The Angels Weep

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘I’ll never be able to repay you for this, Ralph.’

  For a moment Robyn considered him, and then for the first time ever she stood on tiptoe and gave him a light dry kiss on the lips, before hurrying back to her kitchen.

  Ralph’s wagon hove over the hill at a dramatic moment. Jordan was down to his last bottle of champagne, the empty green bottles formed an untidy hillock behind his stall, and the crowd had already begun to drift across to the barbecue pits on which Robyn’s celebrated spiced beef sausage was sizzling in clouds of aromatic steam.

  Isazi brought the wagon to a halt below the veranda, and, like a conjuror, drew back the canvas hood to reveal the contents. The crowd flocked away to leave Mr Rhodes sitting alone beside his fancy coach.

  Within minutes Jordan sidled up beside his brother.

  ‘Ralph, Mr Rhodes would like to purchase a few cases of your best champagne.’

  ‘I’m not selling in job lots. Tell him it’s a full wagon or nothing.’ Ralph smiled genially. ‘At twenty pounds a bottle.’

  ‘That’s piracy,’ Jordan gasped.

  ‘It’s also the only available champagne in Matabeleland.’

  ‘Mr Rhodes will not be pleased.’

  ‘I’ll be pleased enough for both of us,’ Ralph assured him. ‘Tell him it’s cash, in advance.’

  While Jordan went with the bad news to his master, Ralph sauntered across to the bridegroom and put one arm around his shoulder.

  ‘Be grateful to me, Harry my boy. Your wedding is going to be a hundred-year legend, but have you told the lovely Victoria about her honeymoon yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Harry Mellow admitted.

  ‘Wise decision, laddie. Wankie’s country does not have the appeal of the bridal suite at the Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town.’

  ‘She will understand,’ Harry said with more force than belief.

  ‘Of course she will,’ Ralph agreed, and turned to meet Jordan who returned brandishing the cheque which Mr Rhodes had scribbled on a tattered champagne label.

  ‘How charmingly appropriate,’ Ralph murmured, and tucked it into his top pocket. ‘I’ll send Isazi back to fetch the next wagon.’

  The rumour of wagonloads of free champagne for all at Khami Mission turned Bulawayo into a ghost town. Unable to compete with these prices, the barman of the Grand Hotel closed down his deserted premises and joined the exodus southwards. As soon as the news reached them, the umpires called ‘stumps’ on the cricket match being played on the police parade ground, and the twenty-two players still in their flannels formed a guard of honour for Isazi’s wagon, while behind them followed what remained of the town’s population on horse, cycle or foot.

  The little Mission church could hold only a fraction of the invited and uninvited, the rest of them overflowed into the grounds, though the heaviest concentrations were always to be found around the two widely separated champagne wagons. Copious draughts of warm champagne had made the men sentimentally boisterous and many of the women loudly weepy, so a thunderous acclaim greeted the bride when she at last made her appearance on the Mission veranda.

  On her brother-in-law’s arm, and attended by her sisters, Victoria made her way down the alley that opened for her across the lawn.

  She was pretty enough to begin with, with her green eyes shining and the vivid coppery mass of her hair upon the white satin of her dress, but when she returned the same way, this time on the arm of her new husband, she was truly beautiful.

  ‘All right,’ Ralph announced. ‘It’s all legal – now the party can truly begin.’

  He signalled to the band, a hastily assembled quartet led by Matabeleland’s only undertaker on the fiddle, and they launched into a spirited Gilbert and Sullivan. This was the only sheet music available north of the Limpopo. Each member of the quartet provided his own interpretation of The Mikado, so that the dancers could waltz or polka to it as the inclination and the champagne dictated.

  By dawn of the following day, the party had started to warm up, and the first fist-fight broke out behind the church. However, Ralph settled it by announcing to the shirtsleeved contestants, ‘This will never do, gentlemen, it is an occasion of joy and goodwill towards all mankind.’ And then before they realized his intention, he dropped them on their backs in quick succession with a left and right swing that neither of them saw coming. Then he helped them solicitously back onto their feet and led them weaving groggily to the nearest drink wagon.

  By dawn on the second day, the party was in full swing. The bride and bridegroom, reluctant to miss a moment of the fun, had not yet left on their honeymoon and were leading the dancing under the spathodea trees. Mr Rhodes, who had rested during the night in the mule coach, now emerged and ate a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs cooked by Jordan over the open fire, washed it down with a tumbler of champagne, and was moved to oratory. He stood on the driver’s seat of the coach and spoke with all his usual eloquence and charisma honed to an edge by a sense of occasion and his own burning belief in his subject.

  ‘My Rhodesians,’ he addressed his audience, and they took it as an endearment rather than a claim to ownership, and loved him for it. ‘Together you and I have made a great leap forward towards the day when the map of Africa will be painted pink from Cape Town to Cairo, when this fair continent will be set beside India, a great diamond beside a lustrous ruby, in the crown of our beloved Queen—’

  They cheered him, the Americans and Greeks and Italians and Irish as loudly as the subjects of the ‘beloved Queen’ herself.

  Robyn St John endured half an hour of these sentiments before she lost control of the frosty dignity that Ralph had counselled, and from the veranda of the homestead she began a counter reading of her own, as yet unpublished, poetry:

  ‘Mild melancholy and sedate he stands

  Tending another’s herds upon the field.

  His father’s once, where now the white man builds

  His home and issues forth his proud commands.

  His dark eyes flash not, his listless hand

  Leans on the shepherd staff, no more he wields

  The gleaming steel, but to the oppressor yields—’

  Her high, clear voice rang over Mr Rhodes’; heads turned back and forth between the two of them like the spectators at a tennis match.

  ‘This is only a beginning,’ Mr Rhodes raised his volume, ‘a great beginning, yes, but a beginning nonetheless. There are ignorant and arrogant men, not all of them black,’ and even the dullest listener recognized that the allusion was to old Kruger, the Boer president of the South African Republic in the Transvaal, ‘who must be allowed the opportunity to come beneath the shield of the pax britannica of their own free will, rather than be driven to it by force of arms.’

  His audience was once again entranced, until Robyn selected another of her works in matching warlike mood, and let fly with:

  ‘He scorns the hurt, nor regards the scar

  Of recent wound, but burnishes for war

  His assegai and targe of buffalo-hide.

  Is he a rebel? Yes, it is a strife

  Between the black-skinned raptor and the white.

  A savage? Yes, though loath to aim at life

  Evil for evil fierce he doth requite.

  A heathen? Teach him then thy better creed,

  Christian! If thou deserv’st that name indeed!’

  The audience’s critical faculty was dulled by two days and two nights of revelry and they applauded Robyn’s impassioned delivery with matching fervour, though the sense of it was thankfully lost upon them.

  ‘The Lord save us,’ Ralph groaned, ‘from emetic jingoism and aperient scansion!’ And he wandered away down the valley to get out of earshot of the competing orators, carrying a bottle of Mr Rhodes’ champagne in one hand, and with his son perched upon his shoulder. Jonathan wore a sailor suit with Jack Tar collar, and a straw boater on his head; the ribbon hung down his back, and he clucked and urged his father on with his heels as though he was astride a
pony.

  There were fifty head of slaughter-oxen and a thousand gallon pots of Juba’s beer to account for, and the black wedding guests were giving the task their dedicated attention. Down here the dancing was even more energetic than that under the spathodea trees, the young men were leaping and twisting and stamping until the dust swirled waist-high about them and the sweat cut runnels down their naked backs and chests. The girls swayed and shuffled and sang, and the drummers hammered out their frenetic rhythms until they dropped exhausted, and others snatched up the wooden clubs to beat the booming hollowed-out tree-trunks. While Jonathan, on Ralph’s back, squealed with delight, one of the slaughter-oxen, a heavy hump-backed red beast, was dragged out of the kraal. A spearsman ran forward and stabbed it through the carotid and jugular. With a mournful bellow the animal collapsed, kicking spasmodically. The butchers swarmed over the carcass, flaying off the hide in a single sheet, delving for the titbits, the kidneys and liver and tripes, throwing them wet and shiny onto the live coals, hacking through the rack of ribs, slicing off thick steaks and heaping them on the racks over the cooking-fire.

  Half raw, running with fat and juice, the meat was stuffed into eager mouths and the beerpots tilted to the hot blue summer sky. One of the cooks tossed Ralph a ribbon of tripe, scorched from the fierce flames, and with the contents still adhering to the stomach lining. Without a visible qualm, Ralph stripped away the lining and bit off a chunk of the sweet white flesh beneath.

  ‘Mushle!’ he told the cook. ‘Good! Very good.’ And passed up a sliver to the child on his back. ‘Eat it, Jon-Jon, what doesn’t kill you, makes you fat,’ and his son obeyed with noisy relish, and agreed with his father’s verdict.

  ‘Mushle, it’s really mush, Papa.’

  Then the dancers surrounded them, prancing and whirling, challenging Ralph. Ralph sat Jonathan on the fence of the cattle kraal, where he had a grandstand view. Then he strode into the centre and set himself in the heroic posture of the Nguni dancer. Bazo had taught him well when they were striplings, and now he raised his right knee as high as his shoulder and brought his booted foot down on the hard earth with a crash, and the other dancers hummed in encouragement and approbation.

  ‘Jee! Jee!’

  Ralph leaped and stamped and postured, and the other dancers were pressed to match him, the women clapped and sang and on the kraal fence Jonathan howled with excitement and pride.

  ‘Look at my daddy!’

  His shirt soaked with sweat, his chest heaving, chuckling breathlessly, Ralph dropped out at last and lifted Jonathan back onto his shoulder. The two of them went on, greeting by name those they recognized in the throng, accepting a proffered morsel of beef or a swallow of tart gruel-thick beer, until at last on the rise beyond the kraal, seated on a log, aloof from the dancers and revellers, Ralph found the man he was seeking.

  ‘I see you, Bazo the Axe,’ he said, and sat down on the log beside him, set the champagne bottle between them and passed Bazo one of the cheroots for which he had developed a taste so long ago on the diamond fields. They smoked in silence, watching the dancers and the feasting until Jonathan grew restless and edged away to seek more exciting occupation, and found it immediately.

  He was confronted by a child a year or so younger than he was. Tungata, son of Bazo, son of Gandang, son of great Mzilikazi, was stark naked except for the string of bright ceramic beads around his hips. His navel popped out in the centre of his fat little belly, his limbs were sturdy, dimpled knees and bracelets of healthy fat at his wrists. His face was round and smooth and glossy, his eyes huge and solemn as he examined Jonathan with total fascination.

  Jonathan returned his scrutiny with equal candour, and made no attempt to pull away as Tungata reached and touched the collar of his sailor suit.

  ‘What is your son’s name?’ Bazo asked, watching the children with an inscrutable expression on his dark features.

  ‘Jonathan.’

  ‘What is the meaning of that name?’

  ‘The gift of God,’ Ralph told him.

  Jonathan suddenly took the straw hat from his own head and placed it upon that of the Matabele princeling. It made such an incongruous picture, the beribboned boater on the head of the naked black boy with his pot belly and little uncircumcised penis sticking out under it at a jaunty angle, that both men smiled involuntarily. Tungata gurgled with glee, seized Jonathan’s hand and dragged him away unprotestingly into the throng of dancers.

  The lingering warmth of that magical moment between the children thawed the stiffness between the two men. Fleetingly, they recaptured the rapport of their young manhood. They passed the champagne bottle back and forth, and when it was empty, Bazo clapped his hands and Tanase came to kneel dutifully before him and offered a clay pot of bubbling brew. She never looked up at Ralph’s face, and she withdrew as silently as she had come.

  At noon she returned to where the two men were still deep in conversation. Tanase led Jonathan by one hand and Tungata, still with the straw hat on his head, by the other. Ralph, who had forgotten all about him, started violently when he saw his son. The child’s beatific grin was almost masked by layers of grime and beef fat. His sailor suit was the victim of the marvellous games which he and his newly found companion had invented. The collar hung by a thread, the knees were worn through, and Ralph recognized some of the stains as ash and ox blood and mud and fresh cow dung. He was less certain of the others.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Ralph groaned, ‘your mother will strangle us both.’ He picked up his son gingerly. ‘When will I see you again, old friend?’ he asked Bazo.

  ‘Sooner than you think,’ Bazo replied softly. ‘I told you I would work for you again when I was ready.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ralph nodded.

  ‘I am ready now,’ said Bazo simply.

  Victoria was amazingly gracious in her acceptance of the change of honeymoon venue, when Harry Mellow explained shamefacedly, ‘Ralph has this idea. He wants to follow up one of the African legends, at a place called Wankie’s country, near the great falls that Doctor Livingstone discovered on the Zambezi river. Vicky, I know how you looked forward to Cape Town and to seeing the sea for the first time, but—’

  ‘I’ve lived without the sea for twenty years, a little longer won’t hurt much.’ And she took Harry’s hand. ‘Wherever thou goest, my love, Wankie’s country, Cape Town, or the North Pole, just as long as we are together.’

  The expedition was conducted in Ralph Ballantyne’s usual style, six wagons and forty servants to convey the two families northwards through the magnificent forests of northern Matabeleland towards the great Zambezi river. The weather was mild and the pace leisurely. The country teemed with wild game, and the newly-weds billed and cooed and made such languorous eyes at each other that it was infectious.

  ‘Just whose honeymoon is this?’ Cathy mumbled in Ralph’s ear one lazy loving morning.

  ‘Action first, questions later,’ Ralph replied, and Cathy chuckled in a throaty self-satisfied way and cuddled back down in the feather mattress of the wagon bed.

  At evening and mealtimes, Jonathan had to be forcibly removed from the back of the pony that Ralph had given him for his fifth birthday, and Cathy anointed the saddle-sores on his buttocks with Zambuk.

  They reached Wankie’s village on the twenty-second day and for the first time since leaving Bulawayo, the idyllic mood of the caravan bumped back to earth.

  Under the reign of King Lobengula, Wankie had been a renegade and outlaw. Lobengula had sent four separate punitive impis to bring his severed head back to GuBulawayo, but Wankie had been as cunning as he was insolent, as slippery as he was mendacious, and the impis had all returned empty-handed to face the king’s wrath.

  After Lobengula’s defeat and death, Wankie had brazenly set himself up as chieftain of the land between the Zambezi and the Gwaai rivers, and he demanded tribute of those who came to trade or hunt the elephant herds that had been driven into the bad lands along the escarpment of the Zambezi valley, where the
tsetse fly turned back the horsemen and only the hardiest would go in on foot to chase the great animals.

  Wankie was a handsome man in his middle age, open-faced and tall, with the air of the chief he claimed to be, and he accepted the gift of blankets and beads that Ralph presented to him with no effusive gratitude, enquired politely after Ralph’s health and that of his father, and brothers and sons, and then waited like a crocodile at the drinking place for Ralph to come to the real purpose of his visit.

  ‘The stones that burn?’ he repeated vaguely, his eyes hooded as he pondered, seeming to search his memory for such an extraordinary subject, and then quite artlessly he remarked that he had always wanted a wagon. Lobengula had owned a wagon, and therefore Wankie believed that every great chief should have one, and he turned on his stool and glanced pointedly at Ralph’s six magnificent Cape-built eighteen-footers outspanned in the glade below the kraal.

  ‘That damned rogue has the cheek of a white man,’ Ralph protested bitterly to Harry Mellow across the camp-fire. ‘A wagon, no less. Three hundred pounds of any man’s money.’

  ‘But, darling, if Wankie can guide you, won’t it be a bargain price?’ Cathy asked mildly.

  ‘No. I’m damned if I’ll give in to him. A couple of blankets, a case of brandy, but not a three hundred pound-wagon.’

  ‘Damned right, Ralph,’ Harry chuckled. ‘I mean we got Long Island for that price—’

  He was interrupted by a discreet cough behind him. Bazo had come across silently from the other fire where the drivers and servants were bivouacked.

  ‘Henshaw,’ he started, when Ralph acknowledged him. ‘You told me that we had come here to hunt buffalo to make trek riems from their hides,’ he accused. ‘Did you not trust me?’

  ‘Bazo, you are my brother.’

  ‘You lie to your brothers?’

  ‘If I had spoken of the stones that burn in Bulawayo, we would have had a hundred wagons following us when we left town.’