Rage - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗
'Ja.t' he barked into the telephone.
'I don't like to disturb you, Manie." 'Then why do you do it9." Manfred demanded. Dame Leroux was a senior police general, and one of his most able officers. 'It's this man Gama." Let the black bastard hang. That is what he wants." 'No! He wants to do a deal." 'Send someone else to speak to him, I do not want to waste my time." 'He will only talk to you, and we believe he has something important he will be able to tell you." Manfred thought for a moment. His instinct was to dismiss the request out of hand, but he let reason dictate to him.
'All right,' he agreed heavily. 'I will meet him." There would also be a perverse pleasure in confronting a vanquished foe. 'But he is going to hang - nothing will stop that,' he warned quietly.
The prison authority had confiscated the leopard-skin robes of chieftainship, and Moses Gama wore the prison-issue suiting of coarse unbleached calico.
The long unremitting strain of awaiting the outcome of his appeal had told heavily. For the first time Vicky noticed the frosting of white in his cap of dark crinkling hair, and his features were gaunt, his eyes sunken in dark bruised-looking hollows. Her compassion for him threatened to overwhelm her, and she wished that she could reach out and touch him, but the steel mesh screen separated them.
'This is the last time I am allowed to visit you,' she whispered, 'and they will only let me stay for fifteen minutes." 'That will be long enough, for there is not much to say, now that the sentence has been confirmed." 'Oh, Moses, we were wrong to believe that the British and the Americans would save you." 'They tried,' he said quietly.
'But they did not try very hard, and now what will I do withou you. What will the child I am carrying do without a father?" 'You are a daughter of Zulu, you will be strong." 'I will try, Moses my husband,' she whispered. 'But what of you: people? They are also children without a father. What will becom of them?" She saw the old fierce fire burn in his eyes. She had feared it hoc been for ever extinguished, and she felt a brief and bitter joy tr know it was still alight.
'The others will seek to take your place now. Those of the Congres who hate and envy you. When you die they will use your sacrifice t( serve their own ambitions." She saw that she had reached him again, and that he was angry She sought to inflame his anger to give him reason and strength tr go on living.
'If you die, your enemies will use your dead body as a stepping.
stone to climb to the place you have left empty." 'Why do you torment me, woman?" he asked.
'Because I do not want you to die, because I want you to live - lo me, for our child, and for your people." 'That cannot be,' he said.
'The hard Boers will not yield, not even to the demands of the great powers. Unless you can find wings fol me to fly over these walls, then I must go to my fate. There is nc other way." 'There is a way,' Vicky told him. 'There is a way for you to survive - and for you to put down the enemy who seek to usurp your place as the leader of the black nations." He stared at her as she went on.
'When the day comes that we sweep the Boers into the sea, and open the doors of the prisons, you will emerge to take your rightful place at the head of the revolution." 'What is this way, woman? What is this hope that you hold out to me?" He listened without expression as she propounded it to him, and when she had finished, he said gravely, 'It is true that the lioness is fiercer and crueller than the lion." 'Will you do it, my lord - not for your own sake, but for all us weak ones who need you so?" 'I will think on it,' he conceded.
There is so little time,' she warned The black ministerial Cadillac was delayed only briefly at the gates to the prison for they were expecting Manfred De La Rey. As the steel gates swung open, the driver accelerated through into the main courtyard and turned into the parking slot that had been kept free.
The prison commissioner and two of his senior staff were waiting, and they hurried forward as soon as Manfred climbed out of the rear door.
Briefly Manfred shook hands with the commissioner and said, 'I wish to see the prisoner immediately." Of course, Minister, it has been arranged. He is waiting for you." 'Lead the way." Manfred's heavy footfalls echoed along the dreary green-painted corridors, while the senior warders scurried ahead to unlock the interleading doors of each section and relock them as Manfred and the prison commissioner passed through. It was a long walk, but they came at last to the condemned block.
'How many awaiting execution?" Manfred demanded.
'Eleven,' the commissioner replied. The figure was not unusually high, Manfred reflected. Africa is a violent land and the gallows play a central role in the administration of justice.
'I do not want to be overheard, even by those soon to die." et has been arranged,' the commissioner assured him. 'Gama is being kept separate from the others." The warders opened one last steel door and at the end of a short passage was a barred cell. Manfred went through but when the commissioner would have followed, Manfred stopped him.
'Wait here!" he ordered. 'Lock the door after me and open it again only when I ring." As the door clanged shut Manfred walked on to the end of the passage.
The cell was small, seven foot by seven, and almost bare. There was a toilet bowl against the side wall and a single iron bunk fixed to the opposite wall. Moses Gama sat on the edge of the bunk and he looked up at Manfred. Then slowly he came to his feet and crossed the cell to face him through the green-painted bars.
Neither man spoke. They stared at each other. Though only the bars separated them, they were a universe and an eternity apart.
Though their gazes locked, there was no contact between their minds, and the hostility was a barrier between them more obdurate and irreconcilable than the steel bars.
'Yes?" Manfred asked at last. The temptation to gloat over a vanquished adversary was strong, but he withstood it. 'You asked to see me?" q have a proposal to put to you,' Moses Gama said.
'You wish to bargain for your life?" Manfred corrected him, and when Moses was silent, he smiled. 'So it seems that you are no different from other men, Moses Gama. You are neither a saint nor even the noble martyr that some say you are. You are no better than other men, no better than any of us. In the end your loyalty is to yourself alone. You are weak as other men are weak, and like them, you are afraid." 'Do you wish to listen to my proposal?" Moses asked, without a sign of having heard the taunts.
'I will hear what you have to say,' Manfred agreed. 'That is why I came here." 'I will deliver them to you,' Moses said, and Manfred understood immediately.
'By "them" you mean those who also claim to be the leaders of your people? The ones who compete with your own claim to that position?" Moses nodded and Manfred chuckled and shook his head with admiration.
'I will give you the names and the evidence. I will give you the times and the places." Moses was still expressionless. 'You have underestimated the threat that they are to you, you have underestimated the support they can muster, here and abroad. I will give you that knowledge." 'And in return?" Manfred asked.
'My freedom,' said Moses simply.
'Magtig!" The blasphemy was a measure of Manfred's astonishment. 'You have the effrontery of a white man." He turned away so that Moses could not see his face while he considered the magnitude of the offer.
Moses Gama was wrong. Manfred was fully aware of the threat, and he had a broad knowledge of the extent and the ramifications of the conspiracy. He understood that the world he knew was under terrible siege. The Englishman had spoken of the winds of changethey were blowing not only upon the African continent, but across the world. Everything he held dear, from the existence of his family to that of his Volk and the safety of the land that God had delivered unto them, was under attack by the forces of darkness.
