The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 50
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"Mushle, it's really mush, Papa." Then the dancers surrounded them, prancing and whirling, challenging Ralph. Ralph sat Jonathan on the fence of the cattle kraal, where he had a grandstand view. Then he strode into the centre and set himself in the heroic posture of the Nguni dancer. Bazo had taught him well when they were striplings, and now he raised his right knee as high as his shoulder and brought his booted foot down on the hard earth with a crash, and the other dancers hummed in encouragement and approbation.
"Jee! Jee!" Ralph leaped and stamped and postured, and the other dancers were pressed to match him, the women clapped and sang and on the kraal fence Jonathan howled with excitement and pride.
"Look at my daddy!" His shirt soaked with sweat, his chest heaving, chuckling breathlessly, Ralph dropped out at last and lifted Jonathan back onto his shoulder. The two of them went on, greeting by name those they recognized in the throng, accepting a proffered morsel of beef or a swallow of tart gruel-thick beer, until at last on the rise beyond the kraal, seated on a log, aloof from the dancers and revellers, Ralph found the man he was seeking.
"I see you, Bazo the Axe," he said, and sat down on the log beside him, set the champagne bottle between them and passed Bazo one of the cheroots for which he had developed a taste so long ago on the diamond fields. They smoked in silence, watching the dancers and the feasting until Jonathan grew restless and edged away to seek more exciting occupation, and found it immediately.
He was confronted by a child a year or so younger than he was.
Tungata, son Of Bazo, son of Gandang, son of great Mzilikazi, was stark naked except for the string of bright ceramic beads around his hips.
His navel popped out in the centre of his fat little belly, his limbs were sturdy, dimpled knees and bracelets of healthy fat at his wrists.
His face was round and smooth and glossy, his eyes huge and solemn as he examined Jonathan with total fascination.
Jonathan returned his scrutiny with equal candour, and made no attempt to pull away as Tungata reached and touched the collar of his sailor suit.
"What is your son's name?" Bazo asked, watching the children with an inscrutable expression on his dark features. "Jonathan." "What is the meaning of that name?" "The gift of God, "Ralph told him.
Jonathan suddenly took the straw hat from his own head and placed it upon that of the Matabele princeling. It made such an incongruous picture, the beribboned boater on the head of the naked black boy with his pot belly and little uncircumcised penis sticking out under it at a jaunty angle, that both men smiled involuntarily. Tungata gurgled with glee, seized Jonathan's hand and dragged him away unprotestingly into the throng of dancers.
The lingering warmth of that magical moment between the children thawed the stiffness between' the two men. Fleetingly, they recaptured the rapport of their young manhood. They passed the champagne bottle back and forth, and when it was empty, Bazo clapped his hands and Tanase came to kneel dutifully before him and offered a clay pot of bubbling brew. She never looked up at Ralph's face, and she withdrew as silently as she had come.
At noon she returned to where the two men were still deep in conversation. Tanase led Jonathan by one hand and Tungata still with the straw hat on his head, by the other. Ralph, who had forgotten all about him, started violently when he saw his son. The child's beatific grin was almost masked by layers of grime and beef fat. His sailor suit was the victim of the marvelous games which he and his newly found companion had invented. The collar hung by a thread, the knees were worn through, and Ralph recognized some of the stains as ash and ox blood and mud and fresh cow dung. He was less certain of the others.
"Oh my God," Ralph groaned, "your mother will strangle us both."
He picked up his son gingerly. "When will I see you again, old friend? "he asked Bazo.
"Sooner than you think," Bazo replied softly. "I told you I would work for you again when I was ready." Yes, "Ralph nodded.
"I am ready now," said Bazo simply.
Victoria was amazingly gracious in her acceptance of the change of honeymoon venue, when Harry Mellow explained shamefacedly, "Ralph has this idea. He wants to follow up one of the African legends, at a place called Wankie's country, near the great falls that Doctor Livingstone discovered on the Zambezi river. Vicky, I know how you looked forward to Cape Town and to seeing the sea for the first time, but, "I've lived without the sea for twenty years, a little longer won't hurt much." And she took Harry's hand. "Wherever thou go est MY love, Wankie's country, Cape Town, or the North Pole, just as long as we are together." The expedition was conducted in Ralph Ballantyne's usual style, six wagons and forty servants to convey the two families northwards through the magnificent forests of northern Matabeleland towards the great Zambezi river. The weather was mild and the pace leisurely. The country teemed with wild game, and the newly-weds billed and cooed and made such languorous eyes at each other that it was infectious.
"Just whose honeymoon is this?" Cathy mumbled in Ralph's ear one lazy loving morning.
"Action first, questions later," Ralph replied, and Cathy chuckled in a throaty self-satisfied way and cuddled back down in the feather mattress of, the wagon bed.
At evening and mealtimes, Jonathan had to be forcibly removed from the back of the pony that Ralph had given him for his fifth birthday, and Cathy anointed the saddle sores on his buttocks with Zambuk.
They reached Wankie's village on the twenty-second day and for the first time since leaving Bulawayo, the idyllic mood of the caravan bumped back to earth.
Under the reign of King Lobengula, Wankie had been a renegade and outlaw. Lobengula had sent four separate punitive imp is to bring his severed head back to GuBulawayo, but Wankie had been as cunning as he was insolent, as slippery as he was mendacious, and the imp is had all returned empty-handed to face the king's wrath.
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