by Wilbur Smith
Jannie Smuts will keep in close touch, he knows he can call on me, but I feel like an old Zulu chief. I just want to sit in the sun, drink beer, grow fat and count my cattle What about Chaka's Gate, Sir? Mark pleaded.
I have spoken to Jannie Smuts and some of the others, on both sides of the house. We have a lot of support in the new Government as well. I don't want to make it a party issue, I'd like to see it as an issue of each man's own conscience.
They went on talking until Ruth intervened reluctantly. It's after midnight, dear. You can finish your talk in the morning. When are you leaving, Mark? I should be back at Chaka's Gate tomorrow night. Mark felt a prick of guilt as he lied. He knew damned well he was not going home just yet a while. But you'll stay for lunch tomorrow? Yes I'd like that. Thank you. As Mark rose he picked up the file of newspaper clippings from Sean's desk. I'll let you have them back tomorrow, Sir. However, the moment Mark was alone in his room, he dropped into an easy chair and turned avidly to the reverse side of the newspaper cutting he had brought with him.
He had not dared to turn over the cutting and read the words that had caught his eye in the General's presence, but now he lingered over them, re-reading and savouring.
Part of the article was missing, scissored away when the Deputy Minister's speech had been trimmed, but there wasenough.
ExcEPTIONAL EXHIBITION BY YOUNG ARTIST Presently showing at the sample rooms of the Marine Hotel on the Marine Parade is an exhibition of thirty paintings by a young lady artist.
For Miss Storm Courtney, it is her first public exhibition and even a much older and more established artist could have been justly gratified with such a reception by the art-lovers of our fair city. After the first five days, twenty-one of her paintings had found enthusiastic purchasers at prices as high as fifty guineas each. Miss Courtney has a classical conception of form, combined with both a sure sense of colour and a mature and confident execution rare in an artist of such tender years.
Worthy of special mention is Number 16, Greek athlete at rest. This painting, property of the artist and not for sale, is a lyrical composition that would perhaps raise the eyebrows of the more old-fashioned. It is an unashamedly sensual ode to Here the scissors had cut through, leaving Mark with a disturbing unfinished feeling. He read it once more, inordinately pleased that Storm had reverted to her maiden name with which to sign her work. Then carefully he folded the cutting into his wallet, and he sat in the chair staring at the wall, until he fell asleep, still fully dressed.
A young Zulu lass, no more than sixteen years of age, opened the door of the cottage. She was dressed in the traditional white cotton dustcoat of the nanny and she carried baby John on her hip.
Both nanny and child regarded Mark with huge solemn eyes, but the nanny's relief was patent when Mark addressed her in fluent Zulu.
At the sound of Mark's voice John let out an excited squawk that could have been recognition, but was probably merely a friendly greeting. He began to leap up and down on the nanny's hip with such force that she had to grab to prevent him taking off like a sky rocket, He reached out both hands towards Mark, burbling and laughing and shouting, and Mark took him, all warm and wriggling and baby-smelling, from the maid. John immediately seized a handful of Mark's hair and tried to remove it by the roots.
Half an hour later when Mark handed him back to the little moon-faced maid, and went down the steep pathway to the beach, John's indignant howls of protest followed him, only fading with distance.
Mark kicked off his shoes and left them and his shirt above the high-tide mark, then he turned northwards and followed the white sweep of sand, his bare feet leaving wet prints on the smooth firm edge of the seashore.
He had walked a mile, and there was no sign of any other person. The beach sand was rippled by static wind-blown wavelets, and dappled with the webbed prints of sea-birds.
On his right hand, the surf rose in long glassy lines, curling green and then dropping over in a crash of white water that shook the sand beneath his feet. on his left hand, the dense, dark green bush rose above the white beach, and again beyond that, the far blue hills and taller bluer sky.
He was alone, until he saw, perhaps a mile ahead, another solitary figure, also following the edge of the sea, a far small and lonely figure, coming towards him, still too distant to tell whether it was man or woman, friend or stranger.
Mark lengthened his stride, and the figure drew nearer, clearer.
Mark began to run, and the figure ahead of him stopped suddenly, and stood with that stillness poised on the edge of flight.
Then suddenly the stillness exploded, and the figure was racing to him.
It was a woman, a woman with dark silky hair streaming in the wind, a woman with outstretched arms and flying bare brown feet, and white teeth and blue, very blue eyes.
They were alone in the bedroom. Baby John's cot had been removed to the small dining-room next door, since he had begun to show an interest in everything that looked like a good romp, hanging on the edge of his cot with shouts of applause and approbation, and then trying his utmost to scale the wooden railings and join the play.
Now they were enjoying those contented minutes between love and sleep, talking softly in the candlelight under a single sheet, lying on their sides facing each other, holding close, with their lips almost touching as they murmured together. But darling Mark, it is still a thatched hut, and it is still wild bush. It's a big thatched hut, he pointed out. I don't know. I just don't know if I have changed that much. There is only one way to find out. Come with me. But what will people say? The same as they'd say if they could see us now She chuckled easily, and snuggled a little closer. That was a silly question. The old Storm speaking. People have said all there is to say about me, and none of it really mattered a damn. There aren't a lot of people out there to sit in judgement.
Only Pungushe, and he's a very broad-minded gentleman. She laughed again sleepily. Only one person I care about - Daddy mustn't know. I've hurt him enough already So Storm came at last to Chaka's Gate. She came in the beaten and neglected Cadillac, with John on the seat beside her, her worldly possessions crammed into the cab or strapped on the roof and Mark riding his motorcycle escort ahead of her over the rude and bumpy track.
Where the track ended above the Bubezi River, she climbed out and looked around her. Well, she decided after a long thoughtful survey of the towering cliffs, and the river in its bed of green water and white banks, framed by the tall nodding strands of fluffyheaded reeds and great spreading sycamore figs, at least it's picturesque. Mark put John on his shoulder. Tungushe and I will come back with the mules for the rest of your gear. And he led her down the footpath to the river.
Pungushe was waiting for them under the trees on the far bank, tall and black and imposing in his beaded loin cloth. Pungusbe, this is my lady and her name is Vungu Vungu the Storm. I see you, Vungu Vungu, I see also that you are misnamed, said Pungushe quietly, for a storm is an ugly thing which kills and destroys. And you are a lady of beauty. Thank you, Pungushe. Storm smiled at him. But you are also misnamed, for a jackal is a small mean creature. But clever, said Mark solemnly, and John let out a shout of greeting and bounced on Mark's shoulder, reaching out with both hands for Pungushe. And this is my son. Pungushe looked at John. There are two things a Zulu loves dearly, cattle and children. Of the two, he prefers children preferably boy-children. Of all boy-children, he likes best those that are robust, and bold and aggressive. Jamela, I should like to hold your son, he said, and Mark gave John to him. I see you Phimbo, Pungushe greeted the child. I see you little man with a great voice. And then Pungushe smiled that great beaming radiant smile, and John shouted again with joy and thrust his hand in Pungushe's mouth to grab those white shining teeth, but Pungushe swung him up on to his shoulder and laughed with a great hipposnort and carried him up the hill.
So they came to Chaka's Gate, and there was never any doubt, right from that first day.
Within an hour, there was a pol
ite tap on the screendoor of the kitchen and when Mark opened it there stood in a row on the covered stoep all of Pungushe's daughters, from the eldest who was fourteen to the youngest of four. We have come, announced the eldest, to greet Phimbo. Mark looked at Storm inquiringly, and she nodded. The eldest daughter swung John up on to her back with a practised action, and strapped him there with a strip of cotton limbo. She had played nurse-maid to all her brothers and sisters, probably knew more about small children than both Storm and Mark combined, and John took to the froglike position on her back as though he had been born Zulu. Then the little girl bobbed a curtsey to Storm and trotted away, with all her sisters in procession, bearing John off to a wonderland peopled entirely with playmates of endless variety and fascination.
On the third day, Storm began sketching, and by the end of the first week she had taken over the household management on a system that Mark referred to as comfortable chaos, alternating with brief periods of pandemonium.
Comfortable chaos was when everybody ate what they wanted, perhaps chocolate biscuits and coffee for dinner one night and a feast of barbecued meat the next. They ate it where they felt like it, perhaps sitting up in bed or lying on a rug on the sand-bank of the river. They ate when they wanted, breakfast at noon or dinner at midnight, if talking and laughing delayed it that long.
Comfortable chaos was when the dusting of furniture or polishing of floors were forgotten in the excitement of living, when clothes that needed mending were tossed into the bottom of the cupboard, when Mark's hair was allowed to grow in points over the back of his collar. Comfortable chaos ended unpredictably and abruptly to be replaced by pandemonium.
Pandemonium began when Storm suddenly got a steely look in her eye and announced, This place is a pig sty! followed by the snipping of scissors, buckets of steaming water, clouds of flying dust, hanging pots, and flashing needles. Mark was shorn and clad in refurbished clothing, the cottage gleamed and sparkled, and Storm's housekeeping instincts were exhausted for another indefinite period.
And the next day she would be up on Spartan's back, John strapped Zulu-fashion behind her, following Mark on patrol up the valley.
The first time John had been taken on patrol, Mark had asked anxiously, Do you think it's wise to take him, he's still very small? And Storm had replied, I am older and more important than Master John. He fits into my life, not me into his. So John rode patrol on muleback, slept in his apple basket under the stars at night, and took his daily bath in the coot green pools of the Bubezi River, quickly developed an immunity to the occasional tsetse bite, and flourished.
They climbed the steep pathway to the summit of Chaka's Gate, sat with their feet dangling over that fearful drop, and they looked across the whole valley, the far blue hills and the plains and swamps and the wide winding rivers. When I first met you, you were poor, Storm said quietly, leaning against Mark's shoulder with her eyes filled with the peace and wonder of it, but now you are the richest man in the world, for you are the owner of paradise. He took her up the river to the lonely grave below the escarpment. Storm helped him to build a pile of rocks, and to set the cross that Mark had made over it. He told her Pungushe's story of how the old man had been killed, and she cried openly and unashamedly, holding John on her lap, sitting on the gravestone, listening and living every word. I have looked, but never truly seen before, she said, as he showed her the nest of a suribird, cunningly woven of lichen and spider web, turning it carefully so she could peer into the funnel entrance and see the tiny speckled eggs. I never knew what true peace was until I came to this place, she said, as they sat on the bank of the Bubezi in the yellow light of fading day, and watched a kudu bull with long spiral corkscrew horns and chalk-striped shoulders lead his big-eared cows down to the water.
I did not know what happiness was before, she whispered, when they had woken together a little after midnight for no reason and reached for each other in the darkness.
Then one morning she sat up in the rumpled bed, over which John was rampaging unchecked and sowing crumbles of lightly chewed biscuit, and she looked at Mark seriously. You once asked me to marry you, I she said. Would you like to repeat that question, sir? And it was later that same day they heard the axeman at work up the valley.
The blade of a two-handed axe, swung against the hole of a standing hardwood tree, rings like a gunshot, and the sound of it bounced against the cliffs of Chaka's Gate and was flung back to break in dying echoes down the valley, each stroke still lingering on the air while the next cracked off the grey cliffs. There was more than one axernan at work, so that the din was continuous, like the sounds of battle.
Storm had never before seen such a passion of anger on Mark's face. His skin was drained of blood so that the tan of the sun was fever-yellow and his lips seemed frost-bitten and pinched by the force of it. Yet his eyes blazed, and she had to run to match his angry stride as they went up the scree slope from the river beneath the cliff s, and the sound of the axes broke over them, each separate stroke as brutal and shocking as the ones that preceded it.
Ahead of them, one of the lofty leadwoods quivered as though in agony and moved against the sky. Mark stopped in mid-stride to watch it, with his head thrown back and the same agony twisting his own lips. It was a tree of extraordinary symmetry, the silvery trunk rising with such gyace as to seem as slim as a young girl's waist. It had taken two hundred years to reach its towering height.
Seventy feet above the ground, it spread into a dark green dome of foliage.
As they watched, the tree shuddered again and the axes fell silent. Slowly, majestically, the leadwood swung into a downward arc, gathering ponderous momentum, and the partially severed trunk groaned and popped as the fibres tore; faster and faster still she fell, crashing through the tops of the lesser vegetation below her, the twisting tearing wood shrieking like a living thing until she struck solid earth with a jarring impact they could feel in their guts.
The silence lasted many seconds, and then there was the sound of men's voices, awed voices, as though intimidated
by the magnitude of the destruction they had wrought.
Then almost immediately after that, the axes started again, fragmenting the great silences of the valley, and Mark began to run. Storm could not keep pace with him.
He came out in an area of devastation, a growing swathe of fallen trees where fifty black men worked like ants, half-naked and burnished with their own sweat, as they stripped the branches and piled them in windrows for burning. The wood chips shone white as bone in the sunlight and the sap that oozed from the axe cuts had the sweetish smell of newly spilled blood.
At the head of the long narrow clearing, a single white man crouched to the eyepiece of a theodolite set on its squat tripod. He was aiming the instrument down the clearing and directing with hand signals the setting of brightly painted markers.
He straightened from the instrument to face Mark, a young man with a mild friendly face, thick spectacles in silver wire frames, lank sandy hair flopping on to his forehead. Oh, helln there, he smiled, and then the smile froze as Mark hissed at him. Are you in charge here? Well, yes, I suppose I am, the young surveyor stuttered. You are under arrest. I don't understand. It's quite simple, Mark blazed at him. You are cutting standing timber in a proclaimed area. I am the Government Ranger, and I am placing you under arrest. Now look here, the surveyor began placatingly, spreading his open hands in a demonstration of his friendly intentions. I'm just doing my job. In his blind wholesale rage, Mark had not noticed the approach of another man, a heavy broad-shouldered man who moved silently out of the uncut brush along the edge of the clearing. However, the thick north-country accent was instantly familiar, and struck sparks along the surface of Mark's skin. He remembered Hobday from that daywhen first he had returned to Andersland to find his world turned upside down. That's all right, chummy. I'll talk to Mister Anders. Hobday touched the young surveyor's shoulder placatingly and smiled at Mark, a smile that exposed the short evenly ground te
eth, but was completely lacking in any warmth or humour. There is nothing you can tell me, Mark started, and Hobday lifted one hand to stop him.
J am here in my official capacity as a Provincial Inspector for the Ministry of Lands, Anders. You'd better listen. The angry words died and Mark stared at him, while Hobday calmly unfolded a letter from his wallet and proffered it to Mark. It was typewritten on Government paper and signed by the Deputy Minister of Lands. The signature was bold and black, Dirk Courtney. Mark read through the letter slowly, with a plunging sense of despair, and when he finished, he handed it back to Hobday. It gave him unlimited powers in the valley, powers backed by all the authority and weight of Government. Youaregoingupintheworld, he said, but stillworking for the same master. And the man nodded complacently, and then his eyes switched away from Mark's face as Storm came up. The expression on his face changed, as he looked at her.
Storm had her hair in thick twin braids, dangling forward on to each breast. The sun had turned her skin to a rich reddish brown, against which her eyes were startlingly blue and clear. Except for the eyes, she looked like a Sioux princess from some romantic novel.
Hobday dropped his eyes slowly over her body, with such intimate lingering insolence that she reached instinctively for Mark's arm and drew closer to him, as though to bring herself under his direct protection. What is it, Mark? She was still breathless from her climb up the slope, and high colour lit her cheeks. What are they doing here? They're Government men, said Mark heavily. From the Ministry of Lands. But they can't cut our trees, she protested, her voice rising. You've got to stop them, Mark. They're cutting survey lines, Mark explained. They are surveying the valley. But those trees -'It don't really matter, rna'am, Hobday told her. His voice was lower now with a thick gloating tone, and his eyes were still busy on her body, like insects crawling greedily to the scent of honey, moving over the thin sun bleached cotton that covered her breasts. It don't matter a damn, he repeated. They are all going to be under water anyway, cut or standing, it's all going under. He turned away from her at last, and swept one hand down the rude clearing. From that side to this, he said, indicating the gap between the towering grey cliffs of Chaka's Gate, right across it, we're going to build the biggest bloody dam in the whole world. They sat together in darkness, close together as though for comfort, and Mark had not lit the lantern. The reflected glow of stars was thrown in under the thatched veranda of the cottage, giving them just enough light to make out each other's faces. We knew it was coming, whispered Storm. And yet somehow I did not believe it. just as though wishing could make it stop. I'm going through early tomorrow to see your father Mark told her. He has to know. She nodded. Yes, we must be ready to confront them. What will you do? I can't leave you here with John. IAnd you can't take me with you. Not to my father, she agreed. It's all right, Mark, I'll take John back to the cottage. We'll wait for you. I'll come for you there, and next time we return here, you'll be my wife. She leaned against him. If there is anything to return to, she whispered. Oh Mark, Mark, they can't do it!