Power of the Sword - Smith Wilbur. Страница 124

Can you tell us who was the innovator of the concept? Dr Verwoerd demanded, a prickle of exasperation in his usual cool tones.

I believe the idea was first put forward in 1919 by Karl Radek. His forum was an alliance of the pariah powers against the common Western enemies of Britain, France and the United States. The professor leaned forward like a falcon bating for its prey. In your view, sir, does it, or a similar doctrine, have any currency in the present politics of southern Africa? They devoted all their attention to each other for the rest of the session, while Manfred's peers, relieved of all necessity to think, listened with varying degrees of mystification or boredom.

The following Saturday night, when Manfred won the university light heavyweight title in the packed gymnasium, Dr Verwoerd was sitting in the second row. It was the first time that he had been seen at any of the university's athletic tournaments, apart, of course, from the rugby football matches which no Afrikaner worthy of the name would have missed.

A few days later the professor sent for Manfred, ostensibly to discuss an essay that he had submitted on the history of liberalism, but their discussion ran for well over an hour and ranged widely. When it ended Dr Verwoerd stopped Manfred at the door. Here is a book that you might not have had an opportunity to look at. He handed it across the desk.

Keep it as long as you need, and let me know your views when you have finished with it. Manfred was in a hurry to get to his next lecture so he did not even read the title, and when he got back to his room he tossed it on his desk. Roelf was waiting to join him on their evening run and he had no chance to look at the book again until he had changed into his pyjamas late that night.

He picked it up from the desk and saw that he had already heard of it, and that it was in the original German. He did not put it down again until dawn was glimmering through the chinks in his curtains and the rock pigeons were cooing on the ledge outside his window. Then he closed the book and re-read the title: Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.

He passed the rest of the day in a trance of almost religious revelation and hurried back to his room at lunchtime to read again. The author was speaking directly to him, addressing his German and Aryan bloodlines. He had the weird sensation that it had been written exclusively for him. Why else would Herr Hitler have included such marvelous passages as: It is considered as natural and honourable that a young man should learn to fence and proceed to fight duels right and left, but if he boxes, it is supposed to be vulgar! Why?

There is no sport that so much as this one promotes the spirit of attack, demanding lightning decisions, and trains the body in steel dexterity ... but above all the young healthy body must also learn to suffer blows, it is not the function of the V61kisch state to breed a colony of peaceful aesthetes and physical degenerates. . . If our entire intellectual upper class had not been brought up so exclusively on upper-class etiquette; if instead they had learned boxing thoroughly, a German revolution of pimps, deserters and suchlike rabble would never have been possible.

Manfred shivered with a sense of foreknowledge when he saw his own hardly formulated attitudes to personal morality so clearly explained.

Parallel to the training of the body, a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is a hot-house for sexual ideas and stimulations ...

Manfred had himself suffered from these torments set like snares for the young and pure. He had been forced to struggle against the evil lustful clamour of his own body when he had been exposed to magazine and cinema posters, always written in English, that effete degenerate language which he was growing to hate, depicting half-naked females.

You are right, he muttered, turning the pages furiously.

You are laying out the great truths for all of mankind. We must be pure and strong. Then his heart bounded as he saw set out in unequivocal language the other truths that he had only before heard lightly hinted at. He was transported back across the years to the hobo camp beside the railway tracks outside Windhoek, and saw again the tattered newspaper cartoon of Hoggenheimer driving the Volk into slavery. His outrage was consuming and he trembled with anger when he read:

With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth

lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, stealing her from her people.

In his imagination he saw Sarah's sweet pale body lying spreadeagled under the gross hairy carcass of Hoggenheimer and he was ready to kill.

Then the author lanced a vein of his Afrikaner blood so skilfully that Manfred's soul seemed almost to bleed upon the page.

It was and is the Jews who bring the negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization ...

He shuddered. Swartgevaar! Black danger! had been the rallying cry of his people over the centuries they had been in Africa, and his atavistic heart beat to that summons once again.

He finished the book shaken and exhausted as he had never been in the boxing ring. Although it was already late he went to find the man who had loaned it to him, and they talked eagerly and seriously until after midnight.

The next day the professor dropped an approving word to another in a high place: I have found one who I believe will be a valuable recruit, one with a good receptive mind who will soon have great influence and standing amongst our young people. Manfred's name was laid before the high council of a secret society at its next conclave: 'One of our best young men at the university, the senior student of Rust en Vrede is close to him, Have him recruited, ordered the chairman of the council.

Five days a week Roelf and Manfred ran a training route through the mountains together, a hard route of steep gradients and rough footing. Five miles out they stopped to drink in the pool below a feathery white waterfall. Roelf watched Manfred kneel on the slippery wet rocks an scoop up a double handful of the clear cold water to pour it into his open mouth.

He is a good choice, he agreed silently with the decision of his superiors. The light vest and shorts that Manfred wore showed off his powerful but graceful body, and his lustrous coppery hair and fine features were compelling. But it was the golden topaz eyes that were the key to his personality.

Even Roelf felt overshadowed by the younger man's developing confidence and assurance.

He will be a strong leader, the type we need so desperately. Manfred sprang to his feet again, dashing the water from his mouth with his forearm.

Come on, drag arse, he laughed. Last one back home is a Bolshevik. But Roelf stopped him. Today I want to talk to you, he admitted, and Manfred frowned.

Hell, man, we do nothing but talk anyway. Why here? Because here no one will overhear us. And you are wrong, Manie, some of us are doing more than just talking. We are preparing for action, hard fighting action, the kind of action you love so well. Manfred turned back towards him, immediately intrigued, and came to squat in front of him. Who? What action? he demanded, and Roelf inclined his head.

A secret elite of dedicated Afrikaners, the leaders of our people, men in top places, in government and education and the commercial life of the nation. That's who, Manie. And not only the leaders of today, Manie, the leaders of tomorrow also. Men like you and me, Manie, that's who. A secret society? Manfred swayed back on his heels.

No, Manie, much more than that, a secret army ready to fight for our poor downtrodden people. Ready to die to restore our nation to greatness. Manfred felt the fine hairs on his arms and at the nape of his neck come erect as the thrill of it coursed through his veins. His response was immediate and unquestioning.