Rage - Smith Wilbur (читать книги онлайн без сокращений .TXT) 📗
It was ridiculous buying him extravagant gifts for which he paid himself; knowing Tara's tastes, he dreaded his first view of it.
It was covered by a Venetian lace cloth when Shasa entered his office, and he eyed it apprehensively as Tara said a few pretty words about how much she owed him, what a fine and generous husband and what a good father he was to her children.
Ceremoniously Tara lifted the lace cloth off the chest and there was an involuntary gasp of admiration from everyone in the room.
The ivory figurines had mellowed to a soft buttery yellow and the gold leaf had the royal patina of age upon it. They crowded closer to examine it, and Shasa felt his unreasonable antipathy towards the gift cool swiftly. He would never have guessed that Tara could show such taste. Instead of the garish monstrosity he had expected, this was a truly great work of art, and if his instinct was correct, which it almost always was, it was also a first-class investment.
'I do hope you like it?" Tara asked him with unusual timidity.
'It's magnificent,' he told her heartily.
'You don't think it should be under the window?" 'I like it very well just where you put it,' he answered her, and then dropped his voice so nobody else could overhear. 'Sometimes you surprise me, my dear. I'm truly very touched by your thoughtfulness." 'You too were kind and thoughtful to let me go to London,' sl replied.
'I could skip the meeting this afternoon and get home early th evening,' he suggested, glancing down at her bosom.
'Oh, I wouldn't want you to do that,' she answered quickly, su prised by her own physical revulsion at the idea. 'I-am certain to t exhausted by this afternoon. It's such a strain --' 'So our bargain still stands - to the letter?" he asked.
'I think that it is wiser that way,' she told him. 'Don't you?" Moses flew from London directly to Delhi, and had a series c friendly meetings with Indira Gandhi, the president of the India Congress Party. She gave Moses the warmest encouragement an, promises of help and recognition.
At Bombay he went on board a Liberian-registered tramp steame with a Polish captain. Moses signed on as a deckhand for the voyag, to Loureno Marques in Portuguese Mozambique. The tramp caller in at Victoria in the Seychelles Islands to discharge a cargo of rict and then sailed direct for Africa.
In the harbour of Lourengo Marques Moses said goodbye to th jovial Polish skipper and slipped ashore in the company of fiv members of the crew who were bound for the notorious red-lighl area of the seaport. His contact was waiting for him in a dingy nighl club. The man was a senior member of the underground freedom organization which was just beginning its armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule.
They ate the huge juicy Mozambique prawns for which the club was famous, and drank the tart green wine of Portugal while they discussed the advancement of the struggle and promised each other the support and assistance of comrades.
When they had eaten, the agent nodded to one of the bar girls and she came to the table and after a few minutes of arch conversation took Moses' hand and led him through the rear door of the bar to her room at the end of the yard.
The agent joined them there after a few minutes and while the girl kept watch at the door, to warn them of a surprise raid by the colonial police, the man handed Moses the travel documents he had prepared for him, a small bundle of second-hand clothing, and sufficient escudos to see him across the border and as far as the Witwatersrand gold-mines.
The next afternoon Moses joined a group of a hundred or more labourers at the railway station. Mozambique was an important source of labour for the gold-mines, and the wages earned by her citizens made a large contribution to the economy. Authentically dressed and in possession of genuine papers, Moses was indistinguishable from any other in the shuffling line of workers and he went aboard the third-class railway coach without even a glance from the uninterested white Portuguese official.
They left the coast in the late afternoon, climbed out of the muggy tropical heat and entered the hilly forests of the lowveld to approach the border post of Komatipoort early the following morning. As the coach rumbled slowly over the low iron bridge, it seemed to Moses that they were crossing not a river but a great ocean. He was filled with a strange blend of dismay and joy, of dread and anticipation.
He was coming home - and yet home was a prison for him and his people.
It was strange to hear Afrikaans spoken again, guttural and harsh, but made even more ugly to Moses' ear because it was the language of oppression. The officials here were not the indolent and slovenly Portuguese. Dauntingly brisk and efficient, they examined his papers with sharp eyes, and questioned him brusquely in that hated language. However, Moses had already masked himself in the protective veneer of the African. His face was expressionless and his eyes blank, just a black face among millions of black faces, and they passed him through.
Swart Hendrick did not recognize him when he slouched into the general dealer's store in Drake's Farm township. He was dressed in ill-fitting hand-me-downs and wore an old golfing cap pulled down over his eyes. Only when he straightened up to his full height and lifted the cap did Swart Hendrick start and exclaim in amazement, then seized his arm and, casting nervous glances over his shoulder, hustled his brother through into the little cubicle at the back of the store that he used as an office.
'They are watching this place,' he whispered agitatedly 'Is your head full of fever, that you walk in here in plain daylight?" Only when they were safely in the locked office and he had recovered from the shock, did he embrace Moses. 'A part of my heart has been missing, but isnow restored." He shouted over the rhino board partition wall of his office, 'Raleigh, come here immediately, boy!" and his son came to peer in astonishment at his famous uncle and then kneel before him, lift one of Moses's feet and place it on his own head in the obeisance to a great chief. Smiling, Moses lifted him to his feet and embraced him, questioned him about his schooling and his studies and then let him respond to Swart Hendrick's order.
'Go to your mother. Tell her to prepare food. A whole chicken and plenty of maize meal porridge, and a gallon of strong tea will plenty of sugar. Your uncle is hungry." They stayed locked in Swart Hendrick's office until late that night for there was much to discuss. Swart Hendrick made a full report o all their business enterprises, the state of the secret mineworkers union, the organization of their Buffaloes, and then gave him all th news of their family and close friends.
When at last they left the office, and crossed to Swart Hendrick', house, he took Moses' arm and led him to the small bedroom whicl was always ready for his visits, and as he Opened the door, Victoria rose from the low bed on which she had been sitting patiently.
She came to him and, as the child had done, prostrated herself in fronl of him and placed his foot upon her head.
'You are my sun,' she whispered. 'Since you went away I have been in darkness." 'I sent one of the Buffaloes to fetch her from the hospital,' Swart Hendrick explained.
'You did the right thing." Moses stooped and lifted the Zulu girl to her feet, and she hung her head shyly.
"We will talk again in the morning." Swart Hendrick closed the door quietly and Moses placed his forefinger under Vicky's chin and lifted it so he could look at her face.
She was even more beautiful than he remembered, an African madonna with a face like a dark moon. For a moment he thought of the woman he had left in London, and his senses cringed as he compared her humid white flesh, soft as putty, to this girl's glossy hide, firm and cool as polished onyx. His nostrils flared to her spicy African musk, so different from the other woman's thin sour odour which she tried to disguise with flowery perfumes. When Vicky looked up at him and smiled, the whites of her eyes and her perfect 'teeth were luminous and ivory bright in her lovely dark face.
