The idea of staying in Zimbabwe filled her with apprehension and she found the heat oppressive. She lay back on the bed and gazed up at the ceiling. A mosquito had managed to slip in and darted around with a high-pitched whine, reminding her of the need to take her malaria tablets.
She thought of Memories, recalled her standing by the side of the road, in the dust, reciting Byron. She pictured the quiet intensity of her gaze and of the disappointment so clear on her face when she had told her that she was going back to England. She recalled how Memories had taken the children out beneath the Msasa trees and attempted to teach them, remembered the poverty of the village, the running sores on the faces of the little children. The rounded bellies.
She was interrupted by a knock on the door. As she sat up her aunt opened the door and smiled at her. It was a sad smile, she thought, but perhaps she was imagining that.
‘There is a plane tomorrow morning,’ she said to her. ‘I need your passport to call them back and arrange you a seat.’
8
The white men’s stockade was a two-day walk to the south. Tafara and another of the young men from the village trekked out to it to try and discover what had happened to Anokosha, Mhuru and the other villager they had taken. For three days they waited outside the walls of the fort with a ragged camp of other men and women from the villages, but they could learn nothing. When their food ran out they returned to the village.
Dark, bilious clouds massed in the normally clear skies. The rivers ran fast making any travel difficult and the water poured from the rocks and washed away the loose top soil and damaged the roofs of the houses, so that they were continually forced to repair them.
Ngunzi sat most days in silence in the entrance to his hut, gazing out across the plains towards the far side of the valley, which often disappeared as another curtain of rain was drawn across the land. Tafara said little to him, nodding as he passed in the morning on his way out into the fields to look after the cattle.
More of the cattle had died. As much as they tried to care for them, there seemed to be little they could do to stop the spread of the disease. The first symptoms would be a heightened temperature in the cattle and a loss of appetite. Soon after the nasal passages and mouth broke out in sores and then diarrhoea set in. Within a week the animal would be dead. As soon as they spotted symptoms they would isolate the cow and slaughter it, but nothing they did seemed to protect the others.
‘Tafara.’ Ngunzi called him one evening as he returned to the village.
Tafara stopped. He had slept little in the previous few days and had worked for hours on end. All of his muscles ached and his whole body was so weary that he sometimes caught himself sleeping as he walked. He squatted down at the entrance to Ngunzi’s hut.
‘Nothing has been heard from Mhuru,’ Ngunzi said. ‘Or from Anokosha.’
Tafara was not sure whether it was a question or statement, so he said nothing, only bowing his head a little. For some moments they sat in silence. From the village came the sound of quiet chatter and the crackle of flames from a fire. The smoke drifted out from the hut, and settled in an oily cloud over the red-mud earth.
‘Maybe I was wrong,’ Ngunzi said quietly. ‘Since the whites have come to this region there has been nothing but hardship. They have taken our children – your bride. How long will it be before they come for more?’
The old man looked up and searched Tafara’s eyes. Ngunzi’s eyes were liquid and a sheen had begun to film them, turning them milky blue. Where once Tafara remembered them as being piercing and intense, now they seemed gentle and more and more often, lost, he thought, as though the world was changing around him and he no longer knew which way to turn. Ngunzi seemed more unsteady on his feet and often stumbled as he walked.
‘We should send out another messenger,’ Tafara said. ‘Take a goat, or one of the head of cattle, though we have few enough left as it is.’
Ngunzi nodded. In the hard earth he drew a shape with his long fingernail. ‘Have you heard of the rebellion?’
‘There have been some attacks on the villages of the whites. A farm burned here and there. The families flee back to their main stockade and then they send out their warriors.’
‘Perhaps you were right,’ Ngunzi said. ‘If Nehanda is calling for us to take up arms against them…’
‘Let us see what we can do to find Mhuru and Anokosha,’ Tafara said.
He straightened up and looked over to the hut where his friend had lived. Following his trip to see Nehanda he had been fired up to fight the white invaders, but the intensity of his feelings had cooled since he had got home. He was not afraid of fighting, but he was not a warrior at heart, not like his father had been. The image of the man lying in the path with that clean fresh bullet hole in his back haunted him and as much as he would have liked to have believed that the bullets would turn to water as Nehanda had said, he knew that was wishful thinking.
When he slept that night the spirit of Anokosha visited him. He was lying on his back and suddenly she was there beside him. She reached out, her small hand snaking across his skin, arousing him.
‘Anokosha,’ he breathed, turning on his side.
She lifted herself up and lowered herself on top of him, easing herself onto him. The thin, blue light shone across her body – seemed, almost, to shine from her. Her breasts rose and fell above him, larger than he recalled. Her belly too, seemed rounder, fuller, like a fruit swelling on a tree. The ecstasy that arose in him was so mixed with sadness that he felt like crying.
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘where have you been? Where have they taken you? Tell me so that I can find you.’ And then, ‘How is Mhuru? Let me take a message to his father.’
Anokosha smiled, her thick, sensual lips stretching wide, but she said nothing. For some time he lay with his hand upon her belly and then he was lost in sleep.
They selected one of the finest head of cattle from the herd and checked it over carefully, separating it and keeping it confined to an enclosure in the village so that it could not be contaminated. On the morning of the seventh day they rose early, before the sun had risen, and took fresh, frothing beer in an earthenware pot and carried it out of the village and up to the cave in the hills.
When the sun rose, they knelt in the shallow hollow beneath the lip of the cave and began the drumming. As the mist rose their voices echoed from the granite stones, muffled and plaintive. Ngunzi stepped forward, swaying to the rhythm of the drums and poured the beer on the earth. It pooled, forming spume upon the ground.
Later, Mbudzi led the cow out from the village, along the path that led to the white settlement. They stood on the edge of the village and watched him go, Mhuru’s mother crying and calling after him to be persuasive, to find her son and bring him home.
It was four days later when the white men returned to the village, scattering the children who had been playing in the dirt. Mbudzi walked at the head of the small column, behind him were the white South African Police in their khaki uniforms on horseback and the inevitable translator loping along behind, inane grin on his broad face. Mbudzi’s head was bowed. He approached Ngunzi first; Tafara joined them.
‘They slaughtered the cow immediately,’ he breathed, before the translator came into earshot. ‘They were furious. Had I not heard the edict? Was I deliberately trying to infect their animals?’
He wiped the sweat from his face. His clothes were dirty and his feet and legs were caked with mud. Tafara could see from his eyes that he was exhausted.
The white men got down from their horses and gathered around. They formed a circle on the floor outside Ngunzi’s hut, the policemen squatting uncomfortably as though they were about to jump up at any moment. Their rifles were cradled on their laps and Tafara looked at them warily.
‘The edict has gone out that your cattle should be slaughtered.’
The white man flourished a piece of paper covered in dark characters and poked at it with a stubby forefinger. ‘Animal Diseases Act
number 2, 1881, and Government notice number 53, 1886, require that any cattle infected with rinderpest should be reported immediately and that the herd should be destroyed to prevent the spread of the disease.’
Ngunzi looked from one to another of the white men, bewildered, his cloudy eyes seeing little but pale blotches against the verdant green of the valley. The policeman cleared his throat. He was a large man, with a shock of fair hair and a thick moustache that fell down on either side of his mouth giving him a dour, unhappy look. He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, then replaced the cap again, neatly.
‘The cow was not infected,’ Tafara said, his voice sounding like a small, hard pebble.
‘It was infected,’ the policeman shot back, after listening to the translation.
Tafara glanced at Mbudzi who sat silently a little way to his right. Mbudzi hung his head and avoided his gaze.
‘We have come to slaughter the herd,’ the policeman explained. ‘You will be compensated of course.’
It took the interpreter a moment to think of how to translate this last comment, and for a while he hummed and coughed and cleared his throat, until finally, he relayed the sentence with the English word intact.
‘What does this mean?’ Tafara questioned.
The translator looked at him with haughty disdain. Tafara tried to assess what tribe he was from.
‘No,’ Tafara said, his eyes boring into those of the translator.
The translator smiled and passed on his comment to the policeman.
‘You don’t have a choice,’ the policeman fired back.
‘If you touch our cattle, I will kill you,’ Tafara said.
The policeman smiled; a thin, tight smile without an ounce of humanity. He lifted the rifle from his lap.
‘I could shoot you just for having made such a comment, you savage scum.’
Again the translator struggled for an accurate translation of this phrase, but improvised the threat adding insults of his own. Tafara glanced around. There was Mbudzi to his right and a couple of the other young men to his left, but there was nowhere near enough strength to take on the white men with their guns.
The policeman pulled out a wad of bundled papers, small, coloured rectangles with pictures and shapes on them. He counted a number of them off and flung them on the floor before Ngunzi and Tafara.
‘The money there is probably worth more than all of your stock,’ he said, ‘even when they were healthy.’
Tafara gazed, bewildered, at the coloured papers that scattered across the earth caught by a gust of wind. The translator jumped forward and gathered them together carefully.
‘You can trade them for many good things,’ he told Tafara. ‘For food and livestock.’
He pushed the notes into Tafara’s hands.
The policeman stood up and addressed the others. A short, stocky man with red hair nodded and grinned at Tafara.
‘You are to stay here,’ the translator told Tafara. ‘If you resist in any way you will be shot.’
Helplessly, Tafara stood at the edge of the farm and watched as the group made their way down the rise to the fields where their herd of cattle were pastured. Behind him the red haired policeman lit a cigarette. He clapped Tafara on the back and offered him one.
For some time there was little noise beyond the sound of the women in the huts and children talking in low, frightened voices. Tafara stood silent, his mind in turmoil. The sun had passed its zenith and had begun to slip down towards the edge of the valley.
The sound of the sharp retort of rifle fire echoed from the granite rocks behind the village; birds rose into the air and for a few short moments there was a cacophony of noise. Behind Tafara, the policeman threw his cigarette butt onto the earth and ground it beneath his heel. He pulled back the indicator leaver of his Martini-Henry rifle and idly turned the barrel and levelled it at Tafara’s chest. Tafara turned away from the man. He gazed down across the trees and bush and pictured in his mind’s eye the rolling hills and grassland where his cattle roamed.
Tafara was not a violent man; he was a hunter, but he had never killed a man. Stooping down, he picked up a stone, the size of the palm of his hand, smooth and heavy. He weighed it. Considered it. The noise of the guns rose in waves crashing against his ears. Above the trees the pale clouds of smoke gathered ominously.
He jumped when the white man clapped a hand on his shoulder. The man spoke. Though he did not understand a word, the voice was soft and he noted the look in his blue eyes. For one moment he weighed the stone, then, with as much force as he could muster, he threw up his hand and smacked the stone hard against the temple of the white man.
The policeman dropped in an untidy heap upon the earth.
Another volley of shots startled the late afternoon. The birds hung above the trees, high up, circling angrily. The air was still and the village was motionless. Tafara stood above the policeman, looking down at the crumpled body, watching as the blood seeped out, pooling on the earth, soaking in slowly, almost immediately gathering flies.
A figure emerged from the darkness of one of the huts, uttered a strangled moan and then disappeared again. Reaching down, Tafara picked up the gun. Hands trembling, he fumbled with the belt of bullets the policeman wore, tearing it off him and clumsily wrapping it around his own waist.
Straightening up, he glanced back down the incline through the trees to the plain below from where the sound of gunfire still arose, more sporadic now, occasional shots. For one moment longer he hesitated and then he moved, not turning back to the huts, but moving up towards the granite escarpment behind the village, clambering over the rocks, moving swiftly, rifle in hand.
He continued without resting even after darkness had fallen. Normally he would not have travelled at night, certainly not away from the main tracks, but he knew the white men would hunt him and on his own he stood no chance against them. The night was dark. The moon was hidden behind the thick layer of cloud. It was a warm night though and he made good progress across the hills, circling slowly back around towards Nehanda’s village.
At the top of a high hill that commanded a good view of the whole area he paused to catch his breath and turned and gazed back across the shadowy, rolling highlands. Far in the distance the darkness was broken by the flickering glimmer of a large fire. He breathed in deeply, gathering himself, then turned and continued on towards Nehanda.
9
Thin clouds skimmed the horizon as Natalie reached the village. The rains were due. The previous few years had been difficult in Zimbabwe; the rains had failed and drought had devastated the crop yields. The heat was almost unbearable. Perspiration ran down the cleft of her spine and she could smell the sharp, semi-sweet scent of her body despite having showered and put on new clothes just before she had come out.
‘Madness,’ she muttered to herself.
The rough track looked down on a cluster of small huts. The ground was hard beaten and thin smoke curled up from the dwellings into the heavy sky. She had wondered whether she would feel regret when she awoke that morning. All the previous day she had fought with herself. There were seats on the plane to England; she could have been on her way back home. But the image of the young girl’s face troubled her. The rapidly ingested disappointment, as though she was used to it. And she was flattered, she couldn’t deny that. She was capable of offering hope to somebody. She had it in her power to offer somebody something they wanted.
In England it had been different. There she had faced classes of resentful learners; sour-faced adolescents corralled reluctantly into classrooms where they laughed and joked and lay their heads upon the tables, wrote on the walls, kicked each other, prised keys from the computer keyboards. Did anything but listen to her.
Moses was seated beneath the tree in the centre of the village as though he had not moved since the previous visit. When Natalie approached, he glanced up. He did not seem surprised to see her. He did not rise or speak. The village was quiet. From somewhere
came the sound of chickens and the constant dull throb of the cicadas.
Natalie felt suddenly embarrassed before the old man. She gazed at him for some moments unsure how to start. Moses’ hair was grey and the thin straggle of whiskers on his chin, almost white.
‘The school has no teacher,’ she began.
The old man watched her silently.
‘Memories… The girl… ’ She pointed at one of the village huts fatuously. ‘She came to see me. She said she wanted a teacher.’
Still the man said nothing.
‘So I’ve come.’
Moses shifted from his seat, rising slowly. His gaze shifted away from Natalie and he turned and wandered across the packed earth. Natalie watched him go, feeling foolish.
It was only as she began to turn that Natalie noticed the figure standing in the doorway of one of the huts. Memories stepped forward into the sunlight and looked at her gravely, hands folded before her. She was wearing the same tattered T-shirt and skirt, the pocket hanging limply.
‘You said you were going to England.’
‘I changed my mind.’ Natalie smiled.
Memories did not smile. She continued to regard Natalie, her face a mask.
‘So you will teach me?’
Natalie nodded. ‘We’ll see what we can do.’
The first lesson took place beneath the Msasa tree. It was a large, old tree and the branches spread for some metres casting a cooling pool of shade. Taking the rickety chair Moses had been seated on, Natalie moved it beneath the tree. Memories sat on a log, the same one she had been perched on when she schooled the other children from the village on Natalie’s previous visit.
Memories was an able student. That first session, which lasted a couple of hours, they talked about what she had studied with the teacher who had been arrested. Natalie had brought with her a notebook, which she used as a journal, and, tearing off some pages, wrote a few lines for Memories to read, which she did with little difficulty. When she wrote, Memories’ handwriting was beautiful, ornately curved letters that trickled delicately across the page making Natalie feel ashamed of her own clumsy, messy hand.
A Child Called Happiness Page 6
