The Angels Weep (63 page)

Janine listened to the liquid purling piano for a few moments
and then said, ‘Ludwig van B., of course?’

‘Of course, who else?’

Then with slightly less assurance, she said, ‘The
Pathé-tique Sonata?’

‘Oh, very good.’ He grinned as he found a bottle
of Zonnebloem Riesling in one of the cupboards, ‘and the
artiste
?’

‘Oh, come on!’

‘Give it a shot.’

‘Kentner?’

‘Not bad, but it’s Pressler.’ She pulled a
face to show her mortification, and he drew the cork and
half-filled the glasses with pale golden wine.

‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’

She sipped and murmured, ‘Mmm! That’s
good.’

‘Dinner!’ Craig dived back into the cupboard.
‘Rice and canned stuff. The potatoes and onions are three
months old, growing sprouts already.’

‘Macrobiotic,’ she said. ‘Good for you. Can
I help?’

They worked happily shoulder to shoulder in the tiny galley,
and every time they moved they brushed against each other. She
smelled of scented soap, and when he looked down on top of her
head, her curly hair was so dense and lustrous that he had an
almost uncontrollable urge to bury his face in it. Instead he
went to look for another bottle of wine.

He emptied four assorted cans into the pot, chopped onions and
potatoes over the mixture and spooned in curry powder. He served
it on a bed of rice.

‘Delicious,’ Janine declared. ‘What do you
call it?’

‘Don’t ask embarrassing questions.’

‘When you launch her, where will you sail
her?’

Craig reached over her head and brought down a chart and an
Indian Ocean Pilot from the bookshelves.

‘All right.’ He pointed out a position on the
chart. ‘Here we are anchored in a secluded little cove on
an island in the Seychelles. If you look out the porthole you
will see the palm trees and the beaches whiter than sugar. Under
us the water is so clear that we seem to be floating in
air.’

Janine looked out of the porthole. ‘You know what
– you are right! There are the palm trees and I can hear
guitars.’

When they finished eating they pushed the dishes aside, and
pored over the books and charts.

‘Where next? How about the Greek islands?’

‘Too touristy.’ She shook her head.

‘Australia and the Barrier Reef?’

‘Beauty!’ She mimicked an Aussie accent.
‘Can I go topless, sport?’

‘Bottomless too, if you want.’

‘Rude boy.’

The wine had flushed her cheeks, and put a sparkle in her
eyes. She slapped his cheek lightly, and he knew he could kiss
her then but before he moved, she said, ‘Roland told me you
were a dreamer.’

The name stopped him dead. He felt the coldness in his chest,
and suddenly he was angry with her for spoiling the mood of the
moment. He wanted to hurt her as she had just hurt him.

‘Are you sleeping with him?’ he asked, and she
swayed back and stared at him with shock. Then her eyes slanted
like those of a cat, and the rims of her nostrils turned
bone-white with fury.

‘What did you say?’

His own perversity would not let him turn back from the
precipice, and he stepped out over it.

‘I asked if you were sleeping with him.’

‘Are you sure you want to know?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right, the answer is “yes”, and
it’s bloody marvellous. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ he said miserably.

‘Now you can take me home, please.’

They drove in complete silence except for her terse
directions, and when he parked outside the three-storey block of
apartments, he noticed that they were called Beau Vallon, the
same as the Seychelles beach over which they had fantasized.

She climbed out of the Land-Rover. ‘I’m grateful
for the lift,’ she said, and walked up the paved path
towards the entrance of the building.

Before she reached it, she turned and came back. ‘Do you
know that you are a spoilt little boy?’ she asked.
‘And that you give up on everything, just like you did on
the tennis court.’

This time she disappeared into the entrance of the building
without looking back.

When he got back to the yacht, Craig put the charts and books
away, then he cleaned the dishes, dried them, and stacked them in
their racks. He thought he had left a bottle of gin in one of the
cupboards, but he couldn’t find it. There wasn’t even
any of the wine left. He sat in the saloon with the gaslight
hissing softly over his head, and he felt numb and empty. There
was no point in going to his bunk. He knew he would not
sleep.

He unlaced the kitbag; the leather-bound journal that Jonathan
had loaned him was on top. He opened it and began to read. It had
been written in 1860. The writer was Zouga Ballantyne,
Craig’s great-great-grandfather.

After a while, Craig no longer felt numb and empty, for he was
on the quarterdeck of a tall ship, running southwards down the
green Atlantic towards a savage enchanted continent.

S
amson Kumalo
stood in the centre of the dusty track and watched Craig’s
beaten-up old Land-Rover growl away up the avenue of spathodea
trees. When it took the turn past the old cemetery and
disappeared, he picked up his bag and opened the garden gate of
the staff cottage. He walked around the side of the building, and
stopped below the back porch.

His grandfather, Gideon Kumalo, sat on a straight-backed
kitchen chair. The walking-stick, carved like a twisted serpent,
was propped between his feet and both his hands rested on the
head. He was asleep, sitting upright in the uncomfortable chair
in the blaze of the white sunlight.

‘It is the only way I can get warm,’ he had told
Samson.

His hair was white and fluffy as cotton wool, the little
goatee beard on the tip of his chin trembled with each gentle
snore of his breathing. His skin seemed so thin and delicate,
that it might tear like ancient parchment, and it was the same
very dark amber colour. The network of wrinkles that covered it
was cruelly exposed by the direct glare of the sun.

Careful not to block the old man’s sunlight, Samson
climbed the steps, set his bag aside and sat on the half-wall in
front of him. He studied his face, and felt again that gentle
suffocating feeling of love. It was more than the duty that any
Matabele boy was taught to show to his elders, it went beyond the
conventions of parental affection, for between the two of them
was an almost mystical bond.

For almost sixty years Gideon Kumalo had been the assistant
headmaster at Khami Mission School. Thousands of young Matabele
boys and girls had grown up under his guidance, but none had been
as special to him as his own grandson.

Suddenly the old man started and opened his eyes. They were
milky-blue and sightless as those of a newborn puppy. He tilted
his head at a blind listening angle. Samson held his breath and
sat motionless, fearful that Gideon might have at last lost the
sense of perception which was almost miraculous. The old man
turned his head slowly the other way, and listened again. Samson
saw his nostrils flare slightly as he sniffed the air.

‘Is it you?’ he asked in a rusty voice, like the
squeak of an unoiled hinge. ‘Yes, it is you, Vundla.’
The hare has always played a prominent place in African folklore,
the original of the legend of Br’er Rabbit that the slaves
took to America with them. Gideon had nicknamed Samson after the
lively clever little animal. ‘Yes, it is you, my little
Hare!’

‘Baba!’ Samson let his breath out and went down on
one knee before him. Gideon groped for his head and caressed
it.

‘You have never been away,’ he said. ‘For
you live always in my heart.’

Samson thought he might choke if he tried to speak. Silently
he reached and took the thin fragile hands and held them to his
lips.

‘We should have a little tea,’ Gideon murmured.
‘You are the only one who can make it to my
taste.’

The old man had a sweet tooth, and Samson placed six heaped
teaspoons of brown sugar into the enamel mug before he poured the
brew from the blackened tin kettle into it. Gideon cupped his
hands around the mug, sipped noisily, and then smiled and
nodded.

‘Now tell me, little Hare, what has happened to you? I
feel something in you, an uncertainty, like a man who has lost
the path and seeks to find it again.’

He listened while Samson spoke, sipping and nodding. Then when
he finished talking, he said: ‘It is time you came back to
the Mission to teach. You told me once that you could not teach
the young people about life until you learned yourself. Have you
learned yet?’

‘I do not know, Baba. What can I teach them? That death
stalks the land, that life is as cheap as a single
bullet?’

‘Will you always live with doubts, my dear grandson,
must you always look for the questions that have no answers? If a
man doubts everything, then he will attempt nothing. The strong
men of this world are the ones who are always certain of their
own rightness.’

‘Then perhaps I will never be strong,
Grandfather.’

They finished the pot of tea and Samson brewed another. Even
the melancholy of their conversation could not dim their pleasure
in each other, and they basked in it until at last Gideon asked:
‘What time is it?’

‘Past four o’clock.’

‘Constance will be off duty at five. Will you go down to
the hospital to meet her?’

Samson changed into jeans and a light blue shirt, and left the
old man on the porch. He went down the hill. At the gate of the
high security fence that enclosed the hospital, he submitted to
the body-search by the uniformed guards, and then went up past
the post-operative wards, outside which the convalescent patients
in blue dressing-gowns sat on the lawn in the sunlight. Many of
them had limbs missing, for the Khami Hospital received many of
the victims of land-mine explosion and other war injuries. All
the patients were black. Khami Hospital was graded as African
only.

At the reception desk in the main entrance hall, the two
little Matabele nurses recognized him and chittered like sparrows
with pleasure. Gently Samson tapped them for the current gossip
of the Mission Station, the marriages and births, the deaths and
courtships of this close-knit little community. He was
interrupted by a sharp authoritative voice.

‘Samson, Samson Kumalo!’ and he turned to see the
hospital superintendent striding purposefully down the wide
corridor towards him.

Doctor Leila St John wore a white laboratory-coat with a row
of ballpoint pens in the top pocket, and a stethoscope dangling
from her neck. Under the open coat was a shapeless maroon sweater
and a long skirt of crumpled Indian cotton in a gaudy ethnic
design. Her feet were in thick green men’s socks, and open
sandals which buckled at the side. Her dark hair was stringy and
lank, tied with leather thongs into two tails that stuck out on
each side of her head above her prominent ears.

Her skin was unnaturally pale, inherited from her father,
Robert St John. It was pock-marked with the cicatrices of ancient
acne. Her horn-rimmed spectacles were square and mannish, and a
cigarette dangled from the corner of her wide thin lips. She had
a prim, serious old-fashioned face, but the gaze of her green
eyes was direct and intense as she stopped in front of Samson and
took his hand firmly.

‘So the prodigal returns – to run off with one of
my best theatre sisters, I have no doubt.’

‘Good evening, Doctor Leila.’

‘Are you still playing “boy” to your white
settler?’ she demanded. Leila St John had spent five years
in detention in Gwelo political prison at the pleasure of the
Rhodesian government. She had been there at the same time as
Robert Mugabe who, from exile, now led the ZANU wing of the
liberation army.

‘Craig Mellow is a third-generation Rhodesian on both
sides of his family. He is also my friend. He is not a
settler.’

‘Samson, you are an educated and highly capable man. All
around you the world is melting in the crucible of change,
history is being forged on the anvil of war. Are you content to
waste the talents that God gave you and let other lesser men
snatch the future from you?’

‘I do not like war, Doctor Leila. Your father made me a
Christian.’

‘Only mad men do, but what other way is there to destroy
the insensate violence of the capitalist imperialist system? What
other way to meet the noble and legitimate aspirations of the
poor, the weak and the politically oppressed?’

Samson glanced swiftly around the entrance hall, and she
smiled.

‘Don’t worry, Samson. You are amongst friends
here. True friends.’ Leila St John glanced at her
wristwatch. ‘I must go. I will tell Constance to bring you
to dinner. We will talk again.’ She turned abruptly away,
and the heels of her scuffed brown sandals clacked on the tiled
floor as she hurried towards the double swing-doors marked
‘OutPatients’.

Samson found a seat on one of the long benches outside these
doors, and waited amongst the sick and lame, the coughing and
sniffing, the bandaged and the bleeding. The sharp antiseptic
smell of the hospital seemed to permeate his clothes and
skin.

Constance came at last. One of the nurses must have warned
her, for her head turned eagerly from side to side and her dark
eyes shone excitedly as she searched for him. He savoured the
pleasure of seeing her for a moment or two longer before standing
up from his seat on the bench.

Her uniform was crisply starched and ironed, the white apron
stark upon the pink candy stripes, and her cap was perched at a
jaunty angle. The badges of her grades – theatre sister,
midwifery, and the others gleamed on her breast. Her hair was
pulled up tightly and plaited into intricate patterns over her
scalp, an arrangement which took many patient hours to perfect.
Her face was round and smooth as a dark moon, the classical Nguni
beauty with huge black eyes and sparkling white teeth in her
welcoming smile.