When a Crocodile Eats the Sun

by Peter Godwin

  THE NEXT MORNING Mum is all bustling practicality. She opens her diary to make a to-do list. I notice it is a diary of the year 1997, and I wonder if it is not confusing.

  “Not at all,” she says. “New diaries are exorbitant, so Dad recycled old, unused ones. 1997 had the same days of the week to dates as 2004, until February 29. Then, because this is a leap year, we move on to a 1998 diary.” She turns to a new page. “Now, we need to inform people, so they can come to the funeral.”

  She is determined to muster a good turnout and is diverting all her energy into this. She opens up their Christmas-card book containing the names and addresses of all the friends and acquaintances to whom they send cards. Then she suddenly saddens again.

  “You know the last time we sent Christmas cards was two years ago. It got too expensive. A local stamp is going up to Z$2,300. To the UK, it’s Z$19,000.” She is defiant, not ashamed.

  “We are too poor to send Christmas cards,” she says, and shakes her head in wonder at this bald fact. “Most of our friends are too.”

  We’re interrupted by a great splash from the other side of the fir trees.

  “Abyssinians,” says Mum, as though she is identifying a bird species. “It’s the Abyssinian children swimming.”

  “Abyssinians, Mum? They haven’t been called that since Mussolini fled!”

  “Well, anyway, that’s where the Air Ethiopia manager lives. It’s like the American South in the aftermath of the Civil War. When people lose everything, your social status is determined by whether you have to turn your swimming pool into a fishpond. All the rest are carpetbaggers.”

  She goes back to the stiff browned pages of the old Christmas-card book, scanning down her list of antique friends. Many of the names are crossed out because they have died, and most of the rest have their African addresses crossed out and replaced with new ones in England and America, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa and Canada.

  Even my mother is surprised, seeing them all listed like this. “So very few of us remain,” she says quietly.

  There is a honking at the gate — short, long, short, short — Morse code for Linnea, and I go out to let her in. Linnea, like my late sister Jain, is a grade school teacher, and though some years older, in some ways I think Linnea is my mother’s substitute for Jain. She has come today, she says, to administer “needle therapy.” It doesn’t involve injecting drugs; it involves hard-core sewing. The two of them get busy running up a funeral dress for Mum. Soon they both have mouths full of pins.

  “I’m not going to wear stockings at the funeral,” says Mum defiantly. “It’s too hot.”

  I leave them sewing and go to call my family, to tell them I’ve arrived safely. Joanna puts Thomas on the line.

  “Are you missing me while you’re in Africa, Dad?” he asks.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Do you sleep while you’re there?”

  “Sleep? Yes, of course. You sleep at night in Africa just like you do in New York, it’s just that night here is at a different time — ”

  “And do you dream?” he asks, cutting short my attempt to explain time zones.

  “Yes, sometimes I dream.”

  “What do you dream about?”

  “Well, I dream about you and Hugo and Holly.”

  “And do you dream about Grandpa, your dad?”

  “Yes, sometimes I do.”

  “But he’s dead now, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, but you can still dream about people after they’re dead.”

  He pauses. “Mr. Debussy’s dead,” he says. “But his music lives on.”

  Joanna comes back on the line. “They’ve been studying Debussy in Mr. Colligan’s music class,” she explains.

  THERE IS NO FOOD in the house, so I take Mum grocery shopping. At the butcher, as we try to replicate my father’s very particular meat order, of dog bones and tiny portions of ham and chopped pork, she suddenly erupts into tears, and the whole shop stills. “Shopping was Dad’s job,” she wails, and flees.

  In our local supermarket, Bon Marché, the black manager beckons us into his cubicle. “I have something for Mr. Godwin,” he says, smiling as he reaches under his desk to retrieve a special stash of Schweppes soda water and Indian tonic.

  “I’m afraid George passed away last week,” says my mother.

  The manager looks confused.

  “He died,” I say. “Mr. Godwin is dead.”

  The manager is astonished, as though such an event is unthinkable. And then, to his own evident consternation, he begins to cry, and this sets Mum off again.

  “I can’t believe it,” he says, and turns away to hide his tears. “He was here just last week. I wondered where he was when he missed last Saturday, but I thought he’ll definitely come on pensioners’ discount day, so I saved his soda and tonic . . .”

  He loads it into our cart anyway, and we trundle it sadly away. When I look back he has closed the door to his glass cubicle and through it I see he has his head in his hands, crying.

  On our return from the shops, Mudiwa arrives on a condolence visit. He had sat with my mother while I was on my long flight over from New York. “Until your own son gets here,” he had told her, “think of me as your son.”

  We discuss the funeral arrangements. It is to be held on Monday, at Christchurch in Borrowdale, the same church where Jain is now buried, where my father bought a plot that afternoon during the Final Push last May, after the surprise offer from Father Bertram. And now Bertram will preside over Dad’s funeral too — he is becoming our regular Stygian boatman. Mudiwa will place the funeral notices in the newspaper — but not in the Herald, the government paper, which my mother refuses to subsidize.

  When he has gone, we start working out the order of the service. Father Bertram has sent us three Bible readings to choose from, and Mum decides on Ecclesiastes 3:1–8, which she hands me. It is that famous passage, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” But if you read on, beyond the nominated lines, it gets much darker, and it starts to resonate with the cowed country around us, where the populace has been beaten back so many times that now the master only has to so much as reach for his whip for them to skulk off back to their hovels in fear.

  Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. . . .

  My father is well out of it.

  My mother likes the idea of choosing only hymns with lyrics written by C. F. Alexander, a distant great-aunt, Frances (Fanny, as she was known), who was married to William Alexander, the archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland. It was for her own Sunday school kids that she penned such favorites as “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” “Do No Sinful Action,” “There Is a Green Hill Far Away,” and “Once in Royal David’s City.” She had a stirring turn of phrase, old Fanny, and most have remained remarkably popular. One, however, “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” had needed reworking to make it politically correct, explains my mother. She begins to sing in a clear alto soprano:

  “The rich man in his castle,

  The poor man at the gate,

  He made them high or lowly

  And ordered their estate.”

  “That’s the verse that had to be cut,” she says. And I could see why. It seems to be calling down divine justification of our earthly class status.

  It reminds me of how the old South African president, the last grand defender of apartheid, P. W. Botha — who liked to be called the “Groot Krokodil,” the “Great Crocodile” — once tried to use the scriptures as a justification for white rule. Addressing nearly three million black Vapostori pilgrims (from the Zion Christian Church sect) at their annual Easter gathering in the Moria Hills north of Pietersburg, he said that the Bible had a clear messa
ge for the rulers and those ruled. “Thus we read in Romans 13,” he told them, “that every person is subject to the governing authorities. There is no authority but from God.”

  In the end this invocation of the divine right of presidents wasn’t enough to save him, and the Groot Krokodil was forced to regurgitate the sun, and to watch his successor, F. W. de Klerk, hand the country over to black rule. And the city of Pietersburg (named after a Boer general) became Polokwane (Place of Safety, in Ndebele).

  But things have changed here too. Many of the rich men in their castles are of different hue, though the poor men at the gate are the same, only there are more of them now and they are poorer still.

  The phone is ringing regularly with condolence calls. This morning it is Dr. David Parirenyatwa. He is the minister of health, and his father was Zimbabwe’s first black doctor, the one after whom the hospital was named. My mother likes him even though he is in the government. She feels he is a technocrat, not an ideologue. But she’s worried that coming to the funeral might cause problems for him, as it will be full of opposition stalwarts. Pius Wakatama, Ellah’s dad, who is now a firebrand columnist for the last opposition paper, has asked if he may preach.

  My former classmate James Mushore, the owner of Borrowdale Brook Spar Supermarket, drops by to say that he might be able to help find a way out of another problem — Georgina’s inclusion on a new personae non grata list of a hundred and nineteen “enemies of the state.” The minister of information, Professor Jonathan Moyo (widely reviled as a turncoat), is on record as saying that anyone on the list is welcome to return, and that he would arrange convenient accommodation for them at Chikurubi Prison.

  But in the end, we decide that Georgina should not come. It is Mum’s call, and she is petrified that Georgina will be arrested. This fear, Mum says, will overshadow the funeral for her. So Georgina complies with her wish — cross, frustrated, sad. (In the end James himself has to flee the country two weeks later, accused of exchange-control violations.)

  The Walls arrive bearing an elaborately frosted homemade cake. After the Simpsons, they took over at Chimanimani School, where Honest is probably still waiting to be picked up. When we return from seeing them off at the gate, we discover that our deaf Dalmatian has jumped up on the veranda table and eaten their whole cake. He spends the night retching noisily on the lawn.

  ON MY THIRD DAY in Africa after my father died, it rains again, in the late afternoon. Before the rain I go to the funeral of a school friend of mine, Andy van der Ruit, an architect, someone I have known all my life, my age to the very month. The funeral is at the Chisipite Girls School, the school Georgina once attended. I sit on a concrete step with Julia, Mudiwa’s wife, and as we wait for mourners to file in, she fills me in on the reports of Andy’s death. He was taking a presupper nap at about 8:00, she says, when he awoke to see intruders standing at the end of his bed. When he shouted out, one of them pulled a gun from his waistband and shot him point-blank. On hearing the gunshots, Felicity, his wife, tried to press the alarm button to summon the security guards, and the robbers shot her too.

  As my father lay dying in hospital, Felicity, newly widowed, lay in the ward next door.

  At the wake, the talk is of the other fatal robberies in Harare, of inside jobs by off-duty police officers, of suspects who were allowed to escape from a police van at a traffic light.

  At the head of the receiving line, Felicity, a therapist and counselor whom I have also known since my childhood in Chimanimani, sits on a school chair, straight backed and remarkably composed. “Thank you so much for coming,” she says, and hugs me.

  A bunch of us Chimanimani kids are there, middle-aged now and somewhat broken by what has befallen us, by what we have all seen, the reversal of progress, the shocking decline, the descent into darkness. The anticipated trajectory of our lives has gone horribly awry.

  After the wake, I trudge back across the road to our house. It looks painfully shabby. Richard, the replacement gardener, is AWOL, unable to get back from his week off at his tribal home because the buses have no fuel. The driveway is peppered with monumental dog shits — fecal speed bumps for condolence visitors.

  As I fiddle with all the padlocks and chains around the gate, I am startled by a hacking cough. It is a black tramp, one of a growing number of scavenging desperadoes, emerging from the cement storm drain outside our house. He is wearing dark strips of filthy rag, and broken, mismatched shoes. Over his bony shoulders he has slung a torn canvas Tyrolean rucksack. His hair is wildly unkempt from sleeping in the open; it is what the Shona call mufushwa, hair that has twisted into peppercorn bobbles. He stares at the ground, not bothering to look up as I open the gate. He seems to inhabit a world beyond envy because it is beyond hope.

  ON MY SIXTH DAY back in Africa after my father died, thunderheads of cumulus build up, and it rains again. It is President Mugabe’s eightieth birthday. He has made it to the hallowed hall of the octogenarian that my father just missed. Reaching eighty in black Zimbabwe is an astonishing achievement — the average life expectancy at birth is now down to thirty-four (from fifty-seven at independence in 1980). Mugabe is well into his third lifespan here.

  The power comes on briefly, and we watch his birthday celebrations on ZTV news. Afterward there is a ninety-minute interview entitled “His Excellency Robert Gabriel Mugabe at 80.” Of the opposition MDC he says, “The Devil is the Devil — there can never be an occasion to sup with him.” And he mentions an earlier attempt on his life by the presidential cook, who, he says, garnished his food with ground glass.

  “Was it a plot by Western imperialism?” asks the interviewer.

  “I don’t think it was Western imperialism,” says Mugabe. “Western imperialism is much more thorough than that. I think a witch had spoken to the cook.”

  “Do you fear for your life?” asks the anchor.

  “We remain vigilant, yes,” replies Mugabe, slipping unconsciously into the royal plural.

  He is asked what his plans are for the future. “In five years, I’ll still be here, still boxing,” he says, grinning like a lizard and punching his palm. “Still in politics, but retired, obviously.” But he soon contradicts this, saying he intends to stay in power “until I am a century old.”

  My mother is intrigued by the president’s use of symbolism. “At the end of two recent speeches,” she says, “the camera stays on him as a white-gloved servant brings him a silver tea tray with a silver tea set on it. He pours milk from the silver jug into a delicate bone-china cup and then adds tea from the heavily embossed silver teapot and then the film fades out as he sips from the cup. All this at a time when ordinary folk can’t get milk.” She stalks over and switches off the set.

  ON MY SEVENTH DAY in Africa after my father died, there are heavy showers in the afternoon. But before they hit, I go to the Avenues Clinic where he spent his last day. And there in the parking lot under his window, just as they had the week before, the Salvation Army brass band strikes up under huge black clouds aching with rain. Despite the soggy prestorm heat, the bandsmen and a woman are decked out in their full uniforms — white shirts and jackets and dark blue neckties with the Salvation Army crest, an S superimposed over a crucifix, bearing the motto Blood and Fire. In front of them are their tarnished silver music stands, shaped like little harps. The veteran instruments they play — a snare drum, a couple of cornets, a tenor horn, a baritone, an E tuba, a trombone, and a euphonium — are dented with age and use, but lovingly polished. They reflect in the fleeting shafts of sun, brilliantly but benignly, unlike the brass bullets in the bandoliers of those other soldiers, the president’s guards.

  Eventually they strike up “Abide with Me,” and I remember how Jain and I would sing it during the civil war, when we drove across the Hunyani Bridge, which we were worried might be land-mined by guerrillas. We would roll down our windows, hold hands, and bellow it out. Jain’s theory was that if you were killed while you were actually singing “Abide with Me,” you went stra
ight to heaven.

  ON MY FIRST SUNDAY in Africa after my father died, it pours yet again, this time in the early evening. Before the rain begins, we sit at the veranda table and read the condolence notices in the Standard. From the playing fields of Oriel Boys School, the Vapostori service is in full throat. I recognize the Shona hymns from singing them with the Vapostori as a boy. At least one soundtrack of childhood has survived.

  My mother hands me a letter from Albert Nhamoyebonde, “on behalf of the dormant committee of the Zimbabwe Britain Society,” of which he is the chairman. “Hopefully, one day, the Society will become active again,” he has written, “and we shall be able to function in more normal circumstances and renew our friendship and cooperation with members and outside colleagues. Meanwhile, we wish you and your family God’s comfort and blessing in this sorrowful period.”

  “Why is it dormant?” I ask Mum.

  “Because they were hassled by the police and hounded by the CIO as spies,” she says, “and everyone was too afraid to go to meetings as the UK had become the Great Satan.”

  Richard, the new gardener, has returned now from his enforced leave, and snips frantically at the verdant foliage, which the incessant rain has boosted into a jungle canopy that threatens to choke the house. The Hindhead border is still open to the hawkers and the street beyond. The sights and smells and sounds of Africa’s huddled masses are within our castle walls now. The differences between us are diminishing, as we all sink together.

  ON THE DAY of my father’s funeral, it rains in the morning. Afterward, we get ready to leave for the service. Richard takes his guard post, sitting in a green wheelbarrow in the front drive in the shade of the flame tree. He is armed with an old mahogany truncheon. Mum has read that opportunistic tsotsis target houses after scanning the death notices. She says they come on the day of the funeral, assuming that the residents will be conveniently absent.