The Angels Weep (64 page)

Her back was straight, her shoulders narrow but strong. Her
breasts under the white apron were good, her waist narrow and her
hips broad and fecund. She moved with that peculiar African
grace, as though she danced to music that she alone could
hear.

She stopped in front of him. ‘I see you, Samson,’
she murmured. Suddenly shy, she dropped her eyes.

‘I see you, my heart,’ he replied as softly. They
did not touch each other, for a display of passion in public was
against custom and would have been distasteful to both of
them.

They walked slowly up the hill together towards the cottage.
Although she was not a blood relative of Gideon Kumalo, Constance
had been one of his favourite students before his failing
eyesight drove him into retirement. When his wife died, Constance
had gone to live with him, to care for him and keep his house. It
was there she had met Samson.

Though she chattered easily enough, relating the small
happenings that had taken place in his absence, Samson sensed
some reserve in her, and twice she glanced back along the path
with something of fear in her eyes.

‘What is it that troubles you?’ he asked, as they
paused at the garden gate.

‘How did you know—’ she began, and then
answered herself. ‘Of course you know. You know everything
about me.’

‘What is it that troubles you?’

‘The “boys” are here,’ Constance said
simply, and Samson felt the chill on his skin so that the goose
pimples rose upon his forearms.

The ‘boys’ and the ‘girls’ were the
guerrilla fighters of the Zimbabwe revolutionary army.

‘Here?’ he asked. ‘Here at the
Mission?’

She nodded.

‘They bring danger and the threat of death upon
everybody here,’ he said bitterly.

‘Samson, my heart,’ she whispered. ‘I have
to tell you. I could shirk my duty no longer. I have joined them
at last. I am one of the “girls” now.’

T
hey ate the
evening meal in the central room of the cottage, which was
kitchen, dining-room and sitting-room in one.

In place of a table-cloth, Constance covered the scrubbed deal
table with sheets of the
Rhodesian Herald
newspaper. The
columns of newsprint were interspersed with columns of blank
paper, the editor’s silent protest against the draconian
decrees of the government censors. In the centre of it she placed
a large pot of maize meal, cooked stiff and fluffy white and
beside it a small bowl of tripes and sugar beans. Then she filled
the old man’s bowl, placed it in front of him, and put his
spoon in his hand; sitting beside him throughout the meal, she
tenderly directed his hand and wiped up his spillage.

From the wall the small black and white television set gave
them a fuzzy image of the newscaster.

‘In four separate contacts in Mashonaland and
Matabeleland, twenty-six terrorists have been killed by the
security forces in the past twenty-four hours. In addition,
sixteen civilians were killed in crossfire and eight others were
reported killed in a land-mine explosion on the Mrewa road.
Combined Operations Headquarters regret to announce the death in
action of two members of the security forces. The dead were
Sergeant John Sinclair of the Ballantyne Scouts—’

Constance stood up and switched off the television set, then
sat down again and spooned a little more meat and beans into
Gideon’s bowl.

‘It is like a soccer match,’ she said with a
bitterness that Samson had never heard in her voice. ‘Each
evening they give us the score. Terrorists – 2: security
forces – 26; we should fill in the coupons for the
pools.’ Samson saw that she was crying, and could think of
nothing to say for her comfort.

‘They give us the names and ages of the white soldiers,
how many children they leave, but the others are only
“terrorists”, or “black civilians”. Yet
they have mothers and fathers and wives and children also.’
She sniffed up her tears. ‘They are Matabele as we are,
they are our people. Death has become so easy, so commonplace in
this land, but the ones that do not die, those will come to us
here – our people, with their legs torn from their bodies
or their brains damaged so that they become drooling
idiots.’

‘War is always crueller when the women and children are
in it,’ Gideon said in his dusty old voice. ‘We kill
their women, they kill ours.’

There was a soft scratching at the door, and Constance stood
up and went quickly to it. She switched out the electric light
before she opened it. Outside it was night, but Samson saw the
silhouettes of two men in the darkened doorway. They slipped into
the room, and there was the sound of the door closing. Then
Constance switched on the light.

Two men stood against the wall. One glance was enough for
Samson to know who they were. They were dressed in jeans and
denim shirts, but there was an animal alertness about them, in
the way they moved, in their quick bright restless eyes.

The elder of the two nodded at the other, who went quickly
into the bedrooms, searched them swiftly and then came back to
check the curtains over the windows, to make certain there was no
chink between them. Then he nodded at the other man, and slipped
out of the door again. The elder man sat down on the bench
opposite Gideon Kumalo. He had finely boned features, with an
Arab beakiness to his nose, but his skin was almost purple-black
and his head was shaven bald.

‘My name is Comrade Tebe,’ he said quietly.
‘What is your name, old father?’

‘My name is Gideon Kumalo.’ The blind man looked
past his shoulder, his head cocked slightly.

‘That is not the name your mother gave you, that is not
how your father knew you.’

The old man began to tremble, and he tried three times to
speak before the words came out.

‘Who are you?’ he whispered.

‘That is not important,’ the man said. ‘We
are trying to find who you are. Tell me, old man, have you ever
heard the name Tungata Zebiwe? The Seeker after what has been
Stolen, the Seeker after Justice?’

Now the old man began to shake so that he knocked the bowl
from the table and it rang in narrowing circles on the concrete
floor at his feet.

‘How do you know that name?’ he whispered.
‘How do you know these things?’

‘I know everything, old father. I even know a song. We
will sing it together, you and I.’

And the visitor began to sing in soft, but thrilling
baritone:

It was the ancient battle hymn of the ‘Moles’
impi, and the memories came crashing back upon Gideon Kumalo. In
the way of very old men, he could remember in crystal detail the
days of his childhood while the events of the previous week were
already becoming hazy. He remembered a cave in the Matopos Hills
and his father’s never-forgotten face in the firelight, and
the words of the song came back to him:

Gideon sang in his scratchy old man’s voice, and as he
sang, the tears welled up out of his milky blind eyes, and ran
unheeded down his cheeks.

When the song was ended, the visitor sat in silence while
Gideon wiped away his tears. Then he said softly, ‘The
spirits of your ancestors call you, Comrade Tungata
Zebiwe.’

‘I am an old man, blind and feeble, I cannot respond to
them.’

‘Then you must send somebody in your place,’ said
the stranger. ‘Someone in whose veins runs the blood of
Bazo the Axe, and Tanase the witch.’ Then the stranger
turned slowly towards Samson Kumalo who sat at the head of the
table, and he looked directly into Samson’s eyes.

Samson stared back at him flatly. He was angry. He had known
instinctively why the stranger had come. There were few Matabele
who were university graduates, or who had his other obvious
gifts. He had known for a long time now how badly they wanted
him, and it had taken all his ingenuity to avoid them. Now at
last they had found him and he was angry at them and at
Constance. She had led them to him. He had noticed the way she
had kept glancing up at the door during the meal. He knew now
that she had told them that he was here.

On top of his anger he felt a weight of weary resignation. He
knew that he could no longer resist them. He knew the risks that
it would involve, not for himself alone. These were hard men,
tempered in blood to a cruelty that was hard to imagine. He
understood why the stranger had spoken first to Gideon Kumalo. It
was to mark him. If now Samson refused to bend to them, then the
old man was in terrible peril.

‘You must send someone in your place.’

It was the age-old bargain, a life for a life. If Samson
refused the bargain, he knew the old man’s life was
forfeit, and that even then that would not end the affair. They
wanted him, they would have him.

‘My name is Samson Kumalo,’ he said. ‘I am a
Christian, and I abhor war and cruelty.’

‘We know who you are,’ said the stranger.
‘And we know that in these times there is no place for
softness.’

The stranger broke off as the door was pushed open a slit, and
the second stranger who had been on watch outside in the night
put his head into the room and said urgently,

‘
Kanka
!’ Just the one word,
‘Jackals!’ and he was gone.

Swiftly the elder stranger stood up, drew a 7.62mm Tokarev
pistol from the waistband of his jeans, and at the same time
switched out the light. In the darkness he whispered close to
Samson’s ear. ‘The Bulawayo bus station. Two days
from today at eight o’clock in the morning.’

Then Samson heard the latch of the door click, and the three
of them were alone. They waited in the darkness for five minutes
before Constance said, ‘They have gone.’ She switched
on the light and began collecting the dishes and balling up the
newsprint that had served as a table-cloth.

‘Whatever alarmed the “boys” must have been
a false alarm. The village is quiet. There is no sign of the
security forces.’

Neither of the men answered and she made mugs of cocoa for
them.

‘There is a film on television at nine o’clock,
The Railway Children
.’

‘I am tired,’ Samson said. He was still angry with
her.

‘I am tired also,’ Gideon whispered, and Samson
helped him towards the front bedroom. He looked back from the
doorway and Constance gave him such a pathetically appealing
glance that he felt his anger towards her falter.

He lay in the narrow iron bed across from the old man, and in
the darkness listened to the small sounds from the kitchen as
Constance cleaned up and set out the breakfast for the next
morning. Then the door to her small back bedroom closed.

Samson waited until the old man began to snore before he rose
silently. He draped the rough woollen blanket over his naked
shoulders, left the bedroom and went to Constance’s room.
The door was unlocked. It swung open to his touch and he heard
her sit up quickly in the bed.

‘It is me,’ he said quietly.

‘Oh, I was so afraid you would not come.’

He reached out and touched her naked skin. It was cool and
velvety soft. She took his fingers and drew him down towards her,
and he felt the last vestige of his resentment shrivel away.

‘I am sorry,’ she whispered.

‘It does not matter,’ he said. ‘I could not
have hidden for ever.’

‘You will go?’

‘If I do not then they will take my grandfather, and
that will not satisfy them.’

‘That is not the reason you will go. You will go for the
same reason that I did. Because I had to.’

The smooth length of her body was as naked as his own. When
she moved, her breasts jostled against his chest, and he felt the
heat beginning to flow through her.

‘Are they taking you into the bush?’ he asked.

‘No. Not yet. I am ordered to remain here. There is to
be work for me here.’

‘I am glad.’ He brushed her throat with his lips.
In the bush her chances would be very slim. The security forces
were maintaining a kill-ratio of over thirty to one.

‘I heard Comrade Tebe give you an hour and a place. Do
you think they will use you in the bush?’

‘I do not know. I think they will take me for training
first.’

‘This may be our last night together for a long
time,’ she whispered, and he did not reply but traced her
spine in its valley of velvety pliant muscle down to the deep
cleft of her buttocks.

‘I want you to place a son in my womb,’ she
whispered. ‘I want you to give me something to cherish
while we are apart.’

‘It is an offence against law and custom.’

‘There is no law in this land except the gun, there is
no custom except that which we care to observe.’ Constance
rolled under him and clasped him within her long hard limbs.
‘Yet in the midst of all this death we must preserve life.
Give me your child, my heart, give him to me tonight, for there
may be no other nights for us.’

Samson woke in a blaze of nightmare. Light flooded the tiny
room, striking through the threadbare curtain over the single
window and casting harsh moving shadows on the bare whitewashed
wall. Constance clung to him. Her body still hot and moist from
their loving, and her eyes soft with sleep. From outside a
monstrous distorted voice blared orders.

‘This is the Rhodesian army. All people are to come out
of their houses immediately. Do not run. Do not hide. No innocent
person will be harmed. Come out of your houses immediately. Hold
up your hands. Do not run. Do not attempt to hide.’

‘Get dressed,’ Samson told Constance. ‘Then
help me with the old man.’

She staggered, still half-asleep, to the corner cupboard and
pulled a plain pink cotton shift down over her nude body. Then,
barefoot, she followed Samson to the front bedroom. He was
dressed only in a pair of khaki shorts and he was helping Gideon
to rise. Outside the cottage the loudhailers were screeching in
their metallic stentorian voices.