Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur - Страница 117

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I do not agree, he growled, and they were all silent, waiting expectantly. The history of the struggle bears witness that the workers unassisted will rise only as far as the idea of trade unionism, to combine their resources to fight the employers and the capitalist government. But it needs professional revolutionaries bound by complete loyalty to their ideals and by military-type discipline to carry the struggle to its ultimate victorious conclusion. It was almost a verbatim quotation from Lenin's What is to be Done and Hendrick had spoken in English. Even Moses looked amazed by his achievement, while the others exchanged delighted smiles as Hendrick glowered around him and relapsed back into impressive monumental silence.

It was sufficient. He did not have to speak again. By night

fall, when the others traipsed out into the darkness calling farewells and thanks, climbed into their motor cars with slamming doors and roars of starting engines and drove away down the dusty track, Moses had achieved what he had aimed for in bringing his brother out to Rivonia Farm.

Hendrick had been sworn in as a full member of both the South African Communist Party and of the African National Congress.

Marcus Archer had set the guest bedroom aside for Hendrick.

He lay in the narrow truckle bed listening to Moses and Marcus rutting in the main bedroom across the passage, and he was abruptly seized with the conviction that today the seeds of his destiny had been sown: that both the outer limits of his fortune and the time and manner of his own death had been determined in these last few hours. As he fell asleep, he was carried into the darkness on a wave of exultation and of dread.

Moses woke him while it was still dark and Marcus walked out to the Ford with them. The veld was white with frost; it crunched under their feet and had crusted on the windshield of the Ford.

Marcus shook hands with Hendrick. Forward, Comrade, he said. 'The future belongs to us. They left him standing in the frosty dark, staring after them.

Moses did not drive directly back into the city. instead he parked the Ford below one of the high flat-topped mine dumps and he and Hendrick climbed the eroded dump side, five hundred feet almost sheer, and reached the top just as the rising sun cleared the horizon and turned the winter veld to pale gold.

Now do you understand? Moses asked as they stood shoulder to shoulder on the brink of the precipitous hillside, and suddenly like the sunrise itself Hendrick saw his brother's whole tremendous design.

You want not a part of it, he said softly, not even the greater part. He spread his arms in a wide gesture that encompassed all below them from horizon to horizon. You want it all. The whole land and everything in it. And his voice was filled with wonder at the enormity of the vision.

Moses smiled. His brother had at last understood.

They climbed down the mine dump and went in silence to where the Ford was parked. In silence they drove towards Drake's Farm, for there were no words to describe what had happened, as there are no words adequately to describe birth or death. Only as they left the city limits and were forced to stop at one of the level crossings where the railway that served the mine properties crossed the main road, did the mundane world intrude once again.

A ragged black urchin, shivering in the frosty winter highveld morning, ran to the side window of the Ford and waved a folded newspaper at Moses through the glass. He rolled down the window, flipped the child a copper coin and placed the newspaper on the seat between them.

Hendrick frowned with interest and unfolded the newssheet, holding it so they could both see the front page. The headlines were full column: SOUTH AFRICAN TEAM CHOSEN FOR BERLIN OLYMPIC GAMES THE NATION WISHES THEM GOOD LUCK I know that white boy, Hendrick exclaimed, grinning gap-toothed as he recognized one of the photographs that accompanied the text.

So do I, Moses agreed, but they were looking at different young white faces in the long rows of individual pictures.

Of course, Manfred knew that Uncle Tromp kept the most extraordinary hours. Whenever Manfred's bladder woke him in the small dark hours and he dragged himself out of the tool-shed and stumbled down the path to the outhouse against the moroto hedge he would look up and through sleep-blurred eyes see the larnplight burning in the window of Uncle Tromp's study.

Once, more wide awake than usual, Manfred left the path and crept through Aunt Trudi's cabbages to peer in over the sill. Uncle Tromp sat like a shaggy bear at his desk, his beard rumpled from constant tugging and combing with his thick fingers, wire-framed spectacles perched upon his great beak of a nose, muttering furiously to himself as he scribbled on the loose sheets of paper that were tumbled over the desktop like debris after a hurricane. Manfred had assumed he was working on one of his sermons, but had not thought it strange that his labours; had continued night after night for almost two years.

Then one morning the coloured postman wheeled his bicycle up the dusty road, burdened by an enormous package wrapped in brown paper and blazoned with stamps and stickers and red sealing-wax. Aunt Trudi placed the mysterious package on the small hall table, and all the children found excuses to creep into the hall and stare at it in awe, until at five o'clock Uncle Tromp drove up in his pony trap and the girls, led by Sarah, ran shrilling to meet him before he could dismount.

There is a parcel for you, Papa. They crowded up behind him while Uncle Tromp made a show of examining the package and reading the label aloud.

Then he took the pearl-handled penknife from the pocket of his waistcoat, deliberately tested the edge of the blade with his thumb, cut the strings binding the packet and carefully unwrapped the brown paper.

Books! sighed Sarah, and the girls all drooped with palpable disappointment and drifted away. Only Manfred fingered.

There were six thick copies of the same book, all identical, bound in red boards, the titles printed in fake gold leaf but still crisp and shining from the presses. And something in Uncle Tromp's manner and in the intent expression with which he watched Manfred as he waited for his reaction, alerted him to the unusual significance of this pile of books.

Manfred read the title of the top copy and found it long and awkward: The Afrikaner: His Place in History and Africa.

It was written in Afrikaans, the infant language still striving for recognition. Manfred found that unusual, all important scholarly works, even when written by Afrikaners, were in Dutch. He was about to remark upon this when his eyes moved down to the name of the author, and he started and gasped.

Uncle Tromp! The old man chuckled with modest gratification.

You wrote it! Manfred's face lit with pride. You wrote a book. Ja, Jong, even an old dog can learn new tricks. Uncle Tromp swept up the pile in his arms and strode into his study. He placed the books in the centre of his desk and then looked around with astonishment to see that Manfred had followed him into the room.

I'm sorry, Uncle Tromp. Manfred realized his trespass.

He had been in this room only once before in his life, and then only by special invitation. I didn't ask. May I come in, Dlease, Oom? Looks like you are in already. Uncle Tromp tried to look stern. You might as well stay then. Manfred sidled up to the desk with his hands behind his back. In this house he had learned immense respect for the written word. He had been taught that books were the most precious of all men's treasures, the receptacles of his God-given genius.

May I touch one of them? he asked, and when Uncle Tromp nodded, he gingerly reached out and traced the author's name with his fingertip: The Reverend Tromp Bierman'.

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