The shouts and the wailing were muffled and trailing off now. Christ, what an antiquated building, where the poor bloody hangman has to run the gauntlet every time. There should be a separate entrance for all this dirty business. He knew it was coming but not as bad as that.
He bent and unzipped his bag. He pulled the three stout ropes out feverishly and the ball of white string and the little pair of nail scissors and felt for the brandy bottle. He pulled it out and uncorked it and lifted it up and took three swallows out of it. He sighed and then he corked the bottle and shoved it back in the bag.
Well, get on with it.
He looked up at the stout beam above the long stout trapdoor. It was built to take six ropes at once. He felt in his pocket and took out a piece of paper and looked at the first measurement. Then he picked up the first rope and put a foot gingerly on the trapdoor and pressed down to make sure it held. Then he stretched up and lashed the noose to the hook on the beam. The noose lay in a heap at his feet. He went to the ball of string and nipped off six inches with the scissors. He took it back to the noose. He felt in his pocket and brought out the three cardboard labels. He took the one with ‘Samson Ndhlovu’ printed on it and tied it to the rope near the top.
He turned and went back to the other ropes and he felt for the piece of paper again. He coughed.
Samson heard him cough. ‘What’s the time, old man?’
‘Five minutes pasti sixi,’ the black warder said.
Samson stretched his left leg out carefully and he jerked a fraction as the dagger nicked him.
He wanted very badly to go to the lavatory but he dared not because they watch you, even in the lavatory.
They heard the heavy iron front door open and clang and the noise of feet, several pairs of feet, and the shouting started again and then the wailing.
‘Murderers – Murderers – Whooo – Whooo—’ and the thumping on the cell doors.
The priest was in the cell kneeling with Phineas and murmuring prayers and Phineas was on his knees too with his hands over his face and he was shuddering as he wept tears. Eros was sitting in the corner with his arms folded tight round his knees and his forehead was resting on his knees. He had been like that a long time but he was not shuddering. Samson Ndhlovu was still sitting. His eyes were hooded half-closed and he stared straight ahead of him, breathing fast, through his mouth, his mouth dry and his lips chapped from constant licking. He was sweating, the sweat glistening on his forehead and on his chest and when he let go of his knees he trembled. He shifted position with a jerk and his calf muscles bounced and his knee quivered and he clasped it back tight against him. He felt very weak, not strong enough for the task. When he heard the footsteps and the shouts he wanted to scramble to his feet and scream and charge right now. The waiting was very bad and it was hard to keep the head clear, hard to keep concentrating. The priest. His breath came in short pants – he could do it to the priest, anybody would do, it didn’t matter who, just so long as he stabbed him. Even if he failed to stab him properly, even if he made a noise to warn the priest and the priest warded off the knife, even that would probably be enough.
No, not the priest. He might kill him and the priest did not deserve to die. It was also no good pretending. He had to do it properly, stab him properly, if he only injured the person slightly they might not bother to try him. Even if he injured the man seriously they might not bother to try him. They might say it does not matter. It would be better to kill, it was very important to kill so that it was a very serious matter and they had to take him to Court. The white men treat death as a very important matter and they will delay the hanging to try him. It takes a long time to try a man, maybe two months. The British will come before two months. Surely the British would not hang him for defending himself against his murderers.
But he must be careful. He must be quick. One good stab, that is probably all he would have time for. Then they would grab him. When do they tie you up? I must be careful for that. Do they speak first and then tie you up? Do they come around the back? Or do they catch you and then speak? They must say something before they hang you. As soon as the door opens, that must be the time. But they must not get behind my back. I must be in this corner where I am now and I must let them come to me. But I must not arouse their suspicions that I am going to struggle because then they will be ready. I must pretend to be very meek and frightened. I am frightened, very frightened, but I must look weak as well so that maybe they come to me nicely—
‘What is the time, old man?’
‘It is three minutes before nine o’clocki.’
The shouting – ah, it tears at a man’s sinews. But it is good, it makes noise, it gives a man courage. Three minutes. Now it is time to stand up. Stand up, Ndhlovu, stand up quickly. Stand up carefully; Ndhlovu, because of the knife. Hark, the creak of my muscles as I stand up. I am weak, very, very weak and I am shaking. My kneecaps they are shaking, I am very weak. Quickly, now, the knife, do not fumble it, the knife in your hand behind your back, the other hand on your face like a man in great fear of death. Peer through the fingers. Ah, but I am shaking, like a woman.
‘Samson, do you wish anything of me, my son?’
The priest standing in front of him now, looking at him kindly. Ah, it would be so easy now.
Samson shook his head behind his fingers.
The priest saying prayers for him now, with eyes closed tight, muttering aloud and the noise of the shouts. ‘Murderers, murderers, murderers—’ But not the priest.
‘May the Lord have mercy upon your soul, my son—’ Samson nodded. He did not understand him. The priest moved on to Eros.
‘Eros, my son—’
The shouting was very loud now, it was a scream now, thirty men screaming in cells, they must be coming now. The knife is well in my hand, it is slippery. Maybe it is my own blood. I think I have cut myself. Here they come—
The black warder was unlocking the cell. The prison superintendent standing at the gate in his green uniform and two other white warders behind him and three black warders and two men in suits. Yes, one is the hangman, the man I’ve seen many times. Open the door, and in they come.
They advanced on him abreast, the superintendent and the two men in suits. They stopped in the centre of the cell with the warders behind them, and a black prison sergeant beside them. The strange man in the suit spoke. He had a document in his hand.
‘Are you Samson Ndhlovu?’
Samson nodded through his fingers.
‘I am the duly deputised Sheriff of the High Court of Rhodesia. I have here a warrant for the execution upon you of the Sentence of Death.’
The black prison sergeant interpreted.
‘Do you wish to see it?’ The sheriff held out the document. Samson shook his head through his fingers.
The sheriff turned slightly.
‘Are you Eros Bande?’
Now—
Samson gave a loud scream and charged. Solly Berger spun in shock and raised his arms and reeled. A scramble of black and white and khaki and green and batons. The shouting outside, a continuous thumping scream. The shouts in the cell, the shock, the jumping, the flailing of batons. Samson Ndhlovu lashed out and spun, and then a crack of thunder in his head and blackness. Solly Berger lay spread on the floor with blood running out of a hole in his neck.
Samson Ndhlovu had just enough time to realise where he was. He was held upright, strapped to a board, leather straps all the way up his body binding him to the board. A white man in green uniform facing him, six inches from him, arm outstretched holding him vertical. A rope around his neck. A line of faces against the wall. A movement, a sudden plunging, a deafening bang.
Chapter Sixty
The empty house was full of the noise of the radio, music, market reports, women’s gardening hints succeeding each other at full volume, blaring out of the house over the garden. Mahoney sat at his table, chin in palm, staring out the window, sucking from the whisky glass. His mouth was dehydrate
d, with no saliva to give it, but he didn’t care. He was not really drunk, and he should be, he thought distantly; noori – he’d been drinking all night, on an empty stomach. He didn’t care about that either, he didn’t care about anything, he felt reckless of himself, he felt only hate pumping. The noon-time news came on, the announcer’s cultured voice shouted through the house but it bounced off Mahoney: another American bomber raid on Vietnam, American protests over a new shipment of arms by Britain to Cuba, a prison officer was fatally stabbed when a condemned prisoner made a bid to escape in Salisbury Central Prison today – the words bounced off the walls, reverberated out over the grass. The telephone rang in the passage, but he did not bother to answer it. Mahoney’s eyes were dull – steady, hate throbbing. He didn’t feel sorry for Solly Berger, he no longer felt grief for Samson Ndhlovu. You’re dead, Samson, dead dead dead. He only felt anger. You’re dead, Samson, because of the rotten stinking loathsome fecund manoeuvrings of politics, the sneaky nasty hypocritical savagery of politics, the buy and sell of politics, the manoeuvring, the wheedling, and the big-stick waving and the ass-licking, you’re a babe in the woods of politics, Samson, a babe sent into the jungle as cannon-fodder, used by the British so they can dangle you as a pawn for their own clever ass-licking ends. A political football, Samson. You and a million others, Samson, not just you, Samson, before you and after you there have been and will be a million babes in the wood, pawns for the wide boys, you are not the last, Samson, the rotten stinking business will go on for ever until the whole of Africa is destroyed, a hotbed of corruption and inefficiency and tyranny, with a few black dictators sitting on the ruins, puppets of Moscow and Peking. I grieve no more for you, Samson Ndhlovu: I only loathe the forces that used you. And I am glad, glad with all my heart that I am leaving, I can wash my hands of the stink and slime and taste of backstabbing and corruption: I grieve only for the suckers, the pawns that are to follow you, Samson.
Mahoney got up slowly from the table and filled his glass, while the telephone still rang. He carried the glass to the passage and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello.’
‘Joe, are you still all right?’
‘I’m all right, Jackie.’
‘You sure you don’t want me to come out?’
‘Quite sure, Jackie.’
‘Darling?’
‘Yes?’
‘Cheer up.’
‘Yes.’
He replaced the receiver and walked slowly through to the kitchen. He stood still and surveyed the concrete floor, the walls, the thatch roof, the stout rafters. His works, his money, he had built it: he felt reckless of the loss, indifferent, he no longer loved it, they could have it – one day, one day in the not too distant future the forces of Anglo-African politics would steal it from him anyway, like they did the land of the Kenya farmers: fuggem. He moved through the kitchen and out into the sun, and screwed up his eyes and looked about him at his kingdom; the chicken runs, the hens with the new rooster, the grazing paddock, Ferdinand and the kaffir cow and the one calf: it was a good little calf, stout and strong, it was an object lesson to the natives in what a good bull was worth. It would work if he stuck at it, if he kept on talking and spreading the word about – he shook his head: let somebody else break his back with good works. He looked over at the pigsty, the champion boar and the kaffir sow and the ten piglets squealing: good porkers, five pounds sterling each in four, five months, fifty quid: what wouldn’t a native farmer do with an extra fifty quid per annum, and if enough of them did it, Christ, it would change the face of the whole district … He shook his head again. He tossed the whisky down his throat and turned back into the house. He stopped at his table and poured another shot into the glass, and strode over to the shouting radio and spun the knob. Music, music, let’s have some bloody music.
He did not hear the motorcar on the gravel drive, the footsteps mounting the concrete stoep, he did not see the silhouette fill the doorway. Then he sensed it.
He snapped the radio off and turned round, one movement, fists bunched at the hips, half crouched. He stared, then he dropped his fists and straightened slowly.
‘Hello, Joe—’
His mouth opened around the name, his eyes frowned, his heart was beating very fast, then joy and tears pumped up to his throat.
‘Suzie!’
She stood in the doorframe, long hair down, stood hesitant in the doorway, eyes nervous, lip trembling in uncertain smile.
‘Yes, it’s me, Joe—’
‘Suzie.’
He took a step forward, unsteady, heart beating in his ears, his eyes unbelieving, tears coming up, eyes crinkled against the light, joy knocking in his chest. He walked unbelieving across the room, he stopped three paces in front of her and he stared at her. She looked into his eyes, shaking, breathing very hard.
‘Suzie, you’ve come back!’
‘Oh—’
He strode, she ran, clutching each other, clutching, arms clutching each other, squeezing, fingers digging, tears, tears into shoulder, hair across her face, tears wet on her face, salty kisses, smooth flesh wet, cries, oh oh Joseph, my darling, my darling love, my love, my love, my darling Joseph, tears and gasps, blonde hair sticking to his salty face, clutching.
‘Oh Suzie, you’ve come back, you’re back, you’re back—’
She cried, she held him back at a distance, and looked at him, tears running.
‘How are you, my love?’ Her hand felt his face, fingers buried into his hair, fingers trailed his eyebrows, his cheek, his lips, feeling him.
‘Suzie, you’ve come back—’
She clutched him, cried against him:
‘I heard, I tried not to come, darling, I heard about your engagement, I heard about the bomb and Samson’s trial, read it all, then that you were leaving, then your engagement to Jackie, and I didn’t come, Joseph, I wept for you, but I didn’t come, I ached just to see you, to hear your voice, I so wanted just to speak to you, to wish you luck, to tell you I love you, but I didn’t, because I thought it best, I didn’t want to start it all over again. Then I heard about Samson today and my heart cried out for you—’
He held her, dazed, she sobbed it out into his shoulder.
‘Suzie, you’ve come back—’
She shook him gently, fingers digging into his arms, sobbing. She shook her head, no no no Joseph – she held him back again, arms straight, she bent her head back, and her hair fell off her wet face.
‘No, Joseph. Because I’m married, darling. I’m married, married, darling—’ she shook him gently.
‘Married?’
‘Yes, darling. To Jake Jefferson, darling,’ she tossed her head and laughed, tear-gay, a loving tear-laugh. ‘To Jake, I’m a policeman’s wife now, darling, a nice little wife in a nice little Government House, having tea with other Government wives and talking about babies and dinners and the price of butter darling, nothing else, darling.’ She shook him gently, firmly, tearfully, her fingers felt his face, his lips – ‘I’m happy, darling, don’t you see, I’m ordinary, I’m a nice ordinary girl married to a nice ordinary man talking about nice ordinary things—’
He looked at her, dazed, tears in his eyes. ‘Jake Jefferson?’
She shook him.
‘Darling, don’t you see, it’s all for the best, I’m no good for you darling, no good, I’m too different from you, Jackie is good for you, she’s your soulmate, she feels with you, she breathes with you, I’ve seen the way she looks at you, I’m not your soulmate, I wanted to be but I couldn’t be, I didn’t know how, I tried and I failed, I’m just an ordinary girl and now I’m happy living an ordinary life in an ordinary marriage, no ups and downs no moods no creative anguish, no frustrations no arguments, dull ordinary suburban, don’t you see, darling Joseph, one of us had to make the break—’
Mahoney looked at her.
‘Suzie—oh Suzie why didn’t you come back to tell me?’
‘Darling, because you know what would have happened, you’
d have abandoned Jackie and I’d have abandoned Jake—Jackie and Jake, isn’t that a coincidence, darling?—and we would have started all over again—’
He still looked numbly at her: ‘Suzie?’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Have you got a baby?’
She closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘No, darling.’
Mahoney closed his eyes. ‘Suzie, are you happy?’
She bit her lip and nodded, yes yes yes.
‘Suzie?’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Where are you living?’
‘At Kariba, Jake’s stationed up there because of the emergency. Oh Joseph, it was hell, sometimes, knowing you were just two hundred and fifty miles away—’
Her eyes were closed, he looked at her, he shook her gently.
‘Suzie’
‘Yes, Joseph?’
‘Do you love me?’
She opened her eyes and looked at him.
‘Oh I still love you, I have always loved you, I will always love you—’
He held her tight against him, clutched her, he shook, dry sobs of grief, loss, a hundred anguished regrets. She held him tight against her, calmer now, her hand holding his head, stroking: Cry my love, cry cry my brooding love.
His hand took a bunch of her hair gently, and he pulled her head back, they looked into each other’s eyes, he picked her up, she held on to him, acquiescence in her body, love, compassion, softness, giving. He carried her down the passage, still she clung soft and giving to him, looking at him, he laid her down on the bed, quivering, aching, crying inside, he held her to him, she held herself against him, sobbing, crying, giving, weeping, desperately loving, he rolled on top of her, she gave herself to him, soft hips pressing up to him, softness and love and succour, her dress rode up her thighs, they fumbled with each other’s clothes, pushed them off each other urgently, whimpering, giving, the searing, sobbing bliss of reunion, the joy, the heartbreak.
Oh my love my love my love my love – afterwards they lay very still, holding each other, wet with each other’s sweat, wet with each other’s tears, wet with the seed and flesh of each other. She held him, rocked his head against her breast. He slept.
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