by Wilbur Smith
Tungata saw the significance of that and he murmured to himself, ‘They will grow as strong as the great tree once was – and I also am a shoot of the old king’s stock.’
There was a light tread on the gravel path behind Tungata. He frowned as he turned, but the frown cleared as he saw who it was.
‘Comrade Leila,’ he greeted the white woman with the pale intense face.
‘I am honoured that you call me that, Comrade Minister,’ Leila came directly to him and held out her hand.
‘You and your family have always been true friends of my people,’ he told her simply, as he took her hand. ‘Beneath this tree your grandmother, Robyn Ballantyne, met often with Lobengula, my great-great-uncle. She came at his invitation to give him advice and counsel.’
‘Now, I come at your invitation, and you must believe that I will always be yours to command.’ He released her hand and turned back to the tree, his voice had a quiet reflective quality.
‘You were with me when the Umlimo, the spirit medium of our people, made her final prediction. I thought it was right that you should be there when that prediction is brought to fruition.’
‘The stone falcons have returned to roost,’ Leila St John agreed softly. ‘But that is not all the Umlimo’s prophecy. She foresaw that the man who brought the falcons back to Zimbabwe would rule the land as once did the Mambos and Monomatopas, as once did your ancestors Lobengula and great Mzilikazi.’
Tungata turned slowly to face her once more.
‘That is a secret that you and I share, Comrade Leila.’
‘It will remain our secret, Comrade Tungata, but you and I both know that there will be need during the difficult years that lie ahead for a man as strong as Mzilikazi was strong.’
Tungata did not reply. He looked up into the branches of the ancient tree, and his lips moved in a silent supplication. Then he replaced the gold-rimmed glasses over his eyes, and turned back to Leila.
‘The car is waiting,’ he said.
It was a black bullet-proofed Mercedes 500. There were four police motorcycle outriders and a second smaller Mercedes for his bodyguards. The small convoy drove very fast, with the police sirens shrieking and wailing, and the colourful little ministerial pennant fluttering on the front of Tungata’s Mercedes.
They went down the three-kilometre-long jacarandalined driveway that Cecil Rhodes had designed as the approach to his State House, and then crossed the main commercial section of Bulawayo, flying through the red lights at the junctions to the geometrical grid of roads and avenues, past the town square where the wagons had laagered during the rebellion when Bazo’s impis had threatened the town, down along the wide avenue that bisected the meticulously groomed lawns of the public gardens, and at last turned off sharply and drew up in front of the modern three-storey museum building.
There was a red carpet laid down the front steps of the museum and a small gathering of dignitaries, headed by the Mayor of Bulawayo, the first Matabele ever to hold that position, and the curator of the museum.
‘Welcome, Comrade Minister, on this historic occasion.’
They escorted him down the long corridor to the public auditorium. Every seat was already filled, and as Tungata entered, the entire gathering stood and applauded him, the whites in the gathering outdoing the Matabele as a positive demonstration of their goodwill.
Tungata was introduced to the other dignitaries on the speakers’ platform. ‘This is Doctor Van der Walt, curator of the Southern African Museum.’
He was a tall balding man with a heavy South African accent. Tungata shook hands with him briefly and unsmilingly. This man represented a nation that had actively opposed the people’s republican army’s march to glory. Tungata turned to the next in line.
She was a young white woman, and she was immediately familiar to Tungata. He stared at her sharply, not quite able to place her. She had gone very pale under his scrutiny, and her eyes were dark and terrified as those of a hunted animal. The hand in his was limp and cold, and trembled violently – still Tungata could not decide where he had seen her before.
‘Doctor Carpenter is the curator of the Entomological Section.’ The name meant nothing to Tungata, and he turned away from her, irritated by his own inability to place her. He took his seat in the centre of the platform facing the auditorium, and the South African Museum’s curator rose to address the gathering.
‘All the credit for the successful negotiation of the exchange between our two institutions must go to the honourable minister who today honours us with his presence.’ He was reading from a typed sheet, clearly anxious to have done with speaking and sit down again. ‘It was at Minister Tungata Zebiwe’s initiative that discussions first took place, and he sustained these during the difficult period when we appeared to be making little or no progress. Our great problem was in setting a relative value on two such diverse exhibits. On one hand you had one of the world’s most extensive and exhaustive collections of tropical insects, representing many decades of dedicated collecting and classification, while on the other hand we had these unique artefacts from an unknown civilization.’ Van der Walt seemed to be warming to his subject enough to look up from his prepared script. ‘However, it was the honourable minister’s determination to regain for his new nation a priceless part of its heritage that at last prevailed, and it is to his credit entirely that we are gathered here today.’
When at last Van der Walt sat down again, there was a polite splattering of applause, and then an expectant silence as Tungata Zebiwe rose to his feet. The minister had an immense presence, and without yet uttering a word, he transfixed them with his smoky unwavering gaze.
‘My people have a saying that was passed down from the wise ones of our tribe,’ he started in his deep rumbling voice. ‘It is this: The white eagle has stooped on the stone falcons and cast them to earth. Now the eagle shall lift them up again and they will fly afar. There shall be no peace in the kingdoms of the Mambos or the Monomatopas until they return. For the white eagle will war with the black bull until the stone falcons return to roost.’
Tungata paused a moment, letting his words hang between them, heavy with portent. Then he went on. ‘I am sure all of you here know the story of how the bird statues of Zimbabwe were seized by Rhodes’ plunderers, and despite the efforts of my ancestors to prevent it, how they were carried away southwards across the Limpopo river.’
Tungata left the podium and strode to the curtained-off section at the back of the speakers’ platform. ‘My friends, my comrades,’ he turned to face them once more. ‘The stone falcons have returned to roost!’ he said, and drew aside the curtains.
There was a long breathless silence and the audience stared avidly at the serried rank of tall soapstone carvings that was revealed. There were six of them, and they were those that Ralph Ballantyne had lifted from the ancient stone temple. The one that his father had taken on his first visit to Zimbabwe thirty years before had burned in the pyre of Groote Schuur. These six were all that remained.
The soapstone from which each of the birds was carved was of a greenish satiny texture. Each bird crouched on top of a plinth that was ornamented by a pattern of intermeshed triangles like the teeth in a shark’s jaw. The statues were not identical: some of the columns supported crocodiles and lizards that crawled up towards the bird image that surmounted it.
Some of the statues had been extensively damaged, chipped and eroded, but the one in the centre of the line was almost perfect. The bird was a stylized raptor, with its long bladelike wings crossed over its back. The head was proud and erect, the cruel beak hooked and the blind eyes haughty and unforgiving. It was a magnificent and evocative work of primitive art, and the crowded auditorium rose as one person in spontaneous applause.
Tungata Zebiwe reached out and touched the head of the central bird. His back was turned to his audience so that they could not see his lips move, and the applause drowned his whisper.
‘Welcome home,’ he whispered. ‘Welcome
home to Zimbabwe. Bird of my destiny.’
‘Now you do not want to go!’ Janine was shaking with fury. ‘After all the pains I have gone to, to arrange this meeting. Now you simply do not want to go!’
‘Jan, it’s a waste of time.’
‘Thank you!’ She put her face closer to his. ‘Thank you for that. Do you realize what it would cost me to face that monster again, but I was prepared to do it for you, and now it’s a waste of time.’
‘Jan, please—’
‘Damn you, Craig Mellow, it’s you who are a waste of time, you and your endless cowardice.’ He gasped and drew away from her. ‘Cowardice,’ she repeated deliberately. ‘I say that, and I mean it. You were in too much of a blue funk to send that bloody book of yours to a publisher. I had literally to tear it away from you and send it off.’ She broke off, panting with anger, searching for words sharp enough to express her fury.
‘You are afraid to face life, afraid to leave this cave you have built for yourself, afraid to take the chance of somebody rejecting your book, afraid to make any effort to float this thing you have built.’ With a wide, extravagant gesture she indicated the yacht. ‘I see it now, you don’t really want to get onto the ocean, you prefer to hide here, swilling gin and covering yourself with dreams. You don’t want to walk, you prefer to drag yourself around on your backside – it’s your excuse, your grand cast-iron excuse to dodge life.’
Again she had to stop for breath, and then she went on. ‘That’s right, put that little-boy look on your face, make those big sad eyes, it works every time, doesn’t it? Well, not this time, buster, not this time. They have offered me the job of curator at the South African Museum. I’m to see the collection safely installed in its new home, and I’m going to take it. Do you hear me, Craig Mellow? I’m going to leave you to crawl around on the floor because you’re too damned scared to stand up.’ She flung herself out of the saloon and into the forward cabin. She began to snatch her clothes out of the stowage and throw them onto the bunk.
‘Jan,’ he said behind her.
‘What is it now?’ She did not look around.
‘If we are going to be there by three o’clock, then we’d better leave right away,’ Craig said.
‘You can drive,’ she said and pushed past him and went up in the cockpit, leaving him to follow at his best speed.
They drove in silence until they reached the entrance to the long straight avenue of jacaranda trees. At the far end of it were the white gates of State House, and Janine stared straight ahead at them.
‘I’m sorry, Craig. I said things that were hard to say and must have been harder to listen to. The truth is that I am as afraid as you are. I am going to face the man that destroyed me. If I can do it, then perhaps I can retrieve something of myself from the ruins. I lied when I said it was for you. It’s for both of us.’
The police guard came to the driver’s side of the maroon Land-Rover, and without a word Craig handed him the appointment card. The constable checked it against his visitors’ book, and then made Craig fill in his name and address and the reason for his visit.
Craig wrote: ‘Visit to Comrade Minister Tungata Zebiwe’, and the guard took the book back from him and saluted smartly.
The wrought-iron gates swung open and Craig drove through. They turned left towards the minister’s annexe, with just a glimpse of the white gables and blue slate roof of the main residence between the trees.
Craig parked the Land-Rover in the public car park, and slid into the wheelchair. Janine walked beside him to the steps that led up onto the veranda of the annexe, and there was an awkward moment while Craig negotiated them by the sheer strength of his arms. Then they followed the signs down the trestled veranda, beneath the blue wistaria and climbing purple bougainvillaea to the door of the antechamber. One of the minister’s bodyguards searched Janine’s handbag, frisked Craig quickly but expertly, and then stood aside to let them enter the light and airy room.
There were lighter square patches on the walls from where the portraits of previous white administrators and politicians had been removed. The only wall decoration now were two flags draped on either side of the inner double doors, the flags of ZIPRA and of the new Zimbabwe nation.
Craig and Janine waited for almost half an hour, and then the doors opened and another suited bodyguard came through.
‘The Comrade Minister will see you now.’
Craig wheeled himself forward and into the inner room. On the facing wall were portraits of the nation’s leaders, Robert Mugabe and Josiah Inkunzi. In the centre of the wall-to-wall carpeting stood a huge desk in the style of Louis XIV. Tungata Zebiwe sat behind his desk, and even its size could not belittle him.
Involuntarily Craig stopped halfway to the desk.
‘Sam?’ he whispered. ‘Samson Kumalo? I did not know – I’m sorry—’
The minister stood up abruptly. Craig’s shock was reflected in his own face.
‘Craig,’ he whispered, ‘what happened to you?’
‘The war,’ Craig answered, ‘I guess I was on the wrong side, Sam.’
Tungata recovered swiftly, and sat down again. ‘That name is best forgotten,’ he said quietly. ‘Just as what we were once to each other should also be forgotten. You made an appointment through Doctor Carpenter to see me. What was it that you wished to discuss?’
Tungata listened attentively while Craig spoke, and then he leaned back in his chair.
‘From what you tell me, you have already made an application to the exchange control authority for a permit to export this vessel of yours. That permit was refused?’
‘That is correct, Comrade Minister,’ Craig nodded.
‘Then what made you think I would want to or even have the authority to countermand that decision?’ Tungata asked.
‘I didn’t really think you would,’ Craig admitted.
‘Comrade Minister,’ Janine spoke for the first time, ‘I asked for this appointment because I believe that there are special circumstances in this case. Mr Mellow has been crippled for life, and his only possession is this vessel.’
‘Doctor Carpenter, he is fortunate. The forests and wilderness of this land are thickly sown with the unmarked graves of young men and women who gave more than Mr Mellow for freedom. You should have a better reason than that.’
‘I think I have,’ Janine said softly. ‘Comrade Minister, you and I have met before.’
‘Your face is familiar to me,’ Tungata agreed. ‘But I do not recall—’
‘It was at night, in the forest beside the wreckage of an aircraft—’ She saw the flare of recognition in those brooding smoky eyes. They seemed to bore into her very soul. Terror came at her again in suffocating overwhelming waves, she felt the earth sway giddily under her feet, and his face filled all her vision. It took all that remained of her strength and courage to speak again.
‘You won a land, but in doing so, have you lost for ever your humanity?’
She saw the shift in that dark hypnotic gaze, the almost imperceptible softening of his mouth. Then Tungata Zebiwe looked down at his own powerful hands on the white blotter before him.
‘You are a persuasive advocate, Doctor Carpenter,’ he said quietly. He picked up the gold pen from the desk set and wrote briefly on the monogrammed pad. He tore off the sheet and stood up. He came around the desk and towards Janine.
‘In war there are atrocities committed even by decent men,’ he said quietly. ‘War makes monsters of us all. I thank you for reminding me of my own humanity.’ He handed her the sheet of paper. ‘Take that to the exchange control director,’ he told her. ‘You will have your permit.’
‘Thank you, Sam.’ Craig looked up at him, and Tungata stooped over him and embraced him briefly but ardently.
‘Go in peace, old friend,’ he said, in Sindebele, and then straightened up. ‘Get him out of here, Doctor Carpenter, before he unmans me completely,’ Tungata Zebiwe ordered harshly, and strode to the wide sash-windows.
He stare
d out across the green lawns until he heard the double doors close behind him, then he sighed softly and went back to his desk.
‘It’s strange to think that that is the same view of Africa as Robyn and Zouga Ballantyne had in 1860 when they arrived in the slaving clipper Huron.’ Craig pointed back over the stern at the great massif of Table Mountain standing perpetual guard over the southernmost tip of a continent, wreathed in the silver clouds that spilled over her weathered brow of stark rock. Around the foot of the mountain, like a necklace around the throat, were strung the white buildings with their windows shining in the early sunlight like ten thousand beacon fires.
‘This is where it all began, my family’s great African adventure, and this is where it all ends.’
‘It’s an end,’ Janine agreed quietly. ‘But it’s also a new beginning.’ She was standing in the stern, with one hand on the back stay for balance.
She wore a thin tee-shirt and blue denim pants with the legs hacked off short, exposing her long brown legs. During the months of final fitting-out of the yacht, in the basin of the Royal Cape Yacht Club, she had put herself on a strict diet: no wine, no gin and no white food. Her waist had fined down, and the buttocks that peeked out from under the ragged bottoms of her pants were round and tight and hard once again.
She had cut her hair as short as a boy’s and the salt sea air had made it curl tightly against her scalp. The sun had darkened her face and burned away the blemishes around the corners of her mouth and across her chin. Now she revolved slowly, taking in the wide horizon ahead of them.
‘It’s so big, Craig,’ she said, ‘aren’t you scared?’
‘Scared as hell,’ he grinned up at her. ‘I am not certain whether out next landfall will be South America or India, but it’s exciting also.’
‘I’ll make us a mug of cocoa,’ she said.