Rage

by Wilbur Smith

  Slowly he lifted his arms, spreading them like the wings of a falcon on the edge of flight, until they were at the level of his shoulders, a strangely graceful gesture, and he raised his body on tiptoe so that the great muscles of his thighs tightened and changed shape – and then he began to run.

  He ran with the bounding motion of that hunting cat, the cheetah, lifting his knees high and driving his whole body forward. Behind him the turf was scarred by the power of his studded boots, and in the immense silence of the arena his grunting breaths, timed to the long elastic strides, carried to where Manfred sat.

  The leather ball, shiny brown and ovate, was balanced on one point, and as Lothar bore down on where it stood on the green turf, his pace quickened yet his body remained in perfect balance. The kick was a continuation of that long driving stride, his right leg whipped straight at the exact instant that his toe struck the ball and his weight was so far forward that his leg swung on up in an arcing parabola until his foot, with his toe extended like that of a ballet dancer, was high above his head, while both his arms were flung forward to maintain that graceful balance. The ball was grossly deformed by the brutal impact of the kick, but in flight it snapped back into shape, and rose in a flat hard trajectory towards the two tall white goalposts at the end of the field. It neither tumbled nor wobbled, but flew with a stable motion, as steady in the air as a flighted arrow.

  However, a hoarse and anxious sigh went up from the watchers, as they realized that it was aimed too far to the right. Although the power of that mighty right leg had driven it high above the level of the cross bar, it was going to miss the goalposts on the right and Manfred came to his feet with forty thousand others and groaned in helpless agony.

  A miss would mean ignominious defeat, but if the ball passed between the white uprights, it would be victory, sweet and famous, by a single point.

  The ball rose higher still, up out of the sheltered arena, and it caught the wind. Lothar had studied the flags on the roof of the grandstand before he began his run, and now the wind swung the ball in gently, but not enough, oh, sweet God, not nearly enough. Then gradually the ball lost impetus and power as it reached the zenith of its trajectory, and as it slowed, so the wind took charge, curving it ever more sharply to the left, and Manfred’s groan turned to a roar of delight as it fell through the very centre of the goalposts, grazing the white cross bar, and the referee’s shrill long-drawn-out whistle signalled the end of the match.

  Beside Manfred his boyhood friend, Roelf Stander, was pounding his back in congratulation.

  ‘Man, I tell you, he is going to be a Springbok for sure, just like his Pa.’

  On the field Lothar was surrounded by his team mates who were fighting for a chance to embrace him, while from the stands a wave of spectators was sweeping across the field to lionize him.

  ‘Come, let’s go down to the dressing-room.’ Manfred took his companion’s arm, but it was not that easy. They were stopped every few paces by the well-wishers and Manfred smiled and shook their hands and accepted their congratulations. Although this was part of his life, and his very soul fed on the adulation and enormous respect which every one of them, even the richest and most famous of them, showed towards him, yet today it irked Manfred to be kept from his son.

  When at last they reached the dressing-room, the crowd that filled the corridor outside opened miraculously before them, and where others were turned away, they were respectfully ushered through into the steamy noisy room that stank of sweaty clothing and stale urine and hot masculine bodies.

  Lothar was in the centre of the crowd of naked young men, singing and wrestling in rough camaraderie, but when he saw his father he broke away and came to him immediately, dressed only in a pair of grass-stained shorts with his magnificent young body glossy with sweat and a brown beer bottle clutched in one hand. His face was rapturous with pride and the sense of his own achievement.

  ‘My son—’ Manfred held out his right hand and Lothar seized it joyously.

  ‘My son—’ Manfred repeated, but his voice failed him and his vision misted over with pride. He jerked his son’s hand, pulling him against his own chest, and held him hard, hugging him unashamedly, even while Lothar’s sweat stained his shirt and his team mates howled with delight.

  The three of them, Manfred, Roelf Stander and Lothar, drove home in the new ministerial Cadillac. They were happy as schoolboys, grinning and joshing each other and singing the bawdy old rugby songs. When they stopped at the traffic lights before entering the main traffic stream at Jan Smuts Drive that would take them the thirty miles across the grassy undulating highveld to Pretoria there were two small black urchins darting and dodging perilously amongst the vehicles, and one of them peered through the side window of the Cadillac at Manfred, grinning cockily and holding up a copy of the Mail from the bundle of newspapers he carried under his arm.

  Manfred was about to dismiss him with an impatient gesture, for the Mail was an English rag. Then he saw the headlines APPEAL FAILS: GUY FAWKES KILLER TO HANG and he rolled down his side window and flipped the child a coin.

  He passed the paper to Roelf Stander with the terse command, ‘Read it to me!’ and drove on.

  This morning the appeal of Moses Gama against his conviction for murder and attempted murder by the Cape Division of the Supreme Court was dismissed by a full bench of the Appellate Division in Bloemfontein and the date set for the execution by hanging was confirmed.

  ‘Ja, goed.’ Although Manfred scowled with concentration as he listened, his relief was intense. Over the months the media and the public had come to accept the Gama case as something intimately linked to Manfred De La Rey. The fact that he had personally made the arrest and that he was Minister of Police had combined so that the prosecution of the case had become, in the public imagination, a measure of the strength and efficiency of the police force and of Manfred’s kragdadigheid, his own personal power.

  More than any other quality the Afrikaner Volk demanded strength and determination in its leaders. This case, with its terrifying message of black peril and bloody revolution, had invoked the most intense feelings of insecurity throughout the land. People wanted to be reassured that their safety and the security of the state were in strong hands. Manfred, with his sure political instincts, had realized that the dice of his future were being cast.

  Unfortunately, there had been a complication in what should have been a straightforward matter of justice and swift retribution. The fact that the judge of the Supreme Court had dismissed the charge of high treason and had made some controversial and ill-considered remarks about the individual’s duty of loyalty to a state in which he was denied direct representation had been taken up by the foreign press and the case had captured the attention of left-wing liberals and Bolsheviks around the Western world. In America the bearded hippies and Commie university students had formed ‘Save Moses Gama’ committees and had picketed the White House and the South African Embassy in Washington, while even in England there had been demonstrations in Trafalgar Square outside South Africa House by Communist-inspired and financed gangs of black expatriates and some white riff-raff. The British Prime Minister had summoned the South African High Commissioner for consultations and President Eisenhower had instructed his ambassador in Pretoria to call upon Hendrik Verwoerd and appeal for mercy for the condemned man.

  The South African government had stood firm in its rejection of these appeals. Their position was that the matter was one for the judiciary and that they would not interfere with the course of justice. However, their lordships of the Appellate Division were occasionally known to indulge in unwise demonstrations of compassion or obscure legal dialectic, in fits of independent thinking which accorded ill with the hard task of the police and the aspirations of the Afrikaner Volk.

  This time, mercifully, they had been spared one of their lordships’ quirky decisions and in that little green-painted room in Pretoria Central Prison the noose now waited for Moses Gama, and he would crash
through the trap to the eternity into which he had planned to send the leaders of the nation.

  ‘Ja, goed! Now read the editorial!’ Manfred ordered Roelf Stander. The Golden City Mail was one of the English-language newspapers, and even for that section of the press the views it held were liberal. Manfred would never have bought it for preference, but having done so he was now prepared to dilute his grim satisfaction at the Appeal Court’s verdict, with the irritation of listening to the left-wing erudition of the Mail’s editorial staff.

  Roelf Stander rustled the news sheet and cleared his throat.

  “‘A Martyr is Born”,’ he read, and Manfred gave a growl of anger.

  When Moses Gama dies at the end of the hangman’s rope, he will become the most significant martyr in the history of the black African struggle for liberation.

  Moses Gama’s elevation will not be on account of his moving eloquence nor of the awe-inspiring power of his presence. Rather it will be for the simple reason that he has posed a question so grave and so fateful that by its very nature the answer to it can never be given by a single national court of law. The answer rests instead in the heart of mankind itself. For that question is aimed at the very foundation of man’s existence upon this earth. Simply stated, it is this: is a man who is deprived of any peaceful or lawful means of asserting his basic human rights justified in turning, in the last resort, to violence?

  Manfred snorted. ‘Enough of that. I should not have bothered to have you read it out. It is so predictable. If the black savages cut the throats of our children and ate their raw livers, there would still be those rooinekke who would chastize us for not having provided salt for the feast! We will not listen to any more of that. Turn to the sports page. Let us hear what they have to say about Lothie and his manne, though I doubt that those souties can tell the difference between a stick of biltong and a rugby ball.’

  When the Cadillac pulled up the long drive to Manfred’s official residence in the elite suburb of Waterkloof there was a large gathering of family and friends at the swimming-pool at the far end of the wide green lawns, and the younger ones came running to meet them and to embrace Lothar as soon as he stepped out of the Cadillac.

  ‘We listened on the radio,’ they cried, as they clamoured for a turn to hug and kiss him. ‘Oh, Lothie, you were wonderful.’ Each of his sisters took one of his arms, while their friends and the Stander girls crowded as close as they could to him as they escorted him down to the pool where the older women waited to congratulate him.

  Lothar went to his mother first, and while they embraced Manfred watched them with an indulgent smile of pride. What a fine-looking family he had. Heidi was still a magnificent woman and no man could ask for a more dutiful wife. Not once in all the years had he ever regretted his choice.

  ‘My friends, my family, all my loved ones,’ Manfred raised his voice, and they turned to him and fell into silent expectation. Manfred was a compelling speaker, and as a nation they were susceptible to oratory and fine words, for they were constantly exposed to them, from pulpit and political platform, from the cradle to the grave.

  ‘When I look at this young man who is my son, at this fine young South African, and those of our young people like him, then I know that I need not worry for the future of our Volk,’ Manfred proclaimed in the sonorous tones to which his listeners responded instinctively, and they applauded and cried ‘Hoor, hoor!’ each time he paused.

  Amongst the listeners there was one at least who was not entirely captivated by his artistry. Although Sarah Stander smiled and nodded, she could feel her stomach chum and her throat burn with the acid of her rejected love.

  Sitting in this lovely garden, watching the man she had loved beyond life itself, the man to whom she would have dedicated every moment of her existence, the man to whom she had given her girlish body and the tender blossom of her virginity, the man whose seed she had taken joyously into her womb, she felt that ancient, now rancid passion change its shape and texture to become hard and bitter hatred. She listened to Manfred extolling his wife, and she knew that she should have been that woman, those praises should have been for her alone. She should have been at his side to share his triumphs and his achievements.

  She watched Manfred embrace Lothar and with his arm around his shoulders commend his firstborn to them all, smiling with pride as he recited his virtues, and Sarah Stander hated them both, father and son, for Lothar De La Rey was not his firstborn.

  She turned her head and saw Jakobus standing on the periphery, shy and self-effacing, but every bit as handsome as the big golden-headed athlete. Jakobus, her own son, had the dark brows and pale topaz-coloured eyes of the De La Reys. If Manfred were not blind, he would see that. Jakobus was as tall as Lothar, but was not possessed of his half-brother’s raw-boned frame and layers of rippling muscle. He had an appealing fragility of body, and his features were not so dashingly masculine. Instead, he had the face of a poet, sensitive and gentle.

  Sarah’s own expression went dreamy and soft as she remembered his conception. She had been little more than a child, but her love had been that of a mature woman, as she crept through the silent old house to the room in which Manfred slept. She had loved him all her life, but in the morning he was leaving, sailing away to a far-off land, to Germany as a member of the Olympic team, and she had been troubled for weeks with a deep premonition of losing him for ever. She had wanted in some way to ensure against that insupportable loss, to try to make certain of his return, so she had given him everything that she had, her heart and her soul and her barely matured body, trusting him to return them to her.

  Instead he had met the German woman and had married her. Sarah could still vividly recall the cablegram from Germany that had announced his dreadful betrayal, and her own devastation when she read the fateful words. Part of her had shrivelled and died on that day, part of her soul had been missing ever since.

  Manfred De La Rey was still speaking, and he had them laughing now with some silly joke, but he looked towards her and saw that she was serious. Perhaps he read something of her thoughts in her eyes for his own gaze flicked across to where Jakobus stood and then back to her and for an instant she sensed an unusual emotion – regret or guilt – within him.

  She wondered not for the first time if he knew about Jakobus. Surely he must at least have suspected it. Her marriage to. Roelf had been so hasty, so unheralded, and the birth of Kobus had followed so swiftly. Then the physical resemblance of son to father was so strong, surely Manfred knew it.

  Roelf knew, of course. He had loved her without hope until Manfred rejected her, and he had used her pregnancy to gain her consent. Since then he had been a good and dutiful husband and his love and concern for her had never faltered but he was not Manfred De La Rey. He was not, nor could he ever be, a man as Manfred De La Rey was a man. He had never had Manfred’s force and power, his drive and personality and ruthlessness, and she could never love him as she loved Manfred.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted to herself, ‘I have always loved Manfred, and I will love him to the end of my life, but my hatred of him is as strong as my love and with time it will grow stronger still. It is all that I have to sustain me.’

  Manfred was ending his speech now, talking about Lothar’s promotion. Of course, Sarah thought bitterly, his promotion would not have been so rapid if his father had not been the Minister of Police and he had not had such skill with a rugby ball. Her own Kobus could expect no such preferment. Everything he achieved would be with his own talent and by his own efforts. She and Roelf could do little for him. Roelf’s influence was minimal, and even the university fees for Jakobus’ education were a serious drain on their family finances. She had been forced to face the fact that Roelf would never go much further than he was now. His entry into legal practice had been a mistake and a failure. By the time he had accepted that fact and returned to the academic life as a lecturer in law, he had lost so much seniority that it would be many years, if ever, before he was given the cha
ir of law. No, there was not much they could do to help Kobus – but then, of course, none of the family, not even Kobus himself, knew what he wanted from life. He was a brilliant student, but he totally lacked direction or purpose, and he had always been a secretive lad. It was so difficult to draw him out. Once or twice Sarah had succeeded in doing so, but she had been frightened by the strange and radical views he expressed. Perhaps it was best not to explore her son’s mind too deeply, she thought, and smiled across at him just as, at last, Manfred stopped singing his own son’s praises.

  Jakobus came to her side now. ‘Can I get you another orange juice, Mama? Your glass is empty.’

  ‘No, thank you, Kobus. Stay with me for a while. I see so little of you these days.’

  The men had charged their beer tankards and led by Manfred trooped towards the barbecue fires on the far side of the pool. Amid laughter and raillery Manfred and Lothar were tying candy-striped aprons around their waists and arming themselves with long-handled forks.

  On a side table there was a huge array of platters piled with raw meat, lamb chops and sosaties on long skewers, German sausages and great thick steaks, enough to feed an army of starving giants and, Sarah calculated sourly, costing almost her husband’s monthly salary.

  Since Manfred and his one-armed demented father had mysteriously acquired shares in that fishing company in South West Africa he had become not only famous and powerful, but enormously rich as well. Heidi had a mink coat now and Manfred had purchased a large farm in the rich maize-producing belt of the Orange Free State. It was every Afrikaner’s dream to own a farm, and Sarah felt her envy flare as she thought about it. All that should have been hers. She had been deprived of what was rightly hers by that German whore. The word shocked her, but she repeated it silently – whore!