Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 72
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South Africa had no television network, but on her portable radio Victoria listened to a pungent edition of 'Current Affairs' on the state-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation in which the campaign of defiance was described as the action of a radical minority, and Moses Gama was viiifled as a communist-inspired revolutionary criminal who was still at large, although a warrant had been issued for his arrest on a charge of high treason.
Cut off from all other sympathetic human contact, Victoria found herself pining for him with such desperate longing that she cried herself to sleep in her lonely room each night.
On the tenth day of her banning she was returning from her daily report to the police station, keeping to the edge of the pavement in that sensual gliding walk that the Nguni woman practises from childhood when she carries every load, from faggots of firewood to five-gallon clay pots of water, balanced upon her head. A light delivery van slowed down as it approached her from behind, and began to keep pace with her.
Victoria was accustomed to extravagant male attention, for she was the very essence of Nguni female beauty, and when the driver of the vehicle whistled softly, she did not glance in his direction but lifted her chin an inch and assumed a haughty expression.
The driver whistled again, more demandingly, and from the corner of her eye she saw the van was blue with the sign EXPRESS DRY CLEANERS -- SIX HOUR SERVICE painted on the side. The driver was a big man, and although his cap was pulled low over his eyes, she sensed he was attractive and masterful. Despite herself her hips began to swing as she strode on, and her large perfectly round buttocks oscillated like the cheeks of a chipmunk chewing a nut.
'Victoria!" Her name was hissed, and the voice was unmistakable.
She stopped dead and swung round to face him.
'You!" she whispered, and then glanced around her frantically.
For the moment the sidewalk was clear and only light traffic moved down the highway between rows of tall bluegum trees. Her eyes flashed back to his face, almost hungrily, and she whispered, 'Oh Moses, I didn't think you'd come." He leaned across the front seat of the van and opened the door nearest her, and she rushed across and threw herself into the moving van.
'Get down,' he ordered, and she crouched below the dashboard while he slammed the door closed and accelerated away.
'I couldn't believe it was you. I still don't - this van, where did you get it? Oh Moses, you'll never know how much - I heard your name on the radio, many times - so much has happened --' She found that she was gabbling almost hysterically. It had been so long since she had been able to talk freely, and it was as though the painful abscess of loneliness and longing had burst and all the poison was draining in the rush of words.
She began to tell him about the nurses; strike and the banning, and hid of J hei no. ks ulu. had. can.*zted, her- or, qcthe e was- going-rffbe a march by a hundred thousand women, to the government buildings at Pretoria, and she was going to defy her banning order to join the march.
'I want you to be proud of me. I want to be part of the struggle, for that is the only way I can truly be a part of you." Moses Gama drove in silence, smiling a little as he listened to her chatter. He wore blue overalls with the legend 'Express Dry Cleaners' embroidered across his back and the rear of the van was filled with racks of clothing that smelled strongly of cleaning solvent. She knew he had borrowed the van from Hendrick Iabaka.
After a few minutes Moses slowed the van and then turned off sharply on to a spur road which swiftly deteriorated into a rutted track, and then petered out entirely. He bumped the last few yards over tussocks of grass and then parked behind a ruined and roofless building, the windows from whmh the frames had been ripped out were like the eyes of a skull. Victoria straightened up from under the dashboard.
'I have heard about the nurses' strike-and your banning,' he said softly as he switched off the engine. 'And yes, I am proud of you.
Very proud. You are a wife fit for a chief." She hung her head shyly, and the pleasure his words gave her was almost unbearable. She had not truly realized how much she loved him while they had been separated, and now the full force of it rushed back upon her.
'And you are a chief,' she said. 'No, more than that - you are a king." 'Victoria, I do not have much time,' he said. 'I should not have come here at all --' 'I would have shrivelled up if you had not - my soul was droughtstricken --' she burst out, but he laid his hand on her arm to still her.
'Listen to me, Victoria. I have come to tell you that I am going away. I have come to charge you to be strong while I am away." 'Oh, my husband!" In her agitation she lapsed into Zulu. 'Where are you going?" 'I can tell you only that it is to a distant land." 'Can I not journey by your side?" she pleaded.
'No." 'Then I will send my heart to be your travelling companion, while the husk of me remains here to await your return. When will you come back, my husband?" 'I do not know, but it will be a long time." 'For me every minute that you are gone will become a weary day,' she told him quietly, and he raised his hand and stroked her face gently.
'If there is anything you need you must go to Hendrick Tabaka.
He is my brother, and I have placed you in his care." She nodded, unable to speak.
'There is only one thing I can tell you now. When I return I will take the world we know and turn it on its head. Nothing will ever be the same again." 'I believe you,' she said simply.
'I must go now,' he told her. 'Our time together has come to an end." 'My husband,' she murmured, casting down her eyes again. 'Let me be a wife to you one last time, for the nights are so long and cold when you are not beside me." He took a roll of canvas from the back of the van and spread it on the grass beside the parked van. Her naked body was set off by the white cloth as she lay upon it like a figure cast in dark bronze thrown down upon the snow.
At the end when he had spent and lay weak as a child upon her, she clasped his head tenderly to the soft warm swell of her bosom and she whispered to him, 'No matter how far and how long you travel, my love will burn away time and distance and I will be beside you, my husband." Tara was waiting for him, with the lantern lit, lying awake in the cottage tent when Moses returned to the camp. She sat up as he came through the fly. The blanket fell to her waist and she was naked. Her breasts were big and white and laced with tiny bluish veins around the swollen nipples - so different from those of the woman he had just left.
'Where have you been?" she demanded.
He ignored the question as he began to undress.
'You have been to see her, haven't you? Joe ordered you not to." Now he looked at her scornfully, and then deliberately re-buttoned the front of his overalls as he moved to leave the tent again.
'I'm sorry, Moses,' she cried, instantly terrified by the thought of his going. 'I didn't mean it, please stay. I won't talk like that again. I swear it, my darling. Please forgive me. I was upset, I have had such a terrible dream --' she threw aside the blanket and came up on her knees, reaching out both hands towards him. 'Please!" she entreated.
'Please come to me." For long seconds he stared at her and then began once more to unbutton his overalls. She clung to him desperately as he came into the bed.
'Oh Moses - I had such a dream. I dreamed of Sister Nunziata again. Oh God, the look on their faces as they ate her flesh. They were like wolves, their mouths red and running with her blood. It was the most horrific thing, beyond my imagination. It made me want to despair for all the world." 'No,' he said. His voice was low but it reverberated through her body as though she were'the sounding box of a violin trembling to the power of the strings. 'No!" he said. 'It was beauty - stark beauty, shorn of all but the truth. What you witnessed was the rage of the people, and it was a holy thing. Before that I merely hoped, but after witnessing that I could truly believe. It was a consecration of our victory. They ate the flesh and drank the blood as you Christians do to seal a pact with history. When you have seen that sacred rage you have to believe in our eventual triumph." He sighed, his great muscular chest heaved in the circle of her arms and then he went to sleep. It was something to which she could never grow accustomed, the way he could sleep as though he had closed a door in his mind. She was left bereft and afraid, for she knew what lay ahead for her.
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