Rage - Smith Wilbur - Страница 74
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'I received it by a special courier - open it up. Go on!" Mo ordered impatiently, and Tara obeyed. There were four sheets cheap writing paper. Tara turned to the last sheet and as she re the signature her expression altered.
'Moses!" she cried. 'Oh I can't believe it - after all these months.
had given up hope. I didn't even recognize his handwriting." TaJ clutched the letter to her breast.
'He wasn't allowed to write, Tara dear. He has been in a vel strict training camp. He disobeyed orders and took a grave risk t get this note out to you." Molly went to the door. Tll leave you i peace to read it. I know it will make up a little for your loss." Even after Molly had left her alone, Tara was reluctant to begi reading. She wanted to savour the pleasure of anticipation, but a last she could deny herself no longer.
Tara, my dearest, I think of you every day in this place, where the work is very hard am demanding, and I wonder about you and our baby. Perhaps it has alread, been born, I do not know, and I wonder often if it is a boy or a little girl Although what I am doing is of the greatest importance for all of us for the people of Africa, as well as for you and me- yet I find roysell longing for you. The thought of you comes to me unexpectedly in the night and in the day and it is like a knife in my chest.
Tara could not read on, her eyes were awash with tears.
'Oh Moses,' she bit her lip to prevent herself blubbering, 'I never knew you could feel like that for me." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
When I left you, I did not know where I was going, nor what awaited me here. Now everything is clear, and I know what the difficult tasks are that lie ahead of us. I know also that I will need your help. You will not refuse me, my wife? I call you 'wife' because that is how I feel towards you, now that you are carrying our child.
x It was difficult for Tara to take it in. She had never expected him to give her this kind of recognition and now she felt humbled by it.
'There is nothing that I could ever refuse you,' she whispered aloud, and her eyes raced down the sheet. She turned it over quickly and Moses had written: Once before I told you how valuable it would be if you used your family connections to keep us informed of affairs of state. Since then this has become more imperative. Your husband, Shasa Courtney, is going over to the side of the neo-fascist oppressors. Although this fills you with hatred and contempt for him, yet it is a boon we could not have expected or prayed for. Our information is that he has been promised a place in least ten years junior to Tara, barely into her twenties, but with an unusual maturity for one so young.
'My name is Victoria Dinizulu,' she introduced herself. 'My friends call me Vicky. I know you are Mrs Courtney." 'Tara,' Tara corrected her quickly. Nobody had used her surname since she had left Cape Town and it sounded a jarring note in her own ears.
The girl smiled shyly in acknowledgement. She had the serene beauty of a black madonna, the classic moon face of the high-bred Zulu with huge almond eyes and full lips, her skin the colour of dark amber, her hair plaited into an intricate pattern of tiny curls over her skull.
'Are you related to the Courtneys of Zululand?" she asked Tara.
'Old General Sean Courtney and Sir Garrick Courtney of Theuniskraal, near Ladyburg?" 'Yes." Tara tried not to show the shock she felt at the mention of those names. 'Sir Garrick was my husband's grandfather. My own sons are named Sean and Garrick after them. Why do you ask, Vicky? Do you know the family well?" 'Oh yes, Mrs Courtney - Tara." When she smiled, the Zulu girl's face seemed to glow like a dark moon. 'Long ago, during the last century, my grandfather fought at General Sean Courtney's side in the Zulu wars against Cetewayo who stole the kingship of Zululand from my family. It was my grandfather, Mbejane, who should have been king. Instead he became General Courtney's servant.
'Mbejane!" Tara cried. 'Oh yes. Sir Garrick Courtney wrote about him in his History of Zululand. He was Sean Courtney's faithful retainer until his death. I remember they came up here to the gold-' fields of the reef together and later went on to what is now Rhodesia, hunting ivory." 'You know all about that!" Vicky laughed with pleasure.
'My father used to tell me the same stories when I was a little girl. My father still lives near Theuniskraal. After my grandfather, Mbejane Dinizulu, died my father took his place as the old general's body servant. He even went to France with the general in 1916 and worked for him until the general was murdered. In his will the general left him a section of Theuniskraal for his lifetime and a pension of a thousand pounds a year. They are a fine family, the Courtneys. My old father still weeps whenever he mentions the general's name --' Vicky broke off and shook her head, suddenly perplexed and saddened. 'Life must have been so simple in those days, my grandfather and my father were hereditary chieftains and yet they were satisfied to spend their lives subservient to a white man, and strangely they loved that man and he, in his way, seemed to love them. I wonder sometimes if theirs was not the better way --' 'Do not even think that,' Tara almost hissed at her. 'The Courtneys have always been heartless robber barons, plundering and exploiting your people. Right and justice are on the side of your struggle. Never entertain the slightest doubt of that." 'You are right,' Vicky agreed firmly. 'But sometimes it's nice to think of the friendship of the general and my grandfather. Perhaps one day we could be friends again, equal friends, both sides stronger for the friendship." 'With every new oppression, with every new law passed, the prospect fades,' Tara said grimly, 'and I become more ashamed of my race." 'I don't want to be sad and intense tonight, Tara. Let's talk about happy things. You said you have sons, Seen and Garrick, named after their ancestors. Tell me about them, please." However, the thought of the children and Shasa and Weltevreden made Tara feel guilty and uncomfortable, and as soon as she could she changed the subject again.
'Now tell me about yourself, Vicky,' she insisted. 'What are you doing in Johannesburg, so far from Zululand?" 'I work at Baragwanath Hospital,' Vicky told her.
Tara knew that was one of the largest hospitals in the world, certainly the largest in the southern hemisphere, with 2400 beds and over 2000 nurses and doctors, most of them black, for the hospital catered exclusively for black patients. All hospitals, like schools and transport and most other public facilities, were strictly segregated by law, true to the grand concept of apartheid.
Vicky Dinizulu was so modest about her own achievements that Tara had to draw out of her the fact that she was a qualified theatre sister.
'But you are so young, Vicky' she protested.
'There are others younger,' the Zulu girl laughed. Her laughter had a pleasing musical lilt.
'She really is a lovely child,' Tara thought, smiling in sympathy, and then corrected herself. 'No, not a child - a clever and competent young woman." So Tara told her about her clinic at Nyanga, and the problems of malnutrition and ignorance and poverty they encountered, and Vicky related some of her experiences and the solutions they had found to the terrible challenges that faced them in caring for the physical wellbeing of a peasant population trying to adapt to an urban existence.
'Oh, I have enjoyed talking to you,' Vicky blurted out at last. 'I don't know when I have ever spoken to a white woman like this the cabinet of that barbarous regime. If you were in his confidence, it would afford us a direct inside view and knowledge of all their plans and intentions. This would be so valuable that it would be impossible to put a price upon it.
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