The Angels Weep

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Constance!’ Samson ran forward and reached for her. A rifle-butt smashed into his back at the level of his kidneys and flaming agony tore up his spine and burst against the roof of his skull. He dropped to his knees.

  Pain distorted his vision, and the flashlight shone into his face, blinding him. He pushed himself upright with a violent effort, but found that the muzzle of an FN rifle was pressed into his stomach.

  ‘We don’t want you, my friend. Do not interfere in what does not concern you.’

  The Scouts were leading Constance away. She went docilely. She seemed very small and helpless between the two tall soldiers in full battle-dress. She turned and looked back at Samson. Her great soft eyes clung to his face and her lips moved.

  Then for an instant the body of the Land-Rover blocked the beam of the searchlight. Darkness enveloped the group, and a second later when the searchlight caught them again, Constance had broken away from her captors and she was running.

  ‘No!’ screamed Samson in terrible agony. He knew what was about to happen. ‘Stop, Constance, stop.’

  She flew like a lovely moth in the light, the pink of her dress flitting between the trunks of the spathodea trees, and then the bullets ripped chunks of white wet wood from the trees about her, and she was no longer swift and graceful; it was as though the moth’s wings had been shredded by a spiteful child.

  Four soldiers carried her body back, each of them holding a leg or an arm. Constance’s head hung back almost to touch the ground, and the blood from her nostrils and mouth running down her cheeks was thick and black as treacle in the searchlights. They tossed her up into the back of the Land-Rover, where she lay in a tangle of dark limbs like a gazelle shot on the hunting veld.

  Samson Kumalo walked down the main street of Bulawayo. The cool of the night still lingered and the shadows of the jacaranda trees threw tiger stripes across the blue macadam surface. He mingled easily with the lazy flow of humanity along the sidewalk, and he made no effort to avert his face as he passed a BSA police constable in his blue and khaki uniform and pith helmet on the corner of the park.

  While he waited for the traffic lights, he watched the faces about him: the flat incurious expression of the Matabele, their eyes veiled defensively, the bright young white matrons in pretty floral dresses, going about their shopping with a handbag on one shoulder and a machine-pistol on the other. There were very few white men in the streets, and most of those too old for military service – the others were all uniformed and armed.

  The traffic that crossed the intersection in front of him was mostly military. Since the imposition of economic sanctions, the gasolene ration had been reduced to a few litres a month. The farmers coming into town for the day drove the ungainly mine-proofed machines with blast-deflectors and armoured bodies.

  Samson was aware for the first time since Constance’s death of the true extent of his hatred as he watched their white faces. Before today there had been a numbness in him that was anaesthetic, but that was fading.

  He carried no luggage, for a parcel would immediately have attracted attention and invited a body-search. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved shirt and gym shoes – no jacket that might have concealed a weapon; and like the other Matabele around him, his face was blank and expressionless. He was armed only with his hatred.

  The lights changed and he crossed the road unhurriedly and turned down towards the bus station. Even this early it was crowded. There were patient queues of peasants waiting to make the journey back to the tribal trust lands. All of them were loaded with their purchases, bags of meal and salt, tins of cooking-oil or paraffin, bundles of material and cardboard boxes of other luxuries, of matches and soap and candles. They squatted under the iron roofs of the shelters, chattering and laughing, chewing roasted maize cobs, drinking Coca-Cola, some of the mothers feeding their infants from the breast, or scolding their toddlers.

  Every few minutes a bus would draw up in greasy clouds of diesel exhaust, to discharge a horde of passengers, and immediately they were replaced from the endless queues. Samson leaned against the wall of the public latrines. It was the most central position, and he settled himself to wait.

  He did not at first recognize Comrade Tebe. He wore a filthy tattered blue overall with ‘COHEN’S BUTCHERY’ embroidered across the back in red letters. His careless stoop disguised his height, and an expression of moronic goodwill made him appear harmless.

  He passed Samson without a glance in his direction, and entered the latrine. Samson waited a few seconds before he followed him. The toilet reeked of cheap tobacco smoke and stale urine. It was crowded and Comrade Tebe jostled against Samson and slipped a blue cardboard ticket into his hand.

  In one of the cabinets Samson examined it. It was a single third-class ticket, Bulawayo to Victoria Falls. He took his place in the Victoria Falls queue five places behind Tebe. The bus was thirty-five minutes late, and there was the usual rush to heave luggage up onto the roof-racks and find a seat.

  Tebe was in a window seat three rows ahead of Samson. He never looked round while the heavily loaded red bus lumbered out through the northern suburbs. They passed the long avenue of jacaranda trees that Cecil Rhodes had planted and which led up to the gabled State House on the hill above the town where once the royal kraal of Lobengula, King of the Matabele, had stood. They passed the turn-off to the airport and reached the first road-block.

  Every passenger was forced to dismount and identify his luggage. It was opened and searched by the constables manning the road-block, and then a random selection of men and women was made for body-searching. Neither Samson nor Tebe was amongst those selected and fifteen minutes later the bus was reloaded and allowed to pass.

  As they roared on northwards, the acacia and savannah swiftly gave way to stately forest. Samson crouched on the hard bench and watched it pass. Ahead of him Tebe appeared to be sleeping. A little before noon they reached the stop for St Matthew’s Mission on the Gwaai river at the edge of the Sikumi Forest Reserve. Most of the passengers fetched their luggage down from the roof-racks and trudged away along the web of footpaths that led into the forest.

  ‘We will stop here one hour,’ the uniformed driver told the others. ‘You can make a fire and cook your meal.’

  Tebe caught Samson’s eye and sauntered away towards the little general dealer’s store at the crossroads. When Samson followed him into the building, he did not at first find Tebe. Then he saw the door behind the counter was ajar, and the proprietor made a small gesture of invitation towards it. Tebe was waiting for him in the back room amongst the piles of maize sacks and dried skins, the cartons of carbolic soap and the crates of cold drinks.

  He had shed the ragged overalls, and with them the character of the indolent labourer.

  ‘I see you, Comrade Samson,’ he said quietly.

  ‘That is my name no longer,’ Samson answered.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Tungata Zebiwe.’

  ‘I see you, Comrade Tungata,’ Tebe nodded with satisfaction. ‘You worked in the Game Department. You understand guns, do you not?’

  Tebe did not wait for an answer. He opened one of the metal bins of ground meal that stood against the rear wall. He brought out a long bundle wrapped in a green plastic agricultural fertilizer bag and dusted off the powdery white meal. He undid the twine that secured it and handed the weapon that it contained to Tungata Zebiwe, who recognized it instantly. In the early days of the bush war, the security forces had mounted a publicity campaign to tempt informers to report the presence of guerrilla weapons in their villages. They had used television spots and newspaper advertisements. In the remote tribal trust areas they had made massive aerial drops of illustrated pamphlets, all offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of a single one of these.

  It was a 7.62mm automatic Kalashnikov (AK) assault rifle. Tungata took it in his hands and found it surprisingly heavy for its size. Unlike most NATO weapons, it was made not of metal-stamped c
omponents, but of milled steel. The butt and stock were of laminated wood.

  ‘These are the magazines.’ The Rhodesians called it the Banana gun because of these characteristic curved magazines. ‘Loading the mags,’ Tebe demonstrated, pushing the short light brass cartridges down into the mouth with his thumb. ‘Try it.’ Tungata was immediately competent, he had the second magazine loaded with its full thirty rounds in as many seconds.

  ‘Good,’ Tebe nodded again, the wisdom of his choice confirmed. ‘Now to load the rifle. Like this.’ He pressed the forward end of the magazine into the receiver slot and then tilted the rear end upwards. There was a click as the catch engaged.

  In less than three minutes Tebe had demonstrated why the AK was the preferred weapon of guerrilla troops the world around. Its ease of operation and its robust construction made it ideal for the task. With a racial sneer, the Rhodesians called it the only ‘kaffir-proof’ weapon in the shop.

  ‘Selector up as far as it will go and it’s safe,’ Tebe finished the demonstration. ‘Fully down is semi-automatic. In between is fully automatic.’ He showed Tungata the two Cyrillic letters stamped in the block. ‘AB,’ he said. ‘Russian for “Automatic”. Take it.’ He handed it to Tungata, and he watched while he loaded and cocked and unloaded swiftly and neatly. ‘Yes, good. Remember the gun is heavy but it climbs quickly in automatic. Take a firm grip.’

  Tebe rolled the weapon into a cheap grey blanket from which it could be freed instantly.

  ‘The owner of this store is one of us,’ Tebe said. ‘He is even now loading supplies for us onto the bus. It is time for me to tell you why we are here, and where we are going.’

  When Tungata and Tebe left the general dealer’s store and sauntered towards the parked bus, the children had already arrived. There were almost sixty of them, the boys in khaki shirts and short pants, and the girls in blue gymslips with the green sash of St Matthew’s Mission School around their waists. All of them were bare-footed. They were chattering and giggling with excitement at this unexpected outing, this delightful release from the tedium of the schoolroom. Tebe had said they were the Standard VIII pupils, which meant their average age would be fifteen years. All the girls appeared to be pubescent, full-breasted under the coarse cloth of their school uniforms. Under the direction of their class teacher, a young bespectacled Matabele, they were lining up beside the dusty red bus in an obedient and orderly manner. As soon as he saw Tebe, the teacher hurried to meet him.

  ‘It is as you ordered, Comrade.’

  ‘What did you tell the fathers at the Mission?’

  ‘That it was a field exercise. That we would not return until after dark, Comrade.’

  ‘Get the children into the bus.’

  ‘Immediately, Comrade.’

  The bus-driver, with his peaked cap perched authoritatively on his head, began to protest the influx of young passengers, none of them with a ticket, until Tebe stepped up behind him and pressed the Tokarev pistol into his ribs. Then he turned the pale grey of last night’s camp-fire ashes and subsided into his seat. The children scrambled for seats beside the windows, and then looked up with expectant shining faces.

  ‘We are going on an exciting journey,’ the bespectacled teacher told them. ‘You must do exactly as you are told. Do you understand?’

  ‘We understand,’ they replied in dutiful chorus.

  Tebe touched the bus-driver on the shoulder with the barrel of the pistol.

  ‘Drive northwards towards the Zambezi river and the Victoria Falls,’ he ordered softly. ‘If we should meet a security road-block, stop immediately and behave as you always do. Do you hear?’

  ‘Yes,’ mumbled the driver.

  ‘I hear you, Comrade, and I will obey,’ Tebe prompted him.

  ‘I hear you, Comrade, and I will obey.’

  ‘If you do not, then you will be the very first to die. I give you my word on it.’

  Tungata sat on the bench seat at the very rear of the bus, with the blanket-wrapped AK on the floorboards at his feet. He had counted the children and made a list. There were fifty-seven of them, of which twenty-seven were girls. As he asked their names, he made his estimate of each one’s brightness and leadership potential and marked the best on the list with a star. He was pleased that the bespectacled teacher confirmed his choice. He had selected four of the boys and a girl. She was fifteen years old, her name was Miriam and she was a slim pretty child with a quick smile and bright intelligent gaze. There was something in her that reminded him of Constance, and she sat beside him on the bench seat so that he could watch her respond to the first session of indoctrination.

  While the bus roared on northwards beneath the marvellous vaulted roof of the forest, along the straight smooth macadamized highway, Comrade Tebe stood beside the driver’s seat facing the upturned fresh young faces.

  ‘What is my name?’ he asked, and then he told them, ‘I am Comrade Tebe. What is my name?’

  ‘Comrade Tebe,’ they cried.

  ‘Who is Comrade Tebe? Comrade Tebe is your friend and your leader.’

  ‘Comrade Tebe is our friend and our leader.’

  Question and answer repeated again and again.

  ‘Who is Comrade Tungata?’

  ‘Comrade Tungata is our friend and our leader.’

  The children’s voices took on a strident fervour, and there was a mesmeric glitter in their eyes.

  ‘What is the revolution?’

  ‘The revolution is power to the people,’ they shrieked, like Western children of the same age at a pop concert.

  ‘Who are the people?’

  ‘We are the people.’

  ‘Who is the power?’

  ‘We are the power.’

  They swayed in their seats, transported into a state of ecstasy. By this time most of the girls were crying with wild joy.

  ‘Who is Comrade Inkunzi?’

  ‘Comrade Inkunzi is father of the revolution.’

  ‘What is the revolution?’

  ‘The revolution is power to the people.’

  The catechism began again, and impossibly they were carried even higher on the wings of political fanaticism.

  Tungata, himself strangely roused, wondered at the skill and ease with which it was orchestrated. Higher still and higher Tebe carried them, until Tungata found himself shrieking with them in a wonderful catharsis of the hatred and grief which had festered within him since Constance’s murder. He was shaking like a man in fever, and when the bus lurched and threw Miriam’s slim barely matured body against him, he found himself instantly and painfully sexually aroused. It was strange, almost religious, madness that overwhelmed them all, and at the end Comrade Tebe gave them the song.

  ‘This is the song which you will sing as you go into battle, it is the song of your glory, it is the song of the revolution.’

  They sang it in their sweet true children’s voices, the girls harmonizing and clapping in spontaneous rhythm:

  ‘There are guns across the border

  And your murdered fathers stir.

  There are guns across the river

  And your slave-born children weep.

  There is a bloody moon arising

  How long will freedom sleep?’

  Now at last Tungata felt the tears break from his own eyes and pour in scalding streams down his face.

  ‘There are guns in Angola

  And a whisper on the wind.

  There are guns in Maputo

  And a rich red crop to reap.

  There’s a bloody moon arising

  How long will freedom sleep?’

  It left them stunned and exhausted, like the survivors of some terrible ordeal. Comrade Tebe spoke quietly to the bus-driver, and they turned off the main road onto a barely noticeable track into the forest. The bus was forced to slow down to a crawl, as it followed the serpentine track that jinked around the bigger trees and dipped through dry riverbeds. It was dark by the time they stopped. The track had petered out and most of the
children were asleep. Tungata went down the bus waking them and moving them out.

  The boys were sent to find firewood and the girls set to preparing a simple meal of maize meal and sweet tea. Tebe led Tungata aside and explained to him.

  ‘We have entered the liberated area, the Rhodesians no longer patrol this strip of territory. From here we go on foot. It will be two days to the drifts. You will march in the rear of the column, be alert for deserters. Until we reach the river, there is always the danger from the faint-hearted. Now I will deal with the driver.’

  Tebe led the subdued and terrified man away from the camp, with an arm around his shoulders. He returned alone twenty minutes later, by which time most of the children had eaten and had curled up like puppies on the bare earth beside the fires.

  The girl Miriam came to them shyly with a bowl of maize cake and the two men sat close together while they ate. Tebe spoke with his mouth full. ‘You think them babes.’ He indicated the sleeping schoolchildren. ‘Yet they learn swiftly and believe what they are taught without question. They have no concept of death, therefore they know no fear. They obey, and when they die there is no loss of trained men who cannot be replaced. The Simbas used them in the Congo, the Viet Cong used them against the Americans, they are the perfect fodder on which the revolution is nurtured.’ He scraped out the bowl. ‘If any of the girls is to your liking, you may use her. That is one of their duties.’

  Tebe stood up. ‘You will take the first watch. I will relieve you at midnight.’ Still chewing, he walked away. At the nearest fire he squatted down beside where Miriam lay and whispered something to her. She stood up immediately, and followed him trustingly out of the firelight.

  Later, when Tungata patrolled the perimeter of the sleeping camp, he heard a strangled little wail of pain from the darkness where Tebe and the girl lay. Then there was a sound of a blow, and the cry choked off into gentle sobbing. Tungata moved around to the opposite side of the camp, where he did not have to listen.