Текст книги "Rage"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 53 страниц)

Always Moses Gama was at the centre of the excitement. His vast brooding presence seemed to inspire and direct their energies, and Tara realized that he was making bonds, forging loyalties and friendships to carry the struggle onwards to the next plateau. She was immensely proud of him, and humbly proud of her own small part in the grand enterprise. For the very first time in her life she felt useful and important. Until the present time she had spent her life in trivial and meaningless activity. By making her a part of his work, Moses had made her a whole person at last. Impossible as it seemed, during those enchanted months her love for him was multiplied a hundredfold.

Sometimes they travelled together, when Moses was invited to speak to some important group, or to meet representatives of a foreign power.

They went to Sheffield and Oxford to address elements from opposite ends of the political spectrum, the British Communist Party and the association of Conservative students. One weekend they flew to Paris to meet with officials from the French directorate of foreign affairs and a month later they even went to Moscow together. Tara travelled on her British passport and spent the days sightseeing with her Russian Intourist guide while Moses was closeted in secret talks in the offices of the fourth directorate overlooking the Gorky Prospekt.

When they returned to London, Moses and some of his exiled fellow South Africans organized a protest rally in Trafalgar Square directly opposite the imposing edifice of South Africa House, with its frieze of animal head sculptures and colonnaded front entrance.

Tara could not join the demonstration, tFor Moses warned her that they would be photographed with telescopic lenses from the building, and forbade her to expose herself to the racist agents. She was far too valuable to the cause. Instead she struck upon a delightfully ironic twist, and telephoned the high commissioner. He invited her to lunch again. She watched from his own office, sitting in one of his easy chairs in the magnificent stinkwood-panelled room, while below her in the square Moses stood beneath a banner 'Apartheid is a crime against Humanity' and made a speech to five hundred demonstrators. Her only regret was that the wind and the traffic prevented her hearing his words. He repeated them to her that evening as they lay together on the hard mattress on the floor of their bedroom, and she thrilled to every single world.

One lovely English spring morning they walked arm in arm through Hyde Park, and Benjamin threw crumbs to the ducks in the Serpentine.

They watched the riders in Rotten Row, and admired the show of spring blooms in the gardens as they passed them on their way up to Speakers' Corner.

On the lawns the holiday crowds were taking advantage of the unseasonable sunshine, and many of the men were shirtless while the girls had pulled their skirts high on their thighs as they lolled on the grass. The lovers were entwined shamelessly, and Moses frowned.

Public displays of this kind offended his African morality.

As they arrived at Speakers' Corner, they passed the militant homosexuals and Irish Republicans on their upturned milk crates and went to join the group of black speakers. Moses was instantly recognized, he had become a well-known figure in these circles, and half a dozen men and women hurried to meet him, all of them were coloured South African expatriates, and all of them were eager to give him the news.

'They have acquitted them –' 'They have set them all free –' 'Nokwe, Makgatho, Nelson Mandela – they are all free!" 'Judge Rumpff found every one of them not guilty of treason –' Moses Gama stopped dead in his tracks and glowered at them as they surrounded him, dancing joyfully, and laughing in the pale English sunlight, these sons and daughters of Africa.

'I do not believe it,' Moses snarled angrily, and somebody shoved a crumpled copy of the Observer at him. 'Here! Read it! It's true." Moses snatched the newspaper from him. He read swiftly, scanning the front-page article. His face was set and bleak, and then abruptly he thrust the paper into his pocket and shouldered his way out of the group. He strode away down the tarmac pathway, a tall brooding figure and Tara had to run with Benjamin to catch up with him.

'Moses, wait for us." He did not even glance at her, but his fury was evident in the set of his shoulders and the fixed snarl on his lips.

'What is it, Moses, what has made you so angry? We should rejoice that our friends are free. Please speak to me, Moses." 'Don't you understand?" he demanded. 'Are you so witless that you do not see what has happened?" 'I don't – I'm sorry –' 'They have come out of this with enormous prestige, especially Mandela. I had thought that he would spend the rest of his life in prison, or better still, that they would have dropped him through the trap of the gallows." 'Moses!" Tara was shocked. 'How can you speak like that? Nelson Mandela is your comrade." 'Nelson Mandela is my rival to the death,' he told her flatly. 'There can only be one ruler in South Africa, either him or me." 'I did not understand." 'You understand very little, woman. It is not necessary that you should. All you must learn to do is obey me." She annoyed and irritated him with her perpetual moods and jealousies. He found it more difficult each day to accept her cloying adoration. Her soft pale flesh had begun to revolt him and each time it took more of an effort to feign passion. He longed for the day that he could be rid of her – but that day was not yet.

'I am sorry, Moses, if I have been stupid and made you angry." They walked on in silence, but when they came back to the Serpentine, Tara asked diffidently, 'What will you do now?" 'I have to lay claim to my rightful place as the leader of the people.

I cannot allow Mandela to have a clear field." 'What will you do?" she repeated.

'I must go back – back to South Africa." 'Oh, no!" she gasped. 'You cannot do that. It is too dangerous, Moses. They will seize you the minute you set foot on South African soil." 'No,' he shook his head. 'Not if I have your help. I will remain underground, but I will need you." 'Of course. Whatever you want – but, my darling, what will you hope to achieve by taking such a dreadful risk?" With an effort he put aside his anger, and looked down at her.

'Do you remember where we first met, the first time we spoke to each other?" 'In the corridors of the houses of parliament,' she answered promptly. 'I will never forget." He nodded. 'You asked me what I was doing there, and I replied that I would tell you one day. This is the day." He spoke for another hour, softly, persuasively, and as she listened her emotions rose and fell, alternating between a fierce joy and a pervading dread.

'Will you help me?" he asked at the end.

'Oh, I am so afraid for you." 'Will you do it?" 'There is nothing I can deny you,' she whispered. 'Nothing." A week later Tara telephoned Centaine at Rhodes Hill and was surprised by the clarity of the connection. She spoke to each of the children in turn. Sean was monosyllabic and seemed relieved to surrender the telephone to Garry, who was solemn and pedantic, in his first year at business school. It was like talking to a little old man, and Garry's single topic of original news was the fact that his father had at last allowed him to start work part-time, as an office boy at Courtney Mining and Finance. 'Pater is paying me two pounds ten shillings a day,' he announced proudly. 'And soon I an to have my own office with my name on the door." When his turn came to speak to her, Michael read her a poem o his own, about the sea and the gulls. It was really very good, so he enthusiasm was genuine. 'I love you so much,' he whispered. 'Pleas come home soon." Isabella was petulant. 'What present are you going to brin me?" she demanded. 'Daddy bought me a gold locket with a real diamond –' and Tara was guiltily relieved when her daughter passed the telephone back to Centaine.

'Don't worry about Bella,' Centaine soothed her. 'We've had a little confrontation and mademoiselle's feathers are a wee bit ruffled." 'I want to buy a coming-home present for Shasa,' Tara told her. 'I have found the most gorgeous medieval altar that has been converted into a chest. I thought it would be just perfect for his cabinet office at the House. Won't you measure the length of the wall on the right of his desk, under the Pierneef paintings – I want to be certain it will fit in there." Centaine sounded a little puzzled. It was unusual for Tara to show any interest in antique furniture. 'Of course, I will measure it for you,' she agreed dubiously. 'But remember Shasa has very conservative tastes – I wouldn't choose anything too – ah –' she hesitated delicately, not wanting to denigrate her daughter-in-law's taste, 'too obvious or flamboyant." Tll phone you tomorrow evening." Tara did not acknowledge the advice. 'You can read me the measurements then." Two days later Moses accompanied her when she returned to the antique dealer in Kensington High Street. Together they made meticulous measurements of both the exterior and interior of the altar. It was truly a splendid piece of work. The lid was inlaid with mosaic of semi-precious stones while effigies of the apostles guarded the four corners. They were carved in iyory and rare woods and decorated with gold leaf. The panels depicted scenes of Christ's agony, from the scourging to the crucifixion. Only after careful examination did Moses nod with satisfaction.

'Yes, it will do very well." Tara gave the dealer a bank draft for six thousand pounds.

'Price is Shasa's yardstick of artistic value,' she explained to Moses while they waited for his friends to come and collect the piece. 'At six thousand pounds he won't be able to refuse to have it in his office." The dealer was reluctant to hand the chest over to the three young black men who arrived in an old van in response to Moses' summons.

'It is a very agile piece of craftsmanship,' he protested. 'I would feel a lot happier if you entrusted the packing and shipping to a firm of experts. I can recommend –' 'Please don't worry,' Tara reassured him. 'I accept full responsibility from now on." 'It's such a beautiful thing,' the dealer said. 'I would simply curl up and die if it were even scratched." He wrung his hands piteously as they carried it out and loaded it into the back of the van. A week later Tara flew back to Cape Town.

The day after the crate cleared Customs in Cape Town docks, Tara held a small, but select, surprise party in Shasa's cabinet office to present him with her gift. The prime minister was unable to attend, but three cabinet ministers came and with Blaine and Centaine and a dozen others crowded into Shasa's suite to drink Bollinger champagne and admire the gift.

Tara had removed the rosewood Georgian sofa table that had previously stood against the panelled wall, and replaced it with the chest. Shasa had some idea of what was in store. Centaine had dropped a discreet hint, and of course the charge had appeared on his latest statement from Lloyds Bank.

'Six thousand pounds!" Shasa had been appalled. 'That's the price of a new Rolls." What on earth was the damned woman thinking of?

It was ridiculous buying him extravagant gifts for which he paid himself; knowing Tara's tastes, he dreaded his first view of it.

It was covered by a Venetian lace cloth when Shasa entered his office, and he eyed it apprehensively as Tara said a few pretty words about how much she owed him, what a fine and generous husband and what a good father he was to her children.

Ceremoniously Tara lifted the lace cloth off the chest and there was an involuntary gasp of admiration from everyone in the room.

The ivory figurines had mellowed to a soft buttery yellow and the gold leaf had the royal patina of age upon it. They crowded closer to examine it, and Shasa felt his unreasonable antipathy towards the gift cool swiftly. He would never have guessed that Tara could show such taste. Instead of the garish monstrosity he had expected, this was a truly great work of art, and if his instinct was correct, which it almost always was, it was also a first-class investment.

'I do hope you like it?" Tara asked him with unusual timidity.

'It's magnificent,' he told her heartily.

'You don't think it should be under the window?" 'I like it very well just where you put it,' he answered her, and then dropped his voice so nobody else could overhear. 'Sometimes you surprise me, my dear. I'm truly very touched by your thoughtfulness." 'You too were kind and thoughtful to let me go to London,' sl replied.

'I could skip the meeting this afternoon and get home early th evening,' he suggested, glancing down at her bosom.

'Oh, I wouldn't want you to do that,' she answered quickly, su prised by her own physical revulsion at the idea. 'I-am certain to t exhausted by this afternoon. It's such a strain –' 'So our bargain still stands – to the letter?" he asked.

'I think that it is wiser that way,' she told him. 'Don't you?" Moses flew from London directly to Delhi, and had a series c friendly meetings with Indira Gandhi, the president of the India Congress Party. She gave Moses the warmest encouragement an, promises of help and recognition.

At Bombay he went on board a Liberian-registered tramp steame with a Polish captain. Moses signed on as a deckhand for the voyag, to Loureno Marques in Portuguese Mozambique. The tramp caller in at Victoria in the Seychelles Islands to discharge a cargo of rict and then sailed direct for Africa.

In the harbour of Lourengo Marques Moses said goodbye to th jovial Polish skipper and slipped ashore in the company of fiv members of the crew who were bound for the notorious red-lighl area of the seaport. His contact was waiting for him in a dingy nighl club. The man was a senior member of the underground freedom organization which was just beginning its armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule.

They ate the huge juicy Mozambique prawns for which the club was famous, and drank the tart green wine of Portugal while they discussed the advancement of the struggle and promised each other the support and assistance of comrades.

When they had eaten, the agent nodded to one of the bar girls and she came to the table and after a few minutes of arch conversation took Moses' hand and led him through the rear door of the bar to her room at the end of the yard.

The agent joined them there after a few minutes and while the girl kept watch at the door, to warn them of a surprise raid by the colonial police, the man handed Moses the travel documents he had prepared for him, a small bundle of second-hand clothing, and sufficient escudos to see him across the border and as far as the Witwatersrand gold-mines.

The next afternoon Moses joined a group of a hundred or more labourers at the railway station. Mozambique was an important source of labour for the gold-mines, and the wages earned by her citizens made a large contribution to the economy. Authentically dressed and in possession of genuine papers, Moses was indistinguishable from any other in the shuffling line of workers and he went aboard the third-class railway coach without even a glance from the uninterested white Portuguese official.

They left the coast in the late afternoon, climbed out of the muggy tropical heat and entered the hilly forests of the lowveld to approach the border post of Komatipoort early the following morning. As the coach rumbled slowly over the low iron bridge, it seemed to Moses that they were crossing not a river but a great ocean. He was filled with a strange blend of dismay and joy, of dread and anticipation.

He was coming home – and yet home was a prison for him and his people.

It was strange to hear Afrikaans spoken again, guttural and harsh, but made even more ugly to Moses' ear because it was the language of oppression. The officials here were not the indolent and slovenly Portuguese. Dauntingly brisk and efficient, they examined his papers with sharp eyes, and questioned him brusquely in that hated language. However, Moses had already masked himself in the protective veneer of the African. His face was expressionless and his eyes blank, just a black face among millions of black faces, and they passed him through.

Swart Hendrick did not recognize him when he slouched into the general dealer's store in Drake's Farm township. He was dressed in ill-fitting hand-me-downs and wore an old golfing cap pulled down over his eyes. Only when he straightened up to his full height and lifted the cap did Swart Hendrick start and exclaim in amazement, then seized his arm and, casting nervous glances over his shoulder, hustled his brother through into the little cubicle at the back of the store that he used as an office.

'They are watching this place,' he whispered agitatedly 'Is your head full of fever, that you walk in here in plain daylight?" Only when they were safely in the locked office and he had recovered from the shock, did he embrace Moses. 'A part of my heart has been missing, but isnow restored." He shouted over the rhino board partition wall of his office, 'Raleigh, come here immediately, boy!" and his son came to peer in astonishment at his famous uncle and then kneel before him, lift one of Moses's feet and place it on his own head in the obeisance to a great chief. Smiling, Moses lifted him to his feet and embraced him, questioned him about his schooling and his studies and then let him respond to Swart Hendrick's order.

'Go to your mother. Tell her to prepare food. A whole chicken and plenty of maize meal porridge, and a gallon of strong tea will plenty of sugar. Your uncle is hungry." They stayed locked in Swart Hendrick's office until late that night for there was much to discuss. Swart Hendrick made a full report o all their business enterprises, the state of the secret mineworkers union, the organization of their Buffaloes, and then gave him all th news of their family and close friends.

When at last they left the office, and crossed to Swart Hendrick', house, he took Moses' arm and led him to the small bedroom whicl was always ready for his visits, and as he Opened the door, Victoria rose from the low bed on which she had been sitting patiently.

She came to him and, as the child had done, prostrated herself in fronl of him and placed his foot upon her head.

'You are my sun,' she whispered. 'Since you went away I have been in darkness." 'I sent one of the Buffaloes to fetch her from the hospital,' Swart Hendrick explained.

'You did the right thing." Moses stooped and lifted the Zulu girl to her feet, and she hung her head shyly.

"We will talk again in the morning." Swart Hendrick closed the door quietly and Moses placed his forefinger under Vicky's chin and lifted it so he could look at her face.

She was even more beautiful than he remembered, an African madonna with a face like a dark moon. For a moment he thought of the woman he had left in London, and his senses cringed as he compared her humid white flesh, soft as putty, to this girl's glossy hide, firm and cool as polished onyx. His nostrils flared to her spicy African musk, so different from the other woman's thin sour odour which she tried to disguise with flowery perfumes. When Vicky looked up at him and smiled, the whites of her eyes and her perfect 'teeth were luminous and ivory bright in her lovely dark face.

When they had purged their airst passion, they lay under the thick kaross of hyrax skins and talked the rest of the night away.

He listened to her boast of her exploits in his absence. She had marched to Pretoria with the other women to deliver a petition to the new minister of Bantu affairs, who had replaced Dr Verwoerd when he had become prime minister.

The march had never reached the Union Buildings. The police had intercepted it, and arrested the organizers. She had spent three days and nights in prison, and she related her humiliations with such humour, giggling as she repeated the Alice in Wonderland exchanges between the magistrate and herself, that Moses chuckled with her. In the end. the charges of attending an unlawful assembly and ' ' incitement to public violence had been dropped, and Vicky and the other women had been released.

'But I am a battle-trained warrior now,' she laughed. 'I have bloodied my spear, like the Zulus of old King Chaka." 'I am proud of you,' he told her. 'But the true battle is only just beginning –' and he told her a small part of what lay ahead for all of them, and in the yellow flickering light of the lantern, she watched his face avidly and her eyes shone.

Before they at last drifted off into sleep, the false dawn was framing the single small window, and Vicky murmured with her lips against his naked chest, 'How long will you stay this time, my lord?" 'Not as long as I wish I could." He stayed on three more days at Drake's Farm, and Vicky was with him every night.

Many visitors came when they heard that Moses Gama had returned and most of them were the fierce younger men of Urnkhonto we Sizwe, the Spear of the Nation, the warriors eager for action.

Some of the older men of the Congress who came to talk with Moses left disturbed by what they had heard and even Swart Hendrick was worried. His brother had changed. He could not readily tell in what way he had changed, but the difference was there. Moses was more impatient and restless. The mundane details of business, and the day-to-day running of the Buffaloes and the trade union committees no longer seemed to hold his attention.

'It is as though he has fastened his eyes upon a distant hilltop, and cannot see anything in between. He speaks only of strange men in distant lands and what do they think or say that concerns us here?" he grumbled to the twins' mother, his only real confidante. 'He is scornful of the money we have made and saved, and says that after the revolution money will have no value. That everything will belong to the people –' Swart Hendrick broke off to think for a moment of his stores and his shebeens, the bakeries and herds of cattle in the reservations which belonged to him, the money in the post office savings book and in the white man's bank, and the cash that he kept hidden in many secret places – some of it even buried under the floor upon which he now sat and drank the good beer brewed by his favourite wife. 'I am not sure that I wish all things to belong to the people,' he muttered thoughtfully.

'The people are cattle, lazy and stupid, what have they done to deserve the things for which I have worked so-long and hard?" 'Perhaps it is a fever. Perhaps your great brother has a worm in his bowel,' his favourite wife suggested. 'I will make a muti for him that will clear his guts and his skull." Swart Hendrick shook his head sadly. He was not at all certain that even one of his wife's devastating laxatives would drive the dark schemes from his brother's head.

!iiz Of course, long ago he had talked and dreamed strange and wi things with his brother. Moses had been young and that was the w of young men, but now the frosts of wisdom were upon Hendrick head, and his belly was round and full, and he had many sons or herds of cattle. He had not truly thought about it before, but he was a man contented. True he was not free – but then he was not su what free really meant. He loved and feared his brother very muc] but he was not sure that he wanted to risk all he had for a word uncertain meaning.

'We must burn down and destroy the whole monstrous system his brother said, but it occurred to Swart Hendrick that in tl: burning down might be included his stores and bakeries.

'We must goad the land, we must make it wild and ungovernabh like a great stallion, so that the oppressor is hurled to earth from il back,' his brother said, but Hendrick had an uncomfortable irnag of himself and his cosy existence taking that same painful toss.

'The rage of the people is a beautiful and sacred thing, we must le it run free,' Moses said, and Hendrick thought of the people runnin freely through his well-stocked premises. He had also witnessed th rage of the people in Durban during the Zulu rioting, and the vet first concern of every man had been to provide himself with a the suit of clothing and a radio from the looted Indian stores.

'The police are the enemies of the people, they too will perish i the flames,' Moses said, and Hendrick remembered that when the faction fighting between the Zulus and the Xhosas had swept throughout Drake's Farm the previous November, it was the police who hat separated them and prevented many more than forty dead. They hoc also saved his stores from being looted in the uproar. Now Hendrick wondered just who would prevent them killing each other after the police had been burned, and just what day-to-day existence would be like in the townships when each man made his own laws.

Iffowever, Swart Hendrick was ashamed of his treacherous reliet when three days later Moses left Drake's Farm, and moved to the house at Rivonia. Indeed it was Swart Hendrick who had gently pointed out to his brother the danger of remaining when almost everybody in the township knew he had returned, and all day long there was a crowd of idlers in the street hoping for a glimpse of Moses Gama, the beloved leader. It was only a matter of time before the police heard about it through their informers.

The young warriors of Umkhonto we Sizwe willingly acted as Moses' scouts in the weeks that followed. They arranged the meetings, the small clandestine gatherings of the most fierce and bloody-minded amongst their own ranks. After Moses had spoken to them, the smouldering resentments which they felt towards the conservative and pacific leadership of the Congress was ready to burst into open rebellion.

Moses sought out and talked with some of the older members of Congress who, despite their age, were radical and impatient. He met secretly with the cell leaders of his own Buffaloes without the knowledge of Hendrick Tabaka for he had sensed the change in his brother, the cooling of his political passions which had never boiled at the same white heat as Moses' own. For the first time in all the years he no longer trusted him entirely. Like an axe too long in use, Hendrick had lost the keen bright edge, and Moses knew that he must find another sharper weapon to replace him.

'The young ones must carry the battle forward,' he told Vicky Dinizulu. 'Raleigh, and yes, you also, Vicky. The struggle is passing into your hands." At each meeting he listened as long as he spoke, picking up the subtle shifts in the balance of power which had taken place in the years that he had been in foreign lands. It was only then that he realized how much ground he had lost, how far he had fallen behind Mandela in the councils of the African National Congress and the imagination of the people.

'It was a serious error on my part to go underground and leave the country,' he mused. 'If only I had stayed to take my place in the dock beside Mandela and the others –' 'The risk was too great,' Vicky made excuse for him. 'If there had been another judgement – if any of the Boer judges other than Rumpff had tried them, they might have gone to the gallows and if you had gone with them the cause would have died upon the rope with all' of you. You cannot die, my husband, for without you we are children without a father." Moses growled angrily. 'And yet, Mandela stood in the dock and made it a showcase for his own personality. Millions who had never heard his name before, saw his face daily in their newspapers and his words became part of the language." Moses shook his head. 'Simple words: Amandla and Ngawethu, he said, and everyone in the land listened." ' 'They know your name also, and your words, my lord." Moses glared at her. 'I do not want you to try to placate me, woman. We both know that while they were in prison during the trial – and I was in exile – they formally handed over the leadership to Mandela. Even old Luthuli gave his blessing, and since his acquittal Mandela has embarked on a new initiative. I know that he

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has been travelling around the country, in fifty different disguis consolidating that leadership. I must confront him, and wrest t leadership back from him very soon, or it will be too late and I be forgotten and left behind." 'What will you do, my lord? How will you unseat him? He riding high now – what can we do?" 'Mandela has a weakness – he is too soft, too placatory towar the Boers. I must exploit that eakness. He said it quietly, but the W was such a fierce light in his eyes that Victoria shivered involuntaril and then with an effort closed her mind against the dark images 1 words had conjured up.

'He is my husband,' she told herself, fervently. 'He is my lord, or whatever he says or does is the truth and the right." The confrontation took place in the kitchen at Puck's Hill. Outsic the sky was pregnant with leaden thunder clouds, dark as bruis that cast an unnatural gloom across the room and Marcus Arche switched on the electric lights that hung above the long table in thei pseudo-antique brass fittings.

The thunder crashed like artillery and rolled heavily back and fort] through the heavens. Outside the lightning flared in brilliant crackling white light and the rain poured from the eaves in a rippling silve curtain across the windows. They raised their voices against tumult uous nature so they were shouting at each other. They were the higt command of Umkhonto we Sizwe, twelve men in all, all of then black except Joe Cicero and Marcus Archer – but only two of theft counted, Moses Gama and Nelson Mandela. All the others wer silent, relegated to the role of observers, while these two, like dominant black-maned lions, battled for the leadership of the pride.

'If I accept what you prolose,' Nelson Mandela was standing, leaning forward with clenched fists on the table top, 'we will forfeit the sympathy of the world." 'You have already accepted the principle of armed revolt that I have urged upon you all these years." Moses leaned back in the wooden kitchen chair, balancing on its two back legs with his arms folded across his chest. 'You have resisted my call to battle, and instead you have wasted our strength in feeble demonstrations of defiance which the Boers crush down contemptuously." 'Our campaigns have united the people,' Mandela cried. He had grown a short dark beard since Moses had last seen him. It gave him the air of a true revolutionary, and Moses admitted to himself that Mandela was a fine-looking man, tall and strong and brimming with confidence, a formidable adversary.