The Angels Weep (66 page)

‘We will stop here one hour,’ the uniformed driver
told the others. ‘You can make a fire and cook your
meal.’

Tebe caught Samson’s eye and sauntered away towards the
little general dealer’s store at the crossroads. When
Samson followed him into the building, he did not at first find
Tebe. Then he saw the door behind the counter was ajar, and the
proprietor made a small gesture of invitation towards it. Tebe
was waiting for him in the back room amongst the piles of maize
sacks and dried skins, the cartons of carbolic soap and the
crates of cold drinks.

He had shed the ragged overalls, and with them the character
of the indolent labourer.

‘I see you, Comrade Samson,’ he said quietly.

‘That is my name no longer,’ Samson answered.

‘What is your name?’

‘Tungata Zebiwe.’

‘I see you, Comrade Tungata,’ Tebe nodded with
satisfaction. ‘You worked in the Game Department. You
understand guns, do you not?’

Tebe did not wait for an answer. He opened one of the metal
bins of ground meal that stood against the rear wall. He brought
out a long bundle wrapped in a green plastic agricultural
fertilizer bag and dusted off the powdery white meal. He undid
the twine that secured it and handed the weapon that it contained
to Tungata Zebiwe, who recognized it instantly. In the early days
of the bush war, the security forces had mounted a publicity
campaign to tempt informers to report the presence of guerrilla
weapons in their villages. They had used television spots and
newspaper advertisements. In the remote tribal trust areas they
had made massive aerial drops of illustrated pamphlets, all
offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the recovery
of a single one of these.

It was a 7.62mm automatic Kalashnikov (AK) assault rifle.
Tungata took it in his hands and found it surprisingly heavy for
its size. Unlike most NATO weapons, it was made not of
metal-stamped components, but of milled steel. The butt and stock
were of laminated wood.

‘These are the magazines.’ The Rhodesians called
it the
Banana gun
because of these characteristic curved
magazines. ‘Loading the mags,’ Tebe demonstrated,
pushing the short light brass cartridges down into the mouth with
his thumb. ‘Try it.’ Tungata was immediately
competent, he had the second magazine loaded with its full thirty
rounds in as many seconds.

‘Good,’ Tebe nodded again, the wisdom of his
choice confirmed. ‘Now to load the rifle. Like this.’
He pressed the forward end of the magazine into the receiver slot
and then tilted the rear end upwards. There was a click as the
catch engaged.

In less than three minutes Tebe had demonstrated why the AK
was the preferred weapon of guerrilla troops the world around.
Its ease of operation and its robust construction made it ideal
for the task. With a racial sneer, the Rhodesians called it the
only ‘kaffir-proof’ weapon in the shop.

‘Selector up as far as it will go and it’s
safe,’ Tebe finished the demonstration. ‘Fully down
is semi-automatic. In between is fully automatic.’ He
showed Tungata the two Cyrillic letters stamped in the block.
‘AB,’ he said. ‘Russian for
“Automatic”. Take it.’ He handed it to Tungata,
and he watched while he loaded and cocked and unloaded swiftly
and neatly. ‘Yes, good. Remember the gun is heavy but it
climbs quickly in automatic. Take a firm grip.’

Tebe rolled the weapon into a cheap grey blanket from which it
could be freed instantly.

‘The owner of this store is one of us,’ Tebe said.
‘He is even now loading supplies for us onto the bus. It is
time for me to tell you why we are here, and where we are
going.’

When Tungata and Tebe left the general dealer’s store
and sauntered towards the parked bus, the children had already
arrived. There were almost sixty of them, the boys in khaki
shirts and short pants, and the girls in blue gymslips with the
green sash of St Matthew’s Mission School around their
waists. All of them were bare-footed. They were chattering and
giggling with excitement at this unexpected outing, this
delightful release from the tedium of the schoolroom. Tebe had
said they were the Standard VIII pupils, which meant their
average age would be fifteen years. All the girls appeared to be
pubescent, full-breasted under the coarse cloth of their school
uniforms. Under the direction of their class teacher, a young
bespectacled Matabele, they were lining up beside the dusty red
bus in an obedient and orderly manner. As soon as he saw Tebe,
the teacher hurried to meet him.

‘It is as you ordered, Comrade.’

‘What did you tell the fathers at the
Mission?’

‘That it was a field exercise. That we would not return
until after dark, Comrade.’

‘Get the children into the bus.’

‘Immediately, Comrade.’

The bus-driver, with his peaked cap perched authoritatively on
his head, began to protest the influx of young passengers, none
of them with a ticket, until Tebe stepped up behind him and
pressed the Tokarev pistol into his ribs. Then he turned the pale
grey of last night’s camp-fire ashes and subsided into his
seat. The children scrambled for seats beside the windows, and
then looked up with expectant shining faces.

‘We are going on an exciting journey,’ the
bespectacled teacher told them. ‘You must do exactly as you
are told. Do you understand?’

‘We understand,’ they replied in dutiful
chorus.

Tebe touched the bus-driver on the shoulder with the barrel of
the pistol.

‘Drive northwards towards the Zambezi river and the
Victoria Falls,’ he ordered softly. ‘If we should
meet a security road-block, stop immediately and behave as you
always do. Do you hear?’

‘Yes,’ mumbled the driver.

‘I hear you, Comrade, and I will obey,’ Tebe
prompted him.

‘I hear you, Comrade, and I will obey.’

‘If you do not, then you will be the very first to die.
I give you my word on it.’

Tungata sat on the bench seat at the very rear of the bus,
with the blanket-wrapped AK on the floorboards at his feet. He
had counted the children and made a list. There were fifty-seven
of them, of which twenty-seven were girls. As he asked their
names, he made his estimate of each one’s brightness and
leadership potential and marked the best on the list with a star.
He was pleased that the bespectacled teacher confirmed his
choice. He had selected four of the boys and a girl. She was
fifteen years old, her name was Miriam and she was a slim pretty
child with a quick smile and bright intelligent gaze. There was
something in her that reminded him of Constance, and she sat
beside him on the bench seat so that he could watch her respond
to the first session of indoctrination.

While the bus roared on northwards beneath the marvellous
vaulted roof of the forest, along the straight smooth macadamized
highway, Comrade Tebe stood beside the driver’s seat facing
the upturned fresh young faces.

‘What is my name?’ he asked, and then he told
them, ‘I am Comrade Tebe. What is my name?’

‘Comrade Tebe,’ they cried.

‘Who is Comrade Tebe? Comrade Tebe is your friend and
your leader.’

‘Comrade Tebe is our friend and our leader.’

Question and answer repeated again and again.

‘Who is Comrade Tungata?’

‘Comrade Tungata is our friend and our
leader.’

The children’s voices took on a strident fervour, and
there was a mesmeric glitter in their eyes.

‘What is the revolution?’

‘The revolution is power to the people,’ they
shrieked, like Western children of the same age at a pop
concert.

‘Who are the people?’

‘We are the people.’

‘Who is the power?’

‘We are the power.’

They swayed in their seats, transported into a state of
ecstasy. By this time most of the girls were crying with wild
joy.

‘Who is Comrade Inkunzi?’

‘Comrade Inkunzi is father of the revolution.’

‘What is the revolution?’

‘The revolution is power to the people.’

The catechism began again, and impossibly they were carried
even higher on the wings of political fanaticism.

Tungata, himself strangely roused, wondered at the skill and
ease with which it was orchestrated. Higher still and higher Tebe
carried them, until Tungata found himself shrieking with them in
a wonderful catharsis of the hatred and grief which had festered
within him since Constance’s murder. He was shaking like a
man in fever, and when the bus lurched and threw Miriam’s
slim barely matured body against him, he found himself instantly
and painfully sexually aroused. It was strange, almost religious,
madness that overwhelmed them all, and at the end Comrade Tebe
gave them the song.

‘This is the song which you will sing as you go into
battle, it is the song of your glory, it is the song of the
revolution.’

They sang it in their sweet true children’s voices, the
girls harmonizing and clapping in spontaneous rhythm:

Now at last Tungata felt the tears break from his own eyes and
pour in scalding streams down his face.

It left them stunned and exhausted, like the survivors of some
terrible ordeal. Comrade Tebe spoke quietly to the bus-driver,
and they turned off the main road onto a barely noticeable track
into the forest. The bus was forced to slow down to a crawl, as
it followed the serpentine track that jinked around the bigger
trees and dipped through dry riverbeds. It was dark by the time
they stopped. The track had petered out and most of the children
were asleep. Tungata went down the bus waking them and moving
them out.

The boys were sent to find firewood and the girls set to
preparing a simple meal of maize meal and sweet tea. Tebe led
Tungata aside and explained to him.

‘We have entered the liberated area, the Rhodesians no
longer patrol this strip of territory. From here we go on foot.
It will be two days to the drifts. You will march in the rear of
the column, be alert for deserters. Until we reach the river,
there is always the danger from the faint-hearted. Now I will
deal with the driver.’

Tebe led the subdued and terrified man away from the camp,
with an arm around his shoulders. He returned alone twenty
minutes later, by which time most of the children had eaten and
had curled up like puppies on the bare earth beside the
fires.

The girl Miriam came to them shyly with a bowl of maize cake
and the two men sat close together while they ate. Tebe spoke
with his mouth full. ‘You think them babes.’ He
indicated the sleeping schoolchildren. ‘Yet they learn
swiftly and believe what they are taught without question. They
have no concept of death, therefore they know no fear. They obey,
and when they die there is no loss of trained men who cannot be
replaced. The Simbas used them in the Congo, the Viet Cong used
them against the Americans, they are the perfect fodder on which
the revolution is nurtured.’ He scraped out the bowl.
‘If any of the girls is to your liking, you may use her.
That is one of their duties.’

Tebe stood up. ‘You will take the first watch. I will
relieve you at midnight.’ Still chewing, he walked away. At
the nearest fire he squatted down beside where Miriam lay and
whispered something to her. She stood up immediately, and
followed him trustingly out of the firelight.

Later, when Tungata patrolled the perimeter of the sleeping
camp, he heard a strangled little wail of pain from the darkness
where Tebe and the girl lay. Then there was a sound of a blow,
and the cry choked off into gentle sobbing. Tungata moved around
to the opposite side of the camp, where he did not have to
listen.

Before dawn Tungata drove the bus to the brink of the steep
watercourse, and then, yelling with delight, the boys pushed it
over the edge. The girls helped them gather branches and heap
them over the vehicle until it was hidden from even a low-flying
helicopter.

They moved out northwards at first light. Tebe took the point,
keeping half a kilometre ahead of the column. The schoolmaster
stayed with the children, enforcing the complete silence Tebe had
ordered. Before they had covered a mile, he was sweating through
the back of his shirt and his spectacles were misted over.
Tungata came up behind them, carrying the AK at the trail,
avoiding the footpath, staying in the dappled forest shade,
stopping every few minutes to listen, and once every hour
doubling back to lie beside the path and make certain they were
not followed.

None of the skills of the game-ranger had deserted him. He
found himself completely at ease, and in a strange sort of way he
was happy. The future had taken care of itself. He was committed
at last. There were no longer any doubts, no guilty sense of duty
neglected, and the warrior blood of Gandang and Bazo flowed
strongly in his veins.

At noon they rested for an hour. There were no fires and they
ate cold maize cake and washed it down with muddy water from a
water-hole in the mopani. The water tasted of the urine of the
elephants who had bathed in it during the night. When Miriam
brought his ration to Tungata, she could not look into his face,
and when she walked away she moved carefully, as though favouring
an injury.

In the afternoon they began to descend towards the Zambezi
river, and the character of the bush altered. The grand forests
gave way to more open savannah, and there was profuse sign of
wild game. Circling out behind the column, Tungata surprised a
solitary old sable antelope bull, with ebony and salt-white body
and elegant back-swept horns. He stood noble and proud. Tungata
felt a strange affinity with him, and when he took the wind and
went away at a gallop, he left Tungata feeling enriched and
strengthened.