The covenant - James A. Michener [633]
When they left the rhinoceros still galloping across his timeless veld, Philip wandered around the side of the rise and saw to his astonishment that just a little distance to the west lay the buildings and lakes of the Van Doorn farm at Vrymeer. Nxumalo chuckled. 'That's why I brought you by the little roads. Yes, we're on one of Sannie's Tits.'
'Why didn't they tell me?'
'We Zulu keep it to ourselves. It's our rhinoceros. The Van Doorns are in Africa, but they aren't of it.'
Nxumalo's high praise for Laura Saltwood created in Philip a burning desire to visit the woman he had only glimpsed at the airport, and whose son had asked that he 'watch over' her. He had been remiss, but nothing he could have done would have altered what happened to her. He suspected that she might be something of a rhinoceros herself.
He sought permission from Pretoria to travel to Johannesburg on what he claimed was personal business, South Africa having infected him to the extent that he deemed it prudent not to confide that he intended speaking with a banned person.
When he reached her house he saw that it had been recently damaged by fire, for the facade was scarred; when he knocked, he heard a scurry of feet. Looking this way and that, he saw that he was being followed by a policeman, who was taking notes from across the street, and then the door opened.
Pointing to the scarred area, the white-haired woman said, simply, 'Bomb. This time they set the house afire. I'm sure they hoped it would burn me out, but as Louis Bromfield said in his good novel about India, "The rains came."'
'You mean this was a bomb?'
'Third in a row. Once you're banned, hoodlum patriots feel it's their obligation to bomb you or shoot you, or whatnot. Government encourages them.'
'Surely not!'
Mrs. Saltwood had made no move toward inviting him to come into the house, and he supposed this was because of the damage it had suffered, but she disabused him: 'Actually, they do little harm, the bombs. Scare hell out of one, but that's secondary to the greater indignity of banning.' She coughed and said, 'I'm going to meet with you out here, Philip, because the policeman over there must be assured that I'm meeting with only one person. That's my allocation, you know.'
She led him to a small lawn with a table and two chairs. 'We used to have four. Tea in the better afternoons. But we'll not have four again.' For the first time her voice trembled. 'Now, if you'll excuse me for just a moment.'
When she went back into the house, Philip felt an overpowering urge to confuse the watching policeman, so he rose as if in deep thought, walked to where the most recent bomb had struck, and took out a piece of paper. To his disgust he could find no pencil or pen, so he made believe he was taking copious notes on the damage, stepping back now and then to assess it. From the corner of his eye he could see that the policeman was becoming agitated, so he tucked away the paper and pretended to take out a camera, as though he were about to photograph the fire damage. This brought the policeman running.
'You can't do that, sir!' he cried in heavily accented English.
'I wasn't doing anything,' Philip said, showing his empty hands.
'You was taking a picture. That's forbidden, you know, at a banned site.'
'No, sir,' Philip said with great deference. 'I'm an architect. I was just taking proportions,' and he framed a box with his thumbs and fingers.
'That's permitted,' the policeman said.
'What's going on out here?' Laura asked as she appeared in the doorway with a silver tray containing tea things.
'I'm terribly sorry,' Philip apologized, more to the policeman than to Laura. 'I was stupid. This good man feared I had a camera. I am sorry, sir.' To Laura he whispered, 'I did it on purpose to throw him a scare.'
'I say, that's jolly! But we mustn't appear to be laughing. He has the power to be very unpleasant if he wishes.'
'Why the furor about the photograph?'
'When I'm banned, my house is banned. The evidence that it's being bombed is banned.' Abruptly