The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 39

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Then he sighed and took a little red snuff from the buckhom that hung on a thong around his neck. He sneezed and wiped his eyes, and looked at her.

"Your body is part of my body," he said. "Your first-born son is my son. If I do not trust you, then I cannot trust myself. So I tell you, that the old times will come again." "What is this, Lord?" Juba asked. "What strange words are these?" "The words of the Umlimo. She has called forth an oracle. The nation will be free and great again.-" "The Umlimo sent the imp is onto the guns at Shangani and Bembesi,".

Juba whispered bitterly. "The Umlimo preaches war and death and pestilence. There is a new god now. The god Jesus of peace." "Peace?"

Gandang asked bitterly. "If that is the word of this god, then the white men do not listen very well to their own. Ask the Zulu of the peace they found at Ulundi, ask the shade of Lobengula of the peace they brought with them to Matabeleland." Juba could not reply, for again she had not fully understood when Nomusa explained, and she bowed her head in resignation. After a while, when Gandang was certain that she had accepted what he had said, he went on. "The oracle of the Umlimo is in three parts and already the first has come to pass. The darkness at noon, the wings of the locust, and the trees bare of leaves in the springtime. It is happening and we must look to our steel."

"The white men have broken the assegais." "In the hills there has been a new birthing of steel." Involuntarily Gandang lowered his voice to a whisper. "The forges of the Rozwi smiths burn day and night and the molten iron runs copiously as the waters of the Zambezi." Juba stared at him. "Who has done this?" "Bazo, your own son." "The wounds of the guns are still fresh and bright upon his body." "But he is an and una of Kumalo," Gandang whispered proudly, "and he is a man." "One man," Juba replied. "One man only, where are the imp is "Preparing in secret, in the wild places, re-learning the skills and arts which they have not yet forgotten." "Gandang, my lord, I feel my heart beginning to break again, I feel my tears gathering like the rainstorms of summer. Must there always be war?" "You are a daughter of Matabele, of pure Zanzi blood from the south. Your father's father followed Mzilikazi, your father spilled his blood for him, as your own son did for Lobengula do you have to ask that question?" She was silent, knowing how futile it was to argue with him when there was that glitter in his eyes. When the fighting madness was in him, there was no room for reason.

"Juba, my little Dove, there will be work for you when the prophecy of the Umlimo comes to full term." "Lord?" she asked.

"The women must carry the blades. They will be bound up in rolls of sleeping-mats and in bundles of thatching grass and carried on the heads of the women to where the imp is are waiting." "Lord." Her voice was neutral, and she dropped her eyes from his hard glittering gaze.

"The white men and their kanka will not suspect the women, they will let them pass freely upon the road," Gandang went on. "You are the mother of the nation now that the king's wives are dead and scattered. It will be your duty to assemble the young women, to train them in their duty, and to see them place the steel in the hands of the warriors at the time that the Umlimo has foreseen, the time when the hornless cattle are eaten up by the cross." Juba was reluctant to reply, afraid to conjure up his wrath. He had to demand her answer.

"You have heard MY word, woman, and you know your duty to your husband and your people." Then only Juba lifted her head and looked deeply into his dark fierce eyes.

"Forgive me, Lord. This time I cannot obey you. I cannot help to bring fresh sorrow upon the land. I cannot bear to hear again the wails of the widows and orphans. You must find another to carry the bloody steel." She had expected his anger. She could have weathered that, as she had a hundred times before, but she saw in his eyes something that had never been there before. It was contempt, and she did not know how she could bear it. When Gandang stood up without another word and stalked away towards the river, she wanted to run after him and throw herself at his feet, but then she remembered the words of Nomusa.

"He is a gentle God, but the way He sets for us is hard beyond the telling of it." And Juba found that she could not move. She was trapped between two worlds and two duties, and she felt as though it was tearing her soul down the middle. uba sat alone under the bare wild fig tree the rest of the day.

She sat with her arms folded across her great glossy breasts, and she rocked herself silently, as though the movement might comfort her as it would a fretful child, but there was no surcease in either movement or thought, so it was with relief that at last she looked up and saw her two attendants kneeling before her. She did not know how long they had been there. She had not even heard them come up, so rapt had she been in her sorrow and confusion.

"I see you, Ruth," she said, nodding at the Christian girl and her companion, "and you too, Imbali, my little Flower. What is it that makes you look so sad?" "The men have gone into the hills," whispered Ruth.

"And your hearts have gone with them," Juba smiled at the two young women. It was a fond yet sad smile, as though she remembered her own youthful bodily passions and regretted that the flames had burned so low.

"I have dreamed of nothing but my beautiful man, every lonely night we have been away," murmured Ruth.

"And of the fine son he will make with you," Juba chuckled. She knew the girl's desperate need, and teased her lovingly. "Lelesa, the lightning stroke, your man is well named." Ruth hung her head. "Do not mock me, Manwwedtu," she murmured pitifully, and Ruth turned to Imbali.

"And you, little Flower, is there no bee to tickle your petals either?" The girl giggled and covered her mouth and squirmed with embarrassment.

"If you need us, Marnewethu," Ruth said earnestly, "then we will stay with you." Juba kept them in an agony of suspense for a few seconds longer.

How firm and nubile was their young flesh, how sweetly shaped their young bodies, how eager were their great dark eyes, how vast their hunger for all that life had to offer. Juba smiled again and clapped her hands.

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