Alternate Generals (23 page)

And FDR didn't live to see the Communists overrun Asia, even obscure places like Korea and Indochina, and the U.S. not doing a goddamn thing about it because by that time the public was so sour on the Far East that it was political suicide even to talk about getting involved in anything west of Hawaii. Thousands of American boys died relieving the Philippines, after that prancing tinhorn MacArthur managed to get himself trapped there—listen, don't get me started on MacArthur—and ten years later when the Hukbalahaps marched into Manila and proclaimed the People's Republic of the Philippines, you had senior congressmen telling the press that the U.S. had no vital interests in the region! Why, that shifty-eyed little weasel Richard Nixon stood up in the House and said there was nothing in Southeast Asia worth the loss of a single American life!

That, by God, was Mitchell's legacy. He was just a goddamn cowboy.

—Senator Harry S. Truman, interviewed by Merle Miller, 1961

They must have made a mighty noise, those twelve B-17s, as they swept northward across the island of Oahu in the darkest hours of Saturday morning. Surely some of the men at Schofield Barracks heard them—men in all-night craps games, or standing guard, or down in the latrine putting an extra shine on a pair of boots against the morning's inspection. Most of us, though, were sound asleep.

Maybe we did hear, at some level. Maybe the roar of those forty-eight Wright Cyclone engines vibrated its way down to where we lay in our bunks, into our sleeping consciousness, so that we stirred briefly before returning to the lonely dreams of soldiers.

Whether we heard or not, it is certain that none of us had any idea at all that our world was about to be altered forever, in ways we could never imagine or understand.

—James Jones, "The Day It Happened,"
Saturday Evening Post,
December 9, 1961

I was not quite eleven and living in Cape Town, South Africa, when Jan Christian Smuts, "Oom Jannie" (Uncle John) as we called him, died. As his son wrote, "The gallant mountaineer had crossed his last Great Range."

That day—September 11th, 1950—was a sad one for every liberal, every Jew, every South African concerned about the future of what was then my country. We all felt that we knew him personally. I was too young then to fully comprehend the sadness that surrounded his passing, but as I grew older, as I began to understand more and rebelled against the system, I developed a reasoned fondness for the Oubaas, the Old Master.

Fondness became respect when I found myself at school in Stellenbosch, walking the riverside paths that he and Isie—his wife-to-be—had walked in their salad days, talking of the Shelleys, Percy and Mary, and properly avoiding physical contact. Being a dreamer, I often imagined myself to be Sybella Margaretha Krige (Isie), blue eyes sparkling, curly brown hair lifting on the breeze, wandering with Jannie beneath Simon van der Stel's magnificent oaks. I imagined sharing a passion for Shelley and for Shakespeare's tragedies, and I swear I heard him say, "You are less idealistic than I, but more human," as he compared me to ". . . the spirit of poetry in Goethe." What I do know, with the wisdom born of hindsight, is that he said of me—of Isie—later, ". . . (she) recalled me from my intellectual isolation and made me return to my fellows."

General Jan Christian Smuts, founder of the League of Nations, proponent of freedom, Prime Minister of South Africa, lived a long and statesmanlike life. Though he kept journals, and wrote speeches and even books, he refused to write an autobiography. He would, he said, live life and create memories, leaving to his family and to history the task of writing about the events that shaped his life and about the events he helped to shape.

As the years passed, those books were written. The best of them, or at least the one which closest captures the spirit of the Old Master, is by his son, Jan Christian Smuts II. However, since he was not present to hear all of his father's conversations, since he could not enter his father's mind or body, the General's personal history remains incomplete and open to speculation by historians and writers of fiction alike.

The
events
as written here are historical fact. The details, the embellishments, the links between the events—the texture and the metaphysics—are, for the most part, mine. I offer them into the record as my view and mine alone of the unrecorded—the alternate—history of Jan Christian Smuts.

Cheeks glowing from a climb he, not that long ago, would have made without effort, the spare near-octogenarian stared down at Pretoria. The seat of government of the country he had served for the better part of his life was ablaze with jacaranda blossoms and he would willingly have sworn that he could smell their sweet scent even this many miles away. Gazing upward, he saw mountains he would never again climb, though once he would have considered them little more than hills.

". . . The mountain represents the ladder of life, of the soul. I see it as the source of religion, of the religion of joy, of the soul's release from all that signifies drudgery and defeat," he said, repeating with equal conviction the speech he had given at the top of Table Mountain more than a quarter of a century ago at the unveiling of the memorial to South Africa's WWI heroes.

This, he thought, is what it's really all about. The hills, the mountains, the veld, the flowers. He was at heart a farmer, a botanist and a student. Not that he didn't take pride in being Jan Christian Smuts—General, Prime Minister, Statesman—but his place in history was of less importance to him than the fact that any day—any hour—which passed without event, without the making of a memory, was a waste of God-given life. The only time he did not feel that pressure was when he communed with nature or when, in the wee small hours, too tired to rise, he fed upon those memories he had already made. During those hours, having as usual retired early, he awakened and contemplated his life, envying his friend Winston who used those hours to their fullest for writing his diaries or for dealing with leftover affairs of state.

He breathed deeply, exhaled, and swung his thin arms in windmill circles to energize himself for the rest of the walk home. Stooping every now and again to examine a plant or a bloom with his trained botanist's eye, he continued walking, downhill now toward Doornkloof and the small Irene farming community where he lived whenever he could escape from the official government residences in Pretoria and Cape Town. It was a walk he had taken so often that his feet moved through the short spring grass of their own accord, stopping only when his mind insisted upon breathing deeply of the perfumed September air.

How deeply he loved this country of his, he thought, this South Africa, with all of its diversity. And this would always be his favorite time of the year, when thoughts of enemies were occasionally diverted by the insistent growth and renewal that surrounded him.

His mind wandered to his next political battle—the clearly anti-British citizenship change that the Nationalists wanted to implement. In his opinion, anyone who came to South Africa with the intent of staying deserved full citizenship after two years. The Nats felt differently. The fact was that most of the people who would be affected by a change in the rules were British.

Anger for Malan, his chief opponent, sent adrenaline rushing through Smuts' body and he increased his pace. Failing to watch properly the rude path he was following, he did not see the thorn that the day-witch had placed among the grasses.

He held onto his foot and hopped about, resisting the urge to curse—aloud or silently. In his mind's eye, he saw the Modjadji, heard her voice and, too late, recalled the Rain-Queen's warning: "Watch the paths you walk. The day-witch will place a medicated thorn in a familiar path. At first you will feel only pain in your foot, but eventually there will be pain in the leg. As the medication passes into the rest of the body,
Hu fa
. You will die."

The throbbing in his foot interrupted the flow of Smuts' memory. Sitting down upon the ground, using great care so as to be certain that he removed all of the thorn, he rid himself of the offender. His foot continued to throb. He contemplated walking home barefooted, but deciding it would be neither sensible nor seemly, he retied the leather sandals he'd been wearing for thirty-four years, the ones Mohandas Karamchad Gandhi—Indian barrister and South Africa's nuisance number one—had made for him by hand while he was in jail before his final departure for India in 1914. A sign of respect, not love, since they had spent so many years at loggerheads. Gandhi's work on the sandals had apparently delighted his fellow prisoners, for it temporarily stopped his continual fiddling at Western music, for which he apparently had no ear at all.

The pain having reduced itself to a dull throb, Smuts searched the area for a makeshift walking stick and limped his way down and around the last hill. As a diversion, he returned to his replaying of his visit with the Rain-Queen, doing it right this time and transporting himself back into her presence in the way she had taught him—

"So you are the one they call Oubaas, the famous Old Master," Modjadji said in excellent English. "I met your daughter not so long ago. She is a charming young woman, well-mannered and well-schooled."

"I thank you, Modjadji," Smuts responded. "My wife and I are most grateful for the hospitality you showed our daughter." He handed her a large basket filled to overflowing. "We wish you to accept this as a token of our respect and gratitude."

The Queen unpacked the basket's contents, for the most part simple domestic articles sent by his wife. She appeared to be genuinely delighted by all of them. Reaching behind her, she completed the traditional exchange and handed him her gift, a small ebony carving.

"Let us talk," she said. "Later, I will write to your wife and thank her for her gifts."

When they had conversed for some hours, she said, "You speak the rapid, passionate speech of the prophet and seer."

Smuts smiled and shook his head. He wanted to visit the grove of cycads which his daughter had told him lay behind the Queen's headquarters; he wanted to speak of trees and nature. In mystics and the metaphysical he had no interest.

"Do not deny your gift, Old Master."

"My gift?"

"You have the gift, though you have not used it much. Think, for example of the general, Louis Botha. Would you argue your telepathic bond with him and tell me that the two of you share no more than coffee and
biltong
?"

"What could you know of Botha?"

It was her turn to smile. "I am the Rainmaker, Modjadji, Queen of the Lovedu," she said, as if that were explanation enough.

Standing now, towering over him in breadth and depth, she spoke again. "Watch out for the day-witch, Oubaas," she said. "She will get you in the end."

"And you, Modjadji?" he asked. "Do you fear the day-witch?"

"I fear no one."

He thought about the fact of her approaching suicide, a tradition she would not be able to avoid. "What will she do to me?" he asked.

The Modjadji thought carefully before she spoke. "
Hu lega
," she said at last. "That is her favorite method of causing illness or death. She delights in sending misfortune by means of medicine." She closed her eyes and mounted her warning, ending with the words, ". . . 
Hu fa
. You will die."

Smuts heard the pounding of his heart. "What of
Hu dabekulla
, Queen?" he asked at last. "Will I not be able to neutralize the work of the day-witch?"

She sat down heavily, opened her eyes, and leaned against the wall of the hut. "The circle will end when it must end," she said. "You will be ready for it if, when the time comes, you have properly reviewed your life. You have been brought here to learn from me, so listen well—"

"Brought here? I think not. I came because my daughter told me of your cycads," he said. "I wished the honor of meeting you and the joy of seeing them."

"How you came to be here does not matter. That you hear me and act upon what I say does, for it will guide the destiny of our country."

"I am listening," Smuts said. "Though I confess I do not comprehend."

"Comprehension will come," the Queen said. "For now, listen and learn.

"When the day-witch has done her worst and you begin to see your life in memory, you must reenter the stream of your past. There you will find one task which remains undone, for it had to wait until you could whisper in light of the wisdom you have gathered. Tomorrow I will teach you how to do this. For now, you must let me rest," she said. "I am greatly fatigued—"

"I'm getting old, Adam," Smuts said aloud, reentering the present as he crossed the boundary of Irene. Talking to Adam was a pattern developed in his early childhood as the son of a farmer, tending to his family's horses and geese, their goats and cattle. A silent, internal child by nature, he had been happy to be silent, and was mostly so except in the presence of an old farmhand, a shrunken, wrinkled Hottentot as old as forever and aptly named for the oldest man in creation.

Adam was a natural-born philosopher who guided him ever so gently into the set of beliefs which continued to govern his life. Though the Hottentot had likely been dead for sixty or seventy years, it was he to whom Jan Christian Smuts spoke now and always when he had something pressing on his mind. Communing with Adam came as easily to Smuts as communing with nature and with God. If God existed—and as far as Oubaas was concerned He certainly did—then Adam, who had been made in His image, did too.

"A new journey begins, Adam," he said, unlatching the gate that led to home. "I wish you were here to travel by my side."

His foot twisted unnaturally, as it had been since the day he had so crudely removed the day-witch's thorn, Smuts moved toward the podium. The unnatural movement set up the searing pain in his leg. He bore the pain with his usual stoicism, telling himself, as he had for over a year, that it would pass.

Over a year, and almost as long since the Nats wrested away power from the United Party, and from him.