Роберт Фиш - Rough Diamond

But the dream returned every now and then, in all its terror, all its horror, the nauseating feel of the woman’s hands on him, defiling him, her body touching his, trying to force him inside her, her sickening lips on his neck, kissing, sucking…

“Cecil, for God’s sake!”

Rhodes sat up with a start, his eyes wild. He was sweating profusely, the covers of the narrow cot flung about it in total disarray, the battered Gladstone bag he used for a bolster for his thin pillow was on the floor behind the bed, thrown there in his frenzy. His brother frowned at him.

“That dream again? What is it, for God’s sake? What on earth happened in Durban?”

“Nothing.”

“Get it off your mind and the dream will probably go away. What was it?”

“Nothing, I said!”

Rhodes swung his long legs to the floor and sat with his head in his hands, waiting until the first strong edge of panic had subsided. At least the time between the dreams was increasing; perhaps eventually the dream would disappear altogether. At last he took a deep breath and looked up, changing the subject.

“When are you leaving?”

Frank Rhodes consulted a heavy pocket watch. “There’s plenty of time. I’m taking the Durban coach at noon.”

“When will you be back?”

Frank shrugged. He was a tall, handsome man dressed quite nattily, with a thin mustache he was sure the ladies all admired. His hair was neatly trimmed and was just the slightest bit longer than the mode. “I don’t know how long it will take to sell the farm; it’s been a year since you left in such a hurry, and at least ten months since I had to go back and try to organize things. God knows what it’s like now, or if any of the field hands are still there. I left sufficient funds with the overseer, but he’s probably skipped as well. If you had only waited at least until the new crop had been planted—”

“When will you be back?”

Frank shrugged again. “I said, I don’t know how long it will take to sell what’s left of the farm. And after that” — he smiled faintly — “I may not be back at all. This mucking about in the ground for a few pretty stones — it really isn’t my style, you know.”

“It pays the bills, and very nicely,” Cecil Rhodes said dryly. The dream was fading fast. “If you don’t come back, where will you go?”

“Ah, that’s a question! Up-country, probably. Bechuanaland, possibly, maybe further.” He smiled a bit maliciously at his younger brother. “Aren’t you the one who’s always lecturing about how England must control all of central Africa? All of Africa, as a matter of fact. Really, all of the world, if I recall some of your more fervent preachings. Why did you have to study with Ruskin?”

Cecil disregarded the rhetorical question. “So in that case, why would you be going to Bechuanaland? Or possibly even further?”

“Well,” Frank said airily, “people have to get up there to see what’s worth controlling and what is not particularly worth controlling, don’t you agree?”

“I agree, except you don’t control a country by going there in dilettante fashion and twirling a cane. Or a mustache, either,” Cecil said quietly. “You control a country with money, and diamonds are money.”

“My! How very adult we’ve become since we discovered a few diamonds. On claims I happened to establish, I might mention in passing. So you keep digging up the pretty stones, brother,” Frank said evenly, “remembering, of course, to save a little of the profits for me.” He thought of something. “You’re taking your roommate, Charley Rudd, in as a partner, are you?”

Cecil Rhodes looked at his brother calmly, coldly. “I was thinking of offering him your share,” he said. “With you gone — and maybe not coming back — I’ll be paying the claim rent, and at least Charley and I will be doing some work for our money.”

Frank Rhodes studied his younger brother through eyes that were no longer amused. “You’re quite serious, aren’t you?” he said quietly. “I do believe our father may well have sired a monster. And to think I helped nurture it!” He sighed and returned to his lighthearted manner again. “Well, there’s nothing in writing, of course, and I suppose these things happen in the best of families. Particularly in the best of families, in fact. So in that case I might as well donate the claims to you; I’d prefer that to having you steal them from me.” He bent down, picking up his bag. “Goodbye. Shall I give anyone back at the farm in Durban your particular regards?”

Cecil Rhodes felt a chill go through him, a trembling he fought to control. His face paled and involuntarily his jaw tightened. Frank pretended not to notice. He touched the brim of his derby with his finger.

“No? In that case I’ll simply say good-bye.”

He winked and walked from the shack, his bag swinging easily at his side. His place was taken a few moments later by Charles Rudd. Rudd was a sandy-haired, stocky man in his mid-twenties, with a bushy blond mustache, dressed in typical digger’s garb, with corduroy trousers, mud-stained and wrinkled, a shirt topped by a bandanna around his neck to keep out the ever-present dust, and high boots for the thick mud of the claims. He glanced over his shoulder as he entered.

“So Frank’s on his way, eh?”

“Yes,” Rhodes said shortly. He was drawing on his trousers, the same kind of digger’s trousers Charley Rudd was wearing, a sharp contrast to his brother’s stylishness.

“You ready to go to work?” There was a twinkle in Rudd’s blue eyes.

Rhodes frowned at the man. He reached for his hat. “Of course. Why?”

“I don’t mean at the claims,” Rudd said, grinning. “I took a ride out south to pick up some food from a farmer out there — half the price of the provisioners in town — and Andries and his wagon are only a mile or so out of town. He’ll be at Dutoitspan by the time we get there, probably. Our pump has finally arrived!”

To Barney, tramping alongside the wagon and thinking of Fay, the first impression he received of the town of Kimberley was far worse than anything he had imagined from the worst of Andries’ diatribes against the place. The town appeared to be nothing except a scattering of tin shacks, rusty and dilapidated, sweltering in the heat of late October. With the exception of the street down which their wagon was slowly making its way, the shacks seemed to have been placed with no particular sense of order, no attempt to locate them in such fashion as to define streets or to face them in any consistent direction so that future streets might be considered. Beyond the central cluster of metal buildings was a sea of tents equally disorganized as far as location was concerned. There was not a tree, a bush, or a blade of grass to be seen.

And the flies! They rose in swarms at the passage of the ox wagon, startled from their feasting on the remains of dead carcasses that lay between the shacks and the tents, entrails of animals slaughtered for food, or of dogs dead of disease or hunger. And the smell! Between the entrails and the open trenches built behind canvas for the human wastes of the town, and then abandoned when full, or improperly filled, the stench could stop a man in his tracks! Andries had been watching Barney. The large Boer pulled his team to a halt before one of the larger buildings along the street. He reached into the wagon, bringing out Barney’s bags, setting them down.

“Here you are, boy. Colesberg Kopje — New Rush — Kimberley. Call it anything you like.”

Barney forced a grin he was far from feeling. “Oh, it ain’t so bad,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. “No worse than Petticoat Lane.” But he knew in truth that his mother would have been out with a mop and broom if ever Petticoat Lane had been anything like this.