Later Memories took her down to what had been the school building. It was two miles south of the village at the bottom of the hills, a small concrete building, beginning already to crumble away into the greedy brush. The corrugated tin had been stripped from the roof. Inside weeds sprouted, standing almost as tall as Memories. The blackboard had fallen from the wall and lay broken on the floor, the traces of past lessons washed away.
The next day Natalie returned to the village and they took up position beneath the Msasa tree. This time she had come better prepared, with a copy of Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys, a book she had picked up from her aunt’s shelf. It was a bit of a dark book for a twelve-year-old girl, but the writing style was simple, and she thought Memories might appreciate the young female protagonist more than the action thrillers she had brought herself. She had also brought a large pad of paper and a couple of biros, one of which she gave to the girl.
When Natalie appeared on the third day, she found there was another young girl sitting waiting with Memories. She was a little taller and wore a grey shapeless dress that had perhaps once been a school uniform. Memories introduced her as Clara, explaining that they had been friends at the school. A little later a boy joined them, Energy, a thick-set young man. Natalie found it difficult to estimate his age. He could have been anything from thirteen to twenty. He was very quiet and nervous and loitered for a long time at the edge of the fields some twenty feet from the Msasa tree. It was a few days before Natalie was able to encourage him beneath the cool spread of the large branches where the new school met.
Natalie was amazed at the seriousness with which her students worked. Each of the children had responsibilities and work to do for their families, water to carry, farm work, cooking and cleaning and caring for younger children; their lives seemed more grown up than her own. But each day they were waiting for her when she arrived at the village, and the clay earth had been swept neatly and the chair and log arranged. Energy had clambered down to the old school and brought back with him – Natalie could only wonder how, considering its weight – the larger half of the school blackboard.
She taught them English and history. The English she was confident with, but without a textbook she felt a little lost with the history. Their enthusiasm was, though, infectious, and the two hours she set aside for the lesson flashed by.
Often the other children would gather around the edge of the tree to watch and listen. They would not intrude and treated the whole thing with a seriousness that at first made Natalie laugh and then made her nervous. Whenever she visited the village she took some time to see the baby that she had found. They had called the child Happiness. He had begun to flesh out and his eyes were brighter, more lively. One of the women would give him to Natalie and then they would all stand around and laugh as she held the baby gingerly in her arms.
The soft weight of the boy tugged at her. When he lifted his hand to touch Natalie’s face, she felt her heart flutter. The fingers softly grazed her skin. The baby’s eyes opened wider and he smiled, small blue bubbles breaking on his lips. It was so beautiful that she found it painful. Her eyes filled with tears and she had to pass the baby back, and pretend to have a fit of coughing, to hide her emotion.
Memories gazed at her coolly, her steady, serious gaze unpicking her.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said.
‘I’ll walk with you,’ Memories told her.
Her uncle had loaned Natalie a 100cc Kawasaki to get to the village. She rode it up to the top of the dirt lane and then left it there as the track became too rough after that point and walked the last few hundred metres.
‘Are you married?’ Memories asked as they walked up towards the brow of the rise.
‘Married?’ Natalie shook her head and smiled. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Natalie liked this serious young student. Though she was only twelve she behaved more like a young woman. She rarely saw Memories laugh; not that she was unhappy, but she always seemed to bring her emotions under control. She had a sharp tongue with the other children and was tough in her discipline of them.
For a moment Natalie thought of Lawrence. She thought about telling Memories about him; about all that she had hoped for, all that she had dreamed of. She thought of the weight of the baby in her arms and the old pain welled up and for a moment threatened to overtake her. She paused on the path and Memories paused beside her watching her. She sighed.
‘It just never happened,’ she said.
‘But you have been in love?’ Memories pressed her.
They had reached the top of the rise and Natalie swung her leg over the saddle of the Kawasaki and pushed the books inside her shirt, tucking it into her jeans so that they did not fall out on the journey home. The clouds had built up into a dark mass, heavy and threatening.
‘I was going to get married,’ she told Memories. ‘The wedding was arranged and everything.’
‘So what happened?’
Natalie sat on the bike, kicking the stand away, but not starting up the small engine. Instinctively she shrank back from the memory of that time. Of the darkness that had enfolded her. Beside her Memories stood waiting. She wore the same skirt. It was the only one she had, Natalie presumed.
‘I changed my mind.’
‘Was he angry with you?’
Natalie shrugged and smiled sadly. ‘It was complicated.’
The rains came that afternoon. Not a gentle shower. Not even heavy rain like Natalie had seen in England. The sky darkened as the clouds rolled across and when she looked up from her book towards the tail end of the afternoon, it could have been evening. She considered switching on the light as it had become too dark to read, but instead lay down the book and wandered over to the window that looked down across the grass towards the trees and the boundary of the farm.
A sudden rush of wind and the first drops of rain exploded on the concrete patio area at the back of the cottage and a few moments later the water dragged across the farm in heavy sheets. The hills disappeared and the trees were reduced to ghostly presences, barely visible. Above the roar of rain came the deep rumble of thunder. Momentarily the farm was illuminated by the sudden brilliance of a jagged lightening flash. Almost immediately the sky cracked open. The cottage shuddered. The alarm on her uncle’s car wailed in the darkness.
For half an hour the storm lumbered on. Water gushed from the guttering, hissed across the grass; wind buffeted the windows and whipped at the trees, pulling away branches. The crack and rumble of thunder became a continuous roll of sound.
And then, as quickly as it had started, it stopped. The clouds lifted. The sun was just setting, and the sky was blood red. The clouds mauve. As the light faded quickly, the darkness was illuminated by the green of fireflies, down beyond the trees where a small ravine ran fast with rainwater.
‘Did you enjoy the storm?’ Kristine smiled over dinner.
‘Zimbabwe is a lightening magnet,’ Roy said. ‘There are different theories as to why. It has the largest number of lightening related fatalities in the world. I’ve heard that it’s the granite. The radioactivity discharges gamma rays up into the cloud, ionising the air molecules. In the villages, though, they’ll tell you it’s the n’angers, witch doctors, using their power to kill. Back in the seventies twenty-odd people were killed in one strike, as they sheltered in a hut. Mostly, though its children caught out in the storms, sheltering under trees.’
The next day another storm rolled over, obliterating the landscape. Natalie sat in her cottage and gazed out of the window across the back of the farm. She missed being able to go down to the village. She tried to imagine being in one of the small village huts as the rain pounded down on the grass roof. She found she couldn’t. Memories’ questions had unsettled her. She found her mind drifting back to Lawrence and to the whole mess she had fled. Being cooped up inside the small cottage didn’t help. She was glad when the weather improved, and she was able to ride the Kawasaki back down the road to
the village.
When she got there, she found it in a state of disrepair. The rain had damaged the roofs of the buildings and caused mud to slide down from the track. Rather than teaching her small class she found herself riding back to the farm to fetch a shovel. She spent the rest of the day shovelling mud from the ground between the huts and helping to repair the roofs. In the evening she sat in the hut and shared supper, sadza, a sticky maize porridge, enlivened with a thin soup of muriwo, spinach leaves with tomato. Around her the women chatted in Shona, and in the corner Moses sat, on his own, hunched over his meal, gazing out through the doorway at the village.
Natalie tried to engage Moses in conversation, but the old man avoided her and answered only in monosyllables if spoken to directly. The women were not so reticent and once they were accustomed to her threw out comments and questions they demanded Memories interpret. How did she like their cooking? They laughed. Why wasn’t she married? Why was she wasting her time coming to the village? Memories translated the questions unabashed.
The baby was growing. Often Memories would have him tied to her back in a traditional sling and the baby would lie quietly for the whole period of the lesson. After the storm one of the women dropped the baby on Natalie’s knee and pointed at her.
‘It’s your child,’ Memories translated. ‘You should take care of him.’
The women laughed, slapping their knees and doubling up.
‘She looks just like her mother,’ Memories translated from another of the women. Again they fell about laughing and slapping their thighs. Memories took the child from her and dandled it and kissed it, making the baby smile and gurgle. Natalie felt her heart contract with unexpected emotion.
Moses stood up and left.
10
The number of young men in Nehanda’s village had doubled since Tafara’s previous visit. Everywhere they squatted in small circles, talking earnestly, conspiratorially, around small fires, assegais in their hands. The air was heavy with wood smoke. From somewhere came the music of the mbira, a fine thread of sound, constantly evolving, interweaving its melodies, building rhythmic patterns, sounding from a distance rather like water dripping into a pool deep within the forest.
Wending through the groups of young warriors, Tafara made his way towards the music. The musicians were squatted outside a hut towards the top of the village, not far from the path that wound up the hill towards Nehanda’s cave. A fire was burning and the sweet smell of roasted meat caused saliva to fill Tafara’s mouth. He realised, suddenly, how hungry he was, and how long it had been since he had last eaten.
A gazelle had been butchered and roasted. A young boy approached Tafara with some of the meat and greeted him; ‘Hondo.’ Warrior. Tafara took the meat. The musicians looked up and nodded. Tafara felt the weight of the rifle on his shoulder. He recalled the white man he had killed; yes, he was a warrior, as his father had been. A warmth spread through him. Biting into the meat the sweetness of it almost overwhelmed his senses. He felt its juices oozing down his chin, his fingers sticky with its charred fat.
‘Sit with us,’ one of the men said, indicating for him to join the group.
‘Brother, where did you get the weapon?’
For some moments he could not answer them; his mouth was full of meat, his stomach aching for more, his lips wet with grease. He felt their eyes upon him. The music had stopped and men were wandering in from around the huts. Some, he noted, had followed him up the path.
‘They came to our village,’ he said, when he could speak. ‘They came with papers and guns and said that all of our cattle must be slaughtered. They killed them all. Even the healthy ones that had no disease.’
‘And how did you get the weapon?’
Tafara paused. He looked around at the faces, curious and intent.
‘I killed one of them,’ he said, quietly.
He heard the sharp in-take of breath, but felt the excitement, the suddenly febrile atmosphere, like the air among the granite rocks after a thunderstorm, when everything feels more alive and the hairs on your skin stand on end.
At that moment the mbira started up again, picking a sharp percussive rhythm, joined quickly by the soft low throb of fingers on the tautened skin of a drum. The music grew in intensity and one of the young warriors began to sing.
‘Here, drink, warrior – Hondo,’ said one of the men and pushed a cup into his hands filled with frothing beer.
They built up the fire. Darkness had fallen abruptly, and it was cooler. A soft wind blew and there was rain in the air. As the fire grew, so did the crowd of men around it. More musicians joined and soon there was dancing, assegais waving in the flickering light. Tafara felt the throb of blood pumping through his veins. He felt alive. Felt strong. For too long he had sat back and done nothing. He had been right to kill the white man; they had killed his cattle. Why did they think they could come to his land and take his cattle?
There was a sudden hush and the dancers fell to the floor, prostrating themselves in the beaten dirt. The mbira was silent and the drums ceased. From one of the huts a figure emerged. She moved slowly, regally, and yet there was in the movement of her body a tension and lightness, as though she was a bird of prey about to open her wings and fly.
‘Mbuya Nehanda!’ the warriors cried.
‘Our land was open to the strangers,’ Nehanda said. Her voice was brittle and angry. Angrier than he had heard on his previous visit. ‘We did not attack them; we welcomed them, allowed them to pitch their homes on the land of our forefathers. Mwari, the great Mwari, taught us that this land is His land, and we did not deny them.
‘And in return they have fallen upon us. First they brought disease to our cattle, and then they grew greedy and rapacious, and wanted more of our land. Wanted to dig within its belly to steal the gold mined by our ancestors. They killed our livestock. Beat our elders.
‘The time has come, my children, the time has come to rise against them.
‘Mwari is with you, my children, He will make you strong. Do not fear them. Mwari is with you and they cannot harm you.’
A roar erupted from the gathered men. Tafara prostrated himself in the dirt before the feet of the Mbuya Nehanda, and his voice joined in with that of the other warriors.
‘We will slaughter the white spirits!’
They rose then, as one, each with a weapon: assegais and rifles, clubs and bows. Tafara found himself at the front of a group of twenty young men; each looked up to him. Some were young, no more than thirteen or fourteen, but there were others, some older than him. He looked around at the men and knew that he could lead them, that they would follow him. He had already killed a white man and on his back he carried a gun.
They ran through the night, making their way south towards the collection of farms the white settlers had established, spanning out from their main settlement, gradually expanding across the landscape. At one point to the West, they saw flames rising from the roof of a farmhouse and heard in the distance shouting and the crack of gunfire. Silently they moved forward, moving across the plains towards a homestead one of the older men knew.
The settlement was little more than a single farmhouse on the top of a low rise. Its roof was thatched and the ground had been staked out and sectioned off to a distance of around three acres. Cattle were corralled within a fenced area and part of the land had been given over to growing crops. The building itself was curious, being oblong rather than round like the local huts. It was also larger than the huts of the Shona villages. To the side of the main farmhouse were a number of smaller conically roofed, round huts, more like the traditional ones the warriors were familiar with.
As they approached the settlement they heard the barking of dogs. For a moment they paused. Behind the farmhouse rose the moon, large and pale and almost full, casting a thick, buttery light upon the scene.
Knowing that delay would cause his group of warriors to grow nervous, Tafara moved them on quickly. They scaled the fence. Almost immediately the do
gs were on them. Fierce brutes, the size of wolves, snarling and baring their teeth and lunging at them. The men cowered back, startled at the sudden ferocity.
Tafara had little experience shooting the white man’s gun; he had tried it the previous day, up in the mountains, and the blast of it had knocked him off his feet. Recalling the way he had seen the white men hold the gun, he lifted it now, and with a degree of trepidation pressed hard on the trigger. The blast knocked the barrel of the gun up towards the sky. Around him the warriors fell to their knees. The dogs, too, shrank away. Except for one, which fell to the floor with a whimper.
‘You killed it!’ one of the men said.
Though startled himself, Tafara hurried the men on. The dogs howled and lunged, but kept a certain distance allowing the warriors to move up the rise to the farmhouse. As they approached, a movement caught Tafara’s eye. There was somebody outside the building. He was about to caution the warriors when the first burst of gunfire exploded from behind a low wall to the side of the house. There was a startled yelp to the side of him and, turning as he ran, he saw one of the warriors, a man in his early twenties, with a broad forehead and deep-set eyes, stagger and drop his assegai.
‘Fast!’ he yelled.
Nehanda Mbuya’s words came to him at that moment.
‘Mwari will turn their bullets to water, they will not harm you.’
Curiously the words comforted him, gave him strength, despite seeing the warrior fall. Ducking down, he scrambled forward, finding a low ditch deep in shadow, hid from the ghostly light of the moon. A second burst of gunfire shattered the stillness of the night. For a brief moment the brilliance of the explosion illuminated the position of the white men, less than a hundred yards before him to the west of the building. He considered firing back, however he doubted he would hit them and realised he would reveal his own position. Instead he crawled forward on his belly, making as quick progress as he could.
A Child Called Happiness Page 7
