A Child Called Happiness

by Stephan Collishaw

  He slept like the dead and worked like an animal and in that way forgot to feel the pain of loss and shut out all thought that life had been another way. That it could have been another way. But as he struggled with some large rock, the granite hardening the skin of his hands so that they were no more sensitive than the bark of the mimosa tree, the weight stretching his muscles, first hardening them and then wearing them away, one thought kept his feet shuffling, his heart alive – My bones will rise again.

  The vein of gold was thin and poor quality and was soon exhausted and the labourers scattered across the country, moving on to other mines. The white owner of the mine did not move on though. Having surveyed the countryside, and seen that the soil was good, that there was fresh water available and that the granite hills afforded shelter from winds and the rain, he applied to the white authorities and was granted the land to farm.

  Reginald Drew, the new landowner, employed a number of the labourers from the mine to work on his land and Tafara managed to secure himself a position. Drew was a tall thin Scot with red hair and a flaming beard. He was a hard man, both on himself and the men that worked for him, never without his leather lash with which he would beat anybody whom he considered to be avoiding work. Many of the labourers left, slipping away in the night, and those who were there in the morning felt the sharp edge of Drew’s annoyance at being another hand down.

  The first year the crop failed and life was tough. Drew grew even thinner and harder, his blue eyes little more than mean slits in his red face. Twice he fell ill and each time Tafara thought that he would die and that the land would be free again; but Drew was determined not to be beaten and the next year they harvested a good crop.

  Other white settlers had begun to move into the valley, and occasionally they would come down to Drew’s farm and Tafara would listen to the sound of their laughing and singing until late in the night. When he slept he dreamed of slitting the red haired farmer’s throat, but during the day he was a quiet, hard worker, and Drew came to depend upon him and give him more responsibility.

  Tafara was almost thirty by the time he got married to a young girl from a village further up the valley. Akudzwe, his bride, was fourteen, a slight girl who rarely spoke. His first son was born the next year; a sickly child that barely lasted the night before its spirit gave up. He buried the child up in the hills with his father, performing the old rites as well as he could. His second child was born a year later, a girl, strong and with her father’s quiet sullenness. She was the first of ten to survive; four more died.

  My father was born in 1925. Tafara was forty-five by then, and Zindonga was the last of his children. He was born to his third wife, a large woman, happy and careless, who sang all the time. Zindonga was nothing like his father, his eyes were bright and full of hope, and perhaps, because of that, Tafara loved him deeply. Often he would take the boy up into the craggy hills and teach him of the spirits that lived there. They would go to the sacred cave and see the rituals of the old world.

  At night they would lay upon the granite kopje and gaze up into the stars, as Tafara had done with his father, and Tafara felt, then, that a thread had been woven between the past and the future; a fragile thread that would keep alive the true spirits of the land that would one day be theirs again.

  By the fire, late in the evening, as the women sang, and the wood crackled, Tafara told Zindonga about Nehanda, and about the words that she had spoken when the white man could not kill her. ‘Her bones will rise’, he told his son. ‘Her bones will rise, and in that day, the white men’s bullets will turn to water, and we will drive them from the land and it will be ours again. Ours.’

  16

  ‘What do you mean, Happiness is sick?’

  Natalie stood rooted to the spot, Memories standing before her, running her bare toe in the dirt, cutting a line deeper and deeper.

  She could not quite understand the chill that had run down her spine, the sudden fear of loss that had gripped her and made her hand shake as she lifted away the fringe of hair that had fallen in her eyes.

  Brushing past Memories, she paced quickly down towards the huts. Her heart was beating fast now. She felt the girl’s hand on her arm, trying to hold her back, but she pulled away.

  ‘Natalie, no,’ Memories said.

  The hut was dark and empty. Natalie pulled open the flap so that the interior was revealed. The beaten clay earth had been mixed with the blood of an ox in the traditional manner, and scrubbed to a high, dark sheen, which reflected back the light that poured in through the doorway. Against the back wall, clay earth-fired pots were stacked one on top of another. In the centre of the hut, the floor dipped and the ashes of a fire gathered in a small grey heap. She let the curtain drop and turned. Memories was stood behind her.

  ‘Where are they?’ she asked. ‘Where has everybody gone?’

  Before Memories had time to reply, Natalie saw a movement at the top of the lane. Stepping past the girl she shaded her eyes and looked up against the falling sun. A figure appeared, a young man, bathed in sweat. Instantly Natalie recognised him and felt her heart jolt for the second time.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, when Bhekinkosi had jogged down the path to the huts. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘Bhasa sent me,’ the stable boy responded, his breaths jagged. ‘He says you must come. The boss says you are needed back at the farm.’

  Natalie looked at the young man, his shirt dark with perspiration, and then back at Memories. The girl was watching her, head on one side, eyes large and inscrutable. For a moment Natalie was caught between her desires. She glanced from one to the other.

  ‘Bhasa said we must be quick,’ Bhekinkosi said, apologetically.

  Natalie nodded. She set off up the hill towards the Kawasaki, the young man at her heels, panting hard. Only at the top of the rise, where the lane curved out of sight of the village did she turn. Memories stood where she had left her beside the hut, her arms folded across her thin chest following Natalie with her dark eyes. She turned and straddled the bike and indicated for Bhekinkosi to climb on behind her.

  At the farm, Roy was beside the Land Rover, a group of the farm workers around him. His face was red and his forehead lined with deep creases. Kristine stood near the doorway shaded from the light of the sun that was sinking fast by the time Natalie pulled in through the gates and climbed off the bike. Roy was holding his rifle.

  ‘Uncle Roy?’

  Roy strode over to her. He clapped a hand on her shoulder and attempted a grin, but it came out more like a grimace.

  ‘There has been a raid on one of the neighbouring farms,’ Roy explained. ‘The so-called War Veterans have brought their rag-tag mob of local hooligans and Mugabe loyalists. We’re going over there to lend him a hand. To keep them off. I wondered if you would come? Boyle has a daughter a bit younger than you, it would be good for her to have some company.’

  Though he posed it as a question, the look in his eye seemed to warn Natalie that this was no tourist outing and that her support was needed. Natalie nodded. In the pit of her stomach she felt a dark foreboding. She glanced at Kristine and saw the worry in her eyes, the strain evident in the skin pulled taut across her features. The farm hands were talking in low voices.

  Climbing into the front of the Land Rover, Roy pushed open the passenger door and called Natalie to jump in. The farm workers climbed up over the rear door and squatted in the back. Roy nodded his head as he fired up the engine, and glancing down behind the front seat Natalie saw the sporting Mauser she had used to shoot the buck a few weeks before lying beside her uncle’s own rifle. Natalie pulled the seat belt tight around her and gripped the edges of her seat.

  ‘We need to get moving,’ Roy muttered, slipping the gears into first and pressing down hard on the accelerator so that the wheels spat dust and gravel as they moved off. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’

  Turning east out of the gates, they drove away from Bindura, deeper into the valley. The sun was already setti
ng behind them and the shadow of the Land Rover raced ahead, a long shadow, black against the darkening road. The air rushing through the window was cooling and blew back Natalie’s hair from her face, drying the sweat from her brow. Beneath the trees it was already dark. Smoke rose from a fire in a small village squatted by the edge of the road; in a doorway a small boy looked out, naked apart from the ripped shreds of a filthy T-shirt. The boy’s eyes were black and empty; his face a mask, his belly distended.

  For a moment Natalie’s thoughts rested on the baby, Happiness. She pictured the small child in her arms, felt for a second the soft weight of its body. The scent of it after it had been fed and she felt her heart contract painfully. She was about to say something to her uncle, but turning she saw the grim set of his face, his lips tight, his eyes screwed up and the knuckles white around the steering wheel and said nothing.

  By the time they drew close to the farm it was dark. Night came suddenly in Zimbabwe; the sun seemed to accelerate as it drew closer to the horizon, and then it was gone. Roy slowed down, and picked up the CB radio. A voice crackled back, resolute, showing little sign of fear.

  ‘They have set up camp around the perimeter of the farm,’ the voice told them. ‘Come in from the south, take the back track, you should be able to get through.’

  ‘Are they armed?’ Roy asked.

  ‘Sticks, metal bars. I haven’t seen evidence of anything else.’

  Roy pulled off the road onto a dust track and the car bumped its way through the brush, the headlights picking out the strange shapes of the bushes and the gnarled, disfigured trunks of the baobab trees, with their stumpy branches. A figure emerged from the darkness and Roy slammed on his brakes, narrowly avoiding hitting the man. For some moments he stood looking over the bonnet, his eyes blank. He wore a pair of ragged trousers and no shirt. In his hand he held a machete that hung down loose against his leg. Roy revved the engine and the man slouched away into the darkness.

  Natalie gripped the sides of her seat.

  ‘Pick up your rifle,’ Roy told her, his voice terse and the words clipped.

  Natalie reached behind the seat and picked up the Mauser. Her hands shook as she moved the bolt into position and cradled it on her lap. The Land Rover moved forward more slowly now. Natalie stared out into the darkness, trying to discern the shapes that loomed up around them.

  The track soon ran by some barbed wire fencing and they followed it for a couple of hundred metres before reaching a gate where Roy pulled up. He radioed through and before long there was movement behind the fence and the gate swung open allowing the Land Rover to pull through.

  ‘They’re up in the main house, bhasa,’ a voice called through the window.

  The house stood at the top of a gentle rise. Around it stretched lawns, and closer to the house, a pool with sun beds and chairs arranged around it looking forlorn in the darkness. The house was single storey, with a red tiled roof and a long veranda stretched along the front. Lights burned in the windows and outside a powerful spotlight illuminated the neatly raked gravel that ringed the building. Two more Land Rovers were parked up beside the house and as they approached a small group of white farmers came out through a side door of the house.

  When she stepped out of the vehicle, Natalie heard the sound of drums and singing. The sound chilled her to the bone. Seeing the look on her face one of the men nodded.

  ‘You like the sound of the African night?’ He laughed hollowly.

  Inside the house there were more farmers. The men stood talking, while a woman in her sixties served cups of tea and cold drinks. The woman, who the men called Auntie Hattie, was thin and wiry with grey hair. She was dressed in a cotton blouse and a floral patterned skirt. She showed no sign of fear. Her hand was firm and did not display even a hint of a tremor as she handed out the china cups. The men were tanned and dressed in jeans and work clothes, they spoke in low voices, chatting about their farms and the problems they were having with crops or pieces of machinery.

  ‘So, this is your niece?’ Aunt Hattie said, addressing Natalie rather than Roy. ‘It’s good of you to come, dear. Janet will be down in a moment. Have a drink.’

  She pressed a cold Coke bottle into Natalie’s hand.

  A few moments later a young woman came into the room. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. She was tanned, slim and beautiful, dressed in tight blue jeans and a casual white cotton blouse. She smiled seeing Natalie and came over to greet her.

  ‘You’re Barbara’s cousin,’ the girl said, smiling. She had lively blue eyes. Though she was at least five years younger than Natalie, the girl had a social confidence that Natalie immediately envied.

  ‘Barbara was in the year above me,’ Janet explained, ‘but as we’re fairly close neighbours and we ride together, we hung out a lot. I’ve missed her since she started university.’

  The night was quiet. The men took it in turns to stand watch and patrol around the house. Late in the evening Natalie went out with Janet. They stood around the back of the house, on the far side of the swimming pool, at the edge of the light that poured from the house and the spotlight that hung from its eves. Janet pulled out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘You smoke?’

  ‘Occasionally,’ Natalie said.

  They smoked a cigarette watching the small fires that burned outside the fence a hundred metres away, listening to the sound of the drums and the chanting of the men, a low, haunting sound.

  ‘Has somebody called the police?’ Natalie asked.

  Janet laughed. ‘I imagine it was the police who sent them here in the first place.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Political pressure. The Zanu MP around here wants to get his hands on some farm land.’ Janet dropped her cigarette to the floor and stabbed it out with the toe of her boot. ‘And besides that, he knows the white farmers support the MDC candidate.’

  ‘Surely the votes of a few white farmers aren’t going to make that much of a difference?’

  ‘If the farmers vote MDC, then so are most of the workers on their farms. The same goes with businesses. It’s not that they are forced to, it’s just the way they behave; they don’t think for themselves. And they know which side their bread is buttered.’ She pointed at a group of farm workers who were squatted down outside the barn around a small fire. ‘Why do you think they stay here and defend the farm for the white owners?’

  Natalie shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘They know if the white owner gets thrown off the farm, they will be too. The farm will fall into ruins and they will have no work. They have a vested interest in keeping my father in charge of this land and the rest of us; without us they would starve.’

  The raid on the farm began early the next morning. Shortly after eight o’clock the police finally arrived, a single patrol car that parked up outside the front gates. Two policemen got out and began to talk to the crowd of War Veterans. Patrick Boyle, Janet’s father, went down to the gate to speak with them and very quickly an argument broke out.

  Standing by the house, Natalie watched as the men began to shout. Boyle threw up his hands and turned as if to make his way back towards the farmhouse, but the crowd of men surged forwards crashing the gate. As Boyle turned stones began to rain down around him. The large metal gate shuddered under the weight of the bodies thrown against it and after a few moments gave way with a whine and a crash.

  Boyle turned again and began to run up towards the house. Natalie felt her heart skip a beat and her hands stiffened around the rifle in her hands. Roy held out his hand and pressed the gun down. He nodded with his head, pointing towards the building.

  ‘You should go inside,’ he said.

  Natalie shook her head. Janet was beside her father and she wasn’t going to hide away, no matter how scared she felt.

  ‘Put the rifle away,’ Roy said. ‘Let’s not escalate things. Keep it out of sight unless it’s really needed.’

  The crowd of War Veterans spilled across th
e lawn. Some of them were men in their sixties, old enough to have been veterans of the war of independence. There were others, though, who were younger, men in their twenties who had been born during Mugabe’s rule and knew nothing of the government of Ian Smith, of the Rhodesia that had been. The two policemen sidled up behind the crowd.

  ‘Are you not going to stop them?’ Boyle shouted.

  The policemen shrugged and made their way up to where the farmers were standing before the farmhouse.

  ‘They are trespassing,’ Boyle said, his voice was heated and caught slightly as he spoke, whether through nerves or because he was out of breath having hurried back from the advancing crowd it was hard to tell.

  ‘Maybe it is you that are trespassing,’ one of the policemen said. He grinned, though there was nothing particularly friendly about his demeanour.

  A woman advanced across the grass, middle-aged, in a blue floral print dress, followed by a couple of young men wearing stained brown trousers and open shirts. They walked over to the windows and gazed into the farmhouse.

  ‘What’s the problem here?’ Roy said, stepping towards them.

  ‘No problem,’ the woman responded cheerfully. ‘We have come to occupy the property.’

  ‘You’ve come to occupy it?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she clapped her hands together, her whole body moving with her words as if she was singing. ‘From now onwards, this is ours.’

  Roy was about to respond when the sound of shattered glass turned the heads of the white men. For a moment they seemed unresolved. Roy nodded to Boyle. ‘Come on,’ he muttered.

  Black smoke curled up above one of the hedges and the dogs began barking. Natalie stood back against the wall. Janet came to join her. They stood quietly in the shade of the eves watching the Veterans roam about the farm.

  ‘Do you not get scared?’ Natalie asked.

  Janet screwed up her face. ‘I’m not an idiot,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think there’s anything to be scared about at the moment.’