The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 133
- Предыдущая
- 133/183
- Следующая
"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.
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." They 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.
- Предыдущая
- 133/183
- Следующая
