Rage (24 page)

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Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
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M
oses Gama parked the crimson and blue butcher's van in one of the visitors' bays and switched off the engine. In front of him stretched lawns on which a single small sprinkler was trying to atone for all the frosts and drought of the highveld winter, but the Kikuyu grass was seared and lifeless. Beyond the lawn was the long double-storeyed block of the Baragwanath nurses' home.
A small group of black nurses came up the pathway from the main hospital. They were in crisp white uniform, neat and efficient-looking, but when they drew level with the van and saw Moses at the wheel they dissolved into giggles, hiding their mouths with their hands in the instinctive gesture of subservience to the male.
‘Young woman, I wish to speak to you.' Moses leaned out of the window of the van. ‘Yes, you!' The chosen nurse was almost overcome with shyness. Her friends teased her as she approached Moses and paused timidly five paces from him.
‘Do you know Sister Victoria Dinizulu?'
‘Eh he!' the nurse affirmed.
‘Where is she?'
‘She is coming now. She is on the day shift with me.' The nurse looked around for escape, and instead picked out Victoria in the middle of the second group of white-clad figures coming up the path. ‘There she is. Victoria! Come quickly!' the girl cried, and then fled, taking the steps up into the nurses' home two at a time. Victoria recognized
him, and with a word to her friends, left them and cut across the dry brown lawns, coming directly to him. Moses climbed out of the van, and she looked up at him.
‘I'm sorry. There was a terrible bus accident, we were working in theatre until the last case was attended to. I have kept you waiting.'
Moses nodded. ‘It's not important. We have plenty of time still.'
‘It will take me only a few minutes to change into street clothes,' she smiled up at him. Her teeth were perfect, so white that they seemed almost translucent, and her skin had the lustre of health and youth. ‘I am so pleased to see you again – but I do have a very big bone to pick with you.' They were speaking English, and although hers was accented, she seemed confident in the language with a choice of words which matched his own fluency.
‘Good,' he smiled gravely. ‘We will have your bone for dinner – which will save me money.'
She laughed, a fine throaty chuckle. ‘Don't go away, I will be back.' She turned and went into the nurses' home, and he watched her with pleasure as she climbed the steps. Her waist was so narrow that it accentuated the swell of her buttocks under the white uniform. Although her bosom was small, she was full-bottomed and broad-hipped; she would carry a child with ease. That kind of body was the model of Nguni beauty, and Moses was strongly reminded of the photographs he had seen of the Venus de Milo. Her carriage was erect, her neck long and straight, and although her hips swayed as though she danced to a distant music, her head and shoulders never moved. It was obvious that as a child she had taken her turn with the other young girls at carrying the brimming clay pots up from the water-hole, balancing the pot on her head without spilling a drop. That was how the Zulu girls acquired that marvellously regal posture.
With her round madonna face and huge dark eyes she
was one of the handsomest women he had ever seen, and while he waited, leaning against the bonnet of the van, he pondered how each race had its ideal of feminine beauty, and how widely they differed. That led him on to think of Tara Courtney, with her huge round breasts and narrow boyish hips, her long chestnut hair and soft insipid white skin. Moses grimaced, faintly repelled by the image, and yet both women were crucial to his ambitions, and his sensual response to them – attraction or revulsion – was completely irrelevant. All that mattered was their utility.
Victoria came back down the steps ten minutes later. She was wearing a vivid crimson dress. Bright colours suited her, they set off that glossy dark skin. She slid into the passenger's seat of the van beside him, and glanced at the cheap gold-plated watch on her wrist. ‘Eleven minutes sixteen seconds. You cannot really complain,' she announced, and he smiled and started the engine.
‘Now let us pick your thighbone of a dinosaur,' he suggested.
‘Tyrannosaurus rex,' she corrected him. ‘The most ferocious of the dinosaurs. But, no, we'll keep that for dinner as you suggested.'
Her banter amused him. It was unusual for an unmarried black girl to be so forthcoming and self-assured. Then he remembered her training and her life here at one of the world's largest and busiest hospitals. This wasn't a little country girl, empty-headed and giggling, and as if to make the point, Victoria fell into an easy discussion of General Dwight Eisenhower's prospects for election to the White House, and how that would affect the American civil rights struggle – and ultimately their own struggle here in Africa.
While they talked, the sun began to set and the city, with all its fine buildings and parks, fell behind them, until abruptly they entered the half world of Soweto township where half a million black people lived. The dusk was thick with the smell of wood-smoke from the cooking fires, and
it turned the sunset a diabolical red, the colour of blood and oranges. The narrow unmade sidewalks were crowded with black commuters, each of them carrying a parcel or a shopping bag, all hurrying in the same direction, back to their homes after a long day that had begun before the sun with a tortuous journey by bus or train to their places of work in the outer world, and that now ended in darkness with the reverse journey which fatigue made even longer and more tedious.
The van slowed as the streets became more crowded, and then some of them recognized Moses and ran ahead of them, clearing the way.
‘Moses Gama! It's Moses Gama, let him pass!' And as they went by, some of them shouted greetings.
‘I see you, Nkosi.'
‘I see you, Baba!' They called him father and lord.
When they reached the community centre which abutted the administration buildings the huge hall was overflowing, and they were forced to leave the van and go on foot for the last hundred yards.
However, the Buffaloes were there to escort them. Hendrick Tabaka's enforcers pushed a way through the solid pack of humanity, tempering this show of force with smiles and jokes so the crowd made way for them without resentment.
‘It is Moses Gama, let him pass,' and Victoria hung on to his arm and laughed with the excitement of it.
As they went in through the main doors of the hall, she glanced up and saw the name above the door: H. F. VERWOERD COMMUNITY HALL.
It was fast becoming a custom for the Nationalist government to name all state buildings, airports, dams and other public works after political luminaries and mediocrities, but there was an unusual irony in naming the community hall of the largest black township after the white architect of the laws which they had gathered here to
protest. Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was the Minister of Bantu Affairs, and the principal architect of apartheid.
Inside the hall the noise was thunderous. A permit to use the hall for a political rally would have been denied by the township administration, so officially this had been billed and advertised as a rock ‘n' roll concert by a band that gloried in the name of ‘The Marmalade Mambas'.
They were on the stage now, four of them dressed in tight-fitting sequined suits that glittered in the flashing coloured lights. A bank of amplifiers sent the music crashing over the packed audience, like an aerial bombardment, and the dancers screamed back at them, swaying and writing to the rhythm like a single monstrous organism.
The Buffaloes opened a path for them across the dance floor and the dancers recognized Moses and shouted greetings, trying to touch him as he passed. Then the band became aware of his presence and broke off in the middle of the wild driving beat to give him a trumpet fanfare and a roll of drums.
Dozens of willing hands helped Moses up on to the stage, while Victoria remained below with her head at the level of his knees, trapped in the press of bodies that pressed forward to see and to hear Moses Gama. The band leader attempted to introduce him but even the power of the electronic amplifiers could not lift his voice above the tumultuous welcome that they gave Moses. From four thousand throats a savage sustained roar rose and went on and on without diminution. It broke over Moses Gama like a wild sea driven by a winter gale, and like rock he stood unmoved by it.
Then he lifted his arms, and the sound died away swiftly until a suppressed and aching silence hung over that great press of humanity and into that silence Moses Gama roared.
‘Amandla
! Power!'
As a single voice they roared back at him, ‘
Amandla!'
He shouted again, in that deep thrilling voice that rang
against the rafters and reached into the depths of their hearts.
‘Mayibuye!'
They bellowed the reply back at him
‘Afrika! Let Africa persist.'
And then they were silent again, expectant and wound up with excitement and tension, as Moses Gama began to speak.
‘Let us talk of Africa,' he said.
‘Let us talk of a rich and fruitful land with tiny barren pockets on which our people are forced to live.
‘Let us speak of the children without schools and the mothers without hope.
‘Let us speak of taxes and passes.
‘Let us speak of famine and sickness.
‘Let us speak of those who labour in the harsh sunlight, and in the depths of the dark earth.
‘Let us speak of those who live in the compounds far from their families.
‘Let us speak of hunger and tears and the hard laws of the Boers.'
For an hour he held them in his hands, and they listened in silence except for the groans and involuntary gasps of anguish, and the occasional growl of anger, and at the end Victoria found she was weeping. The tears flowed freely and unashamedly down her beautiful upturned moon face.
When Moses finished, he dropped his arms and lowered his chin upon his chest, exhausted and shaken by his own passion and a vast silence fell upon them. They were too moved to shout or to applaud.
In the silence Victoria suddenly flung herself on to the stage and faced them.
‘Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika,'
she sang.
‘God save Africa,' and immediately the band picked up the refrain, while from the body of the hall their magnificent
African voices soared in haunting chorus. Moses Gama stepped up beside her and took her hand in his, and their voices blended.
At the end it took them almost twenty minutes to escape from the hall, their way was blocked by the thousands who wanted the experience to last, to touch them and to hear their voices and to be a part of the struggle.
In the course of one short evening the beautiful Zulu girl in the flaming crimson dress had become part of the almost mystic legend that surrounded Moses Gama. Those who were fortunate enough to be there that evening would tell those who had not, how she had looked like a queen as she stood and sang before them, a queen that befitted the tall black emperor at her side.
‘I have never experienced anything like that,' Vicky told him, when at last they were alone again, and the little blue and crimson van was humming back along the main highway towards Johannesburg. ‘The love they bear you is so powerful—' She broke off. ‘I just can't describe it.'
‘Sometimes it frightens me,' he agreed. ‘They place such a heavy responsibility upon me.'
‘I don't believe you know what fear is,' she said.
‘I do.' He shook his head. ‘I know it better than most.' And then he changed the subject. ‘What time is it? We must find something to eat before curfew.'
‘It's only nine o'clock.' Victoria looked surprised as she turned the dial of her wristwatch to catch the light of a street lamp. ‘I thought it would be much later. I seem to have lived a lifetime in one short evening.'
Ahead of them a neon sign flickered: ‘DOLLS' HOUSE DRIVE-IN. TASTY EATS.' Moses slowed and turned the van into the parking lot. He left Vicky for a few minutes to go to the counter of the replica dolls' house, then he returned with hamburgers and coffee in two paper mugs.
‘Ah, that's good!' she mumbled through a mouthful of hamburger. ‘I didn't realize I was so hungry.'
‘Now what about this bone you threaten me with?' Moses asked, and he spoke in fluent Zulu.
‘You speak Zulu!' She was amazed. ‘I didn't know. When did you learn?' she demanded in the same language.
‘I speak many languages,' he told her. ‘If I want to reach all the people, there is no other way.' And he smiled. ‘However, young woman, you don't change the subject so easily. Tell me about this bone.'
‘Oh, I feel so stupid talking about it now, after all we have shared this evening …' She hesitated. ‘I was going to ask you why you sent your brother to speak to my father before you had said anything to me. I'm not a country girl of the kraals, you know. I am a modern woman with a mind of my own.'

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