The Angels Weep

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Stop crying, you silly girl,’ Robyn scolded her lovingly. ‘You will make me start. Just look at you! How skinny you are, we will have to feed you up! And who is this?’

  The black boy dressed only in a soiled loincloth came forward shyly.

  ‘This is my grandson, Tungata Zebiwe.’

  ‘I did not recognize him, he has grown so big.’

  ‘Nomusa, I have brought him to you so that you can teach him to read and to write.’

  ‘Well, the first thing we will have to do is give him a civilized name. We shall call him Gideon and forget that horrible vengeful name.’

  ‘Gideon,’ Juba repeated. ‘Gideon Kumalo. And you will teach him to write?’

  ‘We have a lot of work to do first,’ Robyn said firmly. ‘Gideon can go into the mud puddle with the other children and you can help me pack the moulds. We have to start all over, Juba, and build it all up from the beginning again.’

  ‘I admire the grandeur and loneliness of the Matopos, and therefore I desire to be buried in the Matopos on the hill which I used to visit and which I called the “View of the World” in a square to be cut in the rock on the top of the hill and covered with a plain brass plate with these words thereon: “Here lie the remains of CECIL JOHN RHODES”.’

  So when at last the pumping of his diseased heart ceased, he came to Bulawayo once more along the railroad that Ralph Ballantyne had laid. The speical saloon coach in which his coffin rode was draped with purple and black, and at each town and siding along the way, those whom he had called ‘my Rhodesians’ brought wreaths to pile upon the casket. From Bulawayo the coffin was taken on a guncarriage into the Matopos Hills and the pure black bullocks that drew it plodded slowly up the rounded egg-shaped dome of granite that he had chosen.

  Above the open sepulchre stood a tripod gantry, with block and chain at the peak, and around it a dense throng of humanity: elegant gentlemen, uniformed officers, and ladies with black ribbons on their hats. Then, farther out, there stretched a vast black sea of half-naked Matabele, twenty thousand come to see him go down into the earth. At their head were the indunas who had met him near this same hill to treat for peace. There were Gandang and Babiaan and Somabula, all of them very old men now.

  Gathered at the head of the grave were the men who had replaced them in real power, the administrators of the Charter Company, Milton and Lawley, and the members of the first Rhodesian Council. Ralph Ballantyne was amongst them with his young wife beside him.

  Ralph’s expression remained grave and tragic as the coffin was lowered on its chains into the gaping tomb, and the bishop read aloud the obituary that Mr Rudyard Kipling had composed:

  ‘It is his will that he look forth

  Across the world he won,

  The granite of the ancient north,

  Great spaces washed with sun.

  There shall he patient take his seat

  (As when the death he dared)

  And there await a people’s feet

  In the paths that he prepared.’

  As the heavy brass plaque was lowered into position, Gandang stepped out of the ranks of the Matabele, and lifted one hand.

  ‘The father is dead,’ he cried, and then in a single blast of sound, like the thunder of a tropical storm, the Matabele nation gave the salute they had never given to a white man before.

  ‘Bayete!’ they shouted as one man. ‘Bayete!’

  The salute to a king.

  The funeral crowds dispersed, slowly, seemingly reluctantly. The Matabele drifted away like smoke amongst the valleys of their sacred hills, and the white folk followed the path down the face of the granite dome. Ralph helped Elizabeth over the uneven footing, and he smiled down at her.

  ‘The man was a rogue, and you weep for him,’ he teased her gently.

  ‘It was all so moving,’ Elizabeth dabbed at her eyes. ‘When Gandang did that—’

  ‘Yes. He fooled them all, even those he led into captivity. Damn me, but it’s a good thing they buried him in solid rock and put a lid on him, or he would have squared the devil and got out of it at the last moment.’

  Ralph turned her out of the stream of people, of mourners who were following the path.

  ‘I told Isazi to bring the carriage round to the back of the hill, we don’t want to be caught in the crush.’

  Under their feet the granite was painted a vivid orange with lichen, and the little blue-headed lizards scuttled for cover in the crevices and then glared at them with their throats throbbing and the cockscomb crests of the monstrous heads fully erect. Ralph paused on the lower slope of the dome, where a twisted and deformed msasa tree had found precarious purchase in one of the crevices and he looked back up at the peak.

  ‘So he’s dead at long last, but his Company still governs us. I have work to do yet, work that may take the rest of my life.’

  Then abruptly and uncharacteristically, Ralph shivered, although the sun was blazing hot.

  ‘What is it, my dear?’ Elizabeth turned to him with quick concern.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I just walked over my own grave.’ Then he chuckled. ‘We’d best go down now before Jon-Jon drives poor Isazi completely out of his mind.’

  He took her arm and led her down to where Isazi had parked the carriage in the shade, and from a hundred paces they picked up the piping of Jonathan’s questions and speculations, each punctuated with a demanding: ‘Uthini, Isazi? What do you say, Isazi?’

  And the patient reply: ‘Eh-heh, Bawu. Yes, yes, little Gadfly.’

  PART TWO

  1977

  The Land-Rover turned off the black-topped road, and as soon as it hit the dirt track, the pale dust boiled out from under its back wheels. It was an elderly vehicle, the desert-coloured paintwork was scored and scratched by thorn and branch down to the bare metal. Rock and sharp shale had bitten chunks of rubber out of the heavily lugged tyres.

  The doors and the top were off and the cracked windshield lay flat on the bonnet, so that the wind swept over the two men in the front seat. Behind their heads stood the gun-rack. The forks, lined with foam rubber, held a formidable battery of weapons: two semi-automatic FN rifles, sprayed with dun and green camouflage paint, a short 9mm Uzi submachine-gun with the extra long magazine clipped on ready for instant use, and, still in its canvas slip-cover, a heavy Colt Sauer ‘Grand African’ whose .458 magnum cartridge could knock a bull elephant off its feet. From the uprights of the gun-rack dangled haversacks containing spare clips and magazines, and a damp canvas waterbottle. They swung harmoniously with each jolt and lurch of the Land-Rover.

  Craig Mellow drove with his foot jamming the accelerator to the floorboards. Though the vehicle’s body clattered and banged loosely, he had always serviced and tuned the engine himself, and the speedometer needle pressed against the stop pin at the end of the dial. There is only one way to go into an ambush, and that is flat out. Get through it as fast as possible, remembering always that they usually laid it out at least half a kilometre deep. Even at 150 K’s an hour, that meant receiving fire for twelve seconds. In that time a good man with an AK 47 can get off three magazines of thirty rounds each.

  Yes, the way to go in was fast – but, of course, a landmine was a beast of an entirely different colour. When they boosted one of those sweethearts with ten kilos of plastic, it kicked you and your vehicle fifty feet in the air and shot your spine out through the top of your skull.

  So although Craig lounged comfortably on the hard leather seat, his eyes scoured the road ahead. This late in the day there had been traffic through ahead of him, and he drove for the diamond tracks in the dust, but he watched for an extraneous tuft of grass, an old cigarette packet or even a pat of dried cow-dung that could conceal the marks of a dig in the road. Of course, this close to Bulawayo he was in more danger from a drunken driver than from terrorist activity, but it was wise to nurture the habit.

  Craig glanced sideways at his passenger, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The man swivelle
d in his seat and reached into the cool box in the back. He brought out two cans of Lion beer with the dew on them, and while he did so, Craig flicked his attention back to the road.

  Craig Mellow was twenty-nine years old, although the floppy thatch of dark hair blowing all over his forehead, the innocent candour of his hazel eyes, and the vulnerable slant to his wide gentle mouth gave him the air of a small boy who expects to be unjustly reprimanded at any moment. He still wore the embroidered green shoulder flashes of a ranger in the Department of Wildlife and Nature Conservation on his khaki bush-shirt.

  Beside him Samson Kumalo pulled the tabs off the beer cans. He wore the same uniform, but he was a tall Matabele with a deep intelligent forehead and a hard smooth-shaven lantern jaw. He ducked as a spurt of froth flew from the cans, and then handed one of them to Craig and kept one for himself. Craig saluted him with his can and swigged a mouthful, then licked the white moustache from his upper lip, and put the Land-Rover to the twisting road up the Khami hills.

  Before they reached the crest, Craig dropped the empty can into the plastic trash-bag that hung from the dash, and slowed the Land-Rover, looking for the turn-off.

  Tall yellow grass hid the small faded sign.

  KHAMI ANGLICAN MISSION

  Staff Cottages. No through road.

  It was at least a year since Craig had last driven this road and he almost missed it.

  ‘Here it is!’ Samson warned him, and he swung sharply onto the secondary track. It jinked through the forest, then came abruptly to the long straight avenue of spathodea trees that led down to the staff village. The trunks were thicker than a man’s chest, and the dark green branches met overhead. At the head of the avenue, almost screened by the trees and the long grass, was a low whitewashed wall with a rusty wrought-iron gate. Craig pulled onto the verge and switched off the engine.

  ‘Why are we stopping here?’ Samson asked.

  They always spoke English when they were alone; just as they always spoke Sindebele when anyone else was listening; just as Samson called him ‘Craig’ in private and ‘Nkosi’ or ‘Mambo’ at all other times. It was a tacit understanding between them, for in this tortured war-torn land, there were those who had taken Samson’s fluent English as the mark of a ‘cheeky mission boy’, and recognized by the easy intimacy between the two men that Craig was that thing of doubtful loyalties, a kaffir-lover1.

  ‘Why are we stopping at the old cemetery?’ Samson repeated.

  ‘All that beer.’ Craig climbed out of the Land-Rover and stretched. ‘I have to pump ship.’

  He relieved himself against the battered front wheel, then went to sit on the low wall of the graveyard, swinging his long bare sun-browned legs. He wore khaki shorts and suede desert boots without socks, for the barbed seeds of arrow grass stick in knitted wool.

  Craig looked down onto the roofs of Khami Mission Station that lay below the wooded hills. Some of the older buildings, dating back to before the turn of the century, were thatched, although the new school and hospital were tiled with red terracotta. However, the rows of low-cost housing in the compound were covered with unpainted corrugated asbestos. They made an unsightly grey huddle beside the lovely green of the irrigated fields. They offended Craig’s aesthetic sense, and he looked away.

  ‘Come on, Sam, let’s get cracking—’ Craig broke off and frowned. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Samson had gone through the wrought-iron gate into the walled cemetery and was urinating casually on one of the gravestones.

  ‘Jesus, Sam, that’s desecration.’

  ‘An old family custom.’ Samson shook himself and zipped up. ‘My Grandpa Gideon taught it to me,’ he explained, and then switched into Sindebele. ‘Giving water to make the flower grow again,’ he said.

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘The man that lies down there killed a Matabele girl called Imbali, the Flower,’ said Samson. ‘My grandfather always pees on his grave whenever he passes this way.’

  Craig’s shock was gradually replaced by curiosity. He swung his legs over the wall, and went to stand beside Samson.

  ‘Sacred to the memory of General Mungo St John, Killed during the Matabele Rebellion of 1896.’

  Craig read the inscription aloud:

  ‘Man hath no greater love than this that he

  lay down his life for another.

  Intrepid sailor, brave soldier, faithful

  husband and devoted father.

  Always remembered by his widow Robyn and

  his son Robert.’

  Craig combed the hair out of his eyes with his fingers, ‘Judging by his advertising, he was one hell of a guy.’

  ‘He was a bloody murderer – he, as much as any one man could, provoked the rebellion.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  Craig passed on to the next grave, and read that inscription.

  ‘Here lie the mortal remains of

  DOCTOR ROBYN ST JOHN, Née BALLANTYNE

  Founder of Khami Mission,

  Departed this life April 16th 1931, aged 94 years.

  Well done thou good and faithful servant.’

  He glanced back at Samson. ‘Do you know who she was?’

  ‘My grandfather calls her Nomusa, the Girl-Child of Mercy. She was one of the most beautiful people who ever lived.’

  ‘Never heard of her either.’

  ‘You should have, she was your great-great-grandmother.’

  ‘I have never bothered much with the family history.

  Mother and father were second cousins, that’s all I know.

  Mellows and Ballantynes for generations back – I’ve never

  sorted them all out.’

  ‘“A man without a past, is a man without a future”,’ Samson quoted.

  ‘You know, Sam, sometimes you get up my nose.’ Craig grinned at him. ‘You’ve got an answer for everything.’

  He walked on down the row of old graves, some of them with elaborate headstones, doves and groups of mourning angles, and they were decked with faded artificial flowers in domes of clear glass. Others were covered with simple concrete slabs in which the lettering had eroded to the point of illegibility. Craig read those he could.

  ‘ROBERT ST JOHN Aged 54 years

  Son of Mungo and Robyn.’

  ‘JUBA KUMALO Aged 83 years

  Fly little Dove.’

  And then he stopped as he saw his own surname.

  ‘VICTORIA MELLOW Née CODRINGTON

  Died 8th April 1936 aged 63 years

  Daughter of Clinton and Robyn, wife of Harold.’

  ‘Hey Sam, if you were right about the others, then this must have been my great-grandmother.’

  There was a tuft of grass growing out of a crack through the slab, and Craig stooped and plucked it out. And as he did so, he felt a bond of affinity with the dust beneath that stone. It had laughed and loved and given birth that he might live.

  ‘Hi there, Gran,’ he whispered. ‘I wonder what you were really like?’

  ‘Craig, it’s almost one o’clock,’ Sam interrupted him.

  ‘Okay, I’m coming.’ But Craig lingered a few moments longer, held by that unaccustomed nostalgia. ‘I’ll ask Bawu,’ he decided and went back to the Land-Rover.

  He stopped again outside the first cottage of the village. The small yard was freshly raked and there were petunias in tubs on the veranda.

  ‘Look here, Sam,’ Craig began awkwardly. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do now. You could join the police, like I am doing. Perhaps we could work it that we were together again.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Sam agreed expressionlessly.

  ‘Or I could talk to Bawu about getting you a job at King’s Lynn.’

  ‘Clerk in the pay office?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yea! I know.’ Craig scratched his ear. ‘Still, it’s something.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Sam murmured.

  ‘Hell, I feel bad, but you didn’t have to come with me, you know
. You could have stayed in the department.’

  ‘Not after what they did to you.’ Sam shook his head.

  ‘Thanks, Sam.’

  They sat silently for a while, then Sam climbed down and lugged his bag out of the back of the Land-Rover.

  ‘I’ll come out and see you as soon as I’m fixed up. We’ll work something out,’ Craig promised. ‘Keep in touch, Sam.’

  ‘Sure.’ Sam held out his hand, and they shook briefly.

  ‘Hamba gashle, go in peace,’ Sam said.

  ‘Shala gashle. Stay in peace.’

  Craig started the Land-Rover and swung back the way they had come. As he drove up the avenue of spathodea, he glanced in the rear-view mirror. Sam was standing in the centre of the road with his bag on one shoulder, watching him go. There was a hollow feeling of bereavement in Craig’s chest. The two of them had been together for so long.

  ‘I’ll work something out,’ he repeated determinedly.

  Craig slowed at the top of the rise as he always did here, anticipating his first glimpse of the homestead, but when it came it was with that little shock of disappointment.

  Bawu had stripped the thatch off the room and replaced it with dull grey corrugated asbestos sheet. It had to be done, of course, an RPG-7 rocket fired into the thatch from outside the perimeter – and the whole building would have gone up like the fifth of November. Still Craig resented the change, just as he did the loss of the beautiful jacaranda trees. They had been planted by Bawu’s grandfather, old Zouga Ballantyne who built King’s Lynn back in the early 1890s. In spring their gentle rain of blue petals had carpeted the lawns, but they had been cut down to open a field of defensive fire around the house, and in their place now stood the ten-foot security fence of diamond mesh and barbed wire.

  Craig drove down into the shallow dip below the main homestead towards the complex of offices, storerooms and tractor workshops which were the heart of the vast sprawling ranch. Before he was halfway down, a lanky figure appeared in the high doorway of the workshop, and stood with arms akimbo watching him approach.