The Last Resort

by Douglas Rogers

  The living room had also taken on a life of its own. The electrical outlets were all plugged with flashing digital boxes and cables that whirred and winked when the power was on; there was a mini-generator to operate the television during blackouts, and battery chargers to power the flashlights and halogen lamps my parents used whenever the house went dark. Frogs still hopped through the house from the veranda to the backyard, and fruit bats that resembled domesticated Stealth fighters made frequent flyovers.

  ‘I feel like we’re camping,’ Grace whispered to me during one blackout as a flying ant roasted itself on the gas lamp beside the piano. ‘Camping inside a house.’

  I know my sisters would have been mortified by it all, but to me there was something heroic about the way my parents made do. ‘We’ll make a plan,’ said Mom and Dad – an expression all Zimbabweans used at this point. When crops failed, shops ran out of food or hospitals were emptied of medicine, an almost atavistic survival instinct kicked in. ‘We’ll make a plan,’ people said, and somehow they did. Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans had starved to death or died of disease under Robert Mugabe; the more incredible story was how so many millions managed to survive. They refused to become victims.

  Two days before New Year’s, Mom hosted a dinner party for the cottage tenants, and Grace got to meet most of them in one sitting. Piet, Mienkie and the tough-as-nails farmer widow, Joy Wolf, eighty-four, represented the old guard; Dawson, Patricia, and the Matongo brothers and their wives were the new blood. The racial demographics of the farm had changed dramatically over the years, and yet a wonderful sense of community still existed, embodying new possibilities. It turned out Madeline wasn’t the only baby around, either. Dawson and Patricia had a daughter now, whom they’d named Nicole, and Stephen and Tsitsi also had a little one, Donelle. The veranda became a nursery that night: two black babies and one white one rolling around together on the carpet in front of us while we ate chicken and rice that John Muranda, called into action from brothel duty, had prepared on the gas burner in the kitchen. He’d lost none of his touch as a chef.

  I thought Tendai might not show up, but he duly arrived. He floated soundlessly onto the veranda from the dark wet night and without a word to any of us lifted Madeline off the carpet, took a seat on the low veranda wall with her on his lap, and said to her in that deep, caramel-smooth voice: ‘So, you are the next generation.’

  Then he kissed her on the top of the head and said hello to the rest of us.

  I noticed he called my dad ‘Mr Rog’ now; Dad called him ‘Mr Cool.’

  ‘So, Mr Cool, how are your dealers?’ my father asked.

  Tendai, it turned out, had yet more strategies, new plans. He wanted to expand.

  ‘Listen, Mr Rog,’ he told him. ‘These diamond guys, we must take advantage. They want the life. They want the luxury. We must upgrade the chalets. Get TVs. Satin sheets.’

  Dad guffawed.

  ‘Mr Cool, how can I afford televisions and new sheets for the chalets?’

  ‘We need to invest, Mr Rog! These guys, they can afford.

  Now is the time. Before it’s too late.’

  ‘Why will it be too late?’

  ‘These dealers are not investing their money, Mr Rog. They are not planning for their futures or their families. They just spend: Z$150 million on beer and food and girls in one night! One year ago these guys were nothing – nobodies on the street selling bread and sugar. Now they are millionaires! We need to capitalise, Mr Rog, give them the taste of luxury and enjoyment that they desire, before the diamonds run out or the military removes them.’

  I had never before seen anyone more enthusiastic or innovative about business than my father, but Tendai was that man. His long-term strategy was the 2010 World Cup.

  ‘Listen, Mr Rog, I am going to import a big-screen TV for the event. I will set it up outside. I want to get the DJ Tich Mataz down here from Harare, put his sound system on my seven-ton, and he can play to the customers on the grounds. I saw on TV all the big parties they had in the parks in Germany for the last World Cup. We can do the same!’

  But Dad couldn’t think that far ahead. He was worried about the day-to-day. Hell, he was worried about Mr Cool’s ruthless relative up the road. He had actually been to see the Top Man again two months earlier. With no sign of the promised offer letter, he’d called the number Walter gave him and arranged another appointment, but when he got to the house the security guards said the Top Man was away. Annoyed, he phoned again when he got back and was told by the secretary that the Top Man had been waiting for him all along, and why hadn’t he arrived? He knew he was being played; there was nothing he could do.

  ‘Mr Cool,’ he told Tendai, ‘if I ever get a guarantee from your uncle that he will leave my property alone, we can talk satin sheets.’

  Tendai smiled and said nothing. Madeline had fallen fast asleep on his lap.

  New Year’s Eve was another party, an even bigger bash for my parents’ friends.

  ‘You’ll meet the survivors!’ Mom said.

  ‘And the jailbirds!’ Dad added.

  Dad bought a full-grown pig from Margaret Matongo, and on the morning of 31 December, next to the garage where his fuel had been stolen years earlier, we trussed and dressed the swine and wired it to a gurney. I say ‘we’, but Dad and Muranda did the work; Agoneka and I stood back, trying not to get in the way. My father would just have shouted at us for dropping the pliers or for not tying the twine properly. We did help dig a pit for the coals, though, and we spent much of the afternoon turning and basting the pig until it was dripping in juices, its skin crisp, golden, crackling. Muranda seemed to do most of the work again, and the smoke got in his eyes so much that I fetched him a pair of plastic swimming goggles I had found in an old box of childhood toys in my bedroom. Agoneka and I doubled over in laughter as we watched Muranda work, his face squashed like a fish in a tank, his nasally voice ordering us to stop teasing him.

  Agoneka considered the rain.

  ‘It has never been this hard, Douglas. I can’t remember so much water.’

  ‘It’s the La Niña effect,’ I told him, turning into Cliffie from Cheers. ‘It’s replaced the El Niño current. Cooler water in the Pacific Ocean has a ripple effect, and it’s bringing more rain here.’

  He looked at me like I was an idiot, then went back to staring into the burning coals.

  ‘I think it means there will be a change this year,’ he said.

  Ah, change. That word. The MDC slogan. The next election was only three months away, a presidential and parliamentary poll in one. It was the most important ballot since 2002. But change? I doubted it. In Harare over Christmas all the whites I had met were in agreement: it would be more of the same. The opposition was still divided, they said, and Tsvangirai had no stomach for battle; any change would have to come from within the ruling party. My father hated hearing this. He reckoned whites in Harare were living in a bubble, a rich and corrupt cocoon. They didn’t know what was happening in the heartland of the country. My father was convinced the MDC was going to produce an electoral upset.

  More than twenty guests came for New Year’s Eve – my parents’ last remaining white friends, many of whom had lost their farms in the valley in the past eight years and been forced to reinvent themselves. One farmer, Pete, had found work with a Western NGO, handing out imported maize seed to ‘new farmers’ across the country.

  ‘So, Pete,’ I said, ‘you must miss your farm.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Not really. Listen, for twenty years I ran a tobacco farm. I woke up at five in the morning six days a week, spent an entire day in the fields, employed four hundred people and dealt with poor soil, drought, frost, broken tractors and sick workers.

  Now? Now I drive around in a white Land Cruiser handing out shitty imported maize seed to poor buggers who don’t know how to farm it. Then I collect a salary in US dollars. It’s not very moral and it doesn’t make me feel very good, but it’s easier than farm
ing.’

  Everyone bought their own drink to the party, as well as side dishes and desserts. It was the way of things: no one could afford to cater a whole party anymore. I had imagined chronic food shortages would have led to the urge to hoard, a certain selfishness, and yet the opposite was true: my parents were going to as many parties now as they had in their twenties. Friends would call and say, ‘We’ve got hold of a side of beef, bring potatoes,’ or ‘So-and-so has a crate of Mozambique prawns, make some homemade bread.’ The same happened this night. The banquet table filled with cheese, bread, fresh fruit, salads, garden vegetables – all of it either homegrown or saved for months for this very night.

  Brian and Sheelagh James were there, Sheelagh beautiful as ever in a skintight evening dress. I hadn’t seen Brian since he took me to the rally in Buhera. I asked him about the elections. He said the MDC had been campaigning hard, not so much in the cities, where they had overwhelming support already, but in rural areas – ZANU-PF territory.

  ‘Ag, we’re drawing much bigger crowds now. Our structures are all in place; we’ve got so many organisers and activists. The difference this time is that the results will have to be counted and announced at each polling station at the end of the day. If that happens, we win. They can’t rig it like before. We’ll have all the evidence we need.’

  He sounded as confident as my father. I wasn’t so sure. I remembered 2002 and how confident we’d all been then.

  Speros and Wendy Landos were there, too. It was their swan song. They were about to leave to farm in Zambia, joining the De Klerk sons and hundreds of other white Zimbabwean farmers. I asked Speros for more stories about prison, and he told me that former cellmates still came up to him on the street. ‘They remember how I brought books and magazines into the cells. It’s amazing to meet these guys. They looked after me in there.’

  But wasn’t he bitter about losing his farm and now having to leave the country? He looked at Wendy, and she smiled.

  ‘I can honestly say no,’ he said. ‘We learnt so much in that time of tribulation. We learnt the true meaning of what we often say by rote, ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ Forgiveness is so important, whether it is forgiving another person for a trivial matter or for hurting you to the core of your being. Unless you forgive, you’ll always harbour bitterness and you won’t be able to move on with your life.’

  At one point Dad put his arm around Wendy and said in his ironic tone: ‘Wends, I know you’re leaving, but remember, I’ve booked you. We have a piano here. I don’t want a record playing. I don’t trust these others to get it right.’

  ‘Yes, Lyn, don’t worry, I’ll make it,’ she sighed.

  ‘Booked her for what?’ I asked.

  Dad smiled sheepishly.

  ‘Wends was the last pianist left in town,’ he told me. ‘She’s been playing funerals. A lot of us nearly deads are dropping off now. I’m just making my booking early.’

  I almost dropped my drink. Still, at least I no longer worried that he might do himself in. Had it really been only five years ago, on this same lawn, that Mom, tears rolling down her face, told me she feared he was going to shoot himself? It felt like another lifetime.

  The best story I heard that night, though, was Miss Moneypenny’s. Loud and magnetic as ever, she spun a cracking tale about her trip with Walter six months earlier to meet the Destroyer, the country’s most famous traditional healer. Sadly, Dad had had to miss the trip, but he loved hearing Moneypenny talk about it, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have said that my father had a newfound belief in the power of witchcraft. After all, hadn’t a traditional healer, at the insistence of their first manager, Mrs Magondweni, come to bless and protect this property fourteen years ago? What else could explain the fact that they were still on it? That despite everything it was still theirs?

  ‘He lives way up there in the mountains, past Chipinge and the tea estates overlooking Mozambique,’ Moneypenny began. ‘Not in a hut or anything. A fancy double-storey with a sat dish on the roof. The lounge is full of televisions and stereos people have given him. His yard is lined with cars. People come from as far away as Namibia to see this guy.’

  ‘Did he know Walter?’ I asked.

  ‘He did. But even on the way up there, at the police roadblocks, the cops all knew Walter. The Destroyer is an old man, stooped, wrinkled, like a wizard. He sat on a wood stool in a dark room dealing one by one with all the visitors. Finally it was my turn. I told him my situation. He said I had to pay him a bit of money – it wasn’t much – and then he did some chanting, threw a few bones around and just said: “Yes, we can fix this fellow.”’

  As Moneypenny spoke, a white moon weaved through clouds hanging over the valley, and the fruit bats streaked between the fig trees.

  ‘Anyway, he gave me these three little balls of a hard red pasty substance, and I’m thinking, Oh, hell, now I gotta eat this or something? But no, not that at all. He tells me to take the balls home, light a fire in my house, take all my clothes off and dance around the fire naked. Then I should throw the balls onto the fire and tell the spirits how I want this guy who stole my house sorted, how I want him “dirtied”. Finally, in the morning I have to take the pile of ash that’s left over and find a place “where two paths cross”. I should scatter the ash there.’

  I pictured Moneypenny getting ready for this transgressive act, closing the curtains of her suburban home. I hoped that her Charlie Tens might have been spying on her that night, that they might have seen the ceremony and been terrified she was casting a spell on them.

  ‘So did you do it?’ I asked.

  She cackled.

  ‘Of course! It was my last chance for revenge!’

  ‘So where did you drop the ashes?’

  ‘Just off the fairway of the thirteenth hole at Hillside, of course. Two paths intersect there: it’s right outside my house.’

  I expected that to be the end of the story, but then Dad jabbed me in the ribs and said, ‘Wait, wait, there’s more,’ his eyes wide with excitement.

  ‘And then,’ said Moneypenny, ‘an uncanny thing happened. A couple months later I’m playing golf at Hillside with a friend who lives next door to my brother’s house. We came to the thirteenth hole, and I told my friend the big joke about the spell I had cast and how I came to scatter the ash here. She looks at me in complete shock and says, ‘Don’t you know? The chappie’s been rushed to hospital – he’s nearly dead!’ I couldn’t believe it. I went white. I mean, I didn’t want to kill the guy, but I did make my wish into the fire that he get seriously ill!’

  My heart was racing. Dad was laughing loudly.

  ‘What happened to him?’ I asked. ‘Do you know if he died?’

  ‘Well, that’s the other uncanny thing. A few weeks later Faith gets a phone call at the office. I wasn’t in. It was a man’s voice. The voice just tells her: “You can tell your boss that everything is okay with me now. I am better.”’

  ‘It was him?’

  ‘I’m sure it was. He must have worked out I had cast a spell on him. Maybe he went to the Destroyer for the antidote. I’ll never get my money back from him, but I know one thing: he no longer lives in my brother’s house. He’s moved out. I think he’s terrified of going back. His parents are living in it now. I don’t mind. That’s good enough for me.’

  On a grey morning two weeks later I met up with Fatso, the diamond dealer, in town. Grace and Madeline had flown home; I wanted more time with Mom and Dad.

  He was waiting for me in a parked car on Herbert Chitepo Road, directly opposite the pharmacy where I’d taken the Political Commissar for headache pills two years earlier. I’d expected a BMW, but he was in a battered Isuzu bakkie. The same gorgeous girl he’d been with that night in the bar stepped out, and Fatso pulled some money from his pocket. Not Zim dollars, but a thick brick of greenbacks. He peeled off a crisp Ben Franklin and gave it to her. She took it, saying nothing, and sauntered off in her tight pi
nk tracksuit and high heels. At nine in the morning, with a thudding hangover, I found her a glorious sight.

  ‘Okay,’ said Fatso. ‘Let’s go meet the guys.’

  We drove north up Herbert Chitepo Road, turning left at the Central Police Station. It was an oddly beautiful colonial building, whitewashed, colonnaded, but with an air of the gallows. Speros and Brian James had both been detained here, and I wondered how Speros’s old cellmates were doing, whether they still had books and magazines to read.

  Four uniformed policemen crossed the street in front of us. Fatso hooted, and they ran over like eager puppies. He distributed paper – thick wads of Zimbabwe dollars this time.

  ‘Friends of mine,’ he said as we drove on. ‘I know them all. I keep them happy.’

  ‘So what’s with the shitty car?’ I said. ‘I thought you would have a BMW or a Merc.’

  ‘I do. I just bought this today. When I go out to the fields, if I hear of a stone, I will swap.’

  ‘You’ll swap the truck for a stone?’

  ‘Of course. That’s what we can do. If I hear of a zhula, a good gem, and I don’t have the cash on me, I tell the gweja he can drive me back to town and take my car.’

  ‘Have you ever done that before?’

  He grinned. ‘A lot of goat herders are driving my cars!’

  I considered all that money in the pocket of his combat trousers.

  ‘How many US dollars do you carry on you at a time?’

  ‘Maybe US$4 000, US$5 000,’ he shrugged.

  ‘Aren’t you worried you’ll get mugged?’

  ‘It’s not so easy. Few people are going to do that. Everyone is making their money.’

  For the next two hours I got a tour of my former hometown, and it was like stepping into a parallel universe. There were two worlds out on those streets, and it was remarkable how easy it had been for me to exist in one and know nothing about the other.