Nothing is certain. She reached across and took his hand.
That's the fun of this game of life, if it was then it wouldn't be worth playing. I wouldn't like to be poor. No! She said it as vehemently as he had. It will not happen, not if we are cunning and bold. What you said about the trade of the world coming to a halt. People no longer able to buy our diamonds... Before those had been merely words, now they were a dreadful possibility.
We must believe that the wheels will one day begin to turn again, one day soon, and we must play the golden rules.
Do you remember them? She swung the Daimler through the climbing turns up the slope and around the spur of the hills so that the mine buildings disappeared behind the rock wall of the cliff.
What was the first golden rule, Shasa? she prompted him.
Sell when everybody else is buying and buy when everybody else is selling he repeated.
Good. And what is happening now? Everybody is trying to sell. It dawned upon him and his grin was triumphant.
He's so beautiful, and he has the sense and the instinct, she thought as she waited for him to follow the coils of the serpent until he reached its head and discovered the fangs.
His expression changed as it happened. He looked at her crestfallen.
But, Mater, how can we buy if we haven't got the money? She pulled to the side of the track and cut the engine.
Then turned to him seriously and took both his hands.
I am going to treat you as a man, she said. What I tell you is our secret, our private business that we share with nobody. Not Grandpater or Anna, or Abraham Abrahams or TWentyman-jones. It's our thing, yours and mine alone. He nodded and she drew a deep breath. I have a premonition that this catastrophe that has engulfed the world is our pivot, an opportunity that very few are ever offered. For the last few years I have been preparing to exploit it. How did I do that, cheri? He shook his head, staring at her fascinated.
I have turned everything, with the exception of the mine and Weltevreden, into cash, and even on those I have borrowed heavily, very heavily. That's why you called all the loans. That's why we went to Walvis for that fish factory and the trawlers, you wanted the money. 'Yes, cheri, yes, she encouraged him, unconsciously shaking hands, willing him to see it. And his face lit again.
You are going to buy! he exclaimed.
I have already begun, she told him. I have bought land and mining concessions, fishing concessions and guano concessions, buildings. I have even bought the Alhambra Theatre in Cape Town and the Coliseum in Johannesburg. But most of all I have bought land, and the option to buy more land, tens and hundreds of thousands of acres, cheri, at two shillings an acre. Land is the only true store of wealth. He could not really grasp it, but he sensed the enormity of what she told him and she saw it in his eyes.
Now you know our secret, she laughed. If I have guessed right, we will double and redouble our fortune. And if it doesn't change. If the, he searched for the word, if the Depression goes on and on for ever, what then, Mater? She pouted and dropped his hands. Then, cheri, nothing will matter very much, one way or the other. She started the Daimler and drove up the last pitch of the road to the bungalow standing alone in its wide lawns, with lights burning in the windows and the servants lined up respectfully on the front verandah in their immaculate white livery to welcome her.
She parked at the bottom of the steps, turned off the engine and turned to him again.
No, Shasa cheri, we are not going to be poor. We are going to be richer, much richer than we ever were before. And then later, through you, my darling, we will have power to go with our wealth. Great fortune, enormous power. Oh, I have it all planned, so carefully planned! Her words filled Shasa's head with turbulent thoughts. He could not sleep.
Great fortune, enormous power. The words excited and disturbed him. He tried to visualize what they meant and saw himself like a strongman at the circus, in leopard-skins and leather wristbands, standing with arms akimbo, huge biceps flexed, upon a pyramid of golden sovereigns, while a congregation in white robes knelt and made obeisance before him.
He ran the images through his head over and over, each time altering some detail, all of them pleasurable but lacking the final touch until he bestowed upon one of his white robed worshippers a crown of unruly wind-tousled sun-streaked curls. He placed her in the front rank, and she lifted her forehead from the ground and stuck her tongue out at him.
His erection was so quick and hard that it made him gasp, and before he could prevent himself he had slipped his hand under the sheet and prised it out of the fly of his pyjamas.
lock Murphy had warned him about it. It will spoil your eye, Master Shasa. I have seen many a good man with a bat or a polo stick ruined by Mrs Palm and her five daughters. But in his fantasy Armalisa was sitting up, her long legs apart, and she was slowly drawing up the skirt of her white robe. The skin of her legs was smooth as butter, and he moaned softly. She was staring at the front of his costume, her tongue whisking lightly over her parted lips, and the white skirt rose higher and higher, and his fist began to jerk rhythmically. He could not prevent it.
Up and up rode the white skirt, never quite reaching the fork of her crotch. Her legs seemed to stretch forever, like the railway tracks across the desert running on and on and never meeting. He choked and jerked into a sitting position on the feather mattress, doubled over his flying fist, and when it came it was sharp and painful as a bayonet driven up into his intestines, and he cried out and fell back against the pillows.
Annalisa's sly grinning freckled face receded, and the wet front of his pyjamas began to turn icy cold, but he did not have the will to strip them off.
When the servant woke him with a tray of coffee and a dish of hard sweet rusks, he felt dazed and exhausted. It was still dark outside, and he rolled over and pulled the pillows over his head.
Madam your mother, she says I wait here until you get up, said the Ovambo servant darkly, and Shasa dragged himself to the bathroom trying to conceal the dry stain on the front of his pyjamas.
One of the grooms had his pony saddled and waiting at the front steps of the bungalow. Shasa took a moment to joke and laugh with the groom and then greet and caress his pony, rubbing foreheads with him and blowing softly
