Rage - Smith Wilbur. Страница 64

The police captain was a tall man with a pleasantly lined face.

Tara could see him over their heads, and he was smiling. That was the thing that struck Tara. Faced with a thousand black protesters, he was still smiling.

'Come on now,' he raised his voice, like a schoolmaster addressing an unruly class. 'You know you can't do this, it's just nonsense, man. You are acting like a bunch of skollies, and I know you are good people." He was still smiling as he picked a few of the leaders out of the front ranks. 'Mr Dhlovu and Mr Khandela - you are on the management committee, shame on you!" He waggled his finger, and the men he had spoken to hung their heads and grinned shamefacedly. The whole atmosphere of the march had begun to change. Here was the father figure, stern but benevolent, and they were the children, mischievous but at the bottom good-hearted and dutiful.

'Off you go, all of you. Go home and don't be silly now,' the captain called, and the column wavered. From the back ranks there was laughter, and a few of those who had been reluctant to join the march began to slip away. Behind the captain his constables were grinning with relief, and the crowd began to jostle as it broke up.

'Good Christ!" Kitty swore bitterly. 'It's all a goddamned anticlimax. I have wasted my time--' Then on to the top steps of the railway station a tall figure stepped out of the ranks and his voice rang out over them, silencing them and freezing them where they stood. The laughter and the smiles died away.

'My people,' Moses Gama cried, 'this is your land. In it you have God's right to live in peace and dignity. This building belongs to all who live here - it is your right to enter, as much as any other person's that lives here. I am going in - who will follow me?" A ragged, uncertain chorus of support came from the front ranks and Moses turned to face the police captain.

'We are going in, Captain. Arrest us or stand aside." At that moment a train, filled with black commuters, pulled into the platform and they hung out of the windows of the coaches and cheered and stamped.

'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika!" sang Moses Gama, and with his head held high he marched under the warning sign WHITES ONLY. 'You are breaking the law,' the captain raised his voice. 'Arrest that man." And the thin rank of constables moved forward to obey.

Instantly a roar went up from the crowd behind him. 'Arrest me!

Arrest me too!" And they surged forward, picking Moses up with them as though he were a surfer on a wave.

'Arrest me!" they chanted. 'Malan! Malan! Come and arrest us!" The crowd burst through the entrance, and the white police constables were carried with them, struggling ineffectually in the press of bodies.

'Arrest me!" It had become a roar. 'Amandla! Amandla!" The captain was fighting to keep his feet, shouting to rally his men, but his voice was drowned out in the chant of, 'Power! Power!" The captain's cap was knocked over his eyes and he was shoved backwards on to the platform. Hank, the cameraman, was in the midst of it, holding his A rriflex high and shooting out of hand.

Around him the white faces of the constables bobbed like flotsam in a wild torrent of humanity. From the coaches the black passengers swarmed out to meet and mingle with the mob, and a single voice called out.

'Jee!" the battle cry that can drive an Nguni warrior into the berserker's passion, and 'Jee!" a hundred voices answered him and 'Jee!" again. There was the crash of breaking glass, one of the coach windows exploded as a shoulder thrust into it and 'Jee!" they sang.

One of the white constables lost his footing and went sprawling backwards. Immediately he was trampled under foot and he screamed like a rabbit in a snare.

'Jee!" sang the men, transformed into warriors, the veneer of western manners stripped away, and another window smashed. By now the platform was choked with a struggling mass of humanity. From the cab of the locomotive, the mob dragged the terrified enginedriver and his fireman. They jostled and pushed them, ringing them in.

'Jee!" they chanted, bouncing at the knees, working themselves up into the killing madness. Their eyes were glazing and engorging with blood, their faces turning into shining black masks.

'Jee!" they sang. 'Jee!" and Moses Gama sang with them. Let the others call for restraint and passive resistance to the enemy, but all that was forgotten and now Moses Gama's blood seethed with all his pent-up hatred and 'Jee!" he cried, and his skin crawled and itched with atavistic fury and his fighting heart swelled to fill his chest.

The police captain, still on his feet, had been driven back against the wall of the station-master's office. One epaulette had been torn from the shoulder of his uniform and he had lost his cap. There was a fleck of blood at the corner of his mustache where an elbow had struck him in the mouth, and he was struggling with the flap of the holster on his belt.

'Kill!" shouted a voice. 'Bulala!" and it was taken up. Black hands clutched at the police captain's lapels, and he drew the service revolver from its holster and tried to raise it, but the crowd was packed too densely around him. He fired blindly from the hip.

The shot was a great blurt of sound, and somebody yelled with shock and pain, and the crowd around the captain backed away, leaving a young black man in an army surplus greatcoat kneeling at his feet, moaning and clutching his stomach.

The captain, white-faced and panting, lied the revolver and fired again into the air.

'Form up on me!" he shouted in a voice hoarse and breaking with terror and exertion. Another of his men was down on his knees, submerged in the milling crowd, but he managed to clear his revolver from its holster and he fired point-blank, emptying the chamber into the press around him.

Then they were running, blocking the entrance, jamming in it as they sought to escape the gunfire, and all the police constables were firing, some on their knees, all of them dishevelled and terrified, and the bullets told in the mass of bodies with loud, meaty thumps, like a housewife beating the dust from a hanging carpet. The air was thick with the smell of gunsmoke and dust and blood, of sweat and unwashed bodies and terror.

They were screaming and pushing, fighting their way out into the street again, leaving their fallen comrades crumpled on the platform in seeping puddles of blood, or crawling desperately after them dragging bullet-shattered limbs.

And the little group of policemen were running to help each other to their feet, bruised and bloodied in torn uniforms. They gathered up the engine-driver and his fireman and, staggering, supporting each other, drawn revolvers still in their hands, they crossed the platform stepping over the bodies and the puddles of blood and hurried down the steps to the two parked vans.

Across the road the crowd had reassembled and they screamed and shook their fists and chanted as the policemen scrambled into the vehicles and drove away at speed, and then the crowd swarmed into the roadway and hurled stones and abuse at the departing vans.

Tara had watched it all from the parked Packard, and now she sat paralysed with horror, listening to the animal growl of the crowd penetrated by the cries and groans of the wounded.

Moses Gama ran to her and 'shouted into the open window, 'Go and fetch Sister Nunziata. Tell her we need all the help we can get." Tara nodded dumbly and started the engine. Across the road she could see Kitty and Hank still filming. Hank was kneeling beside a wounded man, shooting into his tortured face, panning down on to the pool of blood in which he lay.

Tara pulled away, and the crowd in the road tried to stop her.