Rage

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Promise me you will work hard, Joseph,’ Vicky said. ‘Learning makes a man strong.’

  ‘I will be strong,’ Joseph assured her. The elation that Moses Gama’s speech had aroused in him still persisted. ‘Can I come and visit you and your husband, Vicky? He is a man, the kind of man I will want to be one day.’

  Vicky told Moses what the child had said. They were alone in the old Buick, all the wedding gifts and Vicky’s possessions filling the boot and piled in the back seat, and they were leaving that great littoral amphitheatre of Natal, going up over the tail of the Drakensberg range onto the high veld of the Transvaal.

  ‘The children are the future,’ Moses nodded, staring ahead at the steep blue serpent of road that climbed the escarpment, past the green hill of Majuba where the Boers had thrashed the British in the first of many battles with them. ‘The old men are beyond hope. You saw them at the wedding, how they kicked and baulked like unbroken oxen when I tried to show them the way – but the children, ah the children!’ He smiled. ‘They are like fresh clean sheets of paper. You can write on them what you will. The old men are stone-hard and impermeable, but the children are clay, eager clay waiting for the shaping hands of the potter.’ He held up one of his hands. It was long and shapely, the hand of a surgeon or an artist, and the palm was a delicate shade of pink, smooth and not calloused by labour. ‘Children lack any sense of morality, they are without fear, and death is beyond their conception. These are all things they acquire later, by the teaching of their elders. They make perfect soldiers for they question nothing and it takes no great physical strength to pull a trigger. If an enemy strikes them down they become the perfect martyrs. The bleeding corpse of a child strikes horror and remorse into even the hardest heart. Yes, the children are our key to the future. Your Christ knew it when he said “Suffer the little children to come unto me”.’

  Victoria twisted on the leather bench seat of the Buick and stared at him.

  ‘Your words are cruel and blasphemous,’ she whispered, torn by her love for him and her instinctive rejection of what he had just said.

  ‘And yet your reaction proves their truth,’ he said.

  ‘But …’ she paused, reluctant to ask, and fearful to hear his reply. ‘But are you saying that we should use our children—’ She broke off, and an image of the paediatric section of the hospital came into her mind. She had spent the happiest months of all her training amongst the little ones. ‘Are you suggesting that you would use the children in the front line of the struggle – as soldiers?’

  ‘If a child cannot grow up a free man, then he might as well die as a child,’ Moses Gama said. ‘Victoria, you have heard me say this before. It is time now that you learn to believe it. There is nothing I would not do, no price I would not pay, for our victory. If I have to see a thousand little children dead so that a hundred thousand more may live to grow up free men, then for me the bargain is a fair one.’

  Then, for the very first time in her life, Victoria Dinizulu was truly afraid.

  That night they stayed at Hendrick Tabaka’s house in Drake’s Farm Township, and it was well after midnight before they could go to the small bedroom that had been set aside for them because there were many who demanded Moses’ attention, men from the Buffaloes and the mineworkers’ union, a messenger from the council of the ANC and a dozen petitioners and supplicants who came quietly as jackals to the lion when the word flashed through the township that Moses Gama had returned.

  At all these meetings Victoria was present, although she never spoke and sat quietly in a corner of the room. At first the men were surprised and puzzled, darting quick glances across at her and reluctant to come to their business until Moses pressed them. None of them was accustomed to having women present when serious matters were discussed. However, none of them could bring themselves to protest, until the ANC messenger came into the room. He was invested with all the power and importance of the council he represented, and so he was the first to speak about Victoria’s presence.

  ‘There is a woman here,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Moses nodded. ‘But not just a woman, she is my wife.’

  ‘It is not fitting,’ said the messenger. ‘It is not the custom. This is men’s business.’

  ‘It is our purpose and our aim to tear down and burn the old customs and to build up the new. In that endeavour we will need the help of all our people. Not just the men, but the women and children also.’

  There was a long silence while the messenger fidgeted under Moses’ dark unrelenting stare.

  ‘The woman can remain,’ he capitulated at last.

  ‘Yes,’ Moses nodded. ‘My wife will remain.’

  ‘Later in the darkness of their bedroom, in the narrowness of the single bed, Victoria pressed close to him, the soft plastic curves of her body conforming to his hardness, and she said:

  ‘You have honoured me by making me a part of your struggle. Like the children, I want to be a soldier. I have thought about it and I have discovered what I can do.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he invited.

  ‘The women. I can organize the women. I can begin with the nurses of the hospital, and then the other women – all of them. We must take our part in the struggle beside the men.’

  His arms tightened around her. ‘You are a lioness,’ he said. ‘A beautiful Zulu lioness.’

  ‘I can feel your heartbeat,’ she whispered, ‘and my own heart beats in exact time to it.’

  In the morning Moses drove her to the nurses’ home at the hospital. She stood at the top of the steps and did not go into the building. He watched her in the rear-view mirror as he drove away and she was still standing there when he turned into the traffic, heading back towards Johannesburg and the suburb of Rivonia.

  He was one of the first to arrive at Puck’s Hill that morning to attend the council meeting to which the previous night’s messenger had summoned him.

  Marcus Archer met Moses on the verandah, and his smile was vitriolic as he greeted him. ‘They say a man is incomplete until he marries – and only then is he finished.’

  There were two men already seated at the long table in the kitchen which had always been used as their council chamber. They were both white men.

  Bram Fischer was the scion of an eminent Afrikaner family whose father had been a judge-president of the Orange Free State. Though he was an expert on mining law, and a QC at the Johannesburg bar, he had also been a member of the old Communist Party and was a member of the ANC, and lately his practice had become almost entirely the defence of those accused under the racial laws that the Nationalist government had enacted since 1948. Although he was a charming and erudite man with a real concern for his countrymen of all races, Moses was wary of him. He was a starry-eyed believer in the eventual miraculous triumph of good over evil, and firmly opposed the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military branch of the ANC. His pacifist influence on the rest of the Congress set a brake on Moses’ aspirations.

  The other white man was Joe Cicero, a Lithuanian immigrant. Moses could guess why he had come to Africa – and who had sent him. He was one of the eagles, fierce-hearted as Moses was himself, and an ally when the need for direct and even violent action was discussed. Moses went to sit beside him, across the table from Fischer. He would need Joe Cicero’s support this day.

  Marcus Archer, who loved to cook, set a plate of devilled kidneys and œufs ranchero in front of him, but before Moses had finished his breakfast the others began to arrive. Nelson Mandela and his faithful ally Tambo arrived together, followed quickly by Walter Sisulu and Mbeki and the others, until the long table was crowded and cluttered with papers and dirty plates, with coffee cups and ashtrays which were soon overflowing with crushed cigarette butts.

  The air was thick with tobacco smoke and Marcus’ cooking aromas, and the talk was charged and serious as they tried to decide and agree exactly what were the objects of the defiance campaign.

  ‘We have to stir the awareness of our people, t
o shake them out of their dumb cowlike acceptance of oppression.’ Mandela put the premier proposition, and across from him Moses leaned forward.

  ‘More important, we must awaken the conscience of the rest of the world, for that is the direction from which our ultimate salvation will come.’

  ‘Our own people—’ Mandela began, but Moses interrupted him.

  ‘Our own people are powerless without weapons and training. The forces of oppression ranged against us are too powerful. We cannot triumph without arms.’

  ‘You reject the way of the peace, then?’ Mandela asked. ‘You presuppose that freedom can only be won at the point of the gun?’

  ‘The revolution must be tempered and made strong in the blood of the masses,’ Moses affirmed. ‘That is always the way.’

  ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen!’ Bram Fischer held up his hand to stop them. ‘Let us return to the main body of the discussion. We agree that by our campaign of defiance we hope to stir our own people out of their lethargy and to attract the attention of the rest of the world. Those are our two main objects. Let us now decide on our secondary objects.’

  ‘To establish the ANC as the only true vehicle of liberation,’ Moses suggested. ‘At present we have less than seven thousand members, but by the end of the campaign we should aim to have enrolled one hundred thousand more.’ To this there was general agreement, even Mandela and Tambo nodded, and when the vote was taken it was unanimous and they could go on to discuss the details of the campaign.

  It was a massive undertaking, for it was planned that the campaign should be nationwide and that it should be conducted simultaneously in every one of the main centres of the Union of South Africa so as to place the utmost strain on the resources of the government and to test the response of the forces of law and order.

  ‘We must fill their gaols’until they burst. We must offer ourselves up for arrest in our thousands until the machinery of tyranny breaks down under the strain,’ Mandela told them.

  For three more days they sat in the kitchen at Puck’s Hill, working out and agreeing every minute detail, preparing the lists of names and places, putting together the timetable of action, the logistics of transport and communication, establishing the lines of control from the central committee down through the provincial headquarters of the movement, and ultimately to the regional cadres in every black township and location.

  It was an onerous task but at last there was only one detail left to decide – the day on which it would begin. Now they all looked to Albert Luthuli at the head of the table and he did not hesitate.

  ‘June the 26th,’ he said, and when there was a murmur of agreement, he went on, ‘So be it, then. We all know our tasks.’ And he gave them the salute of upraised thumbs. ‘Amandla! Power! Ngawethu!

  When Moses went out to where the old Buick was parked beneath the gum trees, the sunset was filling the western sky with furnace colours of hot orange and smouldering red, and Joe Cicero was waiting for him. He leaned against the silvery trunk of one of the bluegum trees, with his arms folded over his broad chest, a bearlike figure, short and squat and powerful.

  He straightened up as Moses came towards him.

  ‘Can you give me a lift in to Braamfontein, comrade?’ he asked, and Moses opened the door of the Buick for him, and they drove in silence for ten minutes before Joe said quietly, ‘It is strange that you and I have never spoken privately.’ His accent was elusive, but the planes of his pale face above the short dark fringe of beard were flat and Slavic and his eyes were dark as tar pools.

  ‘Why is it so stranger Moses asked.

  ‘We share common views,’ Joe replied. ‘We are both true sons of the revolution.’

  ‘Are you certain of that?’

  ‘I am certain,’ Joe nodded. ‘I have studied you and listened to you with approval and admiration. I believe that you are one of the steely men that the revolution needs, comrade.’

  Moses did not reply. He kept his eyes on the road, and his expression impassive, letting the silence draw out, forcing the other man to break it.

  ‘What are your feelings towards Mother Russia?’ Joe asked softly at last, and Moses considered the question.

  ‘Russia has never had colonies in Africa,’ Moses answered carefully. ‘I know that she gives support to the struggle in Malaya and Algeria and Kenya. I believe she is a true ally of the oppressed peoples of this world.’

  Joe smiled and lit another Springbok cigarette from the flat maroon and white pack. He was a chain-smoker and his stubby fingers were stained dark brown.

  ‘The road to freedom is steep and rocky,’ he murmured.

  ‘And the revolution is never secure. The proletariat must be protected from itself by the revolutionary guards.’

  ‘Yes,’ Moses agreed. ‘I have read the works of both Marx and Lenin.’

  ‘Then I was correct,’ Joe Cicero murmured. ‘You are a believer. We should be friends – good friends. There are difficult days ahead and there will be a need for steely men.’ He reached over the back seat and picked up his attache case. ‘You can let me out at the central railway station, comrade,’ he said.

  It had been fully dark for two hours by the time Moses reached the camp in the gorge below the Sundi Caves and parked the Buick behind the Nissen hut that was the expedition’s office and laboratory, and he went up the path to Tara Courtney’s tent, stepping softly so as not to alarm her. He saw her silhouette against the canvas side. She was lying on her stretcher bed reading by the light of the petromax lantern, and he saw her start as he scratched on the canvas.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he called softly. ‘It’s me.’

  And her reply was low but quivering with joy. ‘Oh, God, I thought you’d never come.’

  She was in a frenzy for him. Her other pregnancies had always left her feeling nauseous and bloated, and the thought of sexual contact during that time had been repugnant. But now, even though she was over three months pregnant, her wanting was a kind of madness. Moses seemed to sense her need, but did not try to match it. He lay naked upon his back on the stretcher, and he was like a pinnacle of black granite. Tara hurled herself upon him to impale herself. She was sobbing and uttering little cries and yelps. At once both clumsy and adroit, her body, not yet swollen by the child within her, thrashed and churned above him as he lay quiescent and unmoving, and she went on beyond physical endurance, beyond the limits of flesh, insatiable and desperate for him, until exhaustion at last overcame her and she rolled off him and lay panting weakly, her chestnut hair darkened by her own sweat and plastered to her forehead and neck, and there was a thin pink colouring of blood on the front of her thighs, so wild had been her passion.

  Moses drew the sheet over her and held her until she had stopped shaking and her breathing had quietened, and then he said, ‘It will begin soon – the date has been agreed.’

  Tara was so transported that for a while she did not understand, and she shook her head stupidly.

  ‘June the 26th,’ Moses said. ‘Across the land, in every city, all at the same time. Tomorrow I will be going to Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape to command the campaign there.’

  That was hundreds of miles from Johannesburg, and she had come to be near him. With the melancholy of after-love upon her, Tara felt cheated and abused. She wanted to protest but with an effort checked herself.

  ‘How long will you be away?’

  ‘Weeks.’

  ‘Oh, Moses!’ she began, and then warned by his quick frown, she relapsed into silence.

  ‘The American woman – the Godolphin woman. Have you contacted her? Without publicity the value of our efforts will be halved.’

  ‘Yes.’ Tara paused. She had been on the point of telling him that it was all arranged, that Kitty Godolphin would meet him any time he wanted, but she stopped herself. Instead of handing her over to Moses and standing aside, here was her chance to stay close to him.

  ‘Yes, I have spoken to her. We met at her hotel, she is eager to meet you but sh
e is out of town at the moment, in Swaziland.’

  ‘That is no good,’ Moses muttered. ‘I had hoped to see her before I left.’

  ‘I could bring her down to Port Elizabeth,’ Tara cut in eagerly. ‘She will be back in a day or two and I will bring her to you.’

  ‘Can you get away from here?’ he asked dubiously.

  ‘Yes, of course. I will bring the television people down to you in my own car.’

  Moses grunted uncertainly, and was silent while he thought about it, and then he nodded.

  ‘Very well. I will explain how you will be able to contact me when you get there. I will be in the township of New Brighton, just outside the city.’

  ‘Can I be with you, Moses? Can I stay with you?’

  ‘You know that is impossible.’ He was irritated by her persistence. ‘No whites are allowed in the township without a pass.’

  ‘The television team will not be able to help you much if we are kept out of the township,’ Tara said quickly. ‘We should be close to you to be of any use to the struggle.’ Cunningly she had linked herself to Kitty Godolphin, and she held her breath as he thought about it.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he nodded, and she exhaled softly. He had accepted it. ‘Yes. There might be a way. There is a mission hospital run by German nuns in the township. They are friends. You could stay there. I will arrange it.’

  She tried not to let him see her triumph. She would be with him, that was all that was important. It was madness, but though her body was bruised and sore, already she wanted him again. It was not physical lust, it was more than that. It was the only way she could possess him, even for a few fleeting minutes. When she had him locked in her body, he belonged to her alone.

  Tara was puzzled by Kitty Godolphin’s attitude towards her. She was accustomed to people, both men and women, responding immediately to her own warm personality and good looks. Kitty was different, from the very beginning there had been a cold-eyed reserve and an innate hostility in her. Very swiftly Tara had seen beyond the angelic, little-girl image that Kitty so carefully projected, but even after she had recognized the tough and ruthless person beneath, she could find no logical reason for the woman’s attitude. After all Tara was offering her an important assignment, and Kitty was examining the gift as though it were a live scorpion.