There is a mission run by German nuns, a teaching and nursing order, the Sisters of St Magdalene. They are expecting us. We aren't really allowed to stay in the township, but they have arranged it." Sister Nunziata was a handsome blond woman, not much older than forty years. She had a clear scrubbed-looking skin and her manner was brisk and efficient. She wore the light grey cotton habit of the order, and a white shoulder-length veil.

'Mrs Courtney, I have been expecting you. Our mutual friend will be here later this morning. You will want to bathe and rest." She led them to the cells that had been set aside for them and apologized for the simple comforts they contained. Kitty and Tara shared a cell.

The floor was bare cement, the only decoration was a crucifix on the whitewashed wall, and the springs of the iron bedsteads were covered with thin hard coir mattresses.

'She's just great,' Kitty enthused. 'I must get her on film. Nuns always make good footage." As soon as they had bathed and unpacked their equipment, Kitty had her crew out filming. She recorded a good interview with Sister Nunziata, her German accent lent interest to her statements, and then they filmed the black children in the schoolyard and the out patients waiting outside the clinic.

Tara was awed by the girl's energy, her quick mind and glib tongue, and her eye for angle and subject as she directed the shooting.

It made Tara feel superfluous, and her own lack of talent and creative skill irked her. She found herself resenting the other girl for having pointed up her inadequacies so graphically.

Then everything else was irrelevant. A nondescript old Buick sedan pulled into the mission yard and a tall figure climbed out and came towards them. Moses Gama wore a light blue open-neck shirt, the short sleeves exposed the sleek muscle in his upper arms and neck, and his tailored blue slacks were belted around his narrow waist.

Tara didn't have to say anything, they all knew immediately who he was as Kitty Godolphin breathed softly beside her, 'My God, he is beautiful as a black panther." Tara's resentment of her flared into seething hatred. She wanted to rush to Moses and embrace him so that Kitty might know he was hers, but instead she stood dumbly while he stopped in front of Kitty and held out his right hand.

'Miss Godolphin? At last,' he said, and his voice brought out a rush of goose-bumps down Tara's arms.

The rest of the day was spent in reconnaisance and the filming of more background material, this time with Moses as the central figure in each shot. The New Brighton township was typical of the South African urban locations, rows of identical low-cost housing laid out in geometric squares of narrow roads, some of them paved and others rutted and filled with muddy puddles in which the pre-school children and toddlers, many of them naked or dressed only in ragged shorts, played raucously.

Kitty filmed Moses picking his way around the puddles, squatting to talk to the children, lifting a marvellously photogenic little black cherub in his arms and wiping his snotty nose.

'That's great stuff,' Kitty enthused. 'He's going to look magnificent on film." The children followed Moses, laughing and skipping behind him as though he were the Pied Piper, and the women attracted by the commotion came out of the squalid little cottages. When they recognized Moses and saw the cameras, they began to ululate and dance.

They were natural actresses and completely without inhibition, and Kitty was everywhere, calling for shots and unusual camera angles, clearly delighted by the footage she was getting.

In the late afternoon the working men began to arrive back in the township by bus and train. Most of them were production-line workers in the vehicle assembly plants of Ford and General Motors, or factory-workers in the tyre companies of Goodyear and Firestone, for Port Elizabeth and its satellite town of Uitenhage formed the centre of the country's motor vehicle industry.

Moses walked the narrow streets with the camera following him, and he stopped to talk to the returning workers, while the camera recorded their complaints and problems, most of which were the practical everyday worries of making ends meet while remaining within the narrow lines demarcated by the forest of racial laws. Kitty could edit most of that out, but every one of them mentioned the 'show on demand' clause of the pass laws as the thing they hated and feared most. In every little vignette they filmed Moses Gama was the central heroic figure.

'By the time I've finished with him, he will be as famous as Martin Luther King,' Kitty enthused.

They joined the nuns for their frugal evening meal, and afterwards Kitty Godolphin was still not satisfied. Outside one of the cottages near the mission a family was cooking on an open fire, and Kitty had Moses join them, hunched over the fire in the night with the flames lighting his face, adding drama to his already massive presence as she filmed him while he spoke. In the background one of the women was singing a lullaby to the infant at her breast, and there were the murmurous sounds of the location, the soft cries of the children and the distant yapping of pariah dogs.

Moses Gama's words were poignant and moving, spoken in that deep thrilling voice, as he described the agony of his land and his people, so that Tara, listening to him in the darkness, found tears running down her face.

In the morning Kitty left her team at the mission, and without the camera the three of them, Kitty and Tara and Moses, drove in the Buick to the railway station that served the township and watched the black commuters swarm like hiving bees through the station entrance marked NON WHITES –, NIE BLANKES, crowding on to the platform reserved for blacks, and as soon as the train pulled in, flooding into the coaches set aside for them.

Through the other entrance, marked WHITES ONLY – BLANKES ALLEENLIK, a few white officials and others who had business in the township sauntered and unhurriedly entered the first-class coaches at the rear of the train where they sat on green leathercovered seats and gazed out through glass at the black swarm on the opposite platform with detached expressions as though they were viewing creatures of another species.

'I've got to try and get that,' Kitty muttered. 'I've got to get that reaction on film." She was busily scribbling notes in her pad, sketching rough maps of the station layout and marking in camera sites and angles.

Before noon Moses excused himself. 'I have to meet the local organizers and make the final plans for tomorrow,' and he drove away in the Buick.

Tara took Kitty and the team down to the seaside at St George's Strand, and they filmed the bathers on the beaches lying under the signboards BLANKES ALLEENLIK – WHITES ONLY. School was out and tanned young people, the girls in bikinis and the boys with short haircuts and frank open faces lolled on the white sand, or played beach games and surfed the rolling green waves.

When Kitty asked them, 'How would you feel if black pea151e came to swim here?" some of them giggled nervously at a question they had never considered before: 'They aren't allowed to come here – they've got their own beaches." And at least one was indignant. 'They can't come here and look at our girls in bathing-costumes." He was a beefy young man with seasalt caked in his sun-streaked hair and skin peeling from his sunburned nose.

'But wouldn't you look at the black girls in their bathing costumes?" Kitty asked innocently.

'Sis, man!" said the surfer, his handsome tanned features contorted with utter disgust at the suggestion.

'It's just too good to be true!" Kitty marvelled at her own fortune.

'I'll cut that in with some footage I've got of a beautiful black dancer in a Soweto night club." On the way back to the mission Kitty asked Tara to stop at the New Brighton railway station once again, for a final reconnaisanc› They left the cameras in the Packard and two white-uniformed railway constables watched them with idle disinterest as they wandered around the almost deserted platforms that during the rush hours swarmed with thousands of black commuters. Quietly Kitty pointed out to her team the locations she had chosen earlier, and explained to them what shots she would be striving for.

That night Moses joined them for the evening meal in the mission refectory, and though the conversation was light and cheerful, there was a hint of tension in their laughter. When Moses left, Tara went out with him to where the Buick was parked in the darkness behind the mission clinic.

'I want to be with you tonight,' she told him pathetically. 'I feel so alone without you." 'That is not possible." 'It's dark – we could go for a drive to the beach,' she pleaded.

'The police patrols are looking for just that sort of thing,' Moses told her. 'You would see yourself in the Sunday Times next week end." 'Make love to me here, please Moses,' and he was angry.

'Your selfishness is that of a spoilt child – you think only of your.

self and your own desires, even now when we are on the threshold all great events, you would take risks that could bring us down." Tara lay awake most of the night and listened to Kitty's peaceful breathing in the iron bed across the cell.

She fell asleep just before dawn, and awoke feeling nauseous and heavy, when Kitty leapt gaily out of bed in her pink striped pyjamas, eager for the day.

'June twenty-sixth,' she cried. 'The big day at last!" None of them took more than a cup of coffee for an early breakfast. Tara felt too sick and the others were too keyed up. Hank had checked his equipment the previous night, but now he went over it again before he loaded it into the Packard and they drove down to the railway station.

It was gloomy and the few street lights were still burning while under them the hordes of black commuters hurried. However, by the time they reached the station the first rays of the sun struck the entrance and the light was perfect for filming. Tara noticed that a pair of police Black Maria vans were parked outside the main entrance and instead of the two young constables who had been on duty the previous day, there were eight railway policemen in a group under the station clock. They were in blue uniform with black peaked caps and holstered sidearms on their polished leather Sam Browne belts. They all carried riot batons.

'They have been warned,' Tara exclaimed, as she parked across the street from the two vans. 'They are expecting trouble -just look at them." Kitty had twisted around and was giving last-minute instructions to Hank in the back seat, but when Tara glanced at her to assess her reaction to the waiting police, Romething about Kitty's expression and her inability to meet Tara's eyes made her pause.

'Kitty?" she insisted. 'These policemen. You don't seem –' she broke off as she remembered something. The previous afternoon on the way to the beach, Kitty had asked her to stop outside the Humewood post office because she wanted to send a telegram. However, from across the road looking through the post office window, Tara had seen her slip into one of the glass telephone booths. It had puzzled her at the time.

'You!" she gasped. 'It was you who warned the police!" 'Listen, darling,' Kitty snapped at her. 'These people want to get themselves arrested. That's the whole point. And I want film of them getting arrested. I did it for all our sakes –' she broke off and cocked her head. 'Listen!" she cried. 'Here they come!" Faintly on the dawn there was the sound of singing, hundreds of voices together, and the group of policemen in the station entrance stirred and looked around apprehensively.

'Okay, Hank,' Kitty snapped. 'Let's go!" They jumped out of the Packard, and hurried to the positions they had chosen, lugging their equipment.

The senior police officer with gold braid on his cap was a captain.

Tara knew enough of police rank insignia from first-hand experience.

He gave an order to his constables. Two of them began to cross the road towards the camera team.

'Shoot, Hank. Keep shooting!" Tara heard Kitty's voice, and the singing was louder now. The beautifully haunting refrain of Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika carried by a thousand African voices made Tara shiver.

The two constables were halfway across the road when the first rank of protesters marched around the nearest row of shops and cottages and hurriedly the police captain called his constables back to his side.

They were twenty abreast, arms linked, filling the road from pavement to pavement, singing as they came on, and behind them followed a solid column of black humanity. Some of them were dressed in business suits, others in tattered cast-off clothing, some were silver-haired and others were in their teens. In the centre of the front rank, taller than the men around him, bare-headed and straightbacked as a soldier, marched Moses Gama.

Hank ran into the street with his sound technician following him.

With the camera on his shoulder, he retreated in front of Moses, capturing him on film, the sound man recording his voice as it soared in the anthem, full and magnificent, the very voice of Africa and his features were lit with an almost religious fervour.

Hurriedly the police captain was drawing his men up across the whites-only entrance, and they were hefting their batons nervously, pale-faced in the early sunlight. The head of the column wheeled across the road and began to climb the steps, and the police captain stepped forward and spread his arms to halt them. Moses Gama held up one hand. The column came to a jerking shuffling halt, and the singing died away.

The police captain was a tall man with a pleasantly lined face.

Tara could see him over their heads, and he was smiling. That was the thing that struck Tara. Faced with a thousand black protesters, he was still smiling.

'Come on now,' he raised his voice, like a schoolmaster addressing an unruly class. 'You know you can't do this, it's just nonsense, man. You are acting like a bunch of skollies, and I know you are good people." He was still smiling as he picked a few of the leaders out of the front ranks. 'Mr Dhlovu and Mr Khandela – you are on the management committee, shame on you!" He waggled his finger, and the men he had spoken to hung their heads and grinned shamefacedly. The whole atmosphere of the march had begun to change. Here was the father figure, stern but benevolent, and they were the children, mischievous but at the bottom good-hearted and dutiful.

'Off you go, all of you. Go home and don't be silly now,' the captain called, and the column wavered. From the back ranks there was laughter, and a few of those who had been reluctant to join the march began to slip away. Behind the captain his constables were grinning with relief, and the crowd began to jostle as it broke up.

'Good Christ!" Kitty swore bitterly. 'It's all a goddamned anticlimax. I have wasted my time–' Then on to the top steps of the railway station a tall figure stepped out of the ranks and his voice rang out over them, silencing them and freezing them where they stood. The laughter and the smiles died away.

'My people,' Moses Gama cried, 'this is your land. In it you have God's right to live in peace and dignity. This building belongs to all who live here – it is your right to enter, as much as any other person's that lives here. I am going in – who will follow me?" A ragged, uncertain chorus of support came from the front ranks and Moses turned to face the police captain.

'We are going in, Captain. Arrest us or stand aside." At that moment a train, filled with black commuters, pulled into the platform and they hung out of the windows of the coaches and cheered and stamped.

'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika!" sang Moses Gama, and with his head held high he marched under the warning sign WHITES ONLY. 'You are breaking the law,' the captain raised his voice. 'Arrest that man." And the thin rank of constables moved forward to obey.

Instantly a roar went up from the crowd behind him. 'Arrest me!

Arrest me too!" And they surged forward, picking Moses up with them as though he were a surfer on a wave.

'Arrest me!" they chanted. 'Malan! Malan! Come and arrest us!" The crowd burst through the entrance, and the white police constables were carried with them, struggling ineffectually in the press of bodies.

'Arrest me!" It had become a roar. 'Amandla! Amandla!" The captain was fighting to keep his feet, shouting to rally his men, but his voice was drowned out in the chant of, 'Power! Power!" The captain's cap was knocked over his eyes and he was shoved backwards on to the platform. Hank, the cameraman, was in the midst of it, holding his A rriflex high and shooting out of hand.

Around him the white faces of the constables bobbed like flotsam in a wild torrent of humanity. From the coaches the black passengers swarmed out to meet and mingle with the mob, and a single voice called out.

'Jee!" the battle cry that can drive an Nguni warrior into the berserker's passion, and 'Jee!" a hundred voices answered him and 'Jee!" again. There was the crash of breaking glass, one of the coach windows exploded as a shoulder thrust into it and 'Jee!" they sang.