Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 29
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Shasa was also affected by the deep feelings which she had conceived for Africa, its land and its people.
'I thought America was the most beautiful country in all the world,' she said quietly one evening as they watched the sun set behind the great desolate mountains of the western deserts. 'But when I look at this, I have to wonder." Her curiosity took her into the compounds where the Courtney Company employees were housed, and she spent hours talking to the workers and their wives, filming it all, the questions and answers of black miners and white overseers and shift bosses, their homes and the food they ate, their recreations and their worship, and at the end Shasa asked her, 'So how do you like the way I oppress them9' 'They live well,' she conceded.
'And they are happy,' he pushed her. 'Admit it. I hid nothing from you. They are happy." 'They are happy like children,' she agreed.
'As long as they look up to you like big daddy. But just how long do you think you can keep fooling them? How long is, it going to be before they look at you in your beautiful airplane flying back to parliament to make a few more laws for them to obey and say to themselves, "Hey man!
I'd like to try that also"?" 'For three hundred years under white government the people of this land have woven a social fabric which has held us all together. It works, and I would hate to see it torn asunder without knowing what will replace it." 'How about democracy for a start?" she suggested. 'That's not a bad thing to replace it with - you know, the will of the majority must prevail!" 'You left out the best bit,' he flashed back at her. 'The interests of the minority must be safeguarded. That doesn't work in Africa. The African knows and understands one principle: winner takes all and let the minority go to the wall. That's what will happen to the white settlers in Kenya if the British capitulate to the Mau Mau killers." So they wrangled and sparred during the long hours of flying which took them over the enormous distances of the African continent. From one destination to the next, Shasa and Kitty went ahead in the Mosquito, and the helmet and oxygen mask were too large for her and made her appear even younger and more girlish. David Abrahams piloted the slower and more commodious company De Havilland Dove, the camera equipment and the crew flying with him, and even though most of Shasa's time on the ground was spent in meetings with his managers and administrative staff, there was still much time that he could devote to the seduction of Kitty Godolphin.
Shasa was not accustomed to prolonged resistance from any female who warranted his concentrated attention. There might be a token flight, but always with coy glances over the shoulder, and usually they chose to hide from him in the nearest bedroom, absentmindedly forgetting to turn the key in the lock, and he expected it to go very much the same way with Kitty Godolphin.
Getting into her blue jeans was his first priority; convincing her that Africa was different from America and that they were doing the best job they could came second by a long way. At the end of the ten days he had succeeded in neither endeavour. Both Kitty's political convictions and her virtue remained intact.
Kitty's interest in him, however wide-eyed and intense, was totally impersonal and professional, and she gave the same attention to an Ovambo witchdoctor demonstrating how he cured abdominal cancer with a poultice of porcupine dung, or a muscled and tattooed white shift-boss explaining to her that a black worker should never be punched in the stomach as their spleens were always enlarged from malaria and could easily rupture - hitting them in the head was all right, he explained, because the African skull was solid bone anyway and you couldn't inflict serious damage that way.
'Mary Maria!" Kitty breathed. 'That was worth the trip in itselfl' So on the eleventh day of their odyssey, they flew out of the vastness of the Kalahari Desert from the remote H'am Diamond Mine on its mystic and brooding range of hills, into the town of Windhoek, capital of the old German colony of South West Africa which had been mandated to South Africa at the Treaty of Versailles.
It was a quaint little town, the German influence still very obvious in the architecture and the way of life of the inhabitants. Set in the hilly uplands above the arid littoral, the climate was pleasant and the Kaiserhof Hotel, where Shasa kept another permanent suite, offered many of the creature comforts that they had lacked during the previous ten days.
Shasa and David spent the afternoon with their senior staff in the local office of the Courtney Company, which before its move to Johannesburg had been the head office, but which was still responsible for the logistics of the H'am Mine. Kitty and her team, never wasting a moment, filmed the German colonial buildings and monuments and the picturesque Herero women on the streets. In 1904 this tribe of warriors had engaged the German administration in their worst colonial war which finally left eighty thousand Hereroes dead of famine and battle out of a total population of a hundred thousand. They were tall and magnificent-looking people and the women wore full-length Victorian skirts in butterfly colours and tall matching headdresses. Kitty was delighted with them, and late that afternoon came back to the hotel in ebullient mood.
Shasa had planned carefully, and had left David at the Courtney Company offices to finish the meeting. He was waiting to invite Kitty and her team through to the beer garden of the hotel where a traditional oom-pa-pa band in Lederhosen and alpine hats was belting out a medley of German drinking songs. The locally brewed Hansa Pilsner was every bit as good as the original of the Munich beerhalls, with a clear golden colour and thick creamy head. Shasa ordered the largest tankards, and Kitty drank level with her crew.
The mood turned festive until Shasa drew Kitty aside and under cover of the band told her quietly, 'I don't quite know how to break this to you, Kitty, but this will be our last evening together. I had my secretary book seats on the commercial flight for you and your boys to fly back to Johannesburg tomorrow morning." Kitty stared at him aghast. 'I don't understand. I thought we were flying down to your diamond concessions in the Sperrgebiet." She pronounced it 'Spear Beat' in her enchanting accent. 'That was going to be the main act." 'Sperrgebiet means "Forbidden Area",' Shasa told her sadly. 'And it means just that, Kitty, forbidden. Nobody goes in there without a permit from the government inspector of mines.
'But I thought you had arranged a permit for us,' she protested.
'I tried. I telexed our local office to arrange it. The application was denied. The government doesn't want you in there, I'm afraid." 'But why not?" 'There must be something going on in there that they don't want you to see or film,' he shrugged, and she was silent but he saw the play of fierce emotion across her innocent features and her eyes blazed green with anger and determination. He had early on discovered that the infallible means of making anything irresistibly attractive was to deny it to Kitty Godolphin. He knew that now she would lie, cheat or sell her soul to get into the Sperrgebiet. 'You could smuggle us in,' she suggested.
He shook his head. 'Not worth the risk. We might get away with it, but if I were caught it could mean a fine of ?100,000 or five years in the slammer." She laid her hand on his arm, the first time she had deliberately touched him. 'Please, Shasa. I want so badly to film it." He shook his head sorrowfully. 'I'm sorry, Kitty, can't be done, I'm afraid,' and he stood up. 'Got to go up and change for dinner.
You can break it to your crew while I'm away. Your flight back to Jo'burg leaves ten o'clock tomorrow." It was obvious at the dinner-table that she hadn't warned her crew of the change of plans, for they were still jovial and garrulous with good German beer.
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