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Authors: Wilbur Smith

BOOK: Rage
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E
very pew of the church was filled. The women's bonnets were colourful as a field of wild Namaqua daisies in the springtime, while the men's suits were sombre and severe. All their faces were upturned towards the magnificent carved pulpit of polished black stinkwood in which stood the Most Reverend Tromp Bierman, Moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa.
Manfred De La Rey considered once again how much Uncle Tromp had aged in the years since the war. He had never fully recovered from the pneumonia he had contracted in the concentration camp at Koffiefontein, where that English-lover Jannie Smuts had incarcerated him with hundreds of other patriotic Afrikaners for the duration of the English war with Germany.
Uncle Tromp's beard was snow-white now, even more spectacular than the curly black bush it once had been. The hair on his head, also white, had been close-cropped to conceal its sparsity and it glittered like powdered glass on the high-domed pate, but his eyes were full of fire as he
glowered at his congregation, and his voice that had earned him the sobriquet ‘The Trumpet of God' had lost none of its power and rolled like a cannonade against the high-arched ceiling of the nave.
Uncle Tromp could still pack the pews, and Manfred nodded soberly but proudly as the thunderous outpouring burst over his head. He was not really listening to the words, merely enjoying the sense of continuity that filled him; the world was a safe good place when Uncle Tromp was in his pulpit. Then a man could trust in the God of the
Volk
which he evoked with so much certainty, and believe in the divine intervention which directed his life.
Manfred De La Rey sat in the front pew at the right side of the nave nearest the aisle. It was the most prestigious position in the congregation, and rightly so for Manfred was the most powerful and important man in the church. The pew was reserved for him and his family, and their names were gold-leafed on the hymn books that lay beside each seat.
Heidi, his wife, was a magnificent woman, tall and strong; her bare forearms below the puff sleeves were smooth and firm, her bosom large and shapely, her neck long and her thick golden hair plaited into ropes that were twisted up under the wide-brimmed black hat. Manfred had met her in Berlin when he had been the gold medallist light heavyweight boxer at the Olympic Games in 1936, and Adolf Hitler himself had attended their wedding. They had been separated during the war years, but afterwards Manfred had brought her out to Africa with their son, little Lothar.
Lothar was almost twelve years old now, a fine strong boy, blond as his mother, and upright as his father. He sat very straight in the family pew, his hair neatly slicked down with Brylcreem and the stiff white collar biting into his neck. Like his father, he would be an athlete, but he had chosen the game of rugby at which to excel. His three
younger sisters, blonde and pretty in a fresh-faced healthy way, sat beyond him, their faces framed by the hoods of their traditional
voortrekker
bonnets and full-length skirts reaching to their ankles. Manfred liked them to wear national dress on Sundays.
Uncle Tromp ended with a salvo that thrilled his flock with the threat of hell-fire, and they rose to sing the final hymn. Sharing the hymn book with Heidi, Manfred examined her handsome Germanic features. She was a wife to be proud of, a good housekeeper and mother, a fine companion whom he could trust and confide in, and a glittering ornament to his political career. A woman like this could stand beside any man, even the Prime Minister of a powerful and prosperous nation. He let himself dwell on that secret thought. Yet everything was possible, he was a young man, the youngest by far in the cabinet, and he had never made a political mistake. Even his wartime activities gave him credit and prestige with his peers, although few people outside the inner circle knew of the full role he had played in the militant anti-British pro-Nazi secret army of the
Ossewa Brandwag
.
Already they were whispering that he was the coming man, and it was evident in the huge respect that was shown him as the service ended and the congregation left the church. Manfred stood, with Heidi beside him, on the lawns outside the church while one after another important and influential men came up to deliver social invitations, to ask a favour, to congratulate him on his speech introducing the new Criminal Law Amendment Bill in the House, or simply to pay their respects. It was almost twenty minutes before he was able to leave the church grounds.
The family walked home. It was only two blocks under the green oaks that lined the streets of Stellenbosch, the small university town which was the citadel of Afrikaner intellectualism and culture. The three girls walked ahead, Lothar followed them and Manfred with Heidi on his arm
brought up the rear, stopping every few paces to acknowledge a greeting or exchange a few words with a neighbour or a friend or one of Manfred's constituents.
Manfred had purchased the house when they had arrived back from Germany after the war. Although it stood in a small garden, almost facing on to the street, it was a large house with spacious high-ceilinged rooms that suited the family well. Manfred had never seen any reason to change it, and he felt comfortable with Heidi's formal Teutonic furnishings. Now Heidi and the girls rushed through to help the servants in the kitchen, and Manfred went around the side of the house to the garage. He never used his official chauffeur-driven limousine at weekends, and he brought out his personal Chevrolet sedan and drove to fetch his father for the family Sunday luncheon.
The old man seldom attended church, especially when the Reverend Tromp Bierman was preaching. Lothar De La Rey lived alone on the small-holding that Manfred had bought for him on the outskirts of the town at the foot of the Helshoogte Pass. He was out in the peach orchard pottering with his beehives and Manfred paused by the gate to watch him with a mixture of pity and deep affection.
Lothar De La Rey had once been tall and straight as the grandson who now bore his name, but the arthritis he had contracted during the years in Pretoria Central Prison had bowed and twisted his body and turned his single remaining hand to a grotesque claw. His left arm was amputated above the elbow, too high to fit an artificial limb. He had lost it during the robbery that led to his imprisonment. He was dressed in dirty blue dungarees, with a stained brown hat on his head, the brim drooped over his eyes. One sleeve of the dungaree was pinned back.
Manfred opened the gate and went down into the peach orchard where the old man was stooping over one of the wooden hives.
‘Good morning, Pa,' Manfred said softly. ‘You aren't ready yet.'
His father straightened up and stared at him vaguely, and then started with surprise.
‘Manie! Is it Sunday again already?'
‘Come along, Pa. Let's get you tidied up. Heidi is cooking a roast of pork – you know how you love pork.'
He took the old man's hand, and led him unprotestingly up to the cottage.
‘It's a mess, Pa.' Manfred looked around the tiny bedroom with distaste. The bed had obviously been slept in repeatedly without being remade, soiled clothing was strewn on the floor and used plates and mugs stood on the bedside table. ‘What happened to the new maid Heidi found for you?'
‘I didn't like her, cheeky brown devil,' Lothar muttered.
‘Stealing the sugar, drinking my brandy. I fired her.'
Manfred went to the cupboard and found a clean white shirt. He helped the old man undress.
‘When did you last bath, Pa?' he asked gently.
‘Hey?' Lothar peered at him.
‘It doesn't matter.' Manfred buttoned his father's shirt. ‘Heidi will find another maid for you. You must try and keep her longer than a week this time.'
It wasn't the old man's fault, Manfred reminded himself. It was the prison that had affected his mind. He had been a proud free man, a soldier and a huntsman, a creature of the wild Kalahari Desert. You cannot cage a wild animal. Heidi had wanted to have the old man to live with them, and Manfred felt guilty that he had refused. It would have meant buying a larger home, but that was the least of it. Manfred could not afford to have Lothar dressed like a coloured labourer wandering vaguely around the house, coming into his study uninvited when he had important visitors with him, slobbering his food and making inane
statements at the dinner table when he was entertaining. No, it was better for all of them, the old man especially, that he lived apart. Heidi would find another maid to take care of him, but he felt corrosive guilt as he took Lothar's arm and led him out to the Chevrolet.
He drove slowly, almost at a walking pace, steeling himself to do what he had been unable to do during the years since Lothar had been pardoned and freed from prison at Manfred's instigation.
‘Do you remember how it was in the old days, Pa? When we fished together at Walvis Bay?' he asked, and the old man's eyes shone. The distant past was more real to him than the present, and he reminisced happily, without hesitation recalling incidents and the names of people and places from long ago.
‘Tell me about my mother, Pa,' Manfred invited at last, and he hated himself for leading the old man into such a carefully prepared trap.
‘Your mother was a beautiful woman,' Lothar nodded happily, repeating what he had told Manfred so many times since childhood. ‘She had hair the colour of the desert dunes, with the early sun shining on them. A fine woman of noble German birth.'
‘Pa,' Manfred said softly. ‘You aren't telling me the truth, are you?' He spoke as though to a naughty child. ‘The woman you call my mother, the woman who was your wife, died years before I was born. I have a copy of the death certificate signed by the English doctor in the concentration camp. She died of diphtheria, the white sore throat.'
He could not look at his father as he said it, but stared ahead through the windscreen, until he heard a soft choking sound beside him and with alarm turned quickly. Lothar was weeping, tears slid down his withered old cheeks.
‘I'm sorry, Pa.' Manfred pulled the Chevrolet off the road and switched off the engine. ‘I shouldn't have said
that.' He pulled the white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to his father.
Lothar wiped his face slowly, but his hand was steady, and his wandering mind seemed to have been concentrated by the shock.
‘How long have you known that she was your real mother?' he asked, and his voice was firm and sure. Manfred's soul quailed, he had hoped to hear his father deny it.
‘She came to see me when first I stood for parliament. She blackmailed me, for her other son's sake. I had him in my power. She threatened to expose the fact that I was her bastard son and destroy my candidacy if I acted against her other son. She dared me to ask you if it was not true, but I could not bring myself to do it.'
‘It's true,' Lothar nodded. ‘I'm sorry, my son. I lied to you only to protect you.'
‘I know.' Manfred reached across and took the bony hand as the old man went on.
‘When I found her in the desert, she was so young and helpless – and beautiful. I was young and lonely – it was just the two of us, and her infant, alone together in the desert. We fell in love.'
‘You don't have to explain,' Manfred told him, but Lothar seemed not to hear him.
‘One night two wild Bushmen came into our camp. I thought they were marauders, come to steal our horses and oxen. I followed them, and caught up with them at dawn. I shot them down before I was within range of their poison arrows. It was the way we dealt with those dangerous little yellow animals in those days.'
‘Yes, Pa, I know.' Manfred had read the history of his people's conflict with and extermination of the Bushmen tribes.
‘I did not know it then, but she had lived with these same two little Bushmen before I found her. They had
helped her survive the desert and tended her when she gave birth to her first child. She had come to love them, she even called them “old grandfather” and “old grandmother”.' He shook his head wonderingly, still unable to comprehend this relationship of a white woman with savages. ‘I did not know it, and I shot them without realizing what they meant to her. Her love for me changed to bitter hatred. I know now that her love could not have been very deep, perhaps it was only loneliness and gratitude and not love at all. After that she hated me, and the hatred extended to my child that she was carrying in her womb. To you, Manie. She made me take you away the moment you were born. She hated us both so deeply that she wanted never to set eyes on you. I cared for you after that.'
‘You were my father and my mother.' Manfred bowed his head, ashamed and angry that he had forced the old man to relive those tragically cruel events. ‘What you have told me explains so much that I could never understand.'
‘Ja.'
Lothar wiped fresh tears away with the white handkerchief. ‘She hated me, but you see I still loved her. No matter how cruelly she treated me, I was obsessed with her. That was the reason why I committed the folly of the robbery. It was a madness and it cost me this arm.' He held up the empty sleeve. ‘And my freedom. She is a hard woman. A woman without mercy. She will not hesitate to destroy anything or anybody who stands in her way. She is your mother, but be careful of her, Manie. Her hatred is a terrible thing.' The old man reached across and seized his son's arm, shaking it in his agitation. ‘You must have nothing to do with her, Manie. She will destroy you as she has destroyed me. Promise me you will never have anything to do with her or her family.'

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