Роберт Фиш - Rough Diamond

What had his maniac uncle bought in the short matter of four weeks? Well, he had bought about any land offered in downtown Johannesburg that had clear title, land which had to be worth less than a tenth of what he had paid for it, if Solly was any judge. And who should be a better judge? He, Solly, had been here several months before Barney showed up, and he hadn’t wasted his time, either, in learning the facts of the place, facts that Barney seemed to prefer to disregard. And not satisfied with buying half of the town itself, he had gone ahead and bought land outside of the city, a huge tract, more land than Solly could imagine, an area the idiot intended to stock with cattle — to feed the coming city of Johannesburg, he had said. What coming city of Johannesburg? The way things were going, there wouldn’t be a Johannesburg in five years! And what he had paid for that — that — that pasture could have been purchased for pennies a few years back! Oh, they had seen him coming, all right! His smart uncle, Barney Barnato!

What else? Oh, yes, the waterworks! Water was essential for the mines as well as for the people, Barney had said. What mines? What people? This town would be another Barberton in a year! Oh, yes, and speaking of mines and gold stocks, Barney had, of course, bought gold mines and gold stocks — mines that had gold in them, nobody denied that, but gold that could be taken from those mines at a break-even cost only, and you had to be pretty smart to even do that. The fact was it cost as much to get an ounce of gold from that retentive rock as the cost of just about bringing it to the surface, let alone the cost of crushing the rock in those expensive batteries, and the cost of labor and supervising the damned Kaffirs and the cost of the tools and the machinery and the freight, since because of the damned Kruger there were no railways to the damned place, and God alone knew what else!

Solly had said as much to the reticent Andries the day the large Boer had driven him out in the trap to inspect the land Barney had bought for the ranch, a ranch Andries was to run on a fifty-fifty partnership basis.

“He’s lost his mind!” Solly had said hopelessly. “I don’t believe he has the slightest idea of what he’s doing. Or how much he’s spending.” It wasn’t because Solly particularly wished to confide his thoughts to Andries; to begin with he was a stranger, and a Boer, and besides he was obviously an uneducated peasant, a nobody. But there wasn’t anyone else around; it was almost like talking to oneself. “Over two million pounds. Two million pounds! In less than a month! Can you imagine? Do you have any idea how much money that is, two million pounds?”

Andries properly considered that the question needed no answer from him, and held his silence.

“And if it was only all his own money!” Solly had gone on bitterly. “He seems to forget, or maybe he prefers to forget, that there are other shareholders in the company! He doesn’t even ask their opinion; he just plows on!” He seemed to suddenly realize he was expressing his personal views before a man Barney had just recently introduced into the picture, a new factor in the equation. The people Barney managed to pick up! Like stray dogs! A driver of an ox wagon, for God’s sake, just because they’d once made a trek together! “Of course, that’s just my opinion…” He looked up, the look itself on that haughty patrician face demanding an answer, a commitment.

“Ummm…,” Andries had said diplomatically.

“Yes,” Solly had said shortly with a shake of his head and a sidelong glance at the other man, as if to warn him he had been eavesdropping, for all practical purposes, and not to forget it; and fell silent.

He came back to the present as a man came from Barney’s office and approached his desk, holding out a chit upon which Barney’s scrawled signature was clearly evident. Solly studied it balefully for several moments and then looked up.

“What’s this for?”

“Sold ’im a share o’ a claim.” The man sounded as if the money represented by the chit had been found in the street.

“And where’s this claim?” Solly asked sardonically. “Market Square?”

The man bridled. “Hit’s a good claim, an’ ’e bought hit square! An’ you pay me me money raht now, you ’ear?”

“Don’t take that tone with me! You watch your tongue!”

“Watch me tongue, eh? You watch yer throat, lad! I signed the papers all proper, an’ ’e signed the chit! Now I wants me money!”

Solly gritted his teeth. He wrote the check, signed it, and handed it over, coming to his feet immediately afterward, fuming. This was too much! He marched into Barney’s office, forestalling a rather well dressed elderly man who had moved to the door and had merely been waiting for Solly’s permission to enter. He did not look like the usual run of petitioner waiting to cash in on a worthless claim, or a claim that was, at the very least, profitless; on the contrary he looked rather distinguished, but Solly was well aware that merely looking distinguished did not prevent a man from taking as much advantage of Barney as one who looked disreputable. In any event, Solly pushed past the man brusquely, entering the office and closing the door firmly behind him. Barney looked up curiously.

“Yes, Solly?”

Solly drew up a chair and sat down opposite his uncle. He took a deep breath and began. “Barney,” he said, trying to sound as calm as his uncle looked, “do you know what you are doing?”

“I think so,” Barney said mildly.

“D’you know how much money you’ve put out? In a month?”

“About two million pounds, I believe. Why?”

Solly was speechless, but only for a moment.

“Why? Why? Because most of it if not all of it is money down the drain, that’s why! Sure, there’s gold in the Reef; there’s gold in people’s teeth, too! But what good is the gold in the Reef if nobody can get it out at a profit, eh? The mines that are still working are barely breaking even. Look at the Simmer & Jack mine! They know as much about getting gold out of the rock with mercury amalgam as anyone in the world, and they’re barely making expenses! Look at Robinson! He’s added the new chlorination process to try and squeeze an extra tenth of an ounce per ton of rock, and I doubt if he’s even paid for the new equipment he added! My God, Barney, there’s probably more gold in the slag heaps than there is being extracted and poured, practically. What kind of a business is that to be pouring money in, endlessly? And the mining stocks you insist upon buying, stocks even in mines that have been shut down and will probably never reopen—”

“Solly,” Barney said quietly, interrupting. “There were diamonds in the blue ground, as you may remember, and we had to figure out how to get them out. The answer was in power equipment, steam-driven equipment, and we had to even bring the coal by ox wagon over half of South Africa to fire the boilers. I don’t know what the answer is going to be to get the gold from the rock, but there’s going to be an answer and somebody’s going to find it. And if power is needed and steam to produce that power, at least the coal is within a few miles of here. I know this: there’s gold in the Reef! They calculate there’s more gold here than in any other place in the world. Where there’s that much gold, somebody is going to figure out how to recover it. And at a profit, too. And when they do, I expect to be ready.”

“And if they don’t figure out how to recover it — at that profit you’re talking about — for the next hundred years?” Solly asked sardonically. “What then?”

“Then I guess we wait a hundred years,” Barney said philosophically. He looked at his nephew steadily. “But we wait.”