Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 73
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Joe Cicero came for Moses in the night. Moses had dressed like one of a thousand other contract workers from the gold-mines in a surplus army greatcoat and woollen balaclava helmet that covered most of his face. He had no luggage, as Joe had instructed him, and when the ramshackle Ford pick-up parked across the road from them and flashed its lights once, Moses slipped out of the Cadillac and swiftly crossed to it. He did not say goodbye to Tara, they had taken their farewells long ago and he did not look back to where she sat forlornly behind the wheel of the Cadillac.
As soon as Moses climbed into the rear of the Ford, it pulled away. The tail lights dwindled and were lost around the first curve of the road, and Tara was smothered by such a crushing load of despair that she did not believe she could survive it.
Franois Afrika was the headmaster of the Mannenberg coloured school on the Cape Flats. He was a little over forty years old, a plump and serious man with a carb all lait complexion and thick very curly hair which he parted in the middle and plastered flat with Vaseline.
His wife Miriam was plump also, but much shorter and younger than he. She had taught history and English at the Mannenberg junior school until the headmaster had married her, and she had given him four children, all daughters. Miriam was president of the local chapter of the Women's Institute which she used as a convenient cover for her political activities. She had been arrested during the defiance campaign, but when that petered out she had not been charged and had been released under a banning order. Three months later, when the furore had died away completely, her banning order had not been renewed.
Molly Broadhurst had known her since before she had married Franqois, and the couple were frequent visitors at Molly's home.
Behind her thick spectacles Miriam wore a perpetual chubby smile.
Her home in the grounds of the junior school was clean as an operating theatre with crocheted antimacassars on the heavy maroon easy chairs, and a mirrorlike shine on the floors. Her daughters were always beautifully dressed with coloured ribbons in their pigtails and like Miriam were chubby and contented, a consequence of Miriam's cookery rather than her genes.
Tara met Miriam for the first time at Molly's home. Tara had come down by train from the expedition base at Sundi Caves two weeks before her baby was due. She had booked a private coup compartment and kept the door locked the entire journey to avoid being recognized. Molly had met her at Paarl station, for she had not wanted to risk being seen at the main Cape Town terminus. Shasa and her family still believed that she was working with Professor Hurst.
Miriam was all that Tara had hoped for, all that Molly had promised her, although she was not prepared for the maternity dress.
'You are pregnant also?" she demanded as they shook hands, and Miriam patted her stomach shyly.
'It's a cushion, Miss Tara, I couldn't just pop a baby out of nowhere, could I? I started with just a small lump as soon as Molly told me, and I've built it up slowly." Tara realized what inconvenience she had put her to, and now she embraced her impulsively. 'Oh, I can never tell you how grateful I am. Please don't call me Miss Tara. I'm your friend and plain Tara will do very well." 'I'll look after your baby like it's my own, I promise you,' Miriam told her, and then saw Tara's expression and hastily qualified her assurance. 'But he will always be yours, Tara. You can come and see him whenever, and one day if you are able to take him - well, Francois and I won't stand in your way." 'You are even nicer than Molly told me!" Tara hugged her. 'Come, I want to show you the clothes I've brought for our hah ' 'Oh, they areall blue." Miriam ,v.in: ..... Y' are going to have a boy.9' -- ......... ,,mcu. you are so sure you 'No question about it - I'm sure." 'So was I,' Miriam chuckled. 'And look at me now - all girls!
Though it's not too bad, they are good girls and they are all expecting this one to be a boy,' she patted her padded abdomen, 'and I know they are going to spoil him something terrible." Tara's baby was born in Molly Broadhurst's guest room. Doctor Chetty Abrahamji who delivered it was an old friend of Molly's and had been a secret member of the Communist Party, one of its few Hindu members.
As soon as Tara went into labour, Molly telephoned Miriam Afrika, and she arrived with bag and bulging tummy and went in directly to see Tara.
'I'm so glad we have started at last,' she cried. 'I must admit that although it was a difficult pregnancy, it will be my quickest and easiest delivery." She reached up under her own skirt and with a flourish produced the cushion. Tara laughed with her and then broke off as the next contraction seized her.
'Ouch!" she whispered. 'I wish mine was that easy. This one feels like a giant." Molly and Miriam took turns, sitting beside her and holding her hand when the contractions hit her, and the doctor stood at the foot of the bed exhorting her to, 'Push! Push!" By noon the following day Tara was exhausted, panting and racked, her hair sodden with sweat as though she had plunged into the sea.
'It's no good,' the doctor said softly. 'We'll have to move you into hospital and do a Caesar." 'No! No!" Tara struggled up on an elbow, fierce with determination. 'Give me one more chance." When the next contraction came she bore down on it with such force that every muscle in her body locked and she thought the sinews in her loins must snap like rubber bands. Nothing happened, it was jammed solid, and she could feel the blockage like a great log stuck inside her.
'More!" Molly whispered in her ear. 'Harder - once more for the baby,' Tara bore down again with the strength of desperation and then screamed as she felt her flesh tear like tissue paper. There was a hot slippery rush between her thighs and relief so intense that her scream changed to a long drawn-out cry of joy, that joined with her infant's birth cry.
'Is it a boy?" she gasped, trying to sit up. 'Tell me - tell me quickly." 'Yes,' Molly reassured her. 'It's a boy -just look at his whistle.
Long as my finger. There's no doubt about that - he's a boy all right,' and Tara laughed out aloud.
He weighed nine and a half pounds with a head that was covered with pitch black hair, thick and curly as the fleece of an Astrakhan lamb. He was the colour of hot toffee, and he had Moses Gama's fine Nilotic features. Tara had never seen anything so beautiful in all her life, none of her other babies had been anything like this.
'Let me hold him,' she croaked, hoarse with the terrible effort of his birth, and they placed the child still wet and slippery in her arms.
'I want to feed him,' she whispered. 'I must give him his first suck - then he will be mine for ever." She squeezed out her nipple and pressed it between his lips and he fastened on it, snuffling and kicking spasmodically with pleasure.
'What is his name, Tara?" Miriam Afrika asked.
'We'll call him Benjamin,' Tara said. 'Benjamin Afrika. I like that - he is' truly of Africa." Tara stayed with the infant five days. When finally she had to relinquish him, and Miriam drove away with him in her little Morris Minor, Tara felt as though part of her soul had been hacked away by the crudest surgery. If Molly had not been there to help her through, Tara knew she could not have borne it. As it was Molly had something for her.
'I've been saving it until now,' she told Tara. 'I knew how you would feel when you had to give up your baby. This will cheer you up a little." She handed Tara an envelope, and Tara examined the handwritten address. 'I don't recognize the writing." She looked mystified.
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