Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 47

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'Hey, what is this?" Moses exclaimed.

'Police!" a voice answered from the darkness beyond the open side window. 'Get out both of you!" They climbed out of the van, and Moses went around the bonnet to stand beside Victoria. He saw that while they had been engrossed with each other, a police pick-up had entered the parking lot and parked beside the restaurant building. Now four blue-uniformed constables with flashlights were checking the occupants of all the parked vehicles in the lot.

'Let me see your passes, both of you." The constable in front of him was still shining the light in his eyes, but beyond it Moses could make out that he was very young.

Moses reached into his inner pocket, while Victoria searched in her purse, and they handed their pass booklets to the constable. He turned the beam of the flashlight on them and studied them minutely.

'It's almost curfew,' he said in Afrikaans, as he handed them back. 'You Bantu should be in your own locations at this time of night." 'There is still an hour and a half until curfew,' Victoria replied sharply, and the constable's expression hardened.

'Don't take that tone with me, maid." That term of address was insulting and again he shone the flashlight in her face. 'Just because you've got shoes on your feet and rouge on your face, doesn't mean you are a white woman. Just remember that." Moses took Victoria's arm and firmly steered her back to the van.

'We are leaving right away, officer,' he said placatingly, and once they were both in the van, he told Victoria, 'You will accomplish nothing by getting us both arrested. That is not the level at which we should conduct the struggle. That is just a callow little white boy with more authority than he knows how to carry." 'Forgive me,' she said. 'I just get so angry. What were they looking for anyway?" 'They were looking for white men with black girls, their Immorality Act to keep their precious white blood pure. Half their police force spends its time trying to peer into other people's bedrooms." He started the van and turned into the highway.

Neither of them spoke again until he parked in front of the Baragvanath nurses' home." 'I hope we will not be interrupted again,' Moses said quietly, and placing an arm around her shoulders turned her gently to face him.

Although she had seen how it was done on the cinema screen, and although the other girls in the hostel endlessly discussed what they referred to as 'Hollywood style', Victoria had never kissed a man. It was not part of Zulu custom or tradition. So she lifted her face to him with a mixture of trepidation and breathless expectation, and was amazed at the warmth and softness of his mouth. Swiftly the stiffness and tension went out of her neck and shoulders and she seemed to mould herself to him.

The work at Sundi Caves was even more interesting than Tara Courthey had expected it to be, and she adapted rapidly to the leisurely pace and life and intellectually stimulating companionship of the small specialist team of which she was now a part.

Tara shared a tent with two young students from the University of the Witwatersrand, and she found with mild surprise that the close proximity of other women in such spartan accommodation did not bother her. They were up long before dawn to escape the heat in the middle of the day, and after a quick and frugal breakfast, Professor Hurst led them up to the site and allocated the day's labours. They rested and ate the main meal at noon, and then as the day cooled, they returned to the site and worked on until the light failed. After that they had only enough energy for a hot shower, a light meal and the narrow camp beds.

The site was in a deep kloof. The rocky sides dropped steeply two hundred feet-to the narrow riverbed in the gut. The vegetation in the protected and sun-warmed valley was tropical, quite alien to that on the exposed grasslands that were scoured by wind and winter frosts. Tall candelabra aloes grew on the upper slopes, while farther down it became even denser, and there were tree ferns and cycads, and huge strangler figs with bark like elephant hide, grey and wrinkled.

The caves themselves were a series of commodious open galleries that ran with the exposed strata. They were ideal for habitation by primitive man, located high up the slope and protected from the prevailing winds yet with a wide view out across the plain on to which the kloof debouched. They were close to water and readily defensible against all marauders, and the depth of the midden and accumulated detritus on the floor of the caves attested to the ages over which they had been occupied.

The roofs of the caves were darkened with the smoke of countless cooking fires and the inner walls were decorated with the engravings and childlike paintings of the ancient San peoples and their predecessors. All the signs of a major site with the presence of very early hominids were evident, and although the dig was still in its early stages and they had penetrated only the upper levels, spirits and optimism were high and the whole feeling on the dig was of a close-knit community of persons bound by a common interest cooperating selflessly on a project of outstanding importance.

Tara particularly liked Marion Hurst, the American professor in charge of the excavations. She was a woman in her early fifties, with cropped grey hair, and a skin burned to the colour and consistency of saddle-leather by the suns of Arabia and Africa. They had become firm friends even before Tara discovered that she was married to a negro professor of anthropology at Cornell. That knowledge made their relationship secure, and relieved Tara of the necessity of any subterfuge.

One night she sat late with Marion in the shed they were using as a laboratory, and suddenly Tara found herself telling her about Moses Gama and her impossible love, even about the child she was carrying. The elder woman's sympathy was immediate and sincere.

'What iniquitous social order can keep people from loving others - of course, I knew all about these laws before I came here. That is why Tom stayed at home. Despite my personal feelings, the work here was just too important to pass up. However, you have my promise that I will do anything in my power to help the two of you." Yet Tara had been on the dig for five weeks without having heard from Moses Gama. She had written him a dozen letters and telephoned the Rivonia number, arid the other number in Drake's Farm township. Moses was never there, and never responded to her urgent messages.

At last she could stand it no longer, and she borrowed Marion's pick-up truck and went into the city, almost an hour's drive with the first half of the journey over clay roads that were rutted and bumpy, and finally over wide black-top highways in a solid stream of heavy traffic, coming up from the coalfields at Witbank.

She parked the pick-up under the bluegum trees at the back of Puck's Hill and was suddenly afraid to see him again, terrified that it had all changed and he would send her away. It took all her courage to leave the cab of the pick-up and go around the big unkempt house to the front verandah.

At the far end there was a man sitting at the desk and her heart soared and then as swiftly plunged as he turned and saw her and stood up. It was Marcus Archer. He came down the long verandah towards her, and his smile was spiteful and vinegary.

'Surprise!" he said. 'The last person I expected to see." 'Hello, Marcus. I was looking for Moses." 'I know who you are looking for, dearie." 'Is he here?" Marcus shook his head. 'I haven't seen him for almost two weeks." 'I have written and telephoned - he doesn't reply. I was worried." 'Perhaps he doesn't reply, because he doesn't want to see you." 'Why do you dislike me so, Marcus?" 'Oh my dear, whatever gave you that idea?" Marcus smiled archly.

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