The Last Resort

by Douglas Rogers

  As 2006 moved into 2007 my father was no nearer to getting his letter. He sounded exhausted, spent. Indeed, he was so caught up in his relationship with the soldier, what the soldier was going to do for him – or to him – that he hadn’t had time to find a tenant to run the Drifters bar. It had barely opened in months. It was running into the ground.

  But he and my mother were eating dinner one Sunday evening just before Christmas when the telephone rang. It was strange to get calls at that hour.

  Dad answered.

  ‘Is that Mr Rogers?’ the caller asked.

  It was a rich deep voice, smooth as chocolate.

  ‘Yes, who is this?’

  ‘Mr Rogers. My name is Tendai. I am living in number Twelve A.’

  The voice was confident, slow, self-assured, with a strong African accent.

  ‘Twelve A? But isn’t that the sculptor?’

  ‘Simbarashe is my cousin, Mr Rogers,’ purred the voice. ‘His father has passed away. He has left the premises. I have moved here.’

  Dad rolled his eyes. He couldn’t keep up with the tenants, with who was staying on his land. It wouldn’t have surprised him if Kofi Annan had turned up.

  ‘Yes, so what is the problem?’

  ‘I am a bachelor, Mr Rogers,’ went the voice, ‘and I want to know why I can’t get a meal or a drink at your restaurant. The place is simply not open.’ It was a legitimate complaint, but still, it annoyed my father.

  Did this guy not know the circumstances in the country? What they were all going through? Who on earth did he think he was, calling late on a Sunday to complain?

  ‘What did you say your name was?’ Dad snapped.

  ‘Tendai, Mr Rogers,’ said the voice. ‘My name is Tendai.’

  ‘Well, Tendai, let me tell you something. In case you are unaware, there are a lot of shortages in this country. Shortages of beer, of food, of staff, even of electricity. If you think you can do any better, why don’t you try running it?’

  He said it to shut him up. It wasn’t a business offer.

  ‘Okay, Mr Rogers,’ said the voice. ‘Let me run it. I think I can turn the place around.’

  My father spluttered. He looked at the handset. He couldn’t believe his ears. Who was this guy? But there was something in his confident manner my dad suddenly liked.

  ‘Um, well, okay then,’ he gulped. ‘Come up to the house tomorrow and we can discuss it with my wife. What did you say your name was again?’

  ‘I am Tendai, Mr Rogers. The cousin of Simbarashe.’

  My father should have made the connection right then, but he was suddenly so thrilled at the idea of someone’s taking over the bar, paying rent and cleaning up the place that he didn’t think of it. Neither did Mom. Indeed, it was only after they met him, instantly liked him, showed him around the bar, got him to sign a one-year lease and handed over the keys to their once beloved backpacker lodge that they realised that if he was a cousin of the sculptor, then likely he, too, was a relative of the Top Man. Did they really want to be handing over the keys to their flagship property to the relative of the most dangerous man in the valley? But by then it was too late. And besides, how could they have known that one day the stranger in 12A would change everything? Absolutely everything.

  One Saturday evening they were sitting on the veranda reading when a car drove up in the rapidly advancing gloom. It was a Toyota Land Cruiser, not a vehicle that belonged to any of the tenants. It pulled up outside their locked front gate, headlights on full beam. Then it started hooting. They took a deep breath and ignored it. It hooted again. They looked at each other nervously. It hooted again.

  ‘Shit,’ said Dad.

  For some reason – perhaps because it was getting dark, he had the December deadline in his mind, and the vehicle was the typical kind a chef drove – he forgot his offer letter act. Instead, their plan from all those years before sprang into action. Dad got the shotgun from the cabinet next to the bed. He loaded it in the kitchen and took up a position behind a curtain from where he could see the front gate. It was the same window from which they had watched the Top Man drive by three years earlier.

  Mom walked down to the car. Dad’s mind was racing. He thought of the Top Man. And he suddenly thought of the new tenant, the stranger in 12A. The headlights were on bright, but if she shielded her eyes Mom could vaguely make out two figures in the front seat. The driver’s door opened. Her pulse quickened. She felt the flutter in her stomach. The headlights went off. For some reason she could see even less. She felt momentarily blind, dizzy. She could make out the burly figure of a man exiting the vehicle. Then a booming voice rang out with a Scottish accent.

  ‘Come on, Ros, we know yer bloody hoom! Just driving past an’ thought we’d pop in for a wee drink.’

  It was Jim and Jill – Rob’s parents, Stephanie’s in-laws. Mom had never been so happy to see them before.

  ‘Jesus, Jim,’ she gasped, hugging him when she opened the gate. ‘Don’t do that to us!’

  Back in the kitchen, Dad heard Jim’s booming brogue. He quickly ran to put the shotgun away and turned on the television in the living room. A rugby match was on. When Jim came in he pretended to have been watching it all along.

  FIFTEEN

  The Soldier

  BY 2007 ZIMBABWE was hurtling straight for the abyss.

  It was hard to believe the economy could get any worse, but then one underestimates the mutant power of rampant inflation. It reached 6 000 percent in January, then 10 000 percent in June. It would only climb higher:1 million, 100 million, 231 million percent! Higher than Weimar Germany’s in the 1930s! Eventually it would be estimated in the sextillions. In 2005, the government’s solution to the fiscal crisis had been to clip three zeroes off the banknotes. But those zeroes came rolling back and brought friends with them: a Z$1 million note was introduced. Then a Z$1 billion – nine zeroes. And finally the Z$100 trillion, with fifteen zeroes – the highest-denomination banknote in human history. Miss Moneypenny and other dealers were buying US$1 for Z$1 million in 2007. Had it really been only twenty years ago that the Zimbabwe dollar was equal to the greenback? The official bank rate, meanwhile, was a paltry Z$30 000 to US$1. This suited the chefs more than ever. Those with access to that rate could now buy a Mercedes-Benz in a few swift moves. Prices for food and basic goods surged by the hour. A friend of my mother’s needed to buy a gas burner for cooking. It cost Z$5 million. She went to draw the money. When she returned to the store, the price had doubled to Z$10 million.

  There didn’t seem to be a political solution in sight, either. If you spoke to wise hands in Harare, the opposition was divided. Tsvangirai’s MDC was unable to rally mass protests and street demonstrations. Many bemoaned the MDC’s inability to rouse the people to action, but the commentators were usually speaking from exile. Of course, all protests were crushed. The international community found this out when images of Tsvangirai’s bruised and battered face were broadcast around the world. Inside Zimbabwe the beating only confirmed what everyone already knew: the impotence of the people in the face of the ruthless state machinery.

  As the country went, so went Drifters. Down at the camp you could gauge the national calamity in the changing methods of prostitution.

  I visited again in February 2007 and caught up with the two Johns at lunch on the cement picnic table next to the swimming pool. The pool was empty now, drained of water. My parents couldn’t afford the chemicals to keep it clean, and besides, the pump rarely worked because of the power cuts. Flies buzzed around the swamp of mud and leaves at the deep end. Gone was that luminous blue glow I’d found so alluring on dark nights.

  ‘It’s a dirty game now, Douglas,’ Muranda told me from behind his red cash box, gazing at the swamp. He was talking about the brothel business.

  ‘You know, these days a husband is dropping his wife or girlfriend here. He will say, “I will be back.” Wife waits in a chalet for another mens. Then another mens. Then another. Then husband is coming later to p
ick her. In this way people survive. Flesh for cesh. It’s a dirty game now. A dirty game.’

  Agoneka stroked his dusty beard and nodded grimly as the older John spoke. His orange overalls were as drained of colour as the swimming pool; the life seemed to have gone out of his eyes.

  ‘This year, Douglas,’ he told me, ‘I am no longer in the middle class.’

  I was surprised for a moment that he had ever considered himself middle-class, but then why not? He was educated, had worked in a successful tourist resort as a safari guide, earned a good salary, had food to eat, a place to live.

  ‘Why this year, John?’

  ‘For the first time this year I was unable to provide school uniforms for my kids. I could not buy textbooks or satchels. The gap between rich and poor has become too great now. We have become a nation of dealers. Even here at this place, as Muranda says, a man is dealing his own wife to survive. Only the dealers can make money, but the majority of us – aish – we are suffering.’

  It broke my heart to hear those words. I couldn’t imagine what it was doing to him. I knew all about John’s respect for education and his dreams for his two children, Tariro and Confidence. And I recalled, too, the fever that would grip Zimbabwe on a Monday in January before the start of a new school year, when hundreds of thousands of parents hit department stores across the country to buy their children neat little uniforms, shiny brown lace-ups and tiny coffee-coloured cardboard satchels that would then be filled with new books, crayons, pencils, erasers, rulers, sharpeners and blue ballpoint pens.

  I recalled how excited I was on my first day at Chancellor Junior School, age six, with my new satchel, my name stencilled on it in bold white letters, a pencil case zipped safely inside, and an apple and peanut butter sandwich Mom made in my Tupperware lunchbox. I felt as proud as my father taking his briefcase to work every day. But now? What was once the best education system in Africa had fallen apart. School fees were too expensive for many parents; teachers often were not paid at all. Patricia Jombe, Dawson’s wife, still taught at Dangamvura, but it cost her more to get to work now than her actual salary. ‘I go in because of the children,’ she told me. ‘Teachers are more like social workers now.’

  Muranda even talked wistfully about the colonial days.

  ‘I remember 1963 I was going by bus from Honde Valley to Mutare with five bob in pocket – fifty cents. Bus fare cost two cents each way. I buy bread and two months’ groceries to take back to Honde Valley. I drink some beer and still have money left in pocket! Now one million dollars is for a loaf of bread? Aish – we can’t.’

  My parents often paid the two Johns in food parcels now, since their salaries would be worthless in a few days. What cash they did get they would spend immediately before it lost value. I was amused to discover that the Johns often bought maize from a settler on Frank’s place. According to Agoneka, against all the odds, ‘one woman farmer is doing okay there, selling maize by the bucket’. I thought of Gracie Basket and knew it must be her. The Commissar was quiet, though. He was either lying low or basing himself at his town house. As for Saddam and Becks, I would never see them again.

  I have to say I never witnessed a man drop off his wife or girlfriend at Drifters at any point, but I did discover Muranda had become something of a dealer in his own right, establishing a neat little sideline in, well, aphrodisiacs.

  We were chatting outside his house one evening when a man checked into number 5 with a young woman. A few minutes later the man emerged and walked toward us. Muranda leapt up and met him by the empty pool. They spoke for a while in low tones. Then I saw John hand him something from a plastic packet in his pocket and collect a thick brick of notes in return.

  ‘What did he just give him?’ I asked Agoneka.

  The younger John chuckled, his beautiful smile briefly returning.

  ‘Juju,’ he told me.

  ‘Juju?’

  ‘Many customers now, they come say to John, “Old man, I am off my game, do you have anything?” So he gives them something to perform.’

  ‘To perform? What, in the bedroom?’

  John beamed. ‘Exactly!’

  ‘What kind of things does he give them?’

  ‘Just traditional medicines.’

  Muranda made his way back to us, and he smiled sheepishly when he realised we were talking about his deal. I asked him what juju he’d just sold, but he was too shy to explain.

  ‘Actually, Douglas, we can say just some roots from a pertinent tree,’ said Agoneka. ‘He soaks it in water. But at other times he visits the kraals in the valley where the experienced traditional healers reside, and he can purchase medicine from them to sell for the purpose of performance.’

  He pointed to Naomi and grinned again.

  ‘Mrs John – I can say she is also selling juju. In our Shona culture it is the elders who have the skills to advise on these medicines.’

  The four of us laughed, Mrs John slapping her thighs. It was like old times again.

  Was the soldier just another dealer, too, scamming my father? I met him on that same visit. It had been three months since Dad had been to see the Top Man, and there was still no sign of an offer letter, but Walter was telling him not to worry.

  ‘Mr Rogers, let me be certain with you. With our government, these things can take time. Sometimes many months. But the channels are open. I am ready again to speak with my contacts in Harare. They are waiting.’

  He had already made one trip to meet with a Ministry of Lands official he said he knew. Dad paid for his transport, food and accommodation. No letter resulted. Now he was going to meet with someone he said was more senior – ‘a director’. He would spend the night at Drifters before taking a bus to Harare. Dad was starting to wonder whether it was not all an elaborate con, whether he was stringing him along, selling power and contacts he didn’t have.

  I joined the soldier in number 7 and we spoke at a pine table next to the narrow twin bed. The chalet smelled of sweet perfume and damp straw; the thatch leaked a little from the heavy summer rains. As night fell Muranda arrived with matches and lit a candle on the table, while outside a thunderstorm cracked and the sky spat with sparks.

  Mom was right. The soldier was built like a buffalo: a full-grown bison with flared nostrils, skin as dark as hide leather, and enormous bovine eyes that were glassy black holes, set so far back in his head that it was impossible to tell what colour they were. His large head was shaved bald and was as smooth as a polished soapstone carving. But he had a kind moon face that was as innocent as a child’s and he was surprisingly quick with a smile, despite the dead eyes.

  I thought I might get an idea of who he was – and if he was really helping my father – if I asked him about the war. He claimed to have been a ZANLA guerrilla operating in our valley in the 1970s. The instant I mentioned the word war his dead eyes came alive, lit up like the yellow flames of a bush fire.

  ‘You want to know about whoe, Rogers junior?’ he said excitedly, speaking in a frantic staccato, as if he’d swallowed a gram of speed. ‘I know everything about whoe! I can tell you many things!’

  He pronounced war ‘whoe’, with a rush of breath on the ‘w’ like a gust of wind, and I immediately sensed that he wasn’t bullshitting.

  ‘I was thirteen years old when I went to whoe. In 1975 the Rhodesians came to my parents’ village. They beat me and my brother very thorough. They were asking where the guerrillas were. It was then that I decided to go and fight for my country. I went to whoe to free my mother and father from the whites.’

  He rubbed the flat of his palm over his polished head as he spoke, and in the flickering shadows of the candlelight, thunder broiling around us and a hard rain lashing the thatch, it gave him a monumental glow – like a black version of Brando’s demented Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

  ‘I walked to Mozambique. We were four: my brother and my two cousins. It took us two weeks. We hid in the forest in the day and walked at night. We would sing “Ishe Komberera Africa”
– “God Bless Africa”, an African anthem – as we went.’

  It was a journey taken by thousands of black Zimbabweans in the 1970s, including the president, the Top Man and most senior members of the current government. Some of them would have walked right past our chicken farm on the Mozambique border. Once in Mozambique they trained at guerrilla camps armed and funded by China and North Korea. (The Matabele-dominated liberation movement, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union [ZAPU], was based in Zambia, and supported by the Soviets.)

  ‘When we crossed a big river we were in Mozambique. I said bom dia to some black people. They did not answer, and I knew they were Zimbabweans also there to fight for our freedom. They directed us to Chikwekwete Camp. I became a commander for a Political Commissariat teaching history. I was fourteen.

  ‘In 1977 I was chosen to go to training at Chimoio, Takawira Number Two camp, where our leaders were based – the top leaders of ZANLA. There was no food there, but I didn’t bother.

  My aim was to come back and fight this minority government to liberate our mother and father.’

  The soldier fell silent for a minute, eyes down.

  Then he looked up, and I knew exactly what he was going to say next.

  ‘And on November 23, 1977,’ he whispered, ‘the Rhodesians came. It was early morning. We were three thousand of us in the camps, but they were fast: they came with ground forces, Selous Scouts, fighter planes, helicopters.’