The Angels Weep

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Or else I will destroy you, utterly,’ said Mr Rhodes. Calmly he met the ferocious hatred in the eyes of the young man before him. He was inured by now both to adulation and to hatred, such things were meaningless when measured against the grand design of his destiny. Yet he could afford a placating word.

  ‘You must understand that there is nothing personal in this, Ralph,’ he said. ‘I have nothing but admiration for your courage and determination. As I said earlier, it is in young men like you that I place my hope for the future. No, Ralph, it is not personal. I simply cannot allow anything or anybody to stand in my way. I know what has to be done, and there is so little time left in which to do it.’

  The instinct to kill came upon Ralph in a black unholy rage. He could clearly imagine his fingers locked into the swollen throat, feel his thumbs crushing the larynx from which that shrill cruel voice rose. Ralph closed his eyes and fought off his rage. He threw it off the way a man throws off a sodden cloak when he comes in from the storm, and when he opened his eyes again, he felt as though his whole life had changed. He was icy calm, the tremor gone from his hands, and his voice was level.

  ‘I understand,’ he nodded. ‘In your place I would probably do the same thing. Shall we ask Jordan to draw up the contract making over any rights I or my partners might have in the Wankie coalfields to the BSA Company, and in consideration thereof the BSA Company irrevocably confirms my rights in the claims known as the Harkness Mine.’

  Mr Rhodes nodded approvingly. ‘You will go far, young man. You are a fighter.’ Then he looked up at Jordan. ‘Do it!’ he said.

  The locomotive roared on into the night, and despite the tons of lead that had been placed over the axles to soften the ride for Mr Rhodes, the carriages lurched rhythmically and the ties clattered harshly under the steel wheels.

  Ralph sat by the window in his stateroom. The goose-down coverlet was drawn back invitingly on the double bed behind the green velvet curtains, but it had no attraction for him. He was still fully dressed, though the ormolu clock on the beside table showed the time as three o’clock in the morning. He was drunk, yet unnaturally clear-headed, as though his rage had burned up the alcohol as soon as he swallowed it.

  He stared out of the window. There was a full moon standing over the strangely shaped purple kopjes along the horizon, and every once in a while the beat of the wheels changed to a ringing gong as they crossed another low steel bridge over a dry river course in which the sugary sand glowed like molten silver in the moonlight.

  Ralph had sat through dinner at Mr Rhodes’ board, listening to his high, jarring voice parading a succession of weird and grandiose ideas, interspersed with sudden startling truths or shop-worn old maids’ platitudes that spilled endlessly out of the big man with the lumpy, ungainly body.

  The only reason why Ralph managed to control his emotions and keep a good face, the reason why he even managed to nod in agreement or smile at one of Mr Rhodes’ sallies, was the realization that he had uncovered another of his adversary’s weaknesses. Mr Rhodes lived in a stratum so high above other men, he was so cushioned by his vast wealth, so blinded by his own visions, that he did not seem even to realize that he had made a mortal enemy. If he did think at all of Ralph’s feelings, it was to suppose that he had already discounted the loss of the Wankie coalfields, and accepted it as philosophically and impersonally as Mr Rhodes himself had.

  Even so, the choice food and noble wines were tasteless as sawdust, and Ralph swallowed them with difficulty and experienced a surge of relief when Mr Rhodes finally declared the evening ended in his usual abrupt manner by pushing back his chair without warning and rising to his feet. Only then he paused for a moment to examine Ralph’s face.

  ‘I measure a man by the style in which he faces adversity,’ he said. ‘You will do, young Ballantyne.’

  In that moment Ralph had come close, once again, to losing control, but then Mr Rhodes had left the saloon with his bearlike gait, leaving the two brothers together at the table.

  ‘I am sorry, Ralph,’ Jordan had said simply. ‘I tried to warn you once. You should not have challenged him. You should not have forced me to choose between you and him. I have put a bottle of whisky in your stateroom. We will reach the village of Matjiesfontein in the morning. There is a first-rate hotel run by a fellow called Logan. You can wait there for the northbound train to take you back to Kimberley tomorrow evening.’

  Now the whisky bottle was empty, Ralph looked at it with astonishment. He should have been comatose from the amount that he had drunk. It was only when he tried to stand that his legs cheated him, and he fell against the washstand. He steadied himself, and peered into his own image in the mirror.

  It was not the face of a drunkard. His jaw was hard-edged, his mouth firm, his eyes dark and angry. He pulled back from the mirror, glanced at the bed, and knew that he could not sleep, not even now when he was almost burned out with rage and hatred. Suddenly he wanted surcease, a short oblivion, and he knew where to find it. At the far end of the saloon, behind the tall double doors of intricate marquetry work, was an array of bottles, the finest and most exotic liquors gathered from every civilized land – that was where he could find oblivion.

  Ralph crossed his stateroom, fumbled with the door catch and stepped out. The cold Karroo night air flicked his hair and he shivered in his shirtsleeves, and then weaved down the narrow corridor towards the saloon. He bumped first one shoulder and then the other against the polished teak bulkheads, and cursed his own clumsiness. He crossed the open balcony between coaches, clutching at the handrail to steady himself, eager to get out of the wind. As he entered the corridor of the second coach, one of the doors slid open ahead of him, and a shaft of yellow light outlined the slim and graceful figure that stepped through.

  Jordan had not seen his brother. He paused in the doorway and looked back into the stateroom beyond. His expression was as soft and as loving as that of a mother leaving her sleeping infant. Gently, with exaggerated care, he closed the sliding door so as not to make the least sound. Then he turned and found himself face to face with Ralph.

  Like his brother, Jordan was coatless, but his shirt was unbuttoned down to the silver buckle of his breeches; the cuffs of his sleeves were not linked as though the garment had been thrown on carelessly, and Jordan’s feet were bare, very white and elegantly shaped against the dark-toned carpet.

  None of this surprised Ralph. He expected that, like himself, Jordan was hungry or visiting the heads. He was too fuddled to ponder on it, and was about to invite Jordan to come with him to find another bottle, when he saw the expression on Jordan’s face.

  He was instantly transported back fifteen years in time, to the thatched bungalow of his father’s camp near the great pit of the Kimberley mine where he and Jordan had passed most of their youth. One night, that long ago, Ralph had surprised his brother in a childish act of onanism, and had seen that same expression, that stricken dread and guilt, upon his lovely face.

  Now again Jordan was transfixed, rigid and pale, staring at Ralph with huge terrified eyes, his hand raised as though to shield his throat. Suddenly Ralph understood. He recoiled in horror and found the door onto the balcony closed behind him. He flattened his back against it, unable to speak for infinite seconds, while they stared at each other. When at last Ralph regained his voice, it was rough as though he had run a hard race.

  ‘By God, now I know why you have no use for whores, for you are one yourself.’

  Ralph turned and tore open the door, he ran out onto the balcony and looked about him wildly, like a creature in a trap, and saw the clean moon-washed spaces of the open veld. He kicked open the gate of the balcony, swung down the steps, and let himself drop into the night.

  The earth hit him with crushing force and he rolled down the ballasting and came to rest face down in the harsh scrub beside the tracks. When he lifted his head, the red running-lights of the caboose were dwindling away into the south, and the sound of the wheels was already mute
d, by distance.

  Ralph pushed himself up, and limped and staggered away into the empty veld. Half a mile from the tracks he fell to his knees again, and gagged and retched as he vomited up the whisky and his own disgust. The dawn was an unearthly orange wash behind a crisp black cut-out of flat-topped hills. Ralph lifted his face to it, and he spoke aloud.

  ‘I swear I will have him. I swear that I will destroy this monster, or destroy myself in the attempt.’

  At that moment the rim of the sun pushed up above the hills and hurled a brazen dart of light into Ralph’s face as though a god had been listening, and had sealed the pact with flame.

  ‘My father killed a great elephant upon this spot. The tusks stand on the stoep at King’s Lynn,’ Ralph said quietly. ‘And I shot a fine lion here myself. It seems strange that things like that will never happen again at this place.’

  Beside him Harry Mellow straightened up from the theodolite, and for a moment his face was grave.

  ‘We have come to conquer the wilderness,’ he said. ‘Soon there will be a high headgear reaching up into the sky, and if the Harkness reef runs true, one day a town with schools and churches, hundreds perhaps thousands of families. Isn’t that what we both want?’

  Ralph shook his head. ‘I would be getting soft if I did not. It just seems strange, when you look at it now.’

  The low valleys were still blowing with the soft pink grasses, the timber along the ridges was tall, the tree trunks silver in the sunlight, but even as they watched one of them shivered against the sky and then toppled with a rending crackling roar. The Matabele axemen swarmed over the fallen giant to lop off the branches and for a moment longer the shadow of regret lingered in Ralph’s eyes, then he turned away.

  ‘You have picked a good site,’ he said, and Harry followed the direction of his gaze.

  ‘Knobs Hill,’ he laughed.

  The thatch and daub hut was sited so that it would not overlook the compound for the black labourers. Instead it had a breathtaking view over the forest to where the southern escarpment dipped away into infinite blue distances. A tiny feminine figure came out of the hut, her apron a merry spot of tulip yellow against the raw red earth which Vicky hoped would one day be a garden. She saw the two men below her and waved.

  ‘By God, that girl has done wonders.’ Harry lifted his hat above his head to acknowledge the greeting, his expression fondly besotted. ‘She copes so well, nothing upsets her – not even the cobra in the lavatory this morning – she just up and blasted it with a shotgun. Of course, I’ll have to fix the seat.’

  ‘It’s her life,’ Ralph pointed out. ‘Put her in a city and she’d probably be in tears in ten minutes.’

  ‘Not my girl,’ said Harry proudly.

  ‘All right, you made a good choice,’ Ralph agreed, ‘but it’s bad form to boost your own wife.’

  ‘Bad form?’ Harry shook his head wonderingly. ‘You limeys!’ he said, and stooped to put his eye back to the lens of the theodolite.

  ‘Leave that damn thing for a minute.’ Ralph pinched his shoulder lightly. ‘I didn’t ride three hundred miles to look at your backside.’

  ‘Fine.’ Harry straightened. ‘I’ll let the work lie. What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Show me how you decided on the site of your No.1 shaft,’ Ralph invited, and they went down the valley, while Harry pointed out the factors which had led him to choose the spot.

  ‘The ancient trenches are inclined at just over forty degrees, and we have three layers of schists over-running. Now I extended out the strike of the ancient reef, and we put in the potholes here—’

  The exploratory potholes were narrow vertical shafts, each under a gantry of raw native timber, spaced out in a straight line along the slope of the hill.

  ‘We went down a hundred feet on five of them, down through the friable levels, and we picked up the upper schist layer again—’

  ‘Schist isn’t going to make us rich.’

  ‘No, but the reef’s still under it.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You hired me for my nose.’ Harry chuckled. ‘I can smell it.’ And led Ralph on. ‘So you see this is the only logical spot for the main shaft. I reckon to intersect the reef again at three hundred feet and once we are on it we can stope it out.’

  A small gang of black men were clearing the collar area of the reef and Ralph recognized the tallest of them.

  ‘Bazo,’ he cried, and the induna straightened up and rested on his pick handle.

  ‘Henshaw,’ he greeted Ralph gravely. ‘Have you come to watch the real men at work?’

  Bazo’s flat hard muscle shone like wet anthracite, and running sweat had left snaking trails down it.

  ‘Real men?’ Ralph asked. ‘You promised me two hundred, and you have brought me twenty.’

  ‘The others are waiting,’ Bazo promised. ‘But they will not come if they cannot bring their women with them. One-Bright-Eye wants the women to stay in the villages.’

  ‘They can bring their women, as many as they wish. I will speak to One-Bright-Eye. Go to them. Choose the strongest and the best. Bring me your old comrades from the Moles impi, and tell them I will pay them well and feed them better, and they can bring their women and breed strong sons to work my mines.’

  ‘I will leave in the morning,’ Bazo decided. ‘And be back before the moon shows its horns again.’

  When the two white men moved on down the survey line, Bazo watched them for a while, his face expressionless and his eyes inscrutable, then he looked at his gang and nodded.

  They spat on their palms, hefted their pick-axes and Bazo sang out the opening chorus of the work chant.

  ‘Ubunyonyo bu ginye entudhla. The little black ants can eat up the giraffe.’

  Bazo had composed the line beside the corpse of a giraffe struck down by the rinderpest, and untouched by all the gorged scavengers of the veld except a colony of the black safari ants which had cleaned the cadaver down to the bone. The significance of it had stayed with Bazo; how, by persistence, even the greatest are overcome, and the seemingly innocent line of gibberish was now insidiously preparing the minds of the amadoda who laboured under him. At the invocation they swung the picks on high, standing shoulder to shoulder, the crescent-headed tools silhouetted against the flat blue of the sky.

  ‘Guga mzimba!’ they replied in soaring chorus. ‘Sala nhliziyo. Though our bodies are worn out, our hearts are constant.’

  And then together the humming ‘Jee!’ as the pick-heads hissed downwards in unison, and with a crash buried themselves in the iron earth.

  Each man levered his pick-head free, took one step forward and braced himself as Bazo sang: ‘The little black ants can eat up the giraffe.’

  And again the act was repeated, and again, and a hundred times more, while the sweat was flung from their bodies and the red dust flew.

  Bazo loped along at a deceptively easy gait that never varied, though the hills were steep and the valleys abrupt. His spirits were joyous, he had not truly realized how much the labours of the last weeks had galled until he was released from them. Once long ago he had worked with pick and shovel in the yellow diamond pit at Kimberley. Henshaw had been his companion then, and the two of them had made a game of the brutal endless labour. It had built their muscles and made them strong, but had caged and cramped their spirits, until neither of them could suffer it longer, and they had escaped together.

  Since those days Bazo had known the savage joy and the divine madness of that terrible moment that the Matabele call the ‘closing in’. He had stood against the king’s enemies and killed in the sunlight with his regimental plumes flying. He had won honours and the respect of his peers. He had sat on the king’s council with the induna’s headring on his brow, and he had come to the brink of the black river and briefly looked beyond it into the forbidden land that men call death, and now he had learned a new truth. It was more painful for a man to go backwards than it is for him to go forward. The drudgery
of menial labour rankled the more now for the glories that had preceded it.

  The path dropped away towards the river and disappeared into the dense dark green vegetation like a serpent into its hole. Bazo followed it down and stopped into the gloomy tunnel, and then froze. Instinctively his right hand reached for the non-existent assegai on its leather thong under the grip of the long shield that also was not there – so hard do old habits die. The shield had long ago been burned on the bonfires with ten thousand other shields, and the steel snapped in half on the anvils of the BSA Company blacksmiths.

  Then he saw this was no enemy that came towards him down the narrow tunnel of riverine bush, and his heart bounded almost painfully against his ribs.

  ‘I see you, Lord,’ Tanase greeted him softly.

  She was slim and upright as the young girl he had captured at the stronghold of Pemba the wizard, the same long graceful legs and clinched-in waist, the same heron’s neck like the stem of a lovely black lily.

  ‘Why are you so far from the village?’ he demanded, as she knelt dutifully before him, and clapped her hands softly at the level of her waist.

  ‘I saw you on the road, Bazo, son of Gandang.’

  And he opened his mouth to question her further, for he had come swiftly, then he changed his mind and felt the little superstitious prickle of insect feet along the nape of his neck. Sometimes still there were things about this woman that disquieted him, for she had not been stripped of all her occult powers in the cave of the Umlimo.

  ‘I see you, Lord,’ Tanase repeated. ‘And my body calls to yours the way a hungry infant fresh roused from sleep frets for the breast.’

  He lifted her up, and held her face between his hands to examine it as though he had picked a rare and beautiful flower in the forest. It had taken much to accustom himself to the way she spoke of their secret bodily desires. He had been taught that it was unseemly for a Matabele wife to show pleasure in the act of generation, and to speak of it the way a man does. Instead she should be merely a pliant and unprotesting vessel for her husband’s seed, ready whenever he was, and unobtrusive and self-effacing when he was not.