by Wilbur Smith
The black man's head lolled back, almost sweeping the earth, his mouth gaped open and the blood that dripped from it was black as tar in the lamplight and his head swung loosely to the uneven stride of the men who carried him. They lifted him into the back of the lorry.
The north-bound train came thundering through the siding, its whistle shrilling on a high piercing shriek, and then it was gone on its way to Ladyburg.
The men climbed into the lorry and the engine fired, and it moved away with its headlights sweeping sky and earth as it pitched over the bumpy track.
The stationary train whistled mournfully and it began to roll forward, rumbling slowly over the tracks. Mark crawled out from his hiding-place beneath the bush, and hopped and stumbled after it, catching it just before its speed built up.
He crawled over the sugar bags into the lee of the steel side, and found the Zulu had left his blanket. As he wrapped it around his icy body, he felt the guilt flood over him, guilt for the man's death, the man who had been a friend then the guilt turned to anger.
Bitter corrosive anger that sustained him through the night as the train rushed southwards.
Fordsburg is a squalid suburb of Johannesburg, three hundred miles from the golden grassy hills of Zululand and the beautiful forested valley of Ladyburg. It is an area of mean cottages, tiny workers houses of galvanized iron on timber frames, each with a bleak little garden. In some of the gardens there were brave and defiant shows of bright blooms, barbeton daisies, carinas and flaming red poinsettia, but in most of them the bare untended earth, patched with black-jack and khaki-bush, told of the tenants indifference.
Over the narrow streets and crowded cottages, the mine dumps held majestic sway, towering table-topped mountains of poisonous yellow earth from which the gold had been extracted. The cyanide process of extraction ensured that the earth of the dumps was barren and sterile. No plants grew upon them, and on windy days the yellow dust and grit whipped over the grovelling cottages beneath them.
The dumps dominated the landscape, monument to the antlike endeavours of man, symbols of his eternal greed for gold. The mine headgears were spidery steel structures against the pale cloudless blue of the highveld winter sky.
The huge steel wheels on their heights spun endlessly, back and forth, lowering the cages filled with men deep into the earth, and rising again with the ore bins loaded with the gold-rich rock.
Mark made his way slowly down one of the narrow, dusty streets. He still limped slightly, and a cheap cardboard suitcase carried the few possessions he had bought to replace those he had lost on the escarpment.
The clothes he wore were an improvement on the shapeless demobilization suit that the army had given him. His flannels were neatly creased and the blue blazer fitted his good shoulders and narrow flanks, the open-necked white shirt was snowy clean and set off the smooth brown skin of his neck and face.
He reached the cottage numbered fifty-five on the gate, and it was a mirror image of those on each side and opposite. He opened the gate and went up the short flagged path, aware that somebody was watching him from behind the lace curtain in the front room.
However, when he knocked on the front door it was only opened after a delay of many minutes, and Mark blinked at the woman who stood there.
Her dark short hair was freshly combed, and the clothes she wore had clearly been hastily put on in place of dowdier dress. She was still fastening the belt at her slim waist. it was a dress of pale blue with a design of yellow daisies, and it made her appear young and gay, although Mark saw at once that she was at least ten years older than he was. Yes? she asked, tempering the abrupt demand with a smile. Does Fergus MacDonald live here? He saw now that she was good-looking, not pretty, but fine-looking with good bones in her cheeks and dark intelligent eyes. Yes, this is Mr MacDonald's house. There was a foreign inflection in her voice that was intriguing. I am Mrs MacDonald. Oh, he said, taken by surprise. He had known Fergus was married. He had spoken about it often, but Mark had never really thought about his wife before, not as a real flesh and blood woman, and certainly not one like this. I am an old friend of Fergus'from the army. Oh, I see, she hesitated. My name's Mark, Mark Anders. Instantly her attitude changed, the half smile bloomed and lit her whole face.
She gave a small gasp of pleasure. Mark, of course, Mark. She took his arm impetuously and drew him over the threshold. He has spoken of you so often, I feel I know you so well. Like a member of the family, like a brother, she still had his arm, standing close to him, laughing up at him. Come in, Mark, come in.
I am Helena. Fergus MacDonald sat at the head of the deal table in the dingy kitchen. The table was covered with sheets of newsprint instead of a cloth and Fergus hunched over his plate, and scowled angrily as he listened to Mark's account of his flight from Ladyburg. The bastards, they are the enemy, Mark. The new enemy. ) His mouth was filled with potato and heavily spiced boerewors, thick farmer's sausage, and he spoke through it. We are in another war, lad, and this time they are worse than the bloody Hun. More beer, Mark. Helena leaned across to fill his tumbler from the black quart bottle. Thank you. Mark watched the foaming head rise in his glass, and he pondered Fergus' statement. I don't understand, Fergus. I don't know who these men are, I don't know why they tried to kill me. They are the bosses, lad. That's who we are fighting now. The rich, the mine-owners, the bankers, all those who oppress the working man. Mark took a long swallow of his beer, and Helena smiled at him from across the table. Fergus is right, Mark. We have to destroy them. And she began to talk. It was strange confusing talk from a woman, and there was a fanatical light in her dark eyes.
The words had a compelling power in her clear articulate voice with its lilting accent, and Mark watched the way she used her hands to emphasize each point. They were neat strong hands with gracefully tapered fingers and short nails. The nails were clean and trimmed but the first two fingers of her right hand were stained pale yellow. Mark wondered at that, until suddenly Helena reached across and took a cigarette from the packet at Fergus'elbow.
Still talking, she lit the cigarette from a match in her cupped hands, and drew deeply before exhaling forcibly through pursed lips. Mark had never seen a woman smoke before, and he stared at her. She shook her head vehemently.
The history of the people's revolt is written in blood.
Look at France, see how the revolution sweeps forward in Russia. The short dark shining curls danced around her smooth pale cheeks, and she pursed her lips again to drag at the cigarette, and in some strange fashion Mark found the mannish act shocking, and exciting.
He felt his groin clenching, the tight swollen hardening of his flesh, beyond his reason, far beyond his control.
His breathing caught with shock and embarrassment, and he leaned back and slipped one hand into his trouser pocket, certain that both of them must be aware of his shameful reaction, but instead Helena reached across the table and seized his other wrist in a surprisingly powerful grip.
We know our enemy, we know what must be done and how we must do it, Mark. Her fingers seemed to burn like heated iron into his flesh, he felt dizzy with the force of it. His voice was hoarse as he forced himself to reply. They are strong, Helena, powerful No, no, Mark, the workers are strong, the enemy are weak, and smug. They suspect nothing, they wallow like hogs in the false security of their golden sovereigns, but in reality they are few and unprepared. They do not know their own weakness, and as yet the workers do not realize their great strength. We will teach them. You're right, lass. Fergus wiped the gravy from the plate with a crust of bread and stuffed it into his mouth. Listen to her, Mark, we are building a new world, a brave and beautiful new world. He belched loudly and pushed his plate away, leaving both elbows on the table. But first we have to tear down and destroy this rotten, unjust and corrupt society. There will be hard fighting, and we will need good hard fighting men. He laughed harshly and slapped Mark's shoulder. They'll call for MacDonald and Anders again, lad, you hear me. There is nothing
for us to lose, Mark. Helena's cheeks were flushed. Nothing but our chains, and there is a whole world to win. Karl Marx said that, and it's one of the great truths of history. Helena, are you, he hesitated to use the word, are you and Fergus, well I mean, you aren't Bolsheviks are you? That's what the bosses, and their minions, the police, call us. She laughed contemptuously. They try to make us criminals, already they fear us. With reason, Mark, we will give them reason. No, lad, don't call us Bolsheviks. We are members of the communist party, dedicated to universal communism.
I'm the local party secretary and shop steward of the mineworkers union for the boilermakers shop. Have you read Karl Marx? Helena demanded. No. Mark shook his head, dazed and shocked, but still sexually excited by her to the edge of pain. Fergus a Bolshevik? A bomb-throwing monster? But he knew he was not.
He was an old and trusted comrade. I will lend you my copy. Come on, lass, Fergus chuckled, and shook his head. We are going too fast for the lad. He's got a right barmy look right now. He leaned over and placed an affectionate arm around Mark's shoulders, drawing him close. Have you a place to stay, lad? A job? A place to go? No. Mark flushed. I haven't, Fergus. Oh, yes you have, Helena cut in quickly. I have fixed the bed in the other room, you'll stay there, Mark. Oh, but I couldn't -It's done, she said simply. You'll stay, lad. Fergus squeezed him hard. And we'll see about a job for you tomorrow, you're book-learned.
You can read and write and figure, it will be easy to fix you. I know they need a clerk up at the pay office, and the paymaster is a comrade, a member of the party. I'll pay you for lodging. Of course you will, Fergus chuckled again, and filled his glass to the brim with beer. It's good to see you again, son and he raised his own glass. Send down the line for MacDonald and Anders, and warn the bastards we are coming! He took a long swallow, the pointed Adam's apple bobbing in his throat, then wiped the froth from his upper lip with the back of his hand.
The regimental chaplain had called it the sin of Onan, while the rankers had many more ribald terms for it, toss the caber or visit Mrs Hand and her five daughters. The chaplain had warned of the dire consequences that it would bring, failing sight, and falling hair, a palsied shaking hand and at last idiocy and the insane asylum. Mark lay in the narrow iron bed and stared with unseeing eyes at the faded pink rose-pattern wallpaper of the tiny room. It had the musty smell of being long closed, and there was a wash-basin in an iron frame with an enamel basin against the far wall. A single unshaded bulb hung on a length of flex from the ceiling, and the white plaster around it was fly-speckled; even at the moment three drowsy flies sat on the flex in a stupor. Mark swivelled his attention to them, trying to put aside the waves of temptation that flowed up through his body.
Light steps in the passage stopped opposite his bedroom door, and now there was a tap on the woodwork. Mark? He sat up quickly, letting the single thin blanket fall to
his waist. May I come in? Yes, he husked, and the door swung open. Helena crossed to his bed. She wore a gown of light pink shiny material that buttoned down the front; the skirt opened at each step and there was a glimpse of smooth white flesh above her knees.
She carried a slim book in one hand. I said I would lend it to you, she explained. Read it, Mark. She held out the volume.
The Communist Manifesto was the title, and Mark took it from her, opening it at random. He bowed his head over the open pages to cover the confusion into which her near presence plunged him. Thank you, Helena. He used her name for the first time, wanting her to leave and yet hoping she would stay.
She leaned over him a little, looking at the open book, and the bodice of her gown fell apart an inch. Mark looked up, and saw the incredibly silky sheen where the beginning of one white breast pressed against the lace that edged the neck of the gown. Swiftly he dropped his eyes again, and they were both silent until Mark could stand it no longer, and he looked up at her. Helena, he began, and then stopped. There was a smile, a secret womanly smile on her lips, lips that were slightly parted and moist in the harsh electric light. The dark eyes were half hooded but glowed again with that fierce fanatical light, and her bosom beneath the pink satin rose and fell with quick soundless breathing.
He flushed a sultry red under the dark tan of his cheeks and he rolled abruptly on to his side, drawing up his knees.
Helena straightened up slowly, still smiling. Goodnight, Mark. She touched his shoulder, fire sprang afresh from her finger-tips and then she turned and went slowly towards the door. The slippery material of the gown slid softly across the tight double rounds of her buttocks. I'll leave the light on. She looked back at him, and now the smile was knowing. You'll want to read. The Pay Office of Crown Deep Mines Ltd was a long austere room where five other clerks worked at high desks set in a line down one wall. They were mostly men in advanced middle age, two of them sufferers from phthisis, that dreaded disease of the miners in which the rock dust from the drills settled in the lungs, building up slowly until the lung turned to stone and gradually crippled the man. Employment in the mine offices was a form of pension. The other three were grey and drab men, stooped from poring over their ledgers. The atmosphere in the office was quiet and joyless, as in some monastic cloister.
Mark was given charge of the files and personnel R to Z, and the work was dull and repetitive, soon becoming automatic as he calculated overtime and leave pay, made deductions for rent and union fees and struck his totals. It was drudgery, not nearly enough to engage a bright and active young brain, and the narrow confines of the office were a cage for a spirit that was at home in the wide open sweep of sky and veld and had known the cataclysmic universe of the battlefields of France.
On the weekends, he escaped from his cage and rode on an old bicycle for miles into the open veld, following dusty paths along the base of the rocky kopjes on which grew the regal candelabra of giant aloes, their blooms burning in bright scarlet against the clear pale blue of the highveld sky. He sought seclusion, wilderness, secret places far from other men, but it seemed that always there were the borders. of barbed wire to limit his range; the grasslands had gone to the plough, the pale dust devils swirled and danced over red earth from which the harvest had been stripped, leaving the dried sparse stubble of maize stalks.
The great herds of game that once had covered the open grassland to the full range of the eye were long gone, and now small scrub cattle, multi-coloured and scrawny, grazed in mindless bovine herds tended by almost naked black piccaninnies who paused to watch Mark pedalling by, and greeted him with solemnity which turned to wideeyed pleasure when he returned the greeting in their own language.
Once in a while Mark would start a small grey duiker from its lay and send it bounding and bouncing away through the dry grass with small sharp harris and ears erect, or else catch a glimpse of a springbuck drifting elusive as smoke across the plain, lonely survivors of the long rifles.
Then the delight of their wild presence stayed long with him, warming him on the dark cold ride home.
He needed these times of quiet and solitude to complete the healing process, not only of the Maxim bullet wounds in his back but of the deeper wounds, soul damage caused by too early an exposure to war in all its horror.
He needed this quietness also to evaluate the swift rush of events that filled his evenings and nights in direct contrast with the grey drudgery of his working days.
Mark was carried along by the fanatical energy of Fergus MacDonald and Helena. Fergus was the comrade who had shared with him experience that most men never knew, the stark and terrible involvement of combat. He was also much older than Mark, a paternal figure, filling a deep need in his life. It was easy to suspend the critical faculties and believe; not to think, but to follow blindly wherever Fergus bitter restless energy led them.
There was excitement and a sense of commitment in those meetings with men like him, men with an ideal and a sense of destiny. The secret meetings in locked rooms with armed guards at the doors, the atmosphere quivering with the promise of forbidden thing
s. The cigarette-smoke spiralling upwards until it filled the room with a thick blue haze, like incense burning at some mystic rite; the faces shining with sweat and quiet frenzy of the fanatic, as they listened to the speakers.
Harry Fisher, the Chairman of the Party, was a tall fierce man with a heavy gut, the brawny shoulders and hairy muscular arms of a boilermaker, an unkempt shock of coarse wiry black hair laced with strands of silver and dark burning eyes. We are the Party, the praetorian guard of the proletariat, and we are not bound by law or the ethical considerations of the bourgeois age. The Party in itself is the new law, the natural law of existence. Afterwards he shook hands with Mark, while Fergus stood by with paternal pride. Fisher's grip was as fierce as his stare. You're a soldier, he nodded. We will need you again, comrade. There is bloody work ahead. The disquieting presence of the man stayed to haunt Mark long afterwards, even when they rode home in the crowded tramcar, the three of them squeezed into a double seat so that Helena's thigh was pressed hard against his.
When she spoke to him, she leaned sideways, her lips almost touching his cheek, and her breath smelling of liquorice and cigarettes, a smell that mingled with the cheap flowery perfume she wore, and the underlying musky warmth of her woman's body.
There were other meetings on the Friday evenings, great raucous shouting gatherings where hundreds of white miners crowded into the huge Fordsburg Trades Union Hall, most of them boozy with cheap brandy, loud and inarticulate and spoiling for trouble. They roared like the crowd at a bull fight as the speakers harangued them; occasionally one of the audience climbed on to his chair to sway there, shouting meaningless confused slogans until his laughing comrades dragged him down.
One of the most popular speakers at these public meetings was Fergus MacDonald, he had a dozen tricks to excite his audience, he probed their secret fears and twisted the probe until they howled half in pain and half in adulation. You know what they are planning, the bosses, you know what they are going to do? First they will fragment the trades A thunderous ugly roar, that shook the windows in their frames, and Fergus paused on the stage, sweeping his sparse sandy hair back off his forehead and grinning down at them with his thin bitter mouth until the sound subsided.