Rage (36 page)

Read Rage Online

Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
4.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
She hung her head shyly, and the pleasure his words gave her was almost unbearable. She had not truly realized how much she loved him while they had been separated, and now the full force of it rushed back upon her.
‘And you are a chief,' she said. ‘No, more than that – you are a king.'
‘Victoria, I do not have much time,' he said. ‘I should not have come here at all—'
‘I would have shrivelled up if you had not – my soul was drought-stricken—' she burst out, but he laid his hand on her arm to still her.
‘Listen to me, Victoria. I have come to tell you that I am going away. I have come to charge you to be strong while I am away.'
‘Oh, my husband!' In her agitation she lapsed into Zulu. ‘Where are you going?'
‘I can tell you only that it is to a distant land.'
‘Can I not journey by your side?' she pleaded.
‘No.'
‘Then I will send my heart to be your travelling companion, while the husk of me remains here to await your return. When will you come back, my husband ?'
‘I do not know, but it will be a long time.'
‘For me every minute that you are gone will become a weary day,' she told him quietly, and he raised his hand and stroked her face gently.
‘If there is anything you need you must go to Hendrick Tabaka. He is my brother, and I have placed you in his care.'
She nodded, unable to speak.
‘There is only one thing I can tell you now. When I return I will take the world we know and turn it on its head. Nothing will ever be the same again.'
‘I believe you,' she said simply.
‘I must go now,' he told her. ‘Our time together has come to an end.'
‘My husband,' she murmured, casting down her eyes again. ‘Let me be a wife to you one last time, for the nights are so long and cold when you are not beside me.'
He took a roll of canvas from the back of the van and spread it on the grass beside the parked van. Her naked body was set off by the white cloth as she lay upon it like a figure cast in dark bronze thrown down upon the snow.
At the end when he had spent himself and lay weak as a child upon her, she clasped his head tenderly to the soft warm swell of her bosom and she whispered to him, ‘No matter how far and how long you travel, my love will burn away time and distance and I will be beside you, my husband.'
T
ara was waiting for him, with the lantern lit, lying awake in the cottage tent when Moses returned to the camp. She sat up as he came through the fly. The blanket fell to her waist and she was naked. Her breasts were big and white and laced with tiny bluish veins around the swollen nipples – so different from those of the woman he had just left.
‘Where have you been?' she demanded.
He ignored the question as he began to undress.
‘You have been to see her, haven't you? Joe ordered you not to.'
Now he looked at her scornfully, and then deliberately rebuttoned the front of his overalls as he moved to leave the tent again.
‘I'm sorry, Moses,' she cried, instantly terrified by the thought of his going. ‘I didn't mean it, please stay. I won't talk like that again. I swear it, my darling. Please forgive me. I was upset, I have had such a terrible dream—' She threw aside the blanket and came up on her knees, reaching out both hands towards him. ‘Please!' she entreated. ‘Please come to me.'
For long seconds he stared at her and then began once more to unbutton his overalls. She clung to him desperately as he came into the bed.
‘Oh, Moses – I had such a dream. I dreamed of Sister Nunziata again. Oh God, the look on their faces as they ate her flesh. They were like wolves, their mouths red and running with her blood. It was the most horrific thing, beyond my imagination. It made me want to despair for all the world.'
‘No,' he said. His voice was low but it reverberated through her body as though she were the sounding box of a violin trembling to the power of the strings. ‘No!' he said. ‘It was beauty – stark beauty, shorn of all but the truth. What you witnessed was the rage of the people, and it was a holy thing. Before that I merely hoped, but after witnessing that I could truly believe. It was a consecration of our victory. They ate the flesh and drank the blood as you Christians do to seal a pact with history. When you have seen that sacred rage you have to believe in our eventual triumph.'
He sighed, his great muscular chest heaved in the circle of her arms and then he went to sleep. It was something to which she could never grow accustomed, the way he could sleep as though he had closed a door in his mind. She was left bereft and afraid, for she knew what lay ahead for her.
Joe Cicero came for Moses in the night. Moses had dressed like one of a thousand other contract workers from the goldmines in an Army-surplus greatcoat and woollen balaclava helmet that covered most of his face. He had no luggage, as Joe had instructed him, and when the ramshackle Ford pick-up parked across the road from them and flashed its lights once, Moses slipped out of the Cadillac and swiftly crossed to it. He did not say goodbye to Tara, they had taken their farewells long ago, and he did not look back to where she sat forlornly behind the wheel of the Cadillac.
As soon as Moses climbed into the rear of the Ford, it pulled away. The tail lights dwindled and were lost around the first curve of the road, and Tara was smothered by such a crushing load of despair that she did not believe she could survive it.
F
rancois Afrika was the headmaster of the Mannenberg coloured school on the Cape Flats. He was a little over forty years old, a plump and serious man with a
café au lait
complexion and thick very curly hair which he parted in the middle and plastered flat with Vaseline.
His wife Miriam was plump also, but much shorter and younger than he. She had taught history and English at the Mannenberg junior school until the headmaster had married her, and she had given him four children, all daughters. Miriam was president of the local chapter of the Women's Institute which she used as a convenient cover for her political activities. She had been arrested during the defiance campaign, but when that petered out she had not been charged and had been released under a banning order. Three months later, when the furore had died away completely, her banning order had not been renewed.
Molly Broadhurst had known her since before she had married Francois, and the couple were frequent visitors at Molly's home. Behind her thick spectacles Miriam wore a perpetual chubby smile. Her home in the grounds of the junior school was as clean as an operating theatre with crocheted antimacassars on the heavy maroon easy chairs, and a mirrorlike shine on the floors. Her daughters were always beautifully dressed with coloured ribbons in their pigtails and like Miriam were chubby and contented, a consequence of Miriam's cookery rather than her genes.
Tara met Miriam for the first time at Molly's home. Tara had come down by train from the expedition base at Sundi Caves two weeks before her baby was due. She had booked a private coupé compartment and kept the door locked throughout the entire journey to avoid being recognized. Molly had met her at Paarl station, for she had not wanted to risk being seen at the main Cape Town terminus. Shasa and her family still believed that she was working with Professor Hurst.
Miriam was all that Tara had hoped for, all that Molly had promised her, although she was not prepared for the maternity dress.
‘You are pregnant also?' she demanded as they shook hands, and Miriam patted her stomach shyly.
‘It's a cushion, Miss Tara, I couldn't just pop a baby out of nowhere, could I? I started with just a small lump as soon as Molly told me, and I've built it up slowly.'
Tara realized what inconvenience she had put her to, and now she embraced her impulsively. ‘Oh, I can never tell you how grateful I am. Please don't call me Miss Tara. I'm your friend and plain Tara will do very well.'
‘I'll look after your baby like it's my own, I promise you,' Miriam told her, and then saw Tara's expression and hastily qualified her assurance. ‘But he will always be yours, Tara. You can come and see him whenever, and one day if you are able to take him – well, Francois and I won't stand in your way.'
‘You are even nicer than Molly told me!' Tara hugged her. ‘Come, I want to show you the clothes I've brought for our baby.'
‘Oh, they are all blue,' Miriam exclaimed. ‘You are so sure you are going to have a boy?'
‘No question about it – I'm sure.'
‘So was I,' Miriam chuckled. ‘And look at me now – all girls! Though it's not too bad, they are good girls and they
are all expecting this one to be a boy,' she patted her padded abdomen, ‘and I know they are going to spoil him something terrible.'
Tara's baby was born in Molly Broadhurst's guest room. Dr Chetty Abrahamji who delivered it was an old friend of Molly's and had been a secret member of the Communist Party, one of its few Hindu members.
As soon as Tara went into labour, Molly telephoned Miriam Afrika, and she arrived with bag and bulging tummy and went in directly to see Tara.
‘I'm so glad we have started at last,' she cried. ‘I must admit that although it was a difficult pregnancy, it will be my quickest and easiest delivery.' She reached up under her own skirt and with a flourish produced the cushion. Tara laughed with her and then broke off as the next contraction seized her.
‘Ouch!' she whispered. ‘I wish mine was that easy. This one feels like a giant.'
Molly and Miriam took turns, sitting beside her and holding her hand when the contractions hit her, and the doctor stood at the foot of the bed exhorting her to, ‘Push! Push!' By noon the following day Tara was exhausted, panting and racked, her hair sodden with sweat as though she had plunged into the sea.
‘It's no good,' the doctor said softly. ‘We'll have to move you into hospital and do a Caesar.'
‘No! No!' Tara struggled up on an elbow, fierce with determination. ‘Give me one more chance.'
When the next contraction came she bore down on it with such force that every muscle in her body locked and she thought the sinews in her loins must snap like rubber bands. Nothing happened, it was jammed solid, and she could feel the blockage like a great log stuck inside her.
‘More!' Molly whispered in her ear. ‘Harder – once more for the baby.' Tara bore down again with the strength of desperation and then screamed as she felt her flesh tear like
tissue paper. There was a hot slippery rush between her thighs and relief so intense that her scream changed to a long drawn-out cry of joy, that joined with her infant's birth cry.
‘Is it a boy?' she gasped, trying to sit up. ‘Tell me – tell me quickly.'
‘Yes,' Molly reassured her. ‘It's a boy – just look at his whistle. Long as my finger. There's no doubt about that – he's a boy all right,' and Tara laughed out aloud.
He weighed nine and a half pounds with a head that was covered with pitch-black hair, thick and curly as the fleece of an Astrakhan lamb. He was the colour of hot toffee, and he had Moses Gama's fine Nilotic features. Tara had never seen anything so beautiful in all her life, none of her other babies had been anything like this.
‘Let me hold him,' she croaked, hoarse with the terrible effort of his birth, and they placed the child still wet and slippery in her arms.
‘I want to feed him,' she whispered. ‘I must give him his first suck – then he will be mine for ever.' She squeezed out her nipple and pressed it between his lips and he fastened on it, snuffling and kicking spasmodically with pleasure.
‘What is his name, Tara?' Miriam Afrika asked.
‘We'll call him Benjamin,' Tara.said. ‘Benjamin Afrika. I like that – he is truly of Africa.'
Tara stayed with the infant five days. When finally she had to relinquish him, and Miriam drove away with him in her little Morris Minor, Tara felt as though part of her soul had been hacked away by the crudest surgery. If Molly had not been there to help her through, Tara knew she could not have borne it. As it was Molly had something for her.
‘I've been saving it until now,' she told Tara. ‘I knew how you would feel when you had to give up your baby. This will cheer you up a little.' She handed Tara an envelope, and Tara examined the handwritten address. ‘I don't recognize the writing.' She looked mystified.
‘I received it by a special courier – open it up. Go on!' Molly ordered impatiently, and Tara obeyed. There were four sheets of cheap writing paper. Tara turned to the last sheet and as she read the signature her expression altered.
‘Moses!' she cried. ‘Oh I can't believe it – after all these months. I had given up hope. I didn't even recognize his handwriting.' Tara clutched the letter to her breast.
‘He wasn't allowed to write, Tara dear. He has been in a very strict training camp. He disobeyed orders and took a grave risk to get this note out to you.' Molly went to the door. ‘I'll leave you in peace to read it. I know it will make up a little for your loss.'
Even after Molly had left her alone, Tara was reluctant to begin reading. She wanted to savour the pleasure of anticipation, but at last she could deny herself no longer.
Tara, my dearest,
I think of you every day in this place, where the work is very hard and demanding, and I wonder about you and our baby. Perhaps it has already been born, I do not know, and I wonder often if it is a boy or a little girl.
Although what I am doing is of the greatest importance for all of us – for the people of Africa, as well as for you and me – yet I find myself longing for you. The thought of you comes to me unexpectedly in the night and in the day and it is like a knife in my chest.
Tara could not read on, her eyes were awash with tears.
‘Oh, Moses,' she bit her lip to prevent herself blubbering, ‘I never knew you could feel like that for me.' She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
When I left you, I did not know where I was going, nor what awaited me here. Now everything is clear, and I know what the difficult tasks are that lie ahead of us. I
know also that I will need your help. You will not refuse me, my wife? I call you ‘wife' because that is how I feel towards you, now that you are carrying our child.
It was difficult for Tara to take it in. She had never expected him to give her this kind of recognition and now she felt humbled by it.
‘There is nothing that I could ever refuse you,' she whispered aloud, and her eyes raced down the sheet. She turned it over quickly and Moses had written:
Once before I told you how valuable it would be if you used your family connections to keep us informed of affairs of state. Since then this has become more imperative. Your husband, Shasa Courtney, is going over to the side of the neo-Fascist oppressors. Although this fills you with hatred and contempt for him, yet it is a boon we could not have expected or prayed for. Our information is that he has been promised a place in the cabinet of that barbarous regime. If you were in his confidence, it would afford us a direct inside view and knowledge of all their plans and intentions. This would be so valuable that it would be impossible to put a price upon it.
‘No,' she whispered, shaking her head, sensing what was coming, and it took courage for her to read on.
I ask you, for the sake of our land and our love, that when the child has been born and you are recovered from the birth, that you return to your husband's home at Weltevreden, ask his forgiveness for your absence, tell him that you cannot live without him and his children, and do all in your power to ingratiate yourself with him and to earn his confidence once more.
‘I cannot do it,' Tara whispered, and then she thought of the children, and especially of Michael, and she felt herself wavering. ‘Oh, Moses, you don't know what you are asking of me.' She covered her eyes with her hand. ‘Please don't make me do it. I have only just won my freedom – don' t force me to give it up again.' But the letter went on remorselessly:
Every one of us will be called upon to make sacrifice in the struggle that lies ahead. Some of us may be required to lay down our very lives and I could well be one of those.
‘No, not you, my darling, please not you!'
However, for the loyal and true comrades there will be rewards, immediate rewards in addition to the ultimate victory of the struggle and the final liberation. If you can bring yourself to do as I ask you, then my friends here will arrange for you and me to be together – not where we have to hide our love, but in a free and foreign land where, for a happy interlude, we can enjoy our love to the utmost. Can you imagine that, my darling? Being able to spend the days and nights together, to walk in the streets hand in hand, to dine together in public and laugh openly together, to stand up unafraid and say what we think aloud, to kiss and do all the silly adorable things that lovers do, and to hold the child of our love between us—
It was too painful, she could not go on. When Molly found her weeping bitterly, she sat on the bed beside her and took her in her arms.
‘What is it, Tara dear, tell me, tell old Molly.'
‘I have to go back to Weltevreden,' she sobbed. ‘Oh,
God, Molly, I thought I was rid of that place for ever, and now I have to go back.'

Other books

Moon's Artifice by Tom Lloyd
Highland Heat by Mary Wine
Marston Moor by Michael Arnold
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
Rebecca York by Beyond Control
The Last Heiress by Bertrice Small
A Murder of Mages by Marshall Ryan Maresca
The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee
The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally