Читать книгу Roots of Outrage - John Davis Gordon - Страница 24

A lot of things happened in the two years that followed. Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd led South Africa into becoming a republic, severing its ties to the Queen and the Commonwealth; the Afrikaner had thrown off the British yoke at last, the Boer War had finally ended and there was an orgy of emotion. In Kenya the last of the Mau Mau had been wooed out of the forest with an amnesty and a promise by Britain of independence, which caused outrage amongst the settlers. Tanganyika was given its independence, for the British government had lost its stomach for fighting. Immediately a new Marxist government began collectivization and villagization and communization; America was alarmed, the USSR applauded and South Africa said: ‘I told you so.’ Uganda was granted its independence and Milton Obote, the new prime minister, sent his army, under the command of a sergeant major named Idi Amin, to blast King Freddy, the popular monarch of Buganda, out of his throne and palace. America wrung its hands, the Soviets rubbed theirs and South Africa said ‘I told you so’ again. In Ghana the Great Redeemer continued throwing his opposition into jail. Nigeria was granted independence and immediately there was a military coup, the first of many. In the United Nations President Khrushchev banged his shoe on the table and sent Cuba intercontinental ballistic missiles to be aimed at America. In the Rhodesian Federation the black nationalists sent their youth about burning mission schools and dip tanks, maiming cattle and throwing petrol bombs. In the Congo chaos reigned supreme, tribalism and Marxism and nihilism and cannibalism and black magic, and Moise Tshombe defended the secessionist Katanga against this chaos with white mercenaries. In South Africa, the Spear of the Nation, under Nelson Mandela, started setting off bombs. The rival PAC sponsored a terrorist organization called Poqo, which means We go it alone, and random murders of whites began. The government responded with a new raft of tough legislation, the press was curbed and suspects in police custody began having fatal accidents. It was a bloody, frightening time in Africa as the colonial powers withdrew with reckless haste, and to many people all over the world the South African kragdadigheid seemed the only way. It was the start of the really bad times.

But to Luke Mahoney they were wonderful, exciting, happy times. And when they ended in a crack of thunder, in shock, in desperation, in running for his life, it was all the more heartbreaking because they needn’t have ended that way. In the years that followed he never ceased to remember the happiness of those days. And the unhappiness.

The happiness of being head over heels in love; the happiness of knowing he had one of the most beautiful women in the world to love; the excitement of knowing that tonight they were going to make glorious, riotously sensual love. And there was the excitement of danger, of delicious forbidden fruit – the sheer fun of getting away with it; the breathtaking joy of making love in the apartment above her emporium, with the tailors working below, the telephones ringing; the thrill of smuggling her into The Parsonage for quickies during the afternoons, the excitement of stolen secret hours, sometimes whole perfumed nights.

The stolen nights were mostly on the farm. He was allowed to know where it was now; he drove himself, but always by a different circuitous route, always watching the rear mirror. Although she had neutralized the Vice Squad, or at least Sergeant van Rensburg, it was unwise to spend the night together in her apartment above her shop, and The Parsonage was out of the question because although he trusted the boys he could not trust the girls who emerged in the mornings. The farm was the only place they could safely do it. And did they do it? Oh, the anticipation of waiting for the weekend, the excitement of driving out by roundabout ways, then, when he was halfway to Pretoria, doubling back by other roads to Buck’s Farm. He drove up to the cottage, grinning with anticipation, and the front door burst open and out she came, looking like a million bucks, a laugh all over her lovely face. And his heart turned over each time. And, oh, the wonderful feel and scent and taste of her. And, oh, the joy of being out in the open again, for nobody to see …

It was lovely to be twenty years old and head over heels in forbidden love with a beautiful woman most of South Africa knew about – but didn’t know he had. Lovely, exciting, knowing that they had the whole weekend to themselves until Monday morning, with nobody to knock on the door. Each weekend he brought his law books – he had finished her story – and in the mornings he studied but midday found them lying beside the little pool, drinking wine, cooking on the barbecue, the sun glistening on her goldenness, her long legs so gloriously female, her tiny bikini covering her mount of Venus, the wonderful olive line where her thighs touched, her rounded soft-firm hips, her glorious breasts naked, her long black hair loose, her mouth happy below her sexy sunglasses. They were lovers who had been kept apart most of the week, catching up on each other’s news, what happened at the office, who said what about whom: the delightfully important business of talking about unimportant things when out there in the rest of the land awful things were happening. It was a relief ‘to get away from South Africa’. And, oh, the blissful knowledge of what they were going to do after lunch: just take each other by the hand and lay themselves down upon that big double bed with a smile of anticipation, happiness all over their faces. It seemed that each time he looked at her, her perfect body, cool and warm, the droplets of the swimming pool on her, he took a happy sigh. And she was as beautiful a person as she was beautiful. And their love-making was as beautiful as she was.

Sometimes they got away from it all by getting the hell out of South Africa. Gandhi Garments had outlets in Botswana and Mozambique, all of which fell under Patti’s jurisdiction. About once a month she had to visit one of them, and they made a holiday out of it. They had to go in separate cars, because a white man leaving the country in the same vehicle as an Indian woman, particularly one as well known to the authorities as Patti Gandhi, would be a prime suspect for contravention of the Immorality Act when he returned – the wires would be hot between the border and Police HQ. So they left in separate cars and met in the hotel on the other side of the border. Patti had a cousin in Botswana whom they sometimes visited, but they always stayed in hotels. And, oh, it was a lovely feeling to be free. God knows there is nothing beautiful about the towns of Botswana, flat and dry, the sun beating down hot as hell, but to them it was lovely, freedom. Freedom to be like two people in love, to lie together by the motel pool, to have dinner together by candlelight, to dance together for all the world to see. To them Botswana was beautiful. But Mozambique was truly beautiful: the Portuguese motel on the palmy beach outside Lourenço Marques, the Indian Ocean warm and clear, the fishing boats, fooling together in the warm surf, chasing, splashing, ducking each other like two kids let out of school, pulling her bikini off midst girlish squeals, the wonderful fleeting feel of her nakedness, the laughing salty kisses, lying in the sun, her long hair shiny, her golden skin glistening. Oh God, he was proud of her; he loved the way people looked at her, stole glances at her, the furtive stares when she walked into a room.

‘How does it make you feel?’

‘It amuses me,’ she said. ‘But in South Africa it makes me angry because I’m good enough to lust after but I’m not good enough to be one of them. I’m like an Amsterdam prostitute to be drooled over and left behind in the window. In fact, I’m lower than the prostitute because it’s legal to fuck her. I’m an Untouchable.’

‘Damn right, anybody touches you and I’ll break their bloody necks. Apartheid’s done me a favour …’

Then there were the long languorous lunches at the beachside bistros under the palms, piri-piri prawns and fresh crayfish and barbecued suckling pig and chicken Portuguese style. There they would talk and talk, with the sun sparkling on the sea, the vinho verde slipping down cold and crisp, getting good and replete and sensuous in delicious anticipation of what they were going to do. And waking up in the late afternoon, in the hours after love, sweaty, replete, and diving back into the sea together to start the whole lovely process again.

‘Do we make love more than other lovers, d’you think?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we want each other more than other lovers.’

She said: ‘Because we’re abnormal lovers. We’re not allowed to be normal. So every time we’re together it’s a honeymoon.’

‘If I came home to you every night it would feel the same.’

She smiled. ‘Would it, darling?’ She stroked his eyebrow. ‘Yes, I know how it feels. However I doubt the best of lovers could keep this up. But …’ she sighed, ‘even if we did end up moderating our carnal appetites wouldn’t it be lovely to come home to each other every night?’

Oh, it was a heartbreaking thought. With all his heart he did not want the weekend to end, he did not want to drive back alone to South Africa tomorrow, he did not want to go to bed alone in The Parsonage, he did not want to wake up on Monday morning without her, he did not want to wait for next weekend on Buck’s Farm.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And that’s how it’s going to be one day.’

She snorted softly, and stroked his eyebrow. ‘One day when apartheid is gone? When it’s torn us to bits? When we’re old?’

It made him burn to talk like this. He hated those Afrikaner bastards who had done this to them. He said: ‘So there’s only one thing to do: get out.’ He looked at her. ‘Get out when I’ve got my LLB and we’ll go and live happily ever after in another land.’

She looked at him. It was the first time he had expressed his commitment like that. Her face softened. ‘Thank you, Luke.’ Her big brown eyes were moist; then she clenched her fist and clenched her teeth and heaved herself up and clasped her knees and said to the glorious sunset: ‘And I mean this too: I will never, never leave South Africa!’ She glared at the sunset. ‘Fuck them! I’ll never let them drive me away from the land of my birth! From my parents. From my livelihood!’ She shook her head angrily. ‘If we stand up to these Afrikaner bastards we can pull them down!’ She glared at the sunset. ‘I hate them! And I love what Umkhonto we Sizwe is doing …!’

Umkhonto we Sizwe – MK, for short. Spear of the Nation.

That year the ANC and the Communist Party decided violence was their only policy now that they were banned, driven underground and into exile. Mau Mau violence had worked in Kenya. All over Africa the colonies were getting their independence: the ANC could be sure of support from many places in the north. It was common knowledge that Nelson Mandela was the leader of MK, but it was the South African Communist Party who hurried to Moscow to arrange weapons and training for his new army. MK’s existence was unveiled on 16th December of that year, the anniversary of the Battle of Blood River when the Boers defeated Dingaan’s Zulus. That day bombs exploded in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban, at post offices, government administration offices and electrical installations, and MK’s manifesto was broadcast over Radio Freedom:

‘The time comes in the life of any nation when there remain only two choices: submit or fight. That time has now come to South Africa. We shall not submit and we have no choice but to hit back by all means within our power in defence of our people, our future and our freedom …’

The recruits made their way over the border to join MK, to go for training in Eastern Europe and China and elsewhere in Africa, all arranged by the South African Communist Party. That year two hundred explosions rocked the land. The journalists called Nelson Mandela The Black Pimpernel; the police called him Public Enemy Number One, a Tool of the Communists.

That year Gandhi Garments opened a factory in Swaziland, which was a British protectorate. Swaziland was ideal for those long weekends, the border only 150 miles from Johannesburg. It is high, hilly country with forests and valleys with tumbling streams. Patti usually drove up on Friday morning and completed business in one day so they would have the whole weekend free. Mahoney followed on Friday afternoon. They stayed in the Mountain Arms, in the high forests near the border. It was lovely to sit on the verandah in the evening with a bottle of wine looking down on South Africa turning mauve, the sky turning orange red and setting the western horizon on fire. It was extraordinary that up here on this side of the border they were free to watch that romantic sunset together, to be in love, to stay in this hotel – and down there the law forbade it.

‘Don’t think about it,’ she said. ‘Or it’ll drive us mad.’

‘I am mad. Fighting mad.’

She smiled. ‘Never be fighting mad. You’ve got to be cold, calculatingly mad in this game. And you’re more valuable as a wordsmith, the pen is mightier than the sword. Leave the fighting to us.’

He looked at her. ‘In what game?’

‘Dealing with those bastards down there.’

‘What fighting? And who’s “us”?’

She smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I’m keeping my hands clean. If the cops had anything on me they’d have gleefully nailed me long ago.’

That was the first time he really worried.

‘I don’t want you involved in any of this MK business, Patti.’

She put her hand on his. ‘I promise you I’m far too smart to get my hands dirty or my nose bloodied.’

‘For Christ’s sake, what are you talking about? “Far too smart”?’

‘I simply mean we should leave the fighting to MK.’ She squeezed his hand brightly. ‘Now can we please stop talking about bloody apartheid?’

‘No, I want to know what you mean about being far too smart to get caught.’

‘I didn’t say that. I said too smart to get my hands dirty.’

‘Patti – are you involved in these explosions?’

‘Do I look like a bomb-artist?’

‘Answer me, damn it!’

She looked at him. ‘No.’

He glared at her. ‘But you are still a member of the ANC?’

‘You know the answer to that one.’

‘I mean, are you a member of an ANC underground cell?’

She smiled. ‘Darling, if I were I’d be the last to admit it.’

‘And that’s what worries the shit out of me. Answer me, Yes or no.’

She looked him in the eye. ‘No, darling. There – better?’

Not much. ‘And are you a member of the Communist Party?’

She smiled. ‘Darling, a Communist Party member never admits it. The membership is so secret that not even other party members know who’s a member apart from their immediate cell. Not even all the members of the national executive know who’s who.’

‘So even the ANC executive doesn’t know which of its members are also members of the Communist Party.’

‘I would imagine that’s right.’

She would imagine … ‘Are you or are you not?’

She smiled. ‘Would it make any difference to how you feel about me?’ She held up her palms. ‘And please don’t let’s have another argument about the failure inherent in communism – about the repression of human initiative and the dictatorship of the Party.’

‘But it’d make a difference to our strategy. How careful we are.’

‘Can we be more careful?’

He took a breath. ‘Patti, bombs are going off all over the place. The cops are scouring the land for Nelson Mandela. Roadblocks everywhere. Midnight raids. Surveillance. Tapped telephones. Intercepted mail. Informers.’ He held out a finger at her. ‘If you’re in any way involved in Nelson Mandela’s fucking bombs, even as just a … post office box for passing on messages, you’ll be nailed as an accomplice. And that’s the gallows in Pretoria, Patti!’ He glared at her. ‘Now, do you have anything to do with that?’

She looked him in the eye with fond amusement. ‘No. And now can we please stop talking about it? We’re away from it. We’ve got two whole nights and two whole days! And tomorrow we’re going to our favourite place. Please let’s be happy …’

Their favourite place was a valley two miles from the hotel where a little waterfall tumbled into a deep pool, then swirled away over rapids of smooth stones, round big grey boulders that were warm in the sun, swirling into little bays with pebbled beaches. They had the whole glorious valley to themselves. They were free, free as the air, with nobody to see them. The forest, the waterfall, the sky so blue and the sun golden warm – it was a beautiful place to be free with the most beautiful young woman in the world, swimming naked in the pool, splashing, thrashing, ducking, the wonderful sensuous feel of her cold-warm slipperiness in his arms, her breasts and her hips and her thighs satiny smooth, her long hair floating in clouds about her shoulders.

She always had to do one dive off the top of the waterfall. It was a thirty-foot drop and it gave him the willies. She stood up there, straight lovely legs together, arms stiff at her side, her hair plastered to her head, her breasts jutting. ‘Watching?’

She looked like a goddess of the forest against the sky. ‘Watching.’

Up came her arms, breasts lifting, thighs tautening, up onto her toes, then a big breath and she launched herself. Through thin air she flew, her arms out in her swallow dive, hair streaming, buttocks tight, long legs together. She arced through the sunlight, glistening, then hit the water with a splash. She broke surface, puffing. ‘Were my feet together?’

‘Yep.’

‘Were my toes pointed?’

‘I was particularly proud of your toes.’

‘Shall I do another one?’

‘No, that was perfect, quit while you’re ahead.’

Then came the important business of building a fire. She insisted on doing it herself. Why does she love the actual making of a fire? he wondered. While he sat on a warm rock drinking cold beer she went off into the forest, wearing nothing but sunglasses, collecting wood. The blackened stones of their last fire were still there: she elaborately laid her kindling, then her bigger wood, critically rearranging it, crouching around on her haunches. Mahoney watched her, wondering at her girlish pleasure. Then, the match. Great care as she applied it to her creation: it was a matter of pride that she needed only one, and used no paper. She anxiously dropped to her knees ready to blow. Then, as flame took, great satisfaction.

‘Voilà! Only one match!’

‘Next time I want you to rub two sticks together, that’ll really impress the shit out of me.’

They lay in the sun on a warm smooth rock drinking crisp wine as they waited for the fire to turn to coals, the waterfall cascading, the rapids sparkling. Then they roasted the meat, succulent lamb chops and sausages, and ate with their fingers, teeth tearing, the taste of the fire and wood-smoke, the juices on their chins – it seemed like the best food they had ever eaten. Afterwards, lying back on the warm rock, happy, free, he looked at her, her eyes closed behind her sunglasses, her hair splayed out, her breasts gently rising and falling, the sun glinting on her dark pubic triangle, her thighs glistening; she was the most naked woman in the world. He leant towards her and kissed her nipple and teased it with his tongue, and she gave a little sigh. He kissed down her breasts, and down her belly, kissing her hip, her thigh, down to her knees, then slowly up her other side, and oh the bliss of her soft inner thighs, smooth and fragrant. She lay, eyes closed, a small smile on her wide mouth, her nipples hard as he lingeringly trailed his tongue all round her mount of Venus, his breathing ruffling her silky pubic hair, then she could bear the waiting no longer and she slid her legs apart. He sank his tongue into her warm secret place, and her hand reached out for him.

Later, lying side by side, replete, he said: ‘Why do you love making the fire so much?’

She smiled up at the sky.

‘It’s freedom,’ she said. ‘Being close to nature. When I was a little girl I longed to go into the bush and see the animals. I longed to go camping. But there are no places where Indians are allowed. We aren’t allowed into the Kruger National Park or the other game reserves except as day-trippers. Going to the Indian beach on the Natal coast was about as close to nature as we could get. And it was always full of other Indians with their picnic baskets and portable radios – it wasn’t nature. And you’re not allowed to build fires on the beach. So the only place you can have a fire is in your backyard – and that sure isn’t nature either. That was just frustration when I was a girl – a mockery of freedom. So now I’ve got the opportunity to do it, here, in real nature, real forest, real mountains, it’s a real treat for me. I want to run and do somersaults. Skip and play the fool.’ She smiled. ‘So making the fire is just responding to a childhood deprivation, I guess. That’s why I get a bang out of it.’

‘And that crazy swallow dive is the same?’

She smiled. ‘When I was a kid I saw a movie with Jean Simmons in it, where she’s shipwrecked as a girl on this desert island in the South Pacific with a boy. And they grow up not knowing anything except each other – and then they fall in love, of course, and have a baby, doing it all just instinctively. And they live off the sea and wild fruit, and they are forever diving off cliffs into this turquoise sea – and they collect pearls and don’t know the value of them, until one day this ship arrives and agrees to take them back to civilization, but the wicked captain finds their pearls and he makes them dive for more, and more, and more, until they’re enslaved, and they rebel and run and hide and eventually the ship sails away without them. But they are happy to be free again, living with nature, just the two of them and their baby …’ She smiled. ‘I saw that movie again and again, and I cried each time. And I longed to be like Jean Simmons, so beautiful, so free, standing there on the lip of the cliff, the wind in her hair, the turquoise water below, then launching herself so gracefully, diving like a wild creature into her underwater wonderworld, amongst all the lovely fish and coral … Anyway, I longed to dive like that, when I was a little girl. But there were no public pools for Indians. Now, when I’m standing up there at the top of the waterfall I feel even better than Jean Simmons. Because I’m like a bird let out of a cage. I’m free in real nature at last, and I’m high, and I’m naked, the sun and wind on my body, and I feel defiant – I want to shout, so the whole of South Africa can hear: “Look at me, I’m as good-looking and smart as you are and this is what I want to say to you all: Fuck you!” And then I try to do a perfect swallow, to show ’em.’ She turned her head and looked at him. ‘I guess that’s what it is …’