Rage - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗
Vicky recognized Raleigh Tabaka, and smiled at him as he placed her chair. 'You have grown into a fine young man, Raleigh. Have you finished your schooling now?" 'Yebo, sissie." Raleigh returned her greeting with polite reserve, for even though she was the wife of his uncle, she was a Zulu. His father had taught him to distrust all Zulus. 'I help my father now, sisMe. I learn the business from him and soon I will manage one of the shops on my own." Hendrick Tabaka smiled proudly at his favourite son. 'He learns fast, and I have great faith in the boy." He endorsed what Raleigh had said. 'I am sending him soon to our shop at Sharpeville near Vereeniging to learn the bakery business." Where is your twin brother, Wellington?" Vicky asked, and immediately Hendrick Tabaka frowned heavily and waved at Raleigh to leave the office. As soon as they were alone, he answered her question angrily. 'The white priests have captured Wellington's heart. They have seduced him from the gods of his tribe and his ancestors and taken him to the service of the white man's God. This strange Jesus God with three heads. It grieves me deeply, for I had hoped that Wellington, like Raleigh, would be the son of my old age. Now he studies to be a priest, and I have lost him." He sat down at the tiny cluttered table that served him as a desk and studied his own hands for a moment. Then he raised that bald cannonball head, the scalp criss-crossed with ridged scars from old battles.
'So, wife of my brother, we live in a time of great sorrow. Moses Gama has been taken by the white men's police, and we cannot doubt what they will do with him. Even in my sorrow, I must recall that I warned him that this would happen. A wise man does not throw stones at the sleeping lion." 'Moses Gama did what he knew was his duty. He lived out the deed for which he was born,' Vicky said quietly. 'He struck a blow for all of us - you and me and our children." She touched her belly where beneath the white nurse's uniform the first bulge of her pregnancy showed. 'And now he needs our help." 'Tell me how I can help." Hendrick inclined his head. 'For he was not only my brother, but my chief as well." 'We need money to hire a lawyer to defend him in the white man's court. I have been to see Marcus Archer and the others of the ANC at the house in Rivonia. They will not help us. They say that Moses acted without their agreement or approval. They say that it was agreed not to endanger human life. They say that if they give us money to help in the defence, the police will trace it to them. They say many other things - everything but the truth." 'What is the truth, my sister?" Hendrick asked.
And suddenly Vicky's voice was quivering with fury. 'The truth is that they hate him. The truth is that they are afraid of him. The truth is that they are jealous of him. Moses has done what none of them would have dared. He has aimed a spear at the heart of the white tyrant, and though the blow failed, now all the world knows that it was struck. Not only in this land, but beyond the sea, all the world knows now who is the leader of our people." 'That is true,' Hendrick nodded. 'His name is on every man's lips." 'We must save him, Hendrick my brother. We must do everything we can to save him.
Hendrick rose and went to the small cupboard in the corner. He dragged it aside to reveal the door of an ancient Chatwood safe built into the wall behind it.
When he opened the green steel door, the safe was packed with wads of banknotes.
'This belongs to Moses. It is his share. Take what you need,' said Hendrick Tabaka.
The Supreme Court of the Cape Province of South Africa stands on one side of the gardens that Jan van Riebeeck, the first governor of the Cape, laid out in the 1650s to provision the ships of the Dutch East India Company. On the opposite side of the beautiful gardens stand the houses of parliament that Moses Gama had attempted to destroy. So he was to be tried within a quarter of a mile of the scene of the crime of which he stood accused.
The case aroused the most intense international interest and the film crews and journalists began flying into Cape Town a.week before it was set down to commence.
Vicky Gama arrived by train after the thousand-mile journey down the continent from the Witwatersrand. She travelled with the white lawyer whowould defend Moses and more than fifty of the more radical members of the African National Congress, most of them, like herself, under thirty years of age, and many of them secret members of Moses Gama's Umkhonto we Sizwe military wing of the party. Amongst these was Vicky's half brother, Joseph Dinizulu, now a young man of almost twenty-one studying to be a lawyer at the black university of Fort Hare. The money given to Vicky by Hendrick Tabaka paid for all of them.
Molly Broadhurst met them at the Cape Town station. Vicky, Joseph and the defence lawyer would be staying at her home in Pinelands during the trial, and she had arranged accommodation for all the others in the black townships of Longa and Guguletu.
Desmotid Blake and Michael Courtney flew down together from Johannesburg on the commercial flight, and while Desmond put a severe strain on the bar service, Michael pored over the notebook in which he was roughing out a schedule of all the research into the history of the ANC and the background of Moses Gama and his tribe that he felt they would need.
Centaine Courtney-Malcomess was at the airport to meet the flight.
Much to Michael's embarrassment, she had two servants to carry Michael's single valise out to the daffodil-yellow Daimler that, as usual, she was driving herself. Since Tara had left, Centaine had once more taken over the running of Weltevreden.
'The paper has booked rooms for us at the Atlantic Hotel, Nana.
Michael protested, after he had dutifully embraced his grandmothei 'It's very convenient for the law courts and the national library." 'Nonsense,' said Centaine firmly. 'The Atlantic is a bug-run am Weltevreden is your home." 'Father said I wouldn't be welcome back." 'Your father has missed you even more than I have." Shasa sat Michael beside him at dinner, and even Isabella wa,.
almost totally excluded from their conversation. Shasa was so impressed by his youngest son's sudden new maturity that the followin morning he instructed his broker to purchase another hundred thousand shares in the holding company that owned the Golden Ci0 Mail.
Manfred and Heidi dined at Weltevreden the evening before the trial began and while they drank pre-prandial cocktails Manfred expressed the concern that Shasa and Centaine shared.
'What the prosecution and the court must avoid is allowing the proceedings to deteriorate into a trial not of a murderer and a terrorist, but of our social system and our way of life. The vultures of the international press are already assembled, eager to show us in the worst possible light, and as usual to distort and misrepresent our policy of apartheid. I only wish we had some control over the courts and the press." 'You know I can't agree with you on that one." Shasa shifted in his chair. 'The complete independence of our press and the impartiality of our judicial system gives us credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world." 'Don't lecture me. I am a lawyer,' Manfred pointed out stiffly.
It was strange how despite their enforced and mutually beneficial relationship, they were never truly friends and antagonism was always ready to surface between them. Now it took some little time for the tension to ease, and for them to adopt once more an outward show of cordiality. Only then 'could Manfred tell Shasa, 'We have finally agreed with the prosecution not to raise in court the matter of your wife's involvement with the accused. Apart from the difficulty of beginning extradition proceedings with Britain - she would almost certainly ask for political asylum - there is the consideration of her relationship with Gama. Black man and white woman--' Manfred's expression was one of deep disgust. 'It is repugnant to all decent principles. Raising the subject would not further the prosecution, but would simply give the yellow press something more to drool over. No, it will do none of us any good at all." Manfred put special emphasis on this last sentence. It was all that needed to be said, but Shasa did not let it pass.
