by Wilbur Smith
He was mine, whore, and you stole him from me.
Jakobus was talking to her, but she found it difficult to follow what he was saying. Her attention kept stealing back to Manfred De La Rey. Every time his great laugh boomed out she felt her heart contract and she watched him from the corners of her eyes.
Manifred was holding court; even dressed in that silly apron and with a cooking fork in his hand, he was still the focus of all attention and respect. Every few minutes more guests arrived to join the gathering, most of them important and powerful men, but all of them gathered slavishly around Manfred and deferred to him.
‘We should understand why he did it,’ Jakobus was saying, and Sarah forced herself to concentrate on her son.
‘Who did it, dear?’ she asked vaguely.
‘Mama, you haven’t been listening to a word,’ Jakobus smiled gently. ‘You really are a little scatterbrain sometimes.’ Sarah always felt vaguely uncomfortable when he spoke to her in such a familiar fashion, none of her friends’ children would show such disrespect.
‘I was talking about Moses Gama,’ Jakobus went on, and at the mention of that name everybody within earshot turned towards the two of them.
‘They are going to hang that black thunder, at last,’ somebody said, and everybody agreed immediately.
‘Ja, about time.’
‘We have to teach them a lesson – you show mercy to a kaffir and he takes it as weakness.’
‘Only one thing they understand—’
‘I think it will be a mistake to hang him,’ Jakobus said clearly, and there was a stunned silence.
‘Kobie! Kobie!’ Sarah tugged at her son’s arm. ‘Not now, darling. People don’t like that sort of talk.’
‘That is because they never hear it – and they don’t understand it,’ Jakobus explained reasonably, but some of them turned away deliberately while a middle-aged cousin of Manfred’s said truculently, ‘Come on, Sarie, can’t you stop your brat talking like a Commie.’
‘Please, Kobie,’ she used the diminutive as a special appeal, ‘for my sake.’
Manfred De La Rey had become aware of the disturbance and the flare of hostility amongst his guests, and now he looked across the fires on which the steaks were sizzling and he frowned.
‘Don’t you see, Mama, we have to talk about it. If we don’t, people will never hear any other point of view. None of them even read the English newspapers.’
‘Kobie, you will anger your Uncle Manie,’ Sarah pleaded. ‘Please stop it now.’
‘We Afrikaners are cut off in this little make-believe world of ours. We think that if we make enough laws the black people will cease to exist, except as our servants—’
Manfred had come across from the fires now, and his face was dark with anger.
‘Jakobus Stander,’ he rumbled softly. ‘Your father and your mother are my oldest and dearest friends, but do not trespass on the hospitality of this house. I will not have wild and treasonable ideas bandied about in front of my family and friends. Behave yourself, or leave immediately.’
For a moment it seemed the boy might defy him. Then he dropped his gaze and mumbled. ‘I’m sorry, Oom Manie.’ But when Manfred turned and strode back to the barbecue fire, he said just loud enough for Sarah to hear, ‘You see, they won’t listen. They don’t want to hear. They are afraid of the truth. How can you make a blind man see?’
Manfred De La Rey was still inwardly seething with anger at the youth’s ill-manners, but outwardly he was his usual bluff self as he resumed his self imposed duties over the cooking fires, and led the jovial banter of his male guests. Gradually his irritation subsided, and he had almost put aside Moses Gama and the long shadow that he had thrown over them all, when his youngest daughter came running down from the long low ranch-type house.
‘Papa, Papa, there is a telephone call for you.’
‘I can’t come now, skatjie,’ Manfred called. ‘We don’t want our guests to starve. Take a message.’
‘It’s Oom Danie,’ his daughter insisted, ‘and he says he must talk to you now. It’s very important.’
Manfred sighed and grumbled good-naturedly as he untied his apron, and handed his fork to Roelf Stander. ‘Don’t let them burn!’ and he strode up to the house.
‘Ja!’ he barked into the telephone.
‘I don’t like to disturb you, Manie.’
‘Then why do you do it?’ Manfred demanded. Danie Leroux was a senior police general, and one of his most able officers.
‘It’s this man Gama.’
‘Let the black bastard hang. That is what he wants.’
‘No! He wants to do a deal.’
‘Send someone else to speak to him, I do not want to waste my time.’
‘He will only talk to you, and we believe he has something important he will be able to tell you.’
Manfred thought for a moment. His instinct was to dismiss the request out of hand, but he let reason dictate to him.
‘All right,’ he agreed heavily. ‘I will meet him.’ There would also be a perverse pleasure in confronting a vanquished foe. ‘But he is going to hang – nothing will stop that,’ he warned quietly.
The prison authority had confiscated the leopard-skin robes of chieftainship, and Moses Gama wore the prison-issue suiting of coarse unbleached calico.
The long unremitting strain of awaiting the outcome of his appeal had told heavily. For the first time Vicky noticed the frosting of white in his cap of dark crinkling hair, and his features were gaunt, his eyes sunken in dark bruised-looking hollows. Her compassion for him threatened to overwhelm her, and she wished that she could reach out and touch him, but the steel mesh screen separated them.
‘This is the last time I am allowed to visit you,’ she whispered, ‘and they will only let me stay for fifteen minutes.’
‘That will be long enough, for there is not much to say, now that the sentence has been confirmed.’
‘Oh, Moses, we were wrong to believe that the British and the Americans would save you.’
‘They tried,’ he said quietly.
‘But they did not try very hard, and now what will I do without you. What will the child I am carrying do without a father?’
‘You are a daughter of Zulu, you will be strong.’
‘I will try, Moses my husband,’ she whispered. ‘But what of your people? They are also children without a father. What will become of them?’
She saw the old fierce fire burn in his eyes. She had feared it had been for ever extinguished, and she felt a brief and bitter joy to know it was still alight.
‘The others will seek to take your place now. Those of the Congress who hate and envy you. When you die they will use your sacrifice to serve their own ambitions.’
She saw that she had reached him again, and that he was angry. She sought to inflame his anger to give him reason and strength to go on living.
‘If you die, your enemies will use your dead body as a stepping-stone to climb to the place you have left empty.’
‘Why do you torment me, woman?’ he asked.
‘Because I do not want you to die, because I want you to live – for me, for our child, and for your people.’
‘That cannot be,’ he said. ‘The hard Boers will not yield, not even to the demands of the great powers. Unless you can find wings for me to fly over these walls, then I must go to my fate. There is no other way.’
‘There is a way,’ Vicky told him. ‘There is a way for you to survive – and for you to put down the enemy who seek to usurp your place as the leader of the black nations.’
He stared at her as she went on.
‘When the day comes that we sweep the Boers into the sea, and open the doors of the prisons, you will emerge to take your rightful place at the head of the revolution.’
‘What is this way, woman? What is this hope that you hold out to me?’
He listened without expression as she propounded it to him, and when she had finished, he said gravely, ‘It
is true that the lioness is fiercer and crueller than the lion.’
‘Will you do it, my lord – not for your own sake, but for all us weak ones who need you so?’
‘I will think on it,’ he conceded.
‘There is so little time,’ she warned.
The black ministerial Cadillac was delayed only briefly at the gates to the prison, for they were expecting Manfred De La Rey. As the steel gates swung open, the driver accelerated through into the main courtyard and turned into the parking slot that had been kept free. The prison commissioner and two of his senior staff were waiting, and they hurried forward as soon as Manfred climbed out of the rear door.
Briefly Manfred shook hands with the commissioner and said, ‘I wish to see the prisoner immediately.’
‘Of course, Minister, it has been arranged. He is waiting for you.’
‘Lead the way.’
Manfred’s heavy footfalls echoed along the dreary green-painted corridors, while the senior warders scurried ahead to unlock the interleading doors of each section and relock them as Manfred and the prison commissioner passed through. It was a long walk, but they came at last to the condemned block.
‘How many awaiting execution?’ Manfred demanded.
‘Eleven,’ the commissioner replied. The figure was not unusually high, Manfred reflected. Africa is a violent land and the gallows play a central role in the administration of justice.
‘I do not want to be overheard, even by those soon to die.’
‘It has been arranged,’ the commissioner assured him. ‘Gama is being kept separate from the others.’
The warders opened one last steel door and at the end of a short passage was a barred cell. Manfred went through but when the commissioner would have followed, Manfred stopped him.
‘Wait here!’ he ordered. ‘Lock the door after me and open it again only when I ring.’
As the door clanged shut Manfred walked on to the end of the passage.
The cell was small, seven foot by seven, and almost bare. There was a toilet bowl against the side wall and a single iron bunk fixed to the opposite wall. Moses Gama sat on the edge of the bunk and he looked up at Manfred. Then slowly he came to his feet and crossed the cell to face him through the green-painted bars.
Neither man spoke. They stared at each other. Though only the bars separated them, they were a universe and an eternity apart. Though their gazes locked, there was no contact between their minds, and the hostility was a barrier between them more obdurate and irreconcilable than the steel bars.
‘Yes?’ Manfred asked at last. The temptation to gloat over a vanquished adversary was strong, but he withstood it. ‘You asked to see me?’
‘I have a proposal to put to you,’ Moses Gama said.
‘You wish to bargain for your life?’ Manfred corrected him, and when Moses was silent, he smiled. ‘So it seems that you are no different from other men, Moses Gama. You are neither a saint nor even the noble martyr that some say you are. You are no better than other men, no better than any of us. In the end your loyalty is to yourself alone. You are weak as other men are weak, and like them, you are afraid.’
‘Do you wish to listen to my proposal?’ Moses asked, without a sign of having heard the taunts.
‘I will hear what you have to say,’ Manfred agreed. ‘That is why I came here.’
‘I will deliver them to you,’ Moses said, and Manfred understood immediately.
‘By “them” you mean those who also claim to be the leaders of your people? The ones who compete with your own claim to that position?’
Moses nodded and Manfred chuckled and shook his head with admiration.
‘I will give you the names and the evidence. I will give you the times and the places.’ Moses was still expressionless. ‘You have underestimated the threat that they are to you, you have underestimated the support they can muster, here and abroad. I will give you that knowledge.’
‘And in return?’ Manfred asked.
‘My freedom,’ said Moses simply.
‘Magtig!’ The blasphemy was a measure of Manfred’s astonishment. ‘You have the effrontery of a white man.’ He turned away so that Moses could not see his face while he considered the magnitude of the offer.
Moses Gama was wrong. Manfred was fully aware of the threat, and he had a broad knowledge of the extent and the ramifications of the conspiracy. He understood that the world he knew was under terrible siege. The Englishman had spoken of the winds of change – they were blowing not only upon the African continent, but across the world. Everything he held dear, from the existence of his family to that of his Volk and the safety of the land that God had delivered unto them, was under attack by the forces of darkness.
Here he was being offered the opportunity to deal those forces a telling blow. He knew then what his duty was.
‘I cannot give you your freedom,’ he said quietly. ‘That is too much – but you knew that when you demanded it, didn’t you?’ Moses did not answer him, and Manfred went on, ‘This is the bargain I will offer you. I will give you your life. A reprieve, but you will never leave prison again. That is the best I can do.’
The silence went on so long that Manfred thought he had refused and he began to turn away when Moses spoke again.
‘I accept.’
Manfred turned back to him, not allowing his triumph to show.
‘I will want all the names, all the evidence,’ he insisted.
‘You will have it all,’ Moses assured him. ‘When I have my reprieve.’
‘No,’ Manfred said quietly. ‘I set the terms. You will have your reprieve when you have earned it. Until then you will get only a stay of execution. Even for that I will need you to name a name so that I can convince my compatriots of the wisdom of our bargain.’
Moses was silent, glowering at him through the bars.
‘Give me a name,’ Manfred insisted. ‘Give me something to take to the Prime Minister.’
‘I will do better than that,’ Moses agreed. ‘I will give you two names. Heed them well. They are – Mandela and Rivonia.’
Michael Courtney was in the city room of the Mail when the news that the Appellate Division had denied Moses Gama’s appeal and confirmed the date of his execution came clattering out on the tape. He let the paper strip run through his fingers, reading it with total concentration, and when the message ended, he went to his desk and sat in front of his typewriter.
He lit a cigarette and sat quietly, staring out of the window over the tops of the scraggly trees in Joubert Park. He had a pile of work in his basket and a dozen reference books on his desk. Desmond Blake had slipped out of the office to go down to the George to top up his gin tank and left Michael to finish the article on the American elections. Eisenhower was nearing the end of his final term and the editor wanted a pen portrait of the presidential candidates. Michael was working on his biographical notes of John Kennedy, but having difficulty choosing the salient facts from the vast amount that had been written about the young Democratic candidate, apart from those that everybody knew, that he was a Catholic and a New Dealer and that he had been born in 1917.
America seemed very far away that morning, and the election of an American president inconsequential in comparison with what he had just read on the tape.
As part of his self-education and training, Michael made a practice each day of selecting an item of important news and writing a two-thousand-word mock editorial upon it. These exercises were for his own sake, the results private and jealously guarded. He showed them to no one, especially not Desmond Blake whose biting sarcasm and whose willingness to plagiarize Michael had learned to fear. He kept these articles in a folder in the locked bottom drawer of his desk.
Usually Michael worked on these exercises in his own time, staying on for an hour or so in the evening or sitting up late at night in the little bed-sitter he rented in Hillbrow, pecking them out on his rickety old secondhand Remington.
However, this morning he had been so
moved by the failure of Gama’s appeal that he could not concentrate on the Kennedy story. The image of the imperial-looking black man in his leopard-skin robes kept recurring before Michael’s eyes, and his words kept echoing in Michael’s ears.
Suddenly he reached forward and ripped the half-completed page out of his machine. Then he swiftly rolled a clean sheet into it. He didn’t have to think, his fingers flew across the keys, and the words sprang up before his eyes: ‘A Martyr is Born.’
He rolled the cigarette to the side of his mouth and squinted against the spiral of blue smoke, and the words came in short staccato bursts. He did not have to search for facts or dates or figures. They were all there, crisp and bright in his head. He never paused. He never had to weigh one word against another. The precise word was there on the page almost of its own volition.
When he finished it half an hour later, he knew that it was the best thing he had ever written. He read it through once, shaken by the power of his own words, and then he stood up. He felt restless and nervous. The effort of creation rather than calming or exhausting him had excited him. He had to get outside.
He left the sheet in the typewriter and took his jacket off the back of his chair. The sub glanced up at him enquiringly.
‘Going to find Des,’ he called. In the newsroom there was a conspiracy to protect Desmond Blake from himself and the gin bottle and the sub nodded agreement and returned to his work.
Once he was out of the building, Michael walked fast, pushing his way through the crowds on the sidewalks, stepping out hard with both hands thrust into his pockets. He didn’t look where he was going, but it didn’t surprise him when at last he found himself in the main concourse of the Johannesburg railway station.
He fetched a paper cup of coffee from the kiosk near the ticket office and took it to his usual seat on one of the benches. He lit a cigarette and raised his eyes towards the domed glass ceiling. The Pierneef murals were placed so high that very few of the thousands of commuters who passed through the concourse each day ever noticed them.
