The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 111

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When Zouga at last led the family to the Kimberley diamond-diggings, the bird statue had been unloaded from the wagon and placed under the camelthom tree which marked their last camp. When Jordan's mother, Aletta Ballantyne, had fallen sick with the deadly camp fever, and finally succumbed to the disease the statue had come to play an even larger place in Jordan's life.

He had christened the bird Panes, after the goddess of the North American Indian tribes, and later he had avidly studied the lore of the great goddess Panes that Frazer had detailed in his Goklen Bough, a study in magic and religion. He learned how Panes was a beautiful woman who had been taken up into the mountains. To the adolescent Jordan, Panes and the bird statue became confused with the image of his dead mother. Secretly he had developed a form of invocation to the goddess, and in the dead of night when all the other members of his family slept, he would creep out to make a small sacrifice of hoarded food to Panes and worship her with his own rituals.

When Zouga, financially reduced, had been forced to sell the bird to Mr. Rhodes, the boy had been desolated until the opportunity to enter Mr. Rhodes" service and follow the goddess replaced the emptiness of his existence with not one but two deities. the goddess Panes and Mr. Rhodes. Even after he was grown to manhood in Mr. Rhodes'service, the statue continued to bulk large in Jordan's consciousness, though it was only very occasionally, in times of deep turmoil of the spirit, that he actually resorted to the childish rituals of worship.

Now he had lost the lodestone of his life, and irresistibly he was drawn towards the statue for the last time. Slowly he descended the curve of the main staircase. As he passed, he caressed the carved balustrades which were worked into faithful copies of the ancient bird.

The lofty entrance hallway below was floored with black and white marble slabs arranged in a chequer-board pattern. The main doors were in massive red teak, and the fittings were of burnished brass. The light of the lantern that Jordan carried sent grotesquely misshapen shadows flowing across the marble or fluttering like gigantic bats against the high carved ceiling. In the centre of the marble floor stood a heavy table, upon which were the silver trays for visiting-cards and mail. Between them was a tall decoration of dried pro tea blooms which Jordan had arranged with his own hands.

Jordan set the lamp of Svres porcelain upon the table like a ritual lantern upon a pagan altar. He stepped back from it and slowly raised his head. The original stone falcon of Zimbabwe stood in its high niche, guarding the entrance to Groote Schuur. Seeing it thus it was not possible to doubt the aura of magical power that invested the graven image. It seemed that the prayers and incantations of the long-dead priests of Zimbabwe still shimmered in the air about it, that the blood of the sacrifices steamed from the wavering shadows upon the marble floor, and that the prophecies of the Umlimo, the Chosen One of the ancient spirits, invested it with separate life.

Zouga Ballantyne had heard the prophecies from the Umlimo's lips and had faithfully recorded them in his journal. Jordan had re-read them a hundred times and could repeat them by rote, he had made them part of his own personal ritual and invocation to the goddess.

"There shall be no peace in the kingdom of the Mambos or the Monomatapa until they return. For the white eagle unU war unth the black bull until the stone falcons return to roost." Jordan looked up at the bird's proud, cruel head, at the sightless eyes which stared blankly towards the north, towards the land of the Mambos and the Monomatapa which men now called Rhodesia, and where the white eagle and the black bull were again locked in mortal conflict, and Jordan felt a sense of helplessness and emptiness, as though he were caught up in the coils of destiny and was unable to break free.

"Have pity on me, great Panes," and he dropped to his knees. "I cannot go. I cannot leave you or him. I have no place to go." In the lamplight his face was tinged with a faint greenish sheen, as though it had been carved from glacial ice. He lifted the porcelain lamp from the table, and held it high above his head with both hands.

"Forgive me, great Panes," he whispered, and hurled the lamp against the panelled woodwork of the wall.

The lobby was plunged into darkness for a moment, as the flame of the shattered lamp fluttered to the very edge of extinction. Then it sent a ghostly blue light skittering across the surface of the spreading pool of oil. Suddenly the flames burned up strongly and touched the trailing edges of the long velvet drapes that covered the windows.

Still kneeling before the stone statue, Jordan coughed as the first wisps of smoke enveloped him. He was mildly surprised that, after the first burning sting of it in his lungs, there was so very little pain. The image of the falcon high above him slowly receded, dimmed by the tears that filled Jordan's eyes and by the dense swirling curtains of smoke.

The flames made a low drumming roar as they caught on the wooden panelling and shot to the ceiling. One of the heavy drapes burned through, and as it fell it spread open like the wings of an immense vulture. The fiery wings of thick velvet covered Jordan's kneeling figure and their weight bore him face down to the marble floor.

Already asphyxiated by the dense blue smoke, he did not even struggle and within seconds the mound of crumpled velvet was transformed into a funeral pyre, and the flames reached up Joyously to lick against the base of the stone falcon in its high niche.

Bazo has come down from the place of the Umlimo at last," Isazi said quietly, and Ralph could not contain "Bhimself.

"Are you sure of this?" he demanded eagerly, and Isazi nodded.

"I have sat at the camp-fires of his impi, and with my own eyes have seen him, with the bullet scars shining like medals of silver upon his chest, with my own ears I have heard him harangue his amadoda, steeling them for the fighting which lies ahead." "Where is he, Isazi?

Tell me where I can find him." "He is not alone." Isazi was not about to spoil the dramatic impact of his report by prematurely divulging the bare bones of fact. "Bazo has with him the witch, who is his woman. if Bazo is warlike, then this woman, Tanase, the favourite of the dark -spirits, is bold and ruthless, driven by such bloody cruelty that the amadoda when they look upon her beauty shudder as though it is an unspeakable ugliness." "Where are they?" Ralph repeated.

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