He and the shift boss rode up on the haulage to the cry of Fire in the hole! and Shasa lingered at the head of the main haulage until the shots fired and he felt the earth tremble beneath his feet.
Then he saddled Prester John and, dusty, streaked with sweat, bone-tired and happy as he had seldom been in his life, he rode back along the pipe track.
He was not even thinking about her when he reached the pump-house, but there she was, perched up on top of the silver-painted waterpipe. The shock was such that when Prester John shied under him he almost lost his seat and had to snatch at the pommel.
She had plaited a wreath of wild flowers into her hair and unbuttoned the top of her blouse. In one of the books in the library at Weltevreden there was an illustration of satyrs and nymphs dancing in the forest. The book was kept in the forbidden section to which his mother guarded the key, but Shasa had invested some of his pocket money in a duplicate and lightly clad nymphs were among his favourites of all that treasure house of erotica.
Annalisa was one of these, a wood nymph, only part human, and she slanted her eyes at him slyly and her eye teeth were pointed and very white.
Hello, Annalisa. His voice cracked treacherously, and his heart was beating so wildly that he thought it might spring into his throat and choke him.
She smiled but did not reply, instead she caressed her own arm, a slow lingering stroke from her wrist to her bare shoulder. He watched her fingers raising the fine coppery hair on her forearm and his loins swelled.
She leaned forward and placed her forefinger on her lower lip, still grinning slyly, and her bosom changed shape and the opening of her blouse gaped and he saw that the skin in the vee was so white and translucent that the tiny blue veins showed through it.
He kicked out of the stirrups and swung a leg over Prester John's withers in the showy polo player's forward dismount, but the girl whirled to her feet, hoisted her skirts high and, with a flash of creamy thighs, sprang lightly over the pipeline and disappeared into the thick scrub on the hillside beyond.
Shasa raced after her, and found himself struggling through dense undergrowth. It clawed at his face and seized his legs.
He heard her giggle once, not far ahead of him, but a rock twisted under his boot and he fell heavily, winding himself.
When he pulled himself up and limped after her, she was gone.
A while longer he floundered around in the scrub, his ardour swiftly cooling, and by the time he battled his way back to the pipe track to find that Prester John had taken full advantage of the diversion and decamped, he was bubbling over with anger at himself and the girl.
it was a long tramp back to the bungalow and he hadn't realized how tired he was. It was dark by the time he got home. The pony with empty saddle had raised the alarm and Centaine's concern changed instantly to relieved fury when she saw him.
A week in the heat and dust of the workings and the monotony of the work began to pall, so TWentyman-Jones sent Shasa to work in the winch room of the main haulage. The winch driver was a taciturn, morose man and jealous of his job. He would not allow Shasa to touch the controls of the winch.
My union doesn't allow it. He stood his ground stubbornly and after two days Twenty-man-Jones moved Shasa to the weathering ground.
Here the ore was tipped out and spread in the open by gangs of Ovambo labourers, all stripped to the waist and chanting in chorus as they went through the laborious repetitive process of tip and spread under the urgings of their white supervisor and his gang of black boss-boys.
On this weathering ground lay the stockpile of the H'ani Mine, thousands of tons of ore spread out on an area the size of four polo fields. When the blue ground was blasted out of the pipe it was hard as concrete; only gelignite and the ten-pound sledge hammers would break it. But after it had been lying in the sun on the weathering ground for six months it began to break down and crumble until it was chalky and friable and could be reloaded in the cocopans and taken to the mill and the washing gear.
Shasa was placed in charge of a gang of forty labourers, and soon struck up a friendship with the Ovambo boss-boy.
Like all the black tribesmen he had two names, his tribal name which he did not divulge to his white employers, and his work name. The Ovambo's work name was Moses. He was fifteen years or so younger than the other boss-boys, and had been selected for his intelligence and initiative. He spoke both English and Afrikaans well and the respect that the black labourers usually reserved for the grey hair of age he earned from them with his billy club and boot and acid wit.
If I was a white man, he told Shasa, one day I would have Doctela's job. Doctela was the Ovambo name for TWentyman-Jones, and Moses went on, I might still have it, one day, or if not me, then my son. Shasa was shocked and then intrigued by such an outrageous notion. He had never before met a black who did not know his place in society. There was a disturbing presence about the tall Ovambo, who looked like one of the drawings of an Egyptian pharaoh from the forbidden section of the Weltevreden library, but that hint of danger made him more intriguing to Shasa.
They usually spent the lunch-hour break together, Shasa helping Moses to perfect his reading and writing in the grubby ruled notebook which was his most prized possession. In return the Ovambo taught Shasa the rudiments of his language, especially the oaths and insults, and the meaning of some of the work chants, most of which were ribald.
Is baby-making work or pleasure? was the rhetorical opening question of Shasa's favourite chant, and he joined in the response to the delight of the gang he was supervising: It cannot be work or the white man would make us do it for him! Shasa was just over fourteen years old. Some of the men he supervised were three times his age, and none of them thought it strange. Instead they responded to his teasing and his sunny smile and his sorry attempts to speak their language. His men were soon spreading five loads to four of the other teams, and they ended the second week as top gang on the grounds.
Shasa was too involved with the work and his new friend to notice the dark looks of the white supervisor, and even when he made a pointed remark about kaffer-boeties, or nigger-lovers', Shasa did not take the reference personally.
On the third Saturday, after the men had been paid at noon, he rode down to the boss-boys cottage at Moses invitation and spent an hour sitting in the sun on the front doorstep of the cottage drinking sour milk from the calabash that Moses shy and pretty young wife offered, and helping him read aloud from the copy of Macaulay's History of England he had smuggled out of the bungalow and brought down in his saddlebag.
The book was one of his set works at school so Shasa considered himself something of an authority on it, and he was enjoying the unusual role of teacher and instructor until at last Moses closed the book.
This is very heavy work, Good Water, he had translated Shasa's name directly into the Ovambo, worse than spreading ore in the summer.
I will work on it later, and he went into the single-roomed cottage, placed the book in his locker and came back with a roll of newspaper.
Let us try this. He offered the paper to Shasa, who spread it on his lap. It was poor quality yellow newsprint and the ink smudged onto his fingers. The name on the top of the page was Umlomo Wa Bantu, and Shasa translated it without difficulty: The Mouth of the Black Nations', and he glanced down the columns of print. The articles were mostly in English, though there were a few in the vernacular.
Moses pointed out the editorial, and they started working through it.
What is the African National Congress? Shasa was puzzled. And who is Jabavu? Eagerly the Ovambo began to explain, and Shasa's interest turned to unease as he listened.
Jabavu is the father of the Bantu, of all the tribes, of all the black people. The African National Congress is the herder who guards our cattle. I don't understand. Shasa shook his head. He did not like the direction that the discussion was taking, and he began to squirm as Moses quoted: Your cattle are gone, my people Go rescue them!