Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur - Страница 31
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Her legs had grown longer, her knees were no longer knobbly, and they shaded from coffee brown at the ankles to smooth cream on the inside of her thighs. She sat on the edge of the verandah with her knees apart and her skirts pulled high and rucked up between her legs. As Shasa's gaze dropped, she let her knees fall a little further open. Her nose was snubbed and sprinkled with freckles, and she wrinkled it as she grinned. it was a sly cheeky grin, and her tongue was bright pink between white teeth.
Guiltily Shasa jerked his eyes away and stared ahead through the windshield. But he remembered vividly every last detail of those forbidden minutes behind the pump-house and the heat rose in his cheeks. He could not help glancing at his mother. She was looking ahead at the road and had not noticed. He felt relief until she murmured, She is a common little hussy, ogling everything in pants. Her father is one of the men we are retrenching. We'll be rid of her before she causes real trouble for us and herself. He should have known she had not missed that brief exchange. She saw everything, he thought, and then he felt the impact of her words. The girl was being sent away, and he was surprised by his feeling of deprivation. It was a physical ache in the floor of his stomach.
What will happen to them, Mater? he asked softly. I mean, the people we are firing. While he had listened to his mother and Twenty-man-jones discussing the retrenchments, he had thought of them merely as numbers; but with that glimpse of the girl, they had become flesh and blood. He remembered his adversary the blond boy, and the little girl that he had seen from the window of the railway coach, standing beside the tracks in the hobo camp, and he imagined Annalisa Botha in the place of that strange girl.
I don't know what will become of them. His mother's mouth tightened. I don't think it is anything that should concern us. This world is a place of harsh reality, and each of us has to face it in his own way. I think we should rather consider what would be the consequences if we did not let them go. We would lose money. That is right, and if we lose money, we have to close down the mine, which would mean that all the others would lose their jobs, not just the few that we have to fire. Then we all suffer. If we did that with everything we own, in the end we would lose everything. We would be like the rest of them. Would you prefer that? Suddenly Shasa had a new mental image. Instead of the blond boy standing in the hobo camp, it was himself, barefoot in dusty, tattered khakis, and he could almost feel the night chill through the thin shirt and the rumble of hunger in his guts.
No! he said explosively, and then dropped his voice. I wouldn't like that. He shivered at the persistent images her words had invoked. Is that going to happen, Mater? Could it happen? Might we also be poor? We could be, cheri. It could happen quickly and cruelly if we are not on guard every minute. A fortune is extremely difficult to build but very easy to destroy. Is it going to happen? he insisted, and he thought about the Midas Touch, his yacht, and the polo ponies, and his friends at Bishops, and the vineyards of Weltevreden and he was afraid.
Nothing is certain. She reached across and took his hand.
That's the fun of this game of life, if it was then it wouldn't be worth playing. I wouldn't like to be poor. No! She said it as vehemently as he had. It will not happen, not if we are cunning and bold. What you said about the trade of the world coming to a halt. People no longer able to buy our diamonds... Before those had been merely words, now they were a dreadful possibility.
We must believe that the wheels will one day begin to turn again, one day soon, and we must play the golden rules.
Do you remember them? She swung the Daimler through the climbing turns up the slope and around the spur of the hills so that the mine buildings disappeared behind the rock wall of the cliff.
What was the first golden rule, Shasa? she prompted him.
Sell when everybody else is buying and buy when everybody else is selling he repeated.
Good. And what is happening now? Everybody is trying to sell. It dawned upon him and his grin was triumphant.
He's so beautiful, and he has the sense and the instinct, she thought as she waited for him to follow the coils of the serpent until he reached its head and discovered the fangs.
His expression changed as it happened. He looked at her crestfallen.
But, Mater, how can we buy if we haven't got the money? She pulled to the side of the track and cut the engine.
Then turned to him seriously and took both his hands.
I am going to treat you as a man, she said. What I tell you is our secret, our private business that we share with nobody. Not Grandpater or Anna, or Abraham Abrahams or TWentyman-jones. It's our thing, yours and mine alone. He nodded and she drew a deep breath. I have a premonition that this catastrophe that has engulfed the world is our pivot, an opportunity that very few are ever offered. For the last few years I have been preparing to exploit it. How did I do that, cheri? He shook his head, staring at her fascinated.
I have turned everything, with the exception of the mine and Weltevreden, into cash, and even on those I have borrowed heavily, very heavily. That's why you called all the loans. That's why we went to Walvis for that fish factory and the trawlers, you wanted the money. 'Yes, cheri, yes, she encouraged him, unconsciously shaking hands, willing him to see it. And his face lit again.
You are going to buy! he exclaimed.
I have already begun, she told him. I have bought land and mining concessions, fishing concessions and guano concessions, buildings. I have even bought the Alhambra Theatre in Cape Town and the Coliseum in Johannesburg. But most of all I have bought land, and the option to buy more land, tens and hundreds of thousands of acres, cheri, at two shillings an acre. Land is the only true store of wealth. He could not really grasp it, but he sensed the enormity of what she told him and she saw it in his eyes.
Now you know our secret, she laughed. If I have guessed right, we will double and redouble our fortune. And if it doesn't change. If the, he searched for the word, if the Depression goes on and on for ever, what then, Mater? She pouted and dropped his hands. Then, cheri, nothing will matter very much, one way or the other. She started the Daimler and drove up the last pitch of the road to the bungalow standing alone in its wide lawns, with lights burning in the windows and the servants lined up respectfully on the front verandah in their immaculate white livery to welcome her.
She parked at the bottom of the steps, turned off the engine and turned to him again.
No, Shasa cheri, we are not going to be poor. We are going to be richer, much richer than we ever were before. And then later, through you, my darling, we will have power to go with our wealth. Great fortune, enormous power. Oh, I have it all planned, so carefully planned! Her words filled Shasa's head with turbulent thoughts. He could not sleep.
Great fortune, enormous power. The words excited and disturbed him. He tried to visualize what they meant and saw himself like a strongman at the circus, in leopard-skins and leather wristbands, standing with arms akimbo, huge biceps flexed, upon a pyramid of golden sovereigns, while a congregation in white robes knelt and made obeisance before him.
He ran the images through his head over and over, each time altering some detail, all of them pleasurable but lacking the final touch until he bestowed upon one of his white robed worshippers a crown of unruly wind-tousled sun-streaked curls. He placed her in the front rank, and she lifted her forehead from the ground and stuck her tongue out at him.
His erection was so quick and hard that it made him gasp, and before he could prevent himself he had slipped his hand under the sheet and prised it out of the fly of his pyjamas.
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