by Wilbur Smith
‘You are right, my brother,’ Hendrick nodded. ‘I had not looked that far into the future. He is the enemy of our people. If he and his kind come to power then we will learn a bitter lesson in slavery. I must deliver him to the vengeance of those who seek after him.’
Moses Gama raised his noble head and looked across the fire at his elder brother.
‘It is the weakness of the multitudes that they cannot see the horizon – their gaze is fixed only as far ahead as their bellies or their genitals,’ Moses said. ‘You have admitted to that weakness – why, my brother, do you not seek to rise above it? Why do you not raise your eyes and look to the future?’
‘I do not understand.’
‘The greatest danger to our people is their own patience and passivity. We are a great herd of cattle under the hand of a cunning herdsman. He keeps us quiescent with a paternal despotism, and most of us, knowing no better, are lulled into an acceptance which we mistake for contentment. Yet the herdsman milks us and at his pleasure eats of our flesh. He is our enemy, for the slavery in which he holds us is so insidious that it’s impossible to goad the herd to rebel against it.’
‘If he is our enemy, what of these others that you call the hard Boers?’ Hendrick was perplexed. ‘Are they not a fiercer enemy?’
‘Upon them will depend the ultimate freedom of our people. They are men without subtlety and artifice. Not for them the smile and kind word that disguises the brutal act. They are angry men filled with fear and hatred. They hate the Indians and the Jews, they hate the English, but most of all they hate and fear the black tribes, for we are many and they are few. They hate and fear us because they have what is rightly ours, and they will not be able to conceal their hatred. When they come to power, they will teach our people the true meaning of slavery. By their oppressions, they will transform the tribes from a herd of complacent cattle into a great stampede of enraged wild buffalo before whose strength nothing can stand. We must pray for this white boy of yours and all he stands for. The future of our people depends upon him.’
Hendrick sat for a long time staring into the fire, and then slowly raised his great bald head and looked at his brother with awe.
‘I sometimes think, son of my father, that you are the wisest man of all our tribe,’ he whispered.
Swart Hendrick sent for a sangoma, a tribal medicine man. He made a poultice for Manfred’s shoulder that when applied, hot and evil-smelling, proved highly efficacious and within ten days Manfred was fit to travel again.
The same sangoma provided a herbal dye for Manfred’s skin which darkened it to the exact hue of one of the northern tribes. The eyes, Manfred’s yellow eyes, were not a serious handicap. Amongst the black mine workers who had worked out their Wenela contract and were returning home, there were certain symbols which confirmed their status as sophisticated men of the world, tin trunks to hold the treasures they had acquired, the pink post office savings books filled with the little numbers of their accumulated wealth, the silver metal mine helmets which they were allowed to retain and which would be worn with pride everywhere from the peaks of Basutoland to the equatorial forests, and lastly a pair of sunglasses.
Manfred’s travel papers were issued by one of Hendrick’s Buffaloes, a clerk in the pay office of ERPM, and they were totally authentic. He wore his dark sunglasses when he boarded the Wenela train and his skin was dyed the same hue as the black workers who surrounded him closely. All these men were Hendrick’s Buffaloes, and they kept him protected in their midst.
He found it strange but reassuring that the few white officials that he encountered on the long slow journey back to South West Africa, seldom looked at him directly. Because he was black, their gaze seemed to slide by his face without touching it.
Manfred and Hendrick left the train at Okahandja and with a group of other workers climbed onto the bus for the final hot dusty miles to Hendrick’s kraal. Two days later they set out again, this time on foot, heading north and east into the burning wilderness.
There had been good rains during the previous season and they found water in many of the pans in the southern Kavango and it was two weeks before they saw the kopjes humped like a caravan of camels out of the blue heat haze along the desert horizon.
Manfred realized as they tramped towards the hills how alien he was in this desert. Hendrick and his father had belonged here, but since childhood Manfred had lived in towns and cities. He would never have been able to find his way back without Hendrick’s guidance; indeed he would not have survived more than a few days in this harsh and unforgiving land without the big Ovambo.
The kopje that Hendrick led Manfred towards seemed identical to all the others. It was only when they scaled the steep granite side and stood upon the summit, that the memories came crowding back. Perhaps they had been deliberately suppressed, but now they emerged again in stark detail. Manfred could almost see his father’s features ravaged by fever and smell again the stench of gangrene from his rotting flesh. He remembered with fresh agony the harsh words of rejection with which his father had driven him to safety, but he closed his mind to the ache of them.
Unerringly he went to the crack that split the granite dome and knelt over it, but his heart sank when he peered down and could distinguish nothing in the deep shadows that contrasted with the sunlight and its reflection from the rock around him.
‘So they have gone, these famous diamonds,’ Hendrick chuckled cynically when he saw Manfred’s dismay. ‘Perhaps the jackals have eaten them.’
Manfred ignored him and from his pack brought out a roll of fishing-line. He tied the lead sinker and the stout treble fish hook to the end and lowered it into the crack. Patiently he worked, jigging the hook along the depth of the crack while Hendrick squatted in the small strip of shade under the summit boulders and watched him without offering encouragement.
The hook snagged something deep in the crack, and cautiously Manfred applied pressure on the line. It held and he took a twist around his wrist and pulled upwards with gradually increasing strength. Something gave, and then the hook pulled free. He drew the line in hand over hand. One point of the treble hook had opened under the strain, but there was a shred of rotted canvas still attached to the barb.
He bent the tine of the hook back into shape and lowered it once again into the crack. He plumbed the depths, working each inch from side to side and up and down. Another half hour of work and he felt the hook snag again.
This time the weight stayed on it, and he eased the line in, an inch at a time. He heard something scraping on the rough granite, then slowly a shapeless lumpy bundle came into view deep down. He lifted it slowly, holding his breath as it came up the last few feet. Then as he swung it clear, the canvas of the old rucksack burst open and a cascade of glittering white stones spilled onto the granite top around him.
They divided the diamonds into two equal piles as they had agreed, and drew lots for the first choice. Hendrick won and made his selection. Manfred poured his share into the empty tobacco pouch he had brought for the purpose.
‘You told the truth, little Manie,’ Hendrick admitted. ‘I was wrong to doubt you.’
The following evening they reached the river and slept side by side beside the fire. In the morning they rolled their blankets and faced each other.
‘Goodbye, Hennie. Perhaps the road will bring us together again.’
‘I have told you, little Manie, that the gods of the wilderness have linked us together. We will meet again, that I am certain of.’
‘I look forward to that day.’
‘The gods alone will decide whether we meet again as father and son, as brothers – or as deadly enemies,’ Hendrick said and slung his pack over his shoulder. Without looking back he walked away into the southern desert.
Manfred watched him out of sight, then he turned and followed the bank of the river into the north-west. That evening he came upon a village of the river people. Two of the young men in their dugout canoe ferried him across to the Portuguese side. Three
weeks later Manfred reached Luanda, capital of the Portuguese colony, and rang the bell on the wrought-iron gates of the German consulate.
He waited in Luanda three weeks for orders from the German Abwehr in Berlin, and slowly it dawned upon him that the delay was deliberate. He had failed in the task they had set him, and in Nazi Germany failure was unforgivable.
He sold one of the smallest diamonds from his hoard at a fraction of its real value and waited out his punishment. Each morning he called at the German consulate and the military attaché turned him away with barely concealed contempt.
‘No orders yet, Herr De La Rey. You must be patient.’
Manfred spent most of his days in one of the water-front cafés and his nights in his cheap lodgings, endlessly going over each detail of his failure, or thinking about Uncle Tromp and Roelf in the concentration camp, or about Heidi and the child in Berlin.
His orders came at last. He was issued a German diplomatic passport and he sailed on a Portuguese freighter as far as the Canary Islands. From there he flew on a civilian Junkers aircraft with Spanish markings to Lisbon.
In Lisbon he encountered the same deliberate contempt. He was dismissed casually to find his own lodgings and await those orders which seemed never to come. He wrote personal letters to Colonel Sigmund Boldt and to Heidi. Although the consulate attaché assured him that these had gone out in the diplomatic bag to Berlin, he received no reply.
He sold another small diamond and rented pleasant spacious lodgings in an old building on the bank of the Tagus river, passing the long idle days in reading, study and writing. He began work on two literary projects simultaneously, a political history of southern Africa and an autobiography, both for his own edification and with no intention of ever publishing. He learned Portuguese, taking lessons from a retired schoolmaster who lived in the same building. He kept up a rigorous physical training schedule, as though he were still boxing professionally, and he came to know all the secondhand book stores of the city where he purchased every law book he could find and read them in German, English and Portuguese. But still the time hung heavily on his hands and he chafed at his inability to take part in the conflict that raged around the globe.
The conflict swung against the Axis powers. The United States of America had entered the war and Flying Fortresses were bombing the cities of Germany. Manfred read of the terrible conflagration that had destroyed Cologne and he wrote again to Heidi for perhaps the hundredth time since he had arrived in Portugal.
Three weeks later, on one of his regular calls at the German consulate, the military attaché handed him an envelope and with a surge of joy he recognized Heidi’s handwriting upon it. It told him that she had received none of his previous letters and had come to believe that he was dead. She expressed her wonder and thankfulness at his survival and sent him a snapshot of herself and little Lothar. In the photograph he saw that she had put on a little weight, but in a stately manner she was even more handsome than when last he had seen her – and in a little over three years his son had grown into a sturdy youngster with a head of blond curls and features that showed promise of strength as well as beauty. The photograph was black and white and did not show the colour of his eyes. Manfred’s longing for them both threatened to consume him. He wrote Heidi a long passionate letter explaining his circumstances and urging her to make all possible efforts to procure a travel pass and to join him with the child in Lisbon. Without being specific, he was able to let her know that he was financially able to take care of them, and that he had plans for a future that included them both.
Heidi De La Rey lay awake and listened to the bombers. They had come on three successive nights. The centre of the city was devastated, the opera house and the railway station totally destroyed, and from the information which she had access to in the Department of Propaganda, she knew of the Allied successes in France and Russia, she knew the truth of the hundred thousand German troops captured by the Russians at Minsk.
Beside her Colonel Sigmund Boldt slept restlessly, rolling over and grunting so she was even more disturbed by him than by the distant American bombers. He had reason to worry, she thought. All of them were worried since the abortive attempt to assassinate the Führer. She had seen the films of the execution of the traitors, every minute detail of their agony as they hung on the meat hooks, and General Zoller had been one of them.
Sigmund Boldt had not been one of the conspirators, she was certain of that, but he was close enough to the plot to be caught up in the tidal wave that flowed from it. Heidi had been his mistress for almost a year now, but she had begun to notice the first signs of his waning interest in her, and she knew that his days of influence and power were numbered. Soon she would be alone again, without special food rations for herself and little Lothar.
She listened to the bombers. The raid was over, and the sound of their motors dwindled away to a mosquito hum, but they would be back. In the silence after their departure, she thought about Manfred and the letters he had written to which she had never replied. He was in Lisbon, and in Portugal there were no bombers.
She spoke to Sigmund the next day at breakfast. ‘It is only little Lothar I am thinking of,’ she explained, and she thought she saw a glimmer of relief in his expression. Perhaps he had already been calculating how he could be rid of her without a fuss. That afternoon she wrote to Manfred, care of the German consulate in Lisbon, and she enclosed a photograph of herself and Lothar.
Colonel Sigmund Boldt moved quickly. He still had influence and power in the department sufficient for him to procure her travel pass and documents within a week, and he drove her out to Tempelhof airport in the black Mercedes and kissed her goodbye at the foot of the boarding ladder of the Junkers transport aircraft.
Three days later Sigmund Boldt was arrested in his home at Grünewald and a week later he died under interrogation in his cell at the Gestapo headquarters, still protesting his innocence.
Little Lothar De La Rey caught his first glimpse of Africa peering between the rails of the Portuguese freighter as it steamed into Table Bay. He stood between his father and mother, holding their hands and chuckling with delight at the steam tugs that came bustling out to welcome their ship.
The war had ended two years ago, but Manfred had taken extraordinary precautions before bringing his family to Africa. First he had written to Uncle Tromp who had been released from internment at the end of the war, and from him learned all the family and political news. Aunt Trudi was well and both the girls were married now. Roelf had been released at the same time as Uncle Tromp and had returned to his job at the university. He and Sarah were happy and well and expecting another addition to their family before the year’s end.
Politically the news was promising. Although the Ossewa Brandwag and the other para-military organizations had been discredited and disbanded, their members had been absorbed into the National Party under Dr Daniel Malan, and the Party was rejuvenated and strengthened by their numbers. Afrikaner unity had never been more solid, and the dedication of the massive Voortrekker monument on a kopje above Pretoria had rallied the Volk so that even many of those who had joined Smuts’ army and fought in North Africa and Italy were flocking to the cause.
A backlash was developing against Smuts and his United Party. The feeling was that he placed the interests of the British Commonwealth, which he had done so much to bring into being, before the interests of South Africa.
Furthermore, Smuts had made a political misjudgement by inviting the British Royal Family to visit the country, and their presence had served to polarize public feelings between the English-speaking jingoists and the Afrikaners. Even many of those who had been Smuts men were offended by the visit.
Doctor Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd who had left his teaching post at Stellenbosch University to become editor of Die Vaderland allowed only one reference to the royal visit in his newspaper. He warned his readers that there might be some disruption of traffic in Johannesburg owing to the presence of foreig
n visitors in the city.
On the occasion of the loyal address at the opening of the South African Parliament, Dr Daniel Malan and all his Nationalist members had absented themselves from the House in protest.
Uncle Tromp ended his letter, ‘So we have come through the storm strengthened and purified as a Volk, and more determined than ever in our endeavours. There are great days ahead, Manie. Come home. We need men like you.’
Still Manfred did not move immediately. First he wrote to Uncle Tromp again. In veiled terms he asked what the position was with regard to a white sword he had left behind, and after a delay he received assurance that nobody knew anything about his sword. Discreet enquiries through friends in the police force had elicited the information that although the dossier on the missing sword was still open, it was no longer under active investigation and nobody knew its whereabouts or to whom it belonged. It must be assumed that it would never be found.
Leaving Heidi and the boy in Lisbon, Manfred travelled by train to Zürich where he sold the remainder of the diamonds. In the post-war euphoria prices were high, and he was able to deposit almost £200,000 in a numbered account with Crédit Suisse.
When they reached Cape Town the family went ashore without attracting attention, although as an Olympic gold medallist Manfred could have found himself the centre of a great deal of publicity if he had wished. Quietly he felt his way, visiting old friends, former OB members and political allies, making certain that there were no nasty surprises in store for him before he gave his first interview to the Burger newspaper. To them he explained how he had passed the war in neutral Portugal because he had declined to fight for either side, but now he had returned to the land of his birth to make whatever contribution he could to political progress towards what was every Afrikaner’s dream, a Republic of South Africa, free from the dictates of any foreign power.
He had said all the right things, and he was an Olympic gold medallist in a land where athletic prowess was venerated. He was handsome and clever and devout, with an attractive wife and son. He still had friends in high places and the number of those friends was increasing each day.