by Anthology
If the concierge noticed the bloodstains and gaping hole in Martin’s shirt, he didn’t acknowledge it. But in this two-star hotel questions weren’t asked. Martin picked up his key and, one hand resting over his right kidney, struggled up seven flights of stairs to his room.
Dying left him exhausted. Still wearing his ruined clothes, he collapsed onto his bed and sank into sleep.
Gossamer, her skin is gossamer. He takes her in his arms. “Forever,” he murmurs, remembering the day twenty-nine suns past when she produced the chicken bone. “We said forever.” He coughs, and red bubbly spittle collects at the corners of his mouth, trickles down his chin.
“Our Forever.” She dabs his cut face with cool water, taking care to wash the blood away from his eyes before applying a poultice she’s made from herbs. Sage, fennel and mint flood his nostrils with their calming aromas. She moves to the deep gash in his chest. “You are very brave,” she says, “You have left many Nguni dead. Their blood makes the soil even redder. And you are my husband so I love you.” She kisses his forehead. The only part of his body that is free from gashes.
He puts an arm round her slender waist. Soon it will be bulging with child, and she will be proud of her womanhood. Soon.... But first his wounds must mend. No man can perform in the state to which his body has been reduced. He coughs again, and more red sputum seeps from his lips. He opens his mouth to speak. “Tinashe.” The word splutters out, spraying fine droplets of blood across her face, and is instantly drowned by the shouts and screams coming from outside their home.
She turns to the doorway where his spear and shield rest, turns back to him. Her eyes are huge and round. So white against her perfect black face. He knows what she’s going to do. “Your finger. Our Forever,” she says. And then she stoops over him, kisses his forehead once more. “The word,” she whispers into his ear. “You must say the word when you bite on our Forever.”
“Tinashe, no!” he tries to shout, but it’s too late; she’s gone and the spluttering sounds he makes are lost amid the mêlée.
He gasps, tries to pull air into his lungs yet produces only bubbly spittle. Bite, she said. Bite, so he does, and he sinks into dreams of death.
Awaking, he hears birds and the distant sound of an elephant trumpeting to its mate. But there are no human voices, no women singing as they wash clothes in tubs of water. No children shouting and playing at being warriors.
He stumbles from his bed to the doorway, sees an abandoned village. Huts smoldering, the flames long since worn out. Nguni destroyed their village, killed everyone except him because he was already dead. But he bit his finger, said the word. He wishes he hadn’t, wishes he were dead and lying beside her somewhere in the bush, their arms entwined forever. He leaves their hut, walks past an upturned cooking pot and its congealed contents—half-cooked impala—wanders off to he knows not where.
And Martin slipped into a deeper sleep, one without dreams, his hand massaging a long-gone gash in his chest that had both killed him and saved his life.
Martin’s eyes sprang open, and he shuddered. Never before had he remembered during a normal dream. But now he had a name: Tinashe.
With the back of his hand, he wiped away the sweat that had collected on his forehead. Hoping to remember more, he allowed his eyes to close again. Perhaps his Shona name would come to him. He searched the residual memories of his dreams, but she hadn’t used his name. Or, if she had, it was again lost to him. His finger gravitated to his wart and he changed tack, trying to pull up the word he should have said as he returned to life. Nothing.
He sat up in bed and examined the wound in his abdomen. It was now a raised and angry pink scar. Above it, on his left ribcage, he noticed a shiny hairless patch of skin he’d never before seen. He brushed his fingers across it. Scar tissue, the result of an Nguni spear. He moved his fingers up to his cheek, felt his skin rippling. Not tribal markings. Battle scars. My Body’s telling me something, but I can’t understand!
Grabbing a new packet of cigarettes off the dresser, he went into the bathroom and rummaged in his toilet bag for his spare lighter. Nicotine would concentrate his mind. Dragging heavily on his cigarette, he paced his small room. But the African music reverberating through his skull obliterated any possibility of thought or of returning memories. He sat back on the bed and stared at his left middle finger. The wart. Did it hold the answers? He dropped his dog end into the ashtray and bent over his hand, bit. Blood oozed. But no memories flooded into him as the blood let out of him. Sinoia. He had to get there. It held the answers to his questions.
He lit another cigarette and then went to his safe. Deciding he had sufficient money to settle his hotel bill, he grabbed a handful of dollars and placed them on the dresser. Then he pulled out his passport and certificates. Degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge. One in history, the other in archaeology. Why had he brought them with him? To prove he was a man of education? The idea seemed idiotic now.
Drawing on his cigarette until the end was a spike of glowing red, he carried his small collection of personal belongings into the bathroom and dropped them into the sink. With his lighter, he set fire to everything. His certificates burnt quickly, shrivelling and blackening. Two certificates. Two lifetimes. Both gone up in smoke. The red cover of his passport took longer. Then the flames caught hold, gorging on the gold-embossed lioness and unicorn guarding the Royal crown atop its coat of arms, forcing them to swirl and gyrate to the tribal rhythm thrumming inside his head. The last to dance into disintegration were the words United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
As he rinsed the blackened flakes down the drain, relief swept through him. He showered, dressed in clean clothes and distributed the money, cigarettes and lighter into various pockets. Glancing at his wristwatch only to realize he no longer owned it, he left the hotel. From the angle of the sun, he estimated the time to be about seven-thirty in the morning. Already the heat was oppressive; the few fortunate children had disappeared into educational establishments, the rest begged from shaded overhangs of doorways. Men and women, their wares atop their heads, sauntered to the market.
As he approached the four black youths near the tour operator’s shop, he could see their eyes widening, their eyeballs popping out of their sockets, and he allowed himself a brief chuckle. Coming back from the dead wouldn’t be something they saw every day.
“You owe me a trip to...to Chinhoyi,” he said. “No charge. Correct?”
They nodded like puppets, their huge white-toothed grins meeting their bulging whiter-than-white corneas. Had Martin asked for a guided tour of the pyramids, they would surely have agreed. Anything to keep him happy, keep away the evil eye.
“Now!” Martin said to chivvy them along.
“Yes, bwana, sir. Now. We will take you now. Now is a very good time to go.” The leader nodded to one of his compatriots. “Get the car for the bwana.”
“Yes,” came the reply, and dust span in whirls as the youth sped off.
“Bwana, would you like a Coke to cool you down? It is a very hot day in Zimbabwe.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Another youth disappeared amid a cloud of dust, returning seconds later with a full Coke bottle.
Martin took the bottle, sleek with condensation, and wafted away the obviously-thirsty flies attempting to land on the bottle neck. “This had better be all right,” he said. “You don’t want to know what happens if you’ve poisoned it.”
“No, bwana. We are good boys.” The leader began head-nodding again, and his watch—a Timex—shot spheres of light into Martin’s eyes. “We would never think to do such a thing.”
“Good.” Martin lit a cigarette and put the box back inside his pocket without offering them round, then he sipped his drink. Bubbles popped on his tongue. He had taken only five puffs and still had three-quarters of a bottle of Coke left when a beaten-up black wreck screeched to a halt at the curb. The front passenger’s door opened. “And I expect to get there without bruises
,” he said, as he fumbled for a seatbelt. “Or else...” he added, giving up on any thoughts of car safety where three-point anchorage was concerned.
Tappets knocking and black exhaust fumes mingling with the red dust kicked up by the rear wheels, they tanked along the dirt road leading to Chinhoyi. Martin wound down his window to let air into the car and watched pink-bottomed baboons, never closer than a hundred metres, vanish into the bush ahead of them.
The leader of the four cleared his throat and began his guided-tour recital. “Bwana,” he said, “the Sleeping Pool is known locally as Chirorodziva. This means the Pool of the Fallen Heroes...”
Martin’s attention turned to a man making charcoal at the side of the road. He sat hunched over his slow-burning mound, not bothering to look up.
“...the water is so deep. Even today, divers have not explored all the underground tunnels...”
Now they were passing two men selling Shona artwork, and Martin found himself staring at an identical carving to the one he’d seen in the tourist area. His hands began to tremble. The men looked up wistfully at the car, then turned away to resume their conversation. Old, beaten-up wrecks crammed with five black men said street traders, no money here. Wait for the tourists; they might be along soon.
“...no-one has found the thousands of Shona bodies lying beneath...”
Martin reached into his pocket, pulled out a couple of green notes and let them fly through the open car window. As he knew they would, they fluttered to the men’s feet.
The carving. It was her, Tinashe, or as close to her as anyone could get after so many years. What had the old man said? The spirits of his Shona ancestors guide his grandson’s hands.
Like they guide me, using Chaps’ beat. Martin turned his gaze to the scrubland whizzing past: a sea of red dust, stunted bushes tenaciously clinging to it. Then he saw a group of scraggy, huddled-together thorn trees with crows perched on denuded spiky branches. His breath caught in his chest. A memory. Not there but nearly. Like a word the brain couldn’t quite pull up. Like the word he should say but couldn’t remember. “Stop!” he yelled. “Go back!”
“Yes, bwana, sir.” The car skidded to a halt in the dust, did a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. “You saw a lion cooling off in the shade, bwana?”
Martin shook his head. “I need to stretch my legs.” The car stopped by the trees, and he climbed out.
“The soil is red with my blood.” Her voice. Tinashe’s. Goose pimples crawled over his skin. He glanced at his four guides but they seemed oblivious to her words.
He lit a cigarette and inhaled, drawing tar into his lungs as deeply as he could. The smell of impala cooking in a pot wafted over him and words rose to the surface of his mind: Chamuka nyama.
“Whatever jumps up is meat,” he whispered, and marveled at suddenly remembering the saying when he couldn’t remember the word.
He put his hand to his chest, drew it away. His fingers were covered in blood. He looked down at his shirt. No hole. No red stain. Only his fingertips were testament to the happenings centuries ago. Then he heard children’s laughter, women singing, and all around him, village life bustled into existence. Boys acting out fights with wooden spears, a woman scrubbing cloth, another humming softly to the baby she nursed. And, sitting in front of the hut next to his home, a village elder, reciting his family totem.
Martin turned towards their home: a mud hut baked so dry by the sun it appeared to be carved from burnished oak. “Tinashe,” he whispered.
No reply. No acknowledgement from any of the villagers that he stood amongst them.
He stubbed out his cigarette and began walking to their house. A child holding a spear ran at him. Tingling as, for a moment, their atoms mingled, and then the child materialised on the other side of him.
“Let’s go,” he said to the driver. He wanted to see her as she had been, not put his arms round her only to find she didn’t exist. Nor did he want to be a powerless bystander when Nguni captured her, raped her, condemned her to an eternity in the Sleeping Pool.
Chirorodziva. The pool of Fallen Heroes, he told himself, as he climbed back into his seat with his memories: her silky gossamer skin, her scent, her happy smile—
How did I know that? In my dreams I’ve only seen her worried look as she cleaned my wounds. Fourteen. She was only fourteen. No-one deserves to die at fourteen. A tear ran down his cheek.
They were speeding along the dirt road again before his hand began searching for the seat belt, reminding him that there wasn’t one. And then they were there. Martin pulled his money, lighter and cigarettes from his pocket and gave them to the youths. Without looking back, he exited the car.
An ice cream vendor had put up a stall near the entrance to the caves. Although heat and thirst sapped his will, the Shona inside Martin told him to ignore it. He marched straight to the cave entrance hardly noticing the few early-morning tourists licking their cornets.
A man moved in front of Martin, blocking his way into the caves. “Two dollars,” he said, “American.”
Martin felt in his jeans pockets. They were empty. He patted his shirt pocket. Also empty. He glanced round, searching for the beaten-up black car. His guides had gone. “I want to pay my respects to my ancestors,” he said.
“Five American dollars.”
“What!”
“White man in black skin.” The man spat on the ground.
“How about this?” Martin moved to unclip his wristwatch, then realized it was being driven away with his money. “Please,” he begged.
The man spat again, and Martin looked about desperately. Perhaps there were coins lying on the ground. But there weren’t. Any coins would have been taken by the man standing in front of him. “Please,” he repeated.
And then he thought of his wart, concentrated on his few memories of the Nguni battle. The skin on his face began crawling, rippling, puckering into scars. The man backed away, his eyes wide with terror. Martin grinned and entered the caves.
Cool air embraced his arms. England in the summer when the temperatures held the promise of a lovely day that would never be fulfilled. And the silence was as he’d known it would be: respectful of the dead lying in the unexplored depths. But the spectacle of the water caused him to stop clambering down the limestone. He glanced up at the rock-framed sky above, looked back at the clear pool. How could he have forgotten such beauty? The perfect blue of the water, the stillness of the rocks beneath its surface, so unmoving they could be reflections of those above. White men explained the phenomenon through physics and the way water scattered light but, as a black man from the Shona tribe, Martin knew differently. The souls of the fallen heroes kept it so. Cloudy or sunny, the color never changed. Even at night under torchlight, the water remained the purest blue imaginable. Nor did the water temperature or level ever change. Always bluer than the bluest summer sky, always twenty-two degrees Centigrade, always glassy and still. He picked up a piece of limestone and chucked it at the furthest side of the cave.
Plucked from its trajectory by an invisible hand, it fell to the water. No splash. No ripples.
Again, he started towards the water. One step. Two steps. But the air became thicker, pushed against his legs. He forced a foot forward. Pain shot through his muscles. Another step. More pain. It felt like plowing through a thigh-high snowdrift. Sweat broke out on his forehead, but he managed to take another short step. Then he couldn’t move his legs at all. “Tinashe,” he called.
The only replies were his voice echoing inside the chamber and Chaps’ beat echoing inside his head.
“Tinashe!” he shouted again. Another echo.
In slow motion as if the air were cushioning him, he sank onto the cool limestone floor and cradled his head in his hands. Beneath his palms, the skin on his cheeks rippled and oozed. Blood from his face trickled down his wrists and dripped onto the floor, soaked into the pure white limestone. His chest opened and blood pulsed from the wound. Fast. Faster than his rapid heartbeats. Th
is beat matched the beat inside his skull.
He tore at his clothes, ripping them away. Covered with old lesions, all re-opening, his body became a fountain of red droplets, and suddenly he was at the Palace of Versailles, the setting sun a backdrop to its water ballet: the synchronicity of sound and liquid. He stared, mesmerized by the beauty until his head began to swim and he realized he was losing too much blood.
“Tinashe! Help me, Tinashe!”
More echoes.
She isn’t here! Never was!
Defeated by the utter aloneness inside him, he collapsed onto the rock and looked up at the sky. She abandoned me, ran from me after the Nguni battle.
Now he knew the truth, death could take him. A solitary death, but a death he welcomed nonetheless. “Rutendo,” he muttered. “I give gratitude.” Then he shouted it.
Suddenly his blood began bubbling up through the limestone, forming droplets that ran together into rivulets. The wound on his chest started healing, blood reverse-flowing back into him. And the pressure pinning him to the ground dissipated. He jumped to his feet to better see his body. His scars were vanishing, his skin adopting the glistening health of a young warrior. And he wore a tribal skirt of animal skins and grasses. Automatically, his finger moved to his wart. It was gone.
He started running to the pool. But with every step, his chest tightened. He clutched his ribs as if he could manually make them work. No good. He sank to his knees. Crawled on all fours. He couldn’t die alone. Not now he’d been forgiven his ingratitude.
Blood began dripping from his nose. Then his mouth was filled with a thick sickly fluid: blood. He spat it out. Crawled another meter. More blood in his mouth. He spat again. And then he stared at the blood.
