by Wilbur Smith
The matron moved her out of the room that she shared with two other nursing sisters and she was given a small single room on the unpopular southern side of the hostel which never received the sun in winter. In this room her meals were served to her on a tray as she was prohibited from using the dining-hall when more than two other persons were present. Each evening after coming off shift she made the two-mile walk down to the police station to sign the register, but this soon became a pleasant outing rather than a penance. She was able to smile and greet the people she passed on the street for they did not know she was a non-person and she enjoyed even that fleeting human contact.
Alone in her room she listened to her portable radio and read the books that Moses had given her, and thought about him. More than once she heard his name on the radio. Apparently a controversial film had been shown on the NABS television channel in the United States which had created a furore across the continent. It seemed that South Africa, which for most Americans was a territory remote as the moon and a thousand times less important, was suddenly a political topic. In the film Moses Gama had figured largely, and such was his presence and stature that he had been accepted abroad as the central figure in the African struggle. In the United Nations debate which had followed the television film, nearly every one of the speakers had referred to Moses Gama. Although the motion in the General Assembly calling for the condemnation of South Africa's racial discrimination had beerr vetoed in the Security Council by Great Britain, the debate had sent a ripple across the world and a cold shiver down the spine of the white government in the country.
South Africa had no television network, but on her portable radio Victoria listened to a pungent edition of 'Current Affairs' on the state-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation in which the campaign of defiance was described as the action of a radical minority, and Moses Gama was viiifled as a communist-inspired revolutionary criminal who was still at large, although a warrant had been issued for his arrest on a charge of high treason.
Cut off from all other sympathetic human contact, Victoria found herself pining for him with such desperate longing that she cried herself to sleep in her lonely room each night.
On the tenth day of her banning she was returning from her daily report to the police station, keeping to the edge of the pavement in that sensual gliding walk that the Nguni woman practises from childhood when she carries every load, from faggots of firewood to five-gallon clay pots of water, balanced upon her head. A light delivery van slowed down as it approached her from behind, and began to keep pace with her.
Victoria was accustomed to extravagant male attention, for she was the very essence of Nguni female beauty, and when the driver of the vehicle whistled softly, she did not glance in his direction but lifted her chin an inch and assumed a haughty expression.
The driver whistled again, more demandingly, and from the corner of her eye she saw the van was blue with the sign EXPRESS DRY CLEANERS -- SIX HOUR SERVICE painted on the side. The driver was a big man, and although his cap was pulled low over his eyes, she sensed he was attractive and masterful. Despite herself her hips began to swing as she strode on, and her large perfectly round buttocks oscillated like the cheeks of a chipmunk chewing a nut.
'Victoria!" Her name was hissed, and the voice was unmistakable.
She stopped dead and swung round to face him.
'You!" she whispered, and then glanced around her frantically.
For the moment the sidewalk was clear and only light traffic moved down the highway between rows of tall bluegum trees. Her eyes flashed back to his face, almost hungrily, and she whispered, 'Oh Moses, I didn't think you'd come." He leaned across the front seat of the van and opened the door nearest her, and she rushed across and threw herself into the moving van.
'Get down,' he ordered, and she crouched below the dashboard while he slammed the door closed and accelerated away.
'I couldn't believe it was you. I still don't - this van, where did you get it? Oh Moses, you'll never know how much - I heard your name on the radio, many times - so much has happened --' She found that she was gabbling almost hysterically. It had been so long since she had been able to talk freely, and it was as though the painful abscess of loneliness and longing had burst and all the poison was draining in the rush of words.
She began to tell him about the nurses; strike and the banning, and hid of J hei no. ks ulu. had. can.*zted, her- or, qcthe e was- going-rffbe a march by a hundred thousand women, to the government buildings at Pretoria, and she was going to defy her banning order to join the march.
'I want you to be proud of me. I want to be part of the struggle, for that is the only way I can truly be a part of you." Moses Gama drove in silence, smiling a little as he listened to her chatter. He wore blue overalls with the legend 'Express Dry Cleaners' embroidered across his back and the rear of the van was filled with racks of clothing that smelled strongly of cleaning solvent. She knew he had borrowed the van from Hendrick Iabaka.
After a few minutes Moses slowed the van and then turned off sharply on to a spur road which swiftly deteriorated into a rutted track, and then petered out entirely. He bumped the last few yards over tussocks of grass and then parked behind a ruined and roofless building, the windows from whmh the frames had been ripped out were like the eyes of a skull. Victoria straightened up from under the dashboard.
'I have heard about the nurses' strike-and your banning,' he said softly as he switched off the engine. 'And yes, I am proud of you.
Very proud. You are a wife fit for a chief." 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 droughtstricken --' 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 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." Tara 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.
&
nbsp; '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 re-buttoned 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 gold-mines in a surplus army 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.
Franois 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 carb all 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 Franqois, 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 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 coup compartment and kept the door locked 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 hah ' 'Oh, they areall blue." Miriam ,v.in: ..... Y' are going to have a boy.9' -- ......... ,,mcu. you are so sure you '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. Doctor 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, non
e 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!" Mo ordered impatiently, and Tara obeyed. There were four sheets cheap writing paper. Tara turned to the last sheet and as she re the signature her expression altered.
'Moses!" she cried. 'Oh I can't believe it - after all these months.
had given up hope. I didn't even recognize his handwriting." TaJ clutched the letter to her breast.
'He wasn't allowed to write, Tara dear. He has been in a vel strict training camp. He disobeyed orders and took a grave risk t get this note out to you." Molly went to the door. Tll leave you i 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 begi reading. She wanted to savour the pleasure of anticipation, but a last she could deny herself no longer.