The Angels Weep (85 page)

‘What time is it?’ he asked groggily.

‘It’s morning, I have to go. I didn’t sleep
all night. I don’t know how I will get through work
today.’

‘Will you come back?’ he demanded, coming full
awake.

‘I have to, I have to finish reading. I would take it
with me, but I’d need a camel to carry it, it’s so
big.’

She stood over the bunk looking down at him, with a strange
speculation in those slanted dark blue eyes.

‘It’s difficult to believe that was written by
somebody I thought that I knew,’ she mused softly. ‘I
realize that I really knew very little about you at all.’
She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, my gosh! I have to
fly!’

She parked the VW under the mango trees beside the yacht a
little after five o’clock that evening.

‘I have brought the steaks,’ she called,
‘and the wine.’ She came up the ladder and ducked
down into the saloon. Her voice floated up to him in the cockpit,
‘But you’ll have to cook them. I can’t spare
the time, I’m afraid.’ By the time he got down into
the saloon, she was already seated and completely engrossed in
the massive typescript.

It was long past midnight when she turned the last page. When
she had finished it, she sat quietly with her hands clasped in
her lap, staring at the pile of paper silently.

Then when she looked up at him at last, her eyes were bright
and wet with tears.

‘It’s magnificent,’ she said quietly.
‘It will take me a little time before I can get over it
enough to talk about it rationally, and then I will want to read
it again.’

The following evening, she brought a fat Cornish chicken.
‘It’s range-fed,’ she told him. ‘One more
steak and you would start growing horns.’

She made a
coq au vin
and while they ate, she demanded
an explanation of the characters in his typescript.

‘Was Mr Rhodes really a homosexual?’

‘There doesn’t seem to be any other
explanation,’ he defended himself. ‘So many great men
are hounded to greatness by their own imperfections.’

‘What about Lobengula? Was his first love really a
captured white girl? Did he commit suicide? And Robyn Ballantyne
– tell me more about her, did she impersonate a man to
enrol in medical school? How much of that is true?’

‘Does it matter?’ Craig laughed at her.
‘It’s just a story, the way it might have been. I was
just trying to portray an age, and the mood of that
age.’

‘Oh, yes, it does matter,’ she said seriously.
‘It matters very much to me. You have made it matter. It is
as though I am a part of it – you have made me a part of it
all.’

That night when it grew late, Craig said simply, ‘I made
up the bunk in the forward cabin, it seems silly for you to drive
all that way home.’

She stayed, and the following evening she brought a valise
which she unpacked into the stowage of the forward cabin, and
they settled slowly into a routine. She had first use of the
shower and heads in the morning while he made the breakfast. He
did the cleaning and made up the bunks while she did the shopping
and any other errands for him during her lunchbreak. When she
arrived back at the yacht in the evenings, she would change into
a tee-shirt and jeans, then help him with the work on the yacht.
She was particularly good at sanding and varnishing, she had more
patience and dexterity than Craig did.

At the end of the first week, Craig suggested, ‘It would
save you a bundle if you gave up that flat of yours.’

‘I’ll pay you rent,’ she agreed, and when he
protested, ‘Okay, then, I get the food and liquor –
agreed?’

That night just after she had doused the gaslight in her
cabin, she called through the dark saloon to his stern cabin.

‘Craig, do you know, this is the first time that I feel
safe since—’ She did not finish.

‘I know how you feel,’ he assured her.

‘Goodnight, Skipper.’

Yet it was only a few nights later that he came awake to her
screams. They were so anguished, so tormented and heartrending,
that for seconds he could not move; then he tumbled from his bunk
and sprawled on the deck in his haste to get to her. He fumbled
and found the switch to the fluorescent tube in the saloon, and
then clawed himself down the companionway.

In the reflected light from the saloon, he saw her crouched in
one corner of the cabin. Her bedclothes were hanging in untidy
festoons from the bunk, her nightdress was rucked up around her
naked thighs and her fingers formed a cage across her terrified
contorted face.

He reached for her. ‘Jan, it’s all right.
I’m here!’ He wrapped both arms around her, to try
and still those dreadful cries of terror. Immediately she turned
into a maddened animal, and she flew at him. Her nails slashed
down his forehead, and had he not jerked away, he would have lost
his eye; the bloody parallel wounds ended in his eyebrow, and
thick dark blood oozed into his eye, half-blinding him. Her
strength was out of all proportion to her size, he could not hold
her, and the harder he tried, the wilder she became. She sank her
teeth into his bare forearm, leaving a crescent-shaped bite-mark
deep in his flesh.

He rolled away from her, and instantly she crawled back into
the corner, and crouched there, keening and blubbering to
herself, staring at him with glittering unseeing eyes. Craig felt
his skin crawl and itch with dread and his own horror. Once again
he tried to reach her, but at first advance she bared her teeth
like a rabid dog and snarled at him.

He rolled out of the cabin and dragged himself into the
saloon. Frantically he searched through the tapes and found
Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’. He pressed it into the
slot and turned the volume up to the maximum. The magnificent
music swamped the yacht.

Slowly the sounds from her cabin dwindled into silence, and
then hesitantly Janine came into the companionway of the saloon.
She held her arms crossed over her chest, but the madness was
gone from her eyes.

‘I had a dream,’ she whispered, and came to sit at
the table.

‘I’ll make some coffee,’ he said.

In the galley he bathed his scratches and bites with cold
water, and took the coffee through to her.

‘The music—’ she started, and then she saw
his torn face. ‘Did I do that?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, Craig,’ she whispered.
‘But you must not try to touch me. You see I am a little
bit mad also. You mustn’t try to touch me.’

C
omrade Tungata
Zebiwe, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Information in the
Cabinet of the newly elected government of Zimbabwe, walked
briskly along one of the narrow gravel pathways that meandered
through the lush gardens of State House. His four bodyguards
followed him at a respectful distance. They were all former
members of his old ZIPRA cadre, each of them hardened veterans
whose loyalty had been tested a hundred times. Now, however, they
had changed the camouflage dungarees of the bush war for dark
business suits and sunglasses, the new uniform of the political
élite.

The daily pilgrimage on which Tungata was intent had become a
ritual of his household. As one of the senior Cabinet ministers,
he was entitled to luxurious quarters in one of the annexes of
State House. It was an easy and congenial walk from there,
through the gardens, past State House itself, to the
indaba
tree.

State House was a sprawling edifice with white walls and
gables, arched in the tradition of the great homes of the Cape of
Good Hope. It had been built on the instructions of that
arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes. His taste for the big and
barbaric showed in the design, and his sense of history in his
choice of the site for State House. It was built on the spot
where Lobengula’s kraal had once stood before it was
destroyed by Rhodes’ marauders when they rode in to take
possession of this land.

Beyond the great house, not two hundred paces from its wide
verandas, stood a tree, a gnarled old wild plum enclosed and
protected by a fence of iron palings. This tree was the object of
Tungata’s pilgrimage. He stopped in front of the iron
palings, and his bodyguards hung back so as not to intrude on
this private moment.

Tungata stood with his feet apart and his hands clasped
lightly behind his back. He was dressed in a navy blue suit with
a light chalk stripe. One of a dozen that Gieves and Hawkes of
Savile Row had tailored for him during his last visit to London.
It fitted his wide rangy shoulders to perfection and subtly
emphasized his narrow waist and the length of his legs. He wore a
snowy white shirt under it, his tie was maroon with the tiny
buckle and bridle logo of Gucci picked out in blue. His shoes
were by the same Italian house, and he wore his expensive Western
clothes with the same
élan
as his forefathers had
worn the blue heron’s feathers and royal leopard pelts.

He removed the gold-rimmed aviator-type Polaroid glasses from
his face, and as part of his personal ritual, read the
inscription on the plaque that was riveted to the palings.

Then he looked up into the branches, as though in search of
his ancestor’s spirit. The tree was dying of old age, some
of the central branches were black and dry, but from the rich red
soil at its base new shoots were bursting into vibrant life.

Tungata saw the significance of that and he murmured to
himself, ‘They will grow as strong as the great tree once
was – and I also am a shoot of the old king’s
stock.’

There was a light tread on the gravel path behind Tungata. He
frowned as he turned, but the frown cleared as he saw who it
was.

‘Comrade Leila,’ he greeted the white woman with
the pale intense face.

‘I am honoured that you call me that, Comrade
Minister,’ Leila came directly to him and held out her
hand.

‘You and your family have always been true friends of my
people,’ he told her simply, as he took her hand.
‘Beneath this tree your grandmother, Robyn Ballantyne, met
often with Lobengula, my great-great-uncle. She came at his
invitation to give him advice and counsel.’

‘Now, I come at your invitation, and you must believe
that I will always be yours to command.’ He released her
hand and turned back to the tree, his voice had a quiet
reflective quality.

‘You were with me when the Umlimo, the spirit medium of
our people, made her final prediction. I thought it was right
that you should be there when that prediction is brought to
fruition.’

‘The stone falcons have returned to roost,’ Leila
St John agreed softly. ‘But that is not all the
Umlimo’s prophecy. She foresaw that the man who brought the
falcons back to Zimbabwe would rule the land as once did the
Mambos and Monomatopas, as once did your ancestors Lobengula and
great Mzilikazi.’

Tungata turned slowly to face her once more.

‘That is a secret that you and I share, Comrade
Leila.’

‘It will remain our secret, Comrade Tungata, but you and
I both know that there will be need during the difficult years
that lie ahead for a man as strong as Mzilikazi was
strong.’

Tungata did not reply. He looked up into the branches of the
ancient tree, and his lips moved in a silent supplication. Then
he replaced the gold-rimmed glasses over his eyes, and turned
back to Leila.

‘The car is waiting,’ he said.

It was a black bullet-proofed Mercedes 500. There were four
police motorcycle outriders and a second smaller Mercedes for his
bodyguards. The small convoy drove very fast, with the police
sirens shrieking and wailing, and the colourful little
ministerial pennant fluttering on the front of Tungata’s
Mercedes.

They went down the three-kilometre-long jacarandalined
driveway that Cecil Rhodes had designed as the approach to his
State House, and then crossed the main commercial section of
Bulawayo, flying through the red lights at the junctions to the
geometrical grid of roads and avenues, past the town square where
the wagons had laagered during the rebellion when Bazo’s
impis had threatened the town, down along the wide avenue that
bisected the meticulously groomed lawns of the public gardens,
and at last turned off sharply and drew up in front of the modern
three-storey museum building.

There was a red carpet laid down the front steps of the museum
and a small gathering of dignitaries, headed by the Mayor of
Bulawayo, the first Matabele ever to hold that position, and the
curator of the museum.

‘Welcome, Comrade Minister, on this historic
occasion.’

They escorted him down the long corridor to the public
auditorium. Every seat was already filled, and as Tungata
entered, the entire gathering stood and applauded him, the whites
in the gathering outdoing the Matabele as a positive
demonstration of their goodwill.

Tungata was introduced to the other dignitaries on the
speakers’ platform. ‘This is Doctor Van der Walt,
curator of the Southern African Museum.’

He was a tall balding man with a heavy South African accent.
Tungata shook hands with him briefly and unsmilingly. This man
represented a nation that had actively opposed the people’s
republican army’s march to glory. Tungata turned to the
next in line.

She was a young white woman, and she was immediately familiar
to Tungata. He stared at her sharply, not quite able to place
her. She had gone very pale under his scrutiny, and her eyes were
dark and terrified as those of a hunted animal. The hand in his
was limp and cold, and trembled violently – still Tungata
could not decide where he had seen her before.

‘Doctor Carpenter is the curator of the Entomological
Section.’ The name meant nothing to Tungata, and he turned
away from her, irritated by his own inability to place her. He
took his seat in the centre of the platform facing the
auditorium, and the South African Museum’s curator rose to
address the gathering.