The covenant - James A. Michener [635]
The policeman took notes.
'What's going to happen, Mrs. Saltwood?'
'Laura. We're cousins, you know.'
'How do you see things?'
'For me, a continuation of this until I die. For the country I see some hope. And do you know why? Because every decent and sensible man and woman in this nation knows that changes will have to be made. The Afrikaners who pass these horrible laws are not stupid people. They know this is a last gasp. Our blacks are among the most brilliant in Africa. They know time and pressure are on their side. There is enormous wisdom in this land, and one prays it will be granted the necessary time to manifest itself.'
'Will it? Mocambique, Zimbabwe, Vwarda, Zambia, Namibia pressing in from all directions?'
'The machine gun will guarantee reasonable time, I think. When you return to America assure your people that Afrikaners will use their machine guns if forced to do so. This is not Rhodesia, where retreat became epidemic. This is South Africa, where the gun rules.'
'That sounds rather hopeless.'
'Not at all!' She suggested that they utilize the final two teapots, pouring the cooling tea rapidly from one to the other, to the total bewilderment of the policeman. 'What I mean is, the machine guns will be used to buy time, probably through the remainder of this century. But with every moment gained, more wisdom is gained, too. And the day will come when the bright lads from Stellenbosch and Potchefstroom will lead the way in conciliation.'
'Can they do so soon enough?'
'The other great asset we have is the stability of our Zulu and Xhosa. They're the most patient, wonderful people on this earth. They make me humble, they have behaved so well for so long. Beside them I'm an uncivilized boor, and I think they can wait, intelligently, till the sick white man sorts things out.'
'Sick?'
Laura Saltwood pointed to herself, to the watching policeman, to the closed-in yard, to the bombed front of her house. 'Would any society invent banning if it wasn't sick?'
This seemed to be the period for Philip's intensive course in African realities, for when he returned to his hotel an urgent telegram was awaiting him from his superiors in Pretoria:
favorable upheaval vwarda. proceed immediately temporary duty katombe to protect our interests. anticipate two months absence vrymeer. instructions await you there. Petersen.
He caught a plane which took him to Zambia, where a smaller one belonging to the Vwardan government was waiting. Two other Anglo-Saxons who had once worked in that republic were aboard, and they informed him of the revolutionary decision President M'Bele had made last Friday: 'He informed London, Geneva and the United Nations that his country was plunging into chaosindustrial, financialand he was inviting back at full pay plus bonuses some five hundred foreign technicians, mostly English, who had been in charge of technical details at one time or other during the past decade. I'm to head the distribution of flour.'
'Why?'
'You see, I was run out of the country three years ago. Pretty much like you, Saltwood, if I understand your case. My Vwardan understudy accused me of racism because I yelled at him one day. And why did I yell? Because he was supposed to watch the granary levels throughout the country, and he had allowed those in districts occupied by tribes other than his own to dwindle to zero. I really chewed him out and was expelled.'
'What happened when you left?'
'He became chief of grain procurement, and damned if he didn't continue to let his rival tribes starve.'
The other man had previously been in charge of Jeep and Land Rover procurement and had established a spare-parts replacement system based upon knowing calculations of what happened to vehicles in a primitive country. After drawing up a table of shrewd estimates, he proposed a law which would forbid the importation of any more Jeeps or Land Rovers until stockpiles of spare parts had been accumulated and stored in nine scattered warehouses, from which they would be efficiently distributed