Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur (электронная книга TXT) 📗
How did you know where to look for me? Manfred struggled to his feet. My father told me where to find you, he answered. Hello, Swart Hendrick It has been many years, little Manie. The big Ovambo grinned at him through the black gap of missing teeth; his head, laced with scars, was black and shiny as a cannonball.
Many years, but I never doubted we would meet again.
Never once in all those years. The gods of the wilderness have bound us together, little Manie. I knew you would come. The two men sat alone in the back room of Swart Hendrick's house. it was one of the few brick-built dwellings in the shanty town of Drake's Farm. However, the bricks were unbaked and the building was not so ostentatious as to stand out from the hovels that crowded close around it. Swart Hendrick had long ago learned not to draw the attention of the white police to his wealth.
In the front room the women were cooking and working, while the children bawled or shouted with laughter round their feet. As befitted his station in life, Swart Hendrick had six town wives who lived together in an amiable symbiotic relationship. The possessive jealousy of monogamistic western women was totally alien to them. Senior wives took a major part in the selection of the junior wives and gained considerable prestige from their multiplicity, nor did they resent the maintenance sent to the country wives and their offspring or their spouse's periodic visits to the country kraal to add to the number of those offspring. They considered themselves all part of one family. When the children from the country were old enough to be sent into the city for the furtherance of their education and fortune, they found themselves with many fostermothers and could expect the same love and discipline as they had received in the kraal.
The smaller children had the run of the house and one of them crawled mother-naked into Swart Hendrick's lap as he sat on his carved stool the sign of rank of a tribal chieftain.
Although he was deep in discussion with Manfred, he fondled the little one casually, as he would a favourite puppy, and when the beer pot was empty, he clapped his hands and one of the junior wives, the pretty moon-faced Zulu or the nubile Basuto with breasts as round and hard as ostrich eggs would bring in a new pot and kneel before Hendrick to present it to him.
So, little Manie, we have spoken of everything, and said all that is to be said, and we come back to the same problem. Swart Hendrick lifted the beer pot and swallowed a mouthful of the thick white bubbling gruel. He smacked his lips, then wiped the half moon of beer from his upper lipwith the back of his forearm and handed the pot across to Manfred.
That problem is this. At every railway station and on every road the white police are searching for you. They have even offered a price for you, and what a price, little Manie. They will give five thousand pounds for you. How many cattle and women could a man buy with that amount of money? He broke off to consider the question and shook his head in wonder at the answer. You ask me to help you to leave Johannesburg and to cross the great river in the north. What would the white police do if they caught me? Would they hang me on the same tree as they hang you, or would they only send me to break rocks in the prison of Ou Baas Smuts and King Georgy? Swart Hendrick sighed theatrically. It is a heavy question, little Manie. Can you give me an answer? You have been as a father to me, Hennie, Manfred said quietly. Does a father leave his son for the hyena and the vultures? 'if I am your father, little Manie, why then is your face white and mine black? Hendrick smiled. There are no debts between us, they were all paid long ago. My father and you were brothers. How many summers have burned since those days, Hendrick mourned the passage of time with a sorrowful shake of his head. And how the world and all those in it have changed. There is one thing that never changes, not even over the years, Hennie. What is that, oh child with a white face who claims my paternity? A diamond, my black father. A diamond never changes., Hendrick nodded. Let us speak then of a diamond. Not one diamond, Manfred said. Many diamonds, a bagful of diamonds that lie in a faraway place that only you and I know of. The risks are great, Hendrick told his brother. And doubt lurks in my mind like a man-eating lion lying in thick bush.
Perhaps the diamonds are where the white boy says they are, but the lion of doubt still waits for me. The father was a devious man, hard and without mercy, I sense that the son has grown to be like the father. He speaks of friendship between us, but I no longer feel the warmth in him., Moses Gama stared into the fire; his eyes were dark and inscrutable. He tried to kill Smuts, he mused aloud. He is of the hard Boers like those of old, the ones that slaughtered our people at Blood river and shattered the power of the great chiefs. They have been defeated this time, as they were in 1914, but they have not been destroyed. They will rise to fight again, these hard Boers, when this white men's war across the sea ends, they will call out their impis and carry the battle to Smuts and his party once again. It is the way of the white man, and I have studied his history, that when peace comes, they often reject those who fought hardest during the battle. I sense that in the next conflict the whites will reject Smuts and that the hard Boers will triumph, and this white boy is one of them., 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.
