A CHILD CALLED HAPPINESS
STEPHAN COLLISHAW
Legend Press Ltd, 107-111 Fleet Street, London, EC4A 2AB
[email protected] | www.legendpress.co.uk
Contents © Stephan Collishaw 2018
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Print ISBN 978-1-7871988-1-4
Ebook ISBN 978-1-7871988-0-7
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All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.
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Stephan Collishaw was brought up on a council estate and failed all of his O-levels. His first novel The Last Girl (2003) was chosen by the Independent on Sunday as one of its Novels of the Year. In 2004 Stephan was selected as one of the British Council’s 20 best young British novelists. His first novel with Legend Press, The Song of the Stork, was published in 2017 and described by William Ryan as ‘An elegantly crafted, beautifully written novel about love, survival and hope against all the odds.’
Stephan now works as a teacher in Nottingham, having also lived and worked abroad in Lithuania and Mallorca, where his son Lukas was born.
Follow Stephan on Twitter
@scollishaw
‘Freedom is not something that one people can bestow on another as a gift. They claim it as their own and none can keep it from them.’
Kwame Nkrumah
Mazowe Valley
Zimbabwe
2011
1
They had almost reached the gates of the farm when Natalie heard the sharp wail. At first she thought it was the cry of a bird, but as she listened it subsided into a gurgling sob, soft and all too human. She glanced around but could see nothing. At the foot of the slope, her uncle turned his horse and waved impatiently. Natalie held up her hand. She was about to move forward when she heard it again, to her left.
Turning in her saddle, she scanned the undergrowth and the low brush. She nudged the horse closer to the thicket and the granite boulders, peering into the shadows. The irritation was clear in her uncle’s posture as he turned his horse and began to make his way back up the slope.
‘What is it?’
‘I heard a cry.’
Natalie slipped down off the horse.
‘It was probably a bird.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t a bird.’
‘What kind of a cry?’
Natalie didn’t have to answer as the thin wail rose again, insistent and clear above the noise of the cicadas and rock thrush.
‘Up there.’
They had set out early from the farm, before the sun had risen and it had just begun to get light as they started the climb up the long, slow hill back home again. All around, Natalie could hear the sound of the morning: the squeak of the boulder chaff, the reeling martins. They had ascended from woodland and ahead, at the crest of the kopje, three large boulders were balanced one on top of the other, as if placed there by some giant. They pulled their horses up side-by-side and gazed at them in silence.
‘Drew’s Kopje,’ Roy, her uncle said, motioning with his hand. ‘Named after your great-uncle.’
Natalie nodded. She was about to move the horse forward, but her uncle held out his hand and stopped her. The early morning air was cold and slightly damp from the night. It had been colder than Natalie had anticipated. The breath of the horses lingered in the air.
‘Wait,’ her uncle said.
The horses were content to stand there, lowering their heads to feed on the coarse tufty grass. Natalie cast a quick sidelong glance at Roy, a stern man in his late fifties. His hair was short and greying; his face tanned deeply, like leather. There was not a spare inch of flesh on him. He was a man of few words and Natalie felt uncomfortable in his presence. Looking at him now, in the early morning light, she could see almost no resemblance to her mother, a soft-featured, gentle, bookish woman.
‘See?’
The light was changing, almost as if the brush around them had begun to glow from some internal energy. A moment later the top boulder flamed, brilliantly illuminated. Within minutes, the three rocks were consumed, glistening in the light of the rising sun.
‘Incredible,’ Natalie breathed.
Her uncle nodded, nudging his horse forward along a narrow path that cut up the side of the hill around the glowing stones.
‘The natives used to consider this a sacred place. Home to their ancestral spirits.’
The farm at the bottom of the hill, which they were circling back towards, was at the end of the Mazowe Valley in northern Zimbabwe. It was fertile land, though its careful cultivation had begun to look a little dilapidated. As they drove in on the road from Harare, Natalie had noted the number of farms that had fallen into disrepair; agricultural machinery rusted gently, unused, in the blistering sun. Here and there, on these farms, elderly men worked small patches of the red soil with primitive implements, pausing, briefly from their labour to watch as the wheels of the Land Rover sang past on the hot tarmac.
There were other farms, though, large, neatly trimmed estates; evidence that commercial farming was continuing. Large citrus orchards stretched away into the distance and up near Bindura a copper mine scarred the beauty. The Drew farm was at the far end of the valley. Steep hills rose around it, granite capped, frilled with lush, dark vegetation. The main farmhouse was large and airy, with oak panelled walls, and a large veranda from which you could look out not only across the farm, but along the road to Bindura, and the surrounding countryside.
As they rode up over the back of Drew’s Kopje, Natalie saw the large Jacaranda that marked the gateway to the farm. In the early morning sunlight, its blue flowers glowed hazily. It was hard to gaze out across the landscape and not be moved by the large cerulean expanse of sky, the granite kopjes, the purple hills in the distance, the thin line of smoke rising from the thatched roofed village huts, the elegant Jacaranda carpeting the dirt with its blossom. Natalie hesitated a moment, letting her uncle draw ahead. She stopped the horse on the crown of the hill and breathed in deeply.
The air was alive with the sound of insects and birds. Yet at the same time it seemed silent. There was not, she realised, the sound of a single engine. No car. No plane. She listened intently. Nothing but the sounds of nature. Natalie wasn’t sure she had ever experienced this pure absence of noise before. Even the previous night, as she sat on the veranda of her cottage and listened to the bellow of bullfrogs, there had been the sound of the generator, and somewhere in the main house the low, muffled, melancholy of American country music on the radio.
There was something primordial about this peacefulness. Something deeply moving. She exhaled slowly, breathing out all the pain and the darkness.
It was then, as she rode down towards the farm, trailing her uncle, that she heard the sound of crying.
‘Where did it come from?’ her uncle asked, pulling his horse round and riding back up to Natalie.
‘Up there.’
Natalie pushed through the
branches, the thorns scratching at the red uncovered skin on her forearms and scrambled up onto the boulders. The baby lay on the top, nestled within the smooth indentation on its surface, swaddled loosely in a dirty rag. It could have been no more than a few weeks old. She dropped down onto her knees beside the little bundle, her heart thumping. She half reached out to touch the exposed plump cheek, but stopped herself. The baby looked up at her, its eyes a dark brown, tinged with blue. Her fingers fluttered across her belly.
‘Anything up there?’
‘Yes,’ she called back down to her uncle. She paused, breathless.
The baby was silent, fascinated by her; the small eyes following her every move. As it breathed out, small bubbles burst on its lips. Dribble trickled down its cheek, settling in the shell of its ear. Mucus frothed freshly from its wide nostrils. The small, dark forehead was smooth, though the skin flaked a little, and beneath its eyes stark creases gave it a look of world-weary knowingness. She listened to the sound of its breaths, shallow, light as the whispers of wind in the dry grass. Her uncle’s head appeared close behind her.
‘What is it?’
‘A child,’ Natalie said. ‘A baby.’
‘Pass it down.’
She had never held a child before. She wasn’t sure how to pick it up. Gently pushing her fingers under the body, she levered it into her hands. The baby watched her. It felt so light, almost no weight at all. She cradled it in the crook of her arm and touched its cheek with her right hand; the baby gazed up at her, deep into her eyes with the wisdom of ages and she felt her heart turn. A bubble rose from the core of her being and a pressure built behind her eyes. Her throat constricted and her eyes began to glaze. Suddenly she felt tears streaming down her cheeks and the bubble tight and hard in her throat.
‘Pass it to me,’ her uncle said.
His voice was gentle and though he must have seen the tears he did not mention them. Natalie passed the baby across the hot stone to her uncle, who took it naturally and, holding it high, turned and worked his way back through the bush towards the waiting horses.
‘Do you think the mother is around somewhere?’ Natalie asked.
She had brushed the tears from her face with the cuff of her shirt, but still she avoided meeting her uncle’s eyes.
‘Can you see anyone?’ her uncle answered matter-of-factly.
‘No.’
‘Anyone there?’ her uncle called, his voice echoing from the boulders and down the cleft they had arisen from, bouncing from one kopje to another. The insects sang. Birds flittered away, startled, from the tops of the trees, and something scurried in the undergrowth a few feet away.
‘If it had been left there the birds would have had it before the morning was out,’ Roy said. ‘That or an animal. It wouldn’t last long.’
‘Who do you think left it there?’
‘It looks fairly new-born.’
‘But why?’
Her uncle shrugged. ‘Perhaps they couldn’t afford to raise it.’
‘And just left it to die?’
When she had mounted her horse, she took the baby from Roy, holding it tight. The baby began to cry and she loosened it a little, holding it nervously. She tried speaking to it, but she didn’t know what to say.
‘You’ll be okay with it?’ her uncle asked.
She nodded, taking the track slowly. As they passed beneath the Jacaranda it showered them with blue flowers so that when they arrived on the farm, they were confettied with delicate petals, Natalie with the baby lulled to sleep.
Her aunt Kristine’s face, when she saw them, was a mixture of laughter and concern.
2
Kare kare. Long, long ago. I can still remember the day my father died; I was four years old. But this story does not start then. No. We shall get to his story by and by. This story begins in the days of my grandfather, in the days of the first Chimurenga – the first uprising.
These fields were ours then; these hills, this earth. Our village nestled in between the boulders on the side of the valley. There were many huts. The large central hut belonged to my grandfather. His cattle roamed the whole region from the ridge to the other side of the valley. He had three wives, of which my grandmother was the youngest. He was already an old man when he took her as wife. It was a fertile land, rich and fruitful. The village was close to that of the spirit guide, Nehanda, and like many, he revered her.
His name was Tafara. We are happy, it means, in the Shona language.
It was the year 1896, though Tafara would not have known it as that.
Tafara had settled himself at the top of a high ridge as darkness fell across the valley. In his hands he held the stick that had belonged to his father. It had been a year since his death and the next day they would be visiting his grave to perform the ceremony. Back in the village the women were brewing beer and preparing the sadza; it was just possible to hear the sound of voices and music drifting up over the dry grassland.
Tafara lay back against the stone, which was warm still from the sun. The night was heavy, the darkness, like a hot stifling blanket, blocked out any gleam of light. The moon had not yet risen, but as he lay there the stars began to appear, a glittering sweep of lights, pinpricks of brilliance. Billowing clouds were massed along the horizon, apparent only from the thick black absence of starlight. The rains had held off. Normally they would have come by now. Dark clouds gathered and drifted restlessly across the sky, but no rain had fallen. It had been a poor season; ever since his father had died, the earth seemed to have shrivelled up. The ground was bone hard.
Tafara hugged the stick to his chest and tried to picture his father’s face, but found he could not. He closed his eyes and delineated the details, the beard, the prominent forehead, the noble bearing; but the parts would not stitch together. His voice, though, remained and Tafara could hear it now, laying there, as if it had been only minutes before that it had breathed in his ear.
‘Sango rinopa waneta.’
The forest rewards you when you are weary.
They had been his father’s last words, his voice soft and flutelike as he lay upon his deathbed. Tafara felt now the soft weight of his father’s hand on his head. Heard the exhaustion in his voice. Saw still, piercingly clearly, the slow rise and fall of his emaciated chest beneath the thin blanket.
‘Yes, father,’ he had whispered.
But he did not know what his father had meant. Was it a criticism? Was it encouragement? This was Tafara’s sixteenth season of rains and he felt ill-prepared for the responsibilities about to fall upon him as the eldest son.
A sudden noise disturbed his thoughts. Alert, he sat up, his ears straining. The darkness was impenetrable; it was barely possible for him to see his hand in front of his face. Slowly and silently he slipped the long knife from his belt. His hand was trembling, but he breathed deeply, slowed the race of his heart and raised himself onto the balls of his bare feet. Somewhere a little below him he could hear movement in the undergrowth. A low rustle. He listened intently trying to gauge the size of the creature making the noise, listening for its breathing, for the sounds that might identify it, but little carried.
He eased himself down from the rock, placing its smooth surface against his back, taking care to detect the direction of the soft breeze. He flared his nostrils, inhaled deeply, analysing the scents in the air. Wood smoke. He dropped to a squat. The village was behind him on the other side of the ridge and the breeze was blowing away from it. It was thin, a small fire. He eased forwards silently. As he crept over the ridge he saw the soft glow of the flames, half way down the incline.
He moved to within thirty feet of the fire, keeping low. His view was partly obscured by high brush and he had to work around them, dipping below some large boulders and through a small copse of Msasa. He had crept closer than he anticipated. Two men were seated by the small fire. The first was of middling height dressed in a khaki green jacket. His hat had been discarded next to him. The second sat on the opposite side of
the fire and little was visible of him beyond his gaunt face and beard.
It was not the first time Tafara had seen white men; they had been making incursions through the region more and more regularly. A small group of men had visited his father more than a year before, wanting to purchase land at the head of the valley where they had found deposits of gold. His father had turned them away. One of the white men had taken a large box from the back of their cart and erected it in front of the village. He had assembled the villagers in front of one of the huts and then disappeared beneath a black sheet in front of them. Tafara recalled the incident now and smiled, remembering their incomprehension at the behaviour of this white man hidden beneath his sheet before them.
Sometime later he came out from under it, grinned at them and laughed, and they laughed too at his madness. But, before he left, the white man presented them with a little miracle. On a card, no larger than the width and length of his hand, he presented them with the image of themselves as they had been at that moment, stood before the hut. Tafara did not understand what he had done, but he cherished that small miracle the white man gave him and kept it safely among his possessions.
For a while he watched the two men passing a small canteen between themselves, talking in low voices. When he was assured that they posed no danger he crept away, circling the kopje, moving silently, his ears alert for more of the white men; but the night was quiet.
The village glowed in the deep night and voices and music were audible as soon as he crossed the ridge. A cow had been slaughtered earlier in the day and the rich smell of the meat hung heavily in the air, making his mouth water as he made his way back. There was singing and the sound of the mbira. Many of the men were drunk when he passed through the village towards the central hut. Kamba, his uncle, was sprawled out in the shadows snoring loudly.
Tafara slept fitfully and was woken by a deep grumble shortly before dawn. For some moments he lay listening, but the village was silent and he drifted back to sleep.
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