Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (книги бесплатно без txt) 📗
Salina, also in her nightdress, stood over them to supervise the last prayer of the day.
"Gentle Jesus meek and mild Cathy was already in her own bed, hair ribboned for the night, writing the day's entry in her diary by the light of the guttering candle made from buffalo fat and cloth wick.
pity my simplicity -" gabbled the twins, at such a speed that it came out as, "Pretty mice, and pretty me!"
Arriving at the "Amen" in a dead heat, the twins leaped into the bed that they shared, pulled the blanket to their chins and watched with fascination as Salina began to brush her hair, one hundred strokes with each hand, so that it rippled and flamed with white fire in the candlelight. Then she came to kiss them, blew out the candle, and the thongs of her bed squeaked from across the small thatched hut as she climbed into it.
Tina?" whispered Victoria.
"Vicky, go to sleep."
"Just one question, please."
"All right then, just one."
"Does God allow a girl to marry her own cousin?"
The silence that followed the question seemed to hum in the darkened bedroom like a copper telegraph wire struck by a sword.
Cathy broke the silence.
"Yes, Vicky," she answered quietly. "God does allow it.
Read the Table of Kindred and Affinity on the last page of your prayer book."
The silence was contemplative now.
Una?"
Uzzie, go to sleep."
"You allowed Vicky to ask a question."
"All right then, just one."
"Does God get cross if you pray for something just for yourself, not for Daddy or Mama or your sisters, but just for you alone?"
"I don't think so," Salina's voice was becoming drowsy.
"He might not give it to you but I don't think He will be cross. Now go to sleep, both of you."
Cathy lay very still, on her back with her hands clenched at her sides, staring at the lighter oblong across the hut where the moon defined the single window.
"Please God," she prayed. "Let him look at me the way he looks at Salina, just once. Please."
"What do you think of Zouga's boy?" Robyn took Clinton's arm as they stood together on the darkened stoep and looked out at the star-pricked black velvet curtain of the African night.
"He's a powerful lad, and I don't mean merely muscle." Clinton took his pipe from between his teeth and peered into the bowl. "His wagon is loaded with cases, long wooden cases from which the markings. have been burned with a hot iron."
"Guns?" Robyn asked.
"I think so."
"there is no law against trading guns north of the Limpopo Robyn reminded him. "And Lobengula needs all the power he can get to defend himself."
"Still, guns! I mean, it does go against the grain." Clinton sucked at his pipe, and each puff of smoke he exhaled was denser and ranker. They were both silent for a while.
"He has a hard and ruthless streak, like his father Robyn judged at last.
"A man needs that to survive in this land.
Robyn shivered suddenly, and hugged her own arms.
"Are you cold?" Clinton was immediately solicitous.
"number A grey goose walked over my grave."
"Let's go off to bed."
"A moment longer, Clinton. The night is so beautiful."
Clinton put his arm about her shoulders.
"Sometimes I am so happy that it frightens me," he said. "So much happiness cannot go on for ever."
His words seemed to precipitate the thick but formless dread that had hung over Robyn all this day like the pall of smoke above the winter bush fires. It weighed her down with the premonition that something had changed in all their lives.
"May God save us all," she whispered.
"Amen to that," said Clinton as softly, and took her in out of the night.
The interior of the thatched hall was domed and darkened, so that the patterns of latticed branches and lovingly knotted bark rope disappeared into the gloom above their heads like the arches of a medieval cathedral.
The only light was from the small fire on the clay hearth in the centre of the floor. One of the king's wives threw another handful of dried herbs upon it and oily blue tendrils of smoke twisted upwards towards the unseen roof.
Across the fire, on a low platform of dried clay covered with a thick mattress of furs, silver-backed jackal and blue monkey, bat-eared fox and spotted civet, sat the king.
He was a mountainous figure, stark naked, and his skin polished with fat so that he gleamed like an enormous Buddha carved from a solid block of washed anthracite. His head was round as a cannon ball, surmounted by the induna's ring. His arms were massive, bulging with muscle and fat, but the hands in his lap were strangely dainty, narrow across the pink palms, with long tapered fingers.
His trunk was thickened, his breasts pendulous. All this was flesh which he had carefully cultivated. The beer pots and beef dishes stood close at hand. The thick millet beer bubbled softly and the cuts of beef each had a thick rind of yellow fat. Every few minutes one of his wives responded to a nod or a small movement of one graceful hand by proffering a dish. Weight and size were the mark of a king. Not for nothing was Lobengula called the Great Black Elephant of Matabeleland.
His manner was slow, imbued with the vast dignity of his size and rank. Yet his eyes were thoughtful and deeply intelligent, his features despite the burden of fat which blurred them were handsome, lacking outward traits of the hideous cruelties which any Matabele king had to make part of his life.
"My people expect me to be strong and harsh. There are always those who look for the smallest weakness in me, as the young lions watch the black-maned leader of the pride," Mzilikazi had explained to his son. "See how my chickens follow me to be fed." He had pointed with the toy spear of kingship at the high wheel of tiny specks turning slowly in the sky above the hills of Thabas Indunas. "When my vultures desert me, I will be as dust."
Lobengula, his son, had learned the lesson well, but it had not brutalized him. Indeed, there was a line to his mouth that was almost diffident, and a shadow behind the light of intelligence in his eyes that was hesitant, the confusion of a man tugged at by too many currents AND winds, a man caught up by his destiny, and uncertain as to how he could break away from its remorseless toils.
Lobengula had never expected to take up his father's spear of kingship. He was never the heir apparent, there had been older brothers from mothers of higher rank and nobler blood.
He stared now across the fire at the man that squatted there. A magnificent warrior, his body tempered to black steel by long marches and savage warfare, his understanding and compassion expanded by close and intimate daily contact with common men, his courage and loyalty proven to all the world ten thousand times so there could be no doubts, not even in his own midnight watches, which is the time of doubts, and Lobengula found himself longing to rid himself of this fearsome burden of kingship and place it on the other man's shoulders. He found himself wishing for that quiet and secret cave in the Matopos hills where he had known the only happy days of his life.
The man opposite him was a half-brother; his blood line, like that of Lobengula himself, reaching back unsullied to the Zanzi of Zululand.
He was a prince of the House of Kumalo, wise and brave and untroubled by doubts.
"Such a one should have been king," Lobengula thought, and his love for his half-brother choked his throat so that he coughed. He moved one little finger, and a wife held the beer pot to his lips and he swallowed once and then signed for it to be taken away.
