Rage - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗
The walk down the newsroom seemed the longest of his life, and though nobody even glanced up as he passed, Michael was certain that they were secretly sniggering at him and gloating on his dilemma.
He knocked on the frosted-glass panel of the editor's door and there was a bellow from inside.
Timidly Michael pushed the door open and peered round it. Leon Herbstein was on the telephone, a burly man in a sloppy hand-knitted cardigan with thick horn-rimmed spectacles and a shock of thick curly hair shot through with strands of grey. Impatiently he waved Michael into the room and then ignored him while he finished his conversation on the telephone.
At last he slammed down the receiver and swivelled his chair to regard the young man who was standing uneasily in front of his desk.
Ten days before, Leon Herbstein had received a quite unexpected invitation to a luncheon in the executive dining-room of the Courtney Mining and Finance Company's new head office building. There had been ten other guests present, all of them leaders of commerce and industry, but Herbstein had found himself in the right hand seat beside his host.
Leon Herbstein had never had any great admiration for Shasa Courtney. He was suspicious of vast wealth, and the two Courtneys - mother and son - had a formidable reputation for shrewd and ruthless busirless practices. Then again, Shasa Courtney had forsaken the United Party of which Leon Herbstein was an ardent supporter, and had gone across to the Nationalists. Leon Herbstein had never forgotten the violent anti-semitism which had attended the birth of the National Party, and he considered the policy of apartheM as simply another manifestation of the same grotesque racial bigotry.
As far as he was concerned, Shasa Courtney was one of the enemy.
However, he sat down at his luncheon table quite unprepared for the man's easy and insidious charm and his quick and subtle mind. Shasa devoted most of his attention to Leon Herbstein, and by the end of the meal the editor had considerably moderated his feelings towards the Courtneys. At least he was convinced that Shasa Courtney truly had the best interests of all the people at heart, that he was especially concerned with improving the lot of the black and underprivileged sections, and that he was wielding an important moderating influence in the high councils of the National Party.
In addition, he left the Courtney building with a heightened respect for Shasa Courtney's subtlety. Not once had Shasa mentioned the fact that he and his companies now owned 42 percent of the stock of Associated Newspapers of South Africa or that his son was employed as a junior journalist on the Mail. It hadn't been necessary, both men had been acutely aware of these facts while they talked.
Up to that time Leon Herbstein had felt a natural antagonism towards Michael Courtney. Placing him in the care of Des Blake had been all the preference he had shown to the lad. However, after that luncheon he had begun to study him with more attention. It didn't take an old dog long to attribute the improvement in much of the copy that Des Blake had been turning out recently to the groundwork that Michael Courtney was doing for him. From then onwards whenever he passed Michael's desk, Herbstein made a point of quickly and surreptitiously checking what work was in his machine or in the copy basket.
Herbstein had the journalist's trick of being able to assimilate a full typed sheet at a single glance, and he was grimly amused to notice how often Des Blake's column was based on the draft by his young assistant, and how often the original was better than the final copy.
Now he studied Michael'closely as he stood awkwardly before his desk. Despite the fact that he had cropped his hair in one of those appalling brush cuts that the youth were affecting these days and wore a vividly patterned bow tie, he was a likable-looking lad, with a strong determined jawline and clear intelligent eyes. Perhaps he was too thin for his height, and a little gawky, but he had quite noticeably matured and gained in self-assurance during the short period he had been at the Mail.
Suddenly Leon realized that he was being cruel, and that his scrutiny was subjecting the lad to unnecessary agony. He picked up the sheet of typescript that lay in front of him, and slid it across his untidy desk.
'Did you write that?" he demanded gruffly, and Michael snatched up the sheet protectively.
'I didn't mean anybody to read it,' he whispered, and then remembered who he was talking to and threw in a lame, 'sir." 'Strange." Leon Herbstein shook his head. 'I always believed we were in the business of writing so that others could read." 'I was just practising." Michael held the sheet behind his back.
'I made some corrections,' Herbstein told him, and Michael jerked the page out from behind him and scanned it anxiously.
'Your third paragraph is redundant, and "scar" is a better word than "cicatrice" - otherwise we'll run it as you wrote it." 'I don't understand, sir,' Michael blurted.
'You've saved me the trouble of writing tomorrow's editorial." Herbstein reached across and took the page from Michael's limp fingers, tossed it into his out basket and then concentrated all his attention on his own work.
Michael stood gaping at the top of his head. It took him ten seconds to realize that he had been dismissed and he backed towards the door and closed it carefully behind him. His legs just carried him
!iFi to his desk, and then collapsed under him. He sat down heavily in his swivel chair and reached for his cigarette pack. It was empty and he crumpled it and dropped it into his wastepaper basket.
Only then did the full significance of what had happened hit him and he felt cold and slightly nauseated.
'The editorial,' he whispered, and his hands began to tremble.
Across the desk Desmond Blake belched softly and demanded, 'Where are the notes on that American what's-'is-name fellow?" 'I haven't finished it yet, Mr Blake." 'Listen, kid. I warned you. You'll have to extract your digit from your fundamental orifice if you want to get anywhere around here." Michael set his alarm clock for five o'clock the next morning and went downstairs with his raincoat over his pyjamas. He was waiting on the street corner with the newspaper urchins when the bundles of newsprint were tossed on to the pavement from the back of the Mail's delivery van.
He ran back up the stairs clutching a copy of the paper and locked the door to his bed-sitter. It took all his courage to open it at the editorial page. He was actually shaking with terror that Mr Herbstein might have changed his mind, or that it was all some monstrous practical joke.
There under the Mail's crest at the very top of the editorial page was his headline: 'A MARTYR IS BOR'.
He read it through quickly, and then started again and read it aloud, mouthing each word, rolling it over his tongue like a noble and precious wine. He propped the paper, open at the editorial, beside the mirror while he shaved, and then carried it down to the Greek fast-food car where he had his breakfast each morning and showed it to Mr Costa, who called his wife out of the kitchen.
'Hey, Michael, you a big shot now." Mrs Costa embraced him, smelling of fried bacon and garlic. 'You a big shot newspaperman now." She let him use the telephone in the back room and he gave the operator the number at Weltevreden. Centaine answered on the second ring.
'Mickey!" she cried delightedly. 'Where are you? Are you in Cape Town?" He calmed her down and then read it to her. There was a long silence. 'The editorial, Mickey. You aren't making this up, are you?
I'll never forgive you if you are." Once he had reassured her, Centaine told him, 'I can't remember ever being so excited about anything in years. I'm going to call your father, you must tell him yourself." Shasa came on the line, and Michael read it to him. 'You wrote that?" Shasa asked. 'Pretty hot stuff, Mickey. Of course I don't agree with your conclusions - Gama must hang. However, you almost convinced me otherwise, but we can debate that when next we are together. In the meantime, congratulations, my boy. Perhaps you did make the right decision after all." Michael found that he was a minor celebrity in the newsroom, even the sub stopped by his desk to congratulate him and discuss the article for a few moments, and the pretty little blonde on the reception desk who had never before been aware of his existence, smiled and greeted him by name.
