Gold Mine

by Wilbur Smith

  two and a half minutes later he stood up from the bed turning his back to theresa as he quickly shrugged into the silk dressing-gown.

  "excuse me a minute, theresa." the breathlessness was gone from his voice. he went through the door of his own suite, and seconds later she heard the hiss of the shower and the tinkling splash of water.

  she lay on her back and her fingernails cut into the palms of her hands. her body was trembling with a mixture of revulsion and desire, it had been so fleeting a contact enough to stir her, but so swift as to leave her with a feeling of having been used and sullied. she knew that the rest of the night would pass infinitely slowly, with restless burning tension, remorse and self-pity alternating with wild elation and half-crazed erotic fantasy.

  "damn him," she screamed silently within her skull.

  "damn him! damn him!" she heard the shower stop, and then manfred returned to her room. he smelt of 4711 eau de cologne, and he sat down carefully on the end of the bed.

  "you may turn on the light, theresa." it required a conscious effort for her to unclench her hand and reach out for the lamp switch.

  manfred blinked behind his spectacles at the flood of light. his hair was damp and freshly combed, his cheeks shone like ripe apples.

  "i hope you had an enjoyable day?" he asked, and listened seriously to her reply. despite her tension, theresa found herself falling under the almost hypnotic influence he wielded over her. his voice precise, almost monotonous.

  the glitter of his spectacles, the reptilian stillness of his body and features.

  as she had so many times before, she thought of herself as a warm fluffy rabbit sitting tense and fascinated before the cobra.

  "it is late," he said at last and he stood up.

  looking down at her as she lay cuddled into the white silk sheets, he asked with as little emphasis as if he were requesting her to pass the sugar. "theresa, could you raise three hundred thousand rand without your grandfather knowing?"

  "three hundred thousand!" she sat up startled.

  "yes. could you?"

  "good lord, manfred, that's a small fortune."

  she truly saw nothing unusual in her choice of adjective. "you know it's all in the trust fund, well, most of it. there is the farm and the no, i couldn't find half of that without pops knowing."

  "pity murmured manfred.

  "manfred, you aren't in difficulties?"

  "no. good lord, no. it was just a thought. forget that i asked. good night, theresa, i hope you sleep well." involuntarily she lifted her hands towards him in invitation.

  "good night, manfred." he turned and left the room, she let her hands fall to her sides. for theresa steyner the long night had begun.

  ladies and gentlemen, it is customary for the general manager to introduce the distinguished guest who presents our special service a " wards. last week, in tragic circumstances, our general manager, mr.

  frank lemmer, was killed in the company's service, a loss which we all bitterly regret, and i am sure you all join me in sincere condolence -to mrs. eileen lemmer." rod paused for the acknowledging murmur from his audience. there were 200 of them packed into the mine club hall.

  "it falls upon me, therefore, as acting general manager, to introduce to you doctor manfred steyner who is a senior director of central rand consolidated, our parent company. he is also head of the departments of finance and planning." sitting beside her husband, theresa steyner had noticed manfred's irritation at rod's mention of frank lemmer. it was company policy not to draw public attention to accidental death or injury inflicted on employees by the company's operation. she liked rod the better for his small tribute to frank lemmer.

  theresa was wearing sunglasses, for her eyes were swollen and red.

  in the dawning, after a sleepless night, she had succumbed suddenly to a fit of bitter weeping. the tears were without cause, or reason, and had left her feeling strangely lighthearted and with a brittle sense of well-being.

  however, her enormous eyes always showed up badly for hours after she had wept.

  she sat with her legs demurely crossed, immaculate in a suit of cream shantung, a black silk scarf catching her hair and then letting it fall in a dark glossy brown cascade onto her shoulders. she leaned forward in polite attention to the speaker, one elbow on her knee, her chin cupped in her palm, one long tapered finger against her cheek. a lady with diamonds on her fingers and pearls at her throat, smiling an acknowledgement at rod's reference to "the lovely granddaughter of our chairman'.

  except for the slight incongruity of the sunglasses, she was the perfect image of the young matron. polished, poised, cosseted, secure in her unassailable virtue and duty.

  however, the thoughts that were running through theresa steyner's head, and the flutterings and sensations that were prickling and tickling her, had they been known, would have broken up the assembly in disorder. all the formless fantasy and emotional disturbance of the previous night were now directed at one target rodney ironsides.

  suddenly, with a start of amusement and alarm, she was aware of a phenomenon that she had last experienced many years ago. she moved quickly, shifting her seat, for the cream shantung marked so easily with any moisture.

  "terry steyner!" she thought, deliciously shocked at herself, and found with relief that rod had finished speaking and manfred was standing up to reply. she joined in the applause enthusiastically to distract her errant fancy.

  manfred briefly mentioned the six gentlemen sitting in the front row of seats whose courage and devotion to duty they had come to honour, he then went on into an exploration of the prospects of an increase in the price of gold. in measured, carefully considered terms, he set out the advantages and benefits that would accrue to the industry, the nation and the world at large. it was an erudite and convincing dissertation, and there was a large contingent of newspaper men to record it. the press had been alerted by the public relations department of crc to the text of doctor steyner's speech and all the leading dailies, weeklies, financial gazettes and journals were represented.

  at intervals a photographer would come to crouch below the platform and pop a flash bulb up at doctor steyner. on the eve of the gold price talks with france this would make good copy, for steyner was the boy genius in the south african team.

  the six heroes sat uncomfortably, forlorn in their best suits, scrubbed like schoolboys at a prize-giving ceremony, staring up at the speaker, not understanding a single word of the foreign language, but maintaining expressions of grave dignity.

  rod caught big king's eye and winked at him. solemnly " big king's right eyelid -drooped and rose in reply, and quickly rod averted his gaze to prevent himself laughing out loud.

  he looked straight into theresa steyner's face, taking her completely off her guard. not even the dark glasses could conceal her thoughts, they were as clear as if she had spoken them aloud. before she could drop her eyes to examine the hem of her skirt, rod knew with a stomach swoop of excitement how it could be if he chose.

  with a new awareness he examined her from the corner of his eye, seeing her for the first time as an accessible woman, a highly desirable woman, but nevertheless still the granddaughter of hurry hirschfeld and the wife of manfred steyner. this made her as dangerous as a force ten pressure burst, he knew, but the desire and temptation were hard to deny, inflamed perhaps rather than dampened by the danger.

  he saw that she was blushing now, her fingers picking nervously at the hem of her skirt. she was as agitated as a schoolgirl, she knew he was watching her. rod ironsides, who until five minutes before had been thinking of nothing but his speech, now found himself impelled into a completely new and exciting dimension.

  after the awards had been made, tea had been drunk, biscuits consumed and the crowd had dispersed, rod escorted the steyners down across the vivid green lawns of kikuyu grass to where the chauffeur was holding the daimler.

  "what a magnificent physique that shangaan has, what was his name king?" terry was wal
king between the two men.

  "king nkulu. big king, we call him." rod found his speech unsteady, he had stuttered slightly.

  this thing between the two of them was suddenly overpowering, it hummed like a turbine, making the space between them crackle with tension.

  unless he was deaf, manfred steyner must be aware of it.

  "he is pretty special. there is nothing he can't do, and do it far and away better than his nearest rival. my god, you should see him dance."

  "dance?" enquired terry with interest.

  tribal dancing, you know."

  "of course." terry hoped the relief in her voice was not obvious; she had been racking her badly flustered brain for an excuse to visit the sander ditch again or have rod ironsides come to johannesburg. "i have a friend who is absolutely mad keen on seeing the dances. she pesters me every time i see her." quickly she selected a name from her list of friends, she must have one ready should manfred ask.

  "they dance every saturday afternoon, bring her out any time." rod fielded the ball neatly.

  "what about this saturday?" terry turned to her husband, "would that be all right, manfred?"

  "what's that?" manfred looked at her vaguely, he had not been following the conversation. manfred steyner was a worried man, he was pondering his obligation to gain control of the management of the sander ditch within two days.

  "may we come out here on saturday afternoon to watch the tribal dancing?" terry repeated her question.

  "have you forgotten that i fly to paris on saturday morning, theresa?"

  "oh, dear." terry bit her lip thoughtfully. "it had slipped my mind.

  what a pity, i would have enjoyed it." manfred frowned slightly, irritated.

  "my dear theresa, there is no reason why you shouldn't come out to the sander ditch without me. i am sure you will be safe enough in mr.

  ironsides" hands." his choice of words brought the colour to terry's cheeks again.

  after the award ceremony, big king's first stop was the recruiting agency office at the entrance to the no.1 shaft hostel. there were men clustered about the counter, but they stood aside for big king and he acknowledged the courtesy by slapping their backs indiscriminately and greeting them with: "kunjane, madoda. how is it, men?" the clerk behind the counter hurried to serve him. up at the mine club big king might be a little out of his depth, but here he was treated like a reigning monarch.

  in two neat bundles big king placed the award money on the counter.

  twenty-five rand you will send to my senior wife." he instructed the clerk. "and twenty-five rand you will put to my book." big king was scrupulously fair. half of all his earnings was remitted to the senior of his four wives, and half was added to the substantial sum already credited in his savings bank passbook.

  the agency was the procurer of labour for the insatiably man-hungry gold mines of the witwatersrand and orange free state. its representatives operated across the southern half of the continent.

  from the swamps and fever lagoons along the great zambesi, from among the palm groves fringing the indian ocean, out of these simmering plains that the bushmen called "the big dry," down from the mountains of basutoland and the grass lands of swaziland and zululand they gathered the bantu, the men themselves completing the first fifty or sixty miles of the journey on foot. individuals meeting on a footpath to become pairs, arriving at a little general dealer's store in the bleak scrub desert to find three or four others already waiting, the arrival of the recruiting truck with a dozen men and their luggage aboard, the long bumping grinding progress through the bush. the stops at which more men scrambled aboard, until a full truck load of fifty or sixty disembarked at a railway siding in the wilderness.

  here the tiny trickle of humanity joined a stream, and at the first major centre they trans-shipped and became part of the great flood that washed towards "goldi."

  however, once they had reached johannesburg and been allocated to one of the sixty major gold mines, the agency's obligations towards its recruits were not yet discharged.

  between them the employing mine and the agency must provide each man with employment, training, advice and comfort, maintain contact between him and his family, for very few of them could write, reassure him when he worried that his goats were sick or his wife unfaithful. they must provide a banking and savings service with a personal involvement unknown to any commercial banking institute. they had, in short, to make certain that a man taken from an environment that had not changed in a thousand years and deposited into the midst of a sophisticated and technological society would retain his health, happiness and sanity, so that at the end of his contract he would return to the place from which he had come and tell them all how wonderful it was at "goldi'. he would show them his hard helmet, and his new suitcase crammed with clothes, his transistor radio and the little blue book with its printed figures, inflaming them also with the desire to make the pilgrimage, and keep the flood washing towards'goldi'.

  big king completed his business transactions and went in through the gates of the hostel. he was going to take advantage of the fact -that he had missed the shift and would be among the first at the ablutions and dining-hall.

  he went down across the lawns to his block. despite the size of an establishment that housed 6,000 men, the company had tried to make it as attractive as possible. the result was an unusual design, halfway between a motel and an advanced penitentiary. as a senior boss , big king rated a room of his own.

  an ordinary labourer would share with five others.

  carefully big king brushed down his suit and hung it in the built-in cupboard, wiped down his glossy shoes and racked them, then with a towel around his waist he set off for the ablution block and was irritated to find it already filled with new recruits up from the acclimatization centre.

  big king ran an appraising eye over their naked bodies and judged that this batch must be nearing the completion -age of their eight-day acclimatization. they were sleek and shiny, the muscle definition showing clearly through the skin.

  you could not take a man straight out of his village, probably suffering from malnutrition, and put him down a gold mine to lash and bar and drill in a dry bulb heat of 91" fahrenheit and 84% relative humidity, without running a serious risk of killing him with heat stroke or exhaustion.

  every recruit judged medically fit to work underground went into acclimatization. for eight days, eight hours a day, he and hundreds of others stood with only a loin cloth about his middle in a vast barn-like hall stepping up onto and down from a platform. the height of the platform was carefully matched to the man's height and body weight, the speed of his movements was regulated by a flashing panel of lights, the temperature and humidity were controlled at 91" and 84%, every ten minutes he was given water and his body temperature was registered by the half dozen trained medical assistants in charge of the room.

  at the end of the eighth day he emerged as fit as an olympic athlete, and quite able to perform heavy physical labour in conditions of high temperature and humidity without discomfort or danger.

  "gwedeni!" growled big king, and the nearest recruit, still white with soap suds, hurriedly vacated his shower with a respectful "keshle!" in deference to big king's rank and standing. big king removed his towel and stepped under the shower, revelling as always in the rush of hot water over his skin, flexing the great muscles of his arms and chest.

  the messenger found him there.

  "king nkulu, i have word for thee." the man used shangaan, not the bastard fanikalo.

  "speak" big king invited, soaping his belly and buttocks.

  "the induna bids you call at his house after you have eaten the evening meal."

  "tell him i will attend his wishes," said big king and held his face up into the rush of steaming water.