The Dust Diaries

by Owen Sheers

  ∨ The Dust Diaries ∧

  1 AUGUST 1952

  Enkeldoorn Hospital, Enkeldoorn, Southern Rhodesia

  The corridors and the wards of Enkeldoorn hospital are quiet. This is the only time of the day and night when they are: in the twilight before dawn, sharp, bright stars in a sky which is draining from black, through purple, to blue. The groaning, the coughing, the sound of the nurses’ shoes on the hard floors have all stopped, and the hospital is quiet. Even the trees outside the windows are still. There is no wind. The flies and the mosquitoes have not yet risen into the warmth of the day and the cicadas and grasshoppers have not yet begun their chorus.

  Thomas Shonhe lies on the floor of a private ward in the European wing. He is the only African in this part of the building. The English Sister has made many complaints to the doctors about his presence, but the doctors are respecting Father Cripps’ wishes. The old priest had said clearly when he was admitted almost a month ago that he wanted Thomas to stay with him. Since that day, 8 July, Thomas has not left Arthur’s room. He has watched the nurses wash Baba Cripps, and give him medicine, then, when they are gone, he has cared for him himself, in the way that Fortune told him to and in the way that he knows Baba Cripps expects him to. He lies now, on the floor beside Baba Cripps’ bed, drifting between sleep and wakefulness. When he wakes, he listens for the faint sound of Baba Cripps’ breath, the passing of air in his throat and his lungs. It is a gentle breathing, a sighing, like the wind weaving through the reeds by the river.

  Arthur is lying on his back, his forearms hanging off each side of the bed, his palms held upwards. It is nearly a month since he was brought here in a car from Maronda Mashanu. It is over ten years since Noel Brettell last visited him and read him Keats and Tennyson, over a month since Fortune washed him and over three months since he dictated the codicil of his will to Leonard. But tonight, here in the hospital, he has been living all these memories again. Tonight he has seen Bishop Gaul again, Prank Weston, the alleyways of Zanzibar. Tonight he has raced in the New Year games and watched soldiers and porters die on the shores of Lake Victoria. Tonight he has seen the building of his church and the burning of his mission stations. He has written his poems, read the letters of his life and walked across Mashonaland, sleeping under her stars with his red blanket about him. Tonight he has spoken with headmen about land, lain in his rondavel listening to the waking life of Maronda Mashanu, heard the whirr and tick of Leonard’s bike’s wheels. Tonight he has been cold in summer and hot in winter, heard when he is deaf, seen when he is blind. And tonight he has fallen in love with Ada again. He has lain beside her by the river, felt the heat in her hair, the sun on his face and remembered her voice in his ear.

  The steel edges of the bed are digging into the backs of his arms, and as he lies there, between sleep and consciousness, between life and death, the blood flow to his hands is restricted. But he does not feel any pain. Instead, he feels, through the layers of his sleep, through the darkness of his blindness, that he is holding two glowing globes of light and warmth in each palm, two handfuis of sunlight, heating in his fingers.

  The paper-thin skin of his cheek billows in and out with each shallow breath like a sail, catching the lightest of breezes. The breath tapers in the hollow of his mouth, plays in the canvas of his skin, softens, then dies. And with its dying, Arthur dies too, holding a globe of light in each palm and with a gold and red nidiance firing behind his eyes, like the leaves of the musasa tree in autumn, flicking on and off in the wind.

  ♦

  Lying on the floor, Thomas wakes and listens for Baba Cripps’ breath, and hears nothing. Everything is still. He raises himself under his blanket and kneels by the bed. He looks up a! Arthur’s face in time to see the sinking of his one remaining eye, like a pebble easing itself into mud, until his eyelid is flat across the socket, calm as a windless lake. Thomas looks at Baba Cripps’ face and he knows it has happened. He stands, lifts Arthur’s arms onto the bed and pulls the blanket up to his neck. Then he walks to the door and looks down the dim, bare corridor. There is nothing and no one. He looks back at Baba Cripps, at his face which is draining of life, of light, then softly closes the door as if he might still wake him. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he walks down the empty corridor to find the night nurse, the bare soles of his feet slapping on the hard concrete floor in the quiet twilight of Enkel-doorn hospital on the morning of 1 August 1952.

  Stand 92

  Commandant Street

  Chivhu

  3rd September 2000

  Dear Owen,

  Sorry for delaying in writing to you. I was somehow busy but I did not give up.

  My name is Thomas Shonhe, the one who was with your relative ‘Arthur Shell Crips’ for his last three years up to the day when he passed away.

  When I was with him we walked together. On Mondays we would leave the mission Maronda Mashanu to Chivhu Town on foot to pray for the sick in Chivhu Hospital. People with their sick relatives would ask him to come and pray for the sack. We spent three days in Chivhu. On Wednesdays evening we left Chivhu back to Maronda Mashanu where he had a church service with sermon. This is how we were operating when I was with Shell Arthur Crips during my stay with him.

  Shell Crips was old by the time I stayed with him. He suffered from diarreah for at least three months. I Thomas Shonhe, my duty was to direct him where to go since he was blind. I had to cook for him and wash him. Mr Mamvura was his clerk by that time.

  Arthur Shell Crips died in Chivhu hospital when we were just two. We were in a private ward. After his death I went to call the nurses. The burial was arranged and he was buried at Maronda Mashanu.

  After the burial they requested his clothes. I gave them.

  Yours loving

  Thomas Shonhe

  §

  The Link, September 1952

  A GREAT MULTITUDE

  The Burial of Father Cripps

  Father Cripps had many times expressed Ids wish that a lot of money should not be wasted on his funeral, and this wish was honoured in the very simple but moving burial services on the afternoon of Sunday, 3rd August. All the arrangements were made by Daramombe Mission, which incorporates the earlier Wreningham where he lived and worked for 25 years: the coffin was made in the Mission workshop. There was no hearse; the coffin was carried in a van lent and driven by Mudiwa Bill, the Enkeldoorn bus proprietor.

  The body lay in the little church of St Cyril, where he used to minister in times past, from 11 on Sunday morning till half-past two, when the first part of the Burial Service began. It was read in English by the Rev. R.H. Clark, of Daramombe, and the Rev. Richard Nash, of Umvuma, played the organ. Two hymns were sung: ‘Blest are the pure in heart’ and ‘Sun of my Soul’. The congregation of Europeans, Indians, Coloured and Africans was much too big for the church to hold.

  From St Cyril’s the procession of cars made its way to Father Cripps’ home at Maronda Mashanu. A quarter of a mile from there the cars stopped and the coffin was taken up by the six bearers—Mr N.H. Brettell and Mr W. Siewart of St Cyril’s; Inspector Dufton, B.S.A.P (representing the Civil Commissioner); Mr J. Mutasa and Mr G. Mandaza, old friends of Father Cripps, and Mr D. Taranyika, Headmaster of Daramombe School. A vast crowd of Africans was waiting there in silence. Suddenly three shots rang out, women began to wail, and a group of men broke into a war dance and a famous heathen song used only to honour a great chief, while old men who had known Father Cripps almost all their lives took the coffin from the pallbearers and bore it to the church of the Five Wounds, while the great company sang hymns, including one in Shona written by Father Cripps himself. The spontaneous tribute by heathen and Christian alike in the vast concourse was inexpressibly moving, showing how greatlj the African people loved and admired him whose love for them was so sincere. As one of the Africans said, ‘Father Cripps must aave smiled in his coffin.’

  A grave had beer, prepared in the chancel of the church of Maronda Mashanu—the church which had been la
rgely built by Father Cripps himself after the style of Zimbabwe. It is now almost a ruin, but tlie people propose to build a new church round the grave. The service around the grave was conducted in Shona by the Rev. I angton Machiha, of Daramombe; the Lesson was read by the Rev. Edward Chipunza, who represented the Bishop, and Father Clark read the committal.

  One other priest was present—the Rev. Cyprian Tambo, who as a young man worked for Father Cripps and was instructed and baptised by him.

  All who loved Father Cripps will feel a deep gratitude to the Doctor and Staff of Enkeldoorn Hospital for their sympathy and care, and for their consideration for the many Africans who came to minister to him and to pay their respects. Foremost among these was Leonard Mamvura, Headmaster of Maronda Mashanu School and Secretary for Father Cripps, who cycled backwards and forwards each day after his work to spend as much time as possible with him, and Cecilia and Thomas, who attended him so faithfully.

  ∨ The Dust Diaries ∧

  SUNDAY, 30 JULY 2000

  Harare, Zimbabwe

  Last night I danced on your grave. There must have been more than two hundred of us crammed into the ruins of your church: old men and women, children, mothers with babies swaddled on their backs, young men in Nike and Puma tracksuits, young women wearing coloured headscarves. And all of us dancing, our bodies made large with layers of jumpers, coats, scarves and hats worn against the freezing edge of the night. Our breath steamed like incense in the beams of a powerful halogen lamp mounted on a truck outside the walls, a generator shaking and chuntering on its open back. Everyone was singing. One man at the head of your grave blew long, low notes through an impala horn, another beat a tall mutandarikwa drum, his hands a blur above its tight skin. Above us the clear southern sky was full of stars, the Milky Way dusting a swathe across the blackness and the familiar constellations swung on their sides: Leo tipped, the Southern Cross between the legs of a rearing Centaur. And beyond the broken walls of the church the fires on the kopje were still burning in the deep black of the night, picking out the shape of the little hill in their pulsing spots of orange and yellow.

  ♦

  It is seven months since I was last here looking for you. Seven months since I camped in the Eastern Highlands, thinking over the story about you and Ada and Theresa. I have come back to Maronda Mashanu to attend the annual festival held in your honour. Leonard has been writing excited letters to me in London, telling me about the preparations and what to expect. Three days of services, singing, plays, dancing and feasting. ‘Dear Owen,’ he tells me, ‘Our country is now very cold and please as you are coming for the Memorial Festival of Father Cripps, please try to wear some warm clothing. This is just to remind you.’

  Although it has only been seven months, there are many changes since I was last in the country. There has been an election, marred by rigging, intimidation and ballot boxes found dumped in rivers as far away as Mozambique. The offices of the Daily News, the only voice of opposition in the press, were attacked with grenades. Journalists have been taken to detention centres and opposition leaders threatened. The land question that everyone was talking about when I was last here has become physical (‘I do hope,’ Leonard writes in one letter, ‘that the dust of the land situation in this country will settle down on land invasion soon after the election’). But the farm invasions have continued, some of them turning violent. As you suspected, land has once again been the touch paper for unrest, but this time it is a black government, not a white, that is doing the taking and the giving, despite the economic disaster it will bring. Already there is almost no foreign currency in the country and there are often severe petrol shortages. Driving out of Harare to Chivhu I pass a large group of War Veterans protesting outside the Zanu PF building. There are much fewer white faces on the streets and the air is somehow tauter than it was when I was last here. On the edge of the town a packed commuter minibus slows in front of me, stutters forward, then stops. It rolls to the side of the road and joins the other vehicles abandoned there which have also run out of fuel.

  Seven months, and there are changes with me too. I am no longer getting on the Blue Arrow bus, and I am no longer alone. I am driving a bright green hire car, its metallic shine incongruous against the dusty colours of the veld, and Jodi Bieber, a South African photographer who has come to photograph the festival for the Saturday Times is sitting beside me. As we drive south we pass through a temporary camp of War Veterans, a tattered Zimbabwe flag flying from a crooked wooden pole, then past a deserted petrol station with one lonely pump and a stack of empty blue Pepsi crates stranded on the forecourt. Every now and then a scattering of rondavels appear at the side of the road, bright washing hung on a line, but mostly it is the veld, all around us. Flat, rashed with green over its brown-red dust and dotted with granite.

  Chivhu arrives suddenly out of this landscape. Just a brief warning of some breeze-block’high density’ housing, much of it half-built, and then the town itself is there. We approach the central square, with the cream and green of Vic’s Tavern on one side, then turn left, past the post office, and up the main street of shops, before turning left again, past the old Dutch Reformed church, the hospital, then left again onto Cripps Road. Your road, long and yellow in the late afternoon sun.

  I park the car outside the gate to Leonard’s farm. Somehow it would seem wrong to drive it up to his house; even coated in a film of dust from the journey, it still feels out of place here. So I walk, as I did seven months earlier, up the track to his homestead, where not much has changed. The rondavels are still there, arranged around the patch of beaten earth, the chickens are still pecking in the grass and the dogs are still slouching around, some with puppies in tow. I do notice one change though—the wooden cattle kraal has been moved closer to the house, leaving just a square of churned earth where it once stood. I also notice that the new kraal is empty, its irregular fencing holding nothing but air and another patch of ground, less churned than the old one.

  And then there is Leonard, who has not changed, beaming a smile, walking towards me with the awkward gait of his one stiff hip, his arms outstretched, and saying my name over and over. His wife, Actor, walks behind him, wearing a bright red woollen hat and a blue-and-white spotted dress. She is smiling too, laughing and wringing her hands, and shaking her head at her husbands extravagant welcome. Leonard embraces me, squeezing out our seven months apart with the pressure of his strong arms. Then, taking me by the hand, he leads me into his house for tea. Jodi follows us, the shut ter of her camera clicking. As we enter the bungalow we pass a white goat tethered to a pole outside, bleating thinly, its narrow pink tongue vibrating in its mouth, shuffling its feet in the dust. Inside, its bleats are deadened by the walls, but the goat never stops calling, as if it knows something we don’t, as if it is trying to warn us.

  Actor busies herself over the sideboard in the dark little room of Leonard’s bungalow, preparing some tea, then leaves to go and cook in the kitchen rondavel across the yard. Leonard and I sit at the shaky table in the middle of the room, just as we had done seven months before, and he brings me up to date as he pours out the tea and offers me sugar. He speaks about the election, the intimidation of the voters, the fuel shortages, the high price of Actor’s medical treatment and of the land invasions. I think of your book, An Africa for Africans and of how you saw this coming, this problem of land, the sowing of the dragon’s teeth: ‘This unawakened race does not perceive yet the injury that has been done it. But one day it will arouse itself, become articulate…and then…?’

  As Leonard talks, he shakes his head slowly, like a father disappointed with a promisi ng child. I ask him why he has moved the cattle kraal nearer the house and he tells me. He had just two cattle left when one morning three months ago he found their heads and their skins lying in the mud of the kraal. They had been slaughtered and butchered while Leonard and his wife slept. ‘We are suspecting they came from Chivhu town with cars to carry the meat,’ he explains of the thieves. ‘Ther
e is no law here anymore.’ He shakes his head again, his eyes down, and he seems older than when I met him outside. Older and tired. For a moment he is quiet, and just the bleating of the goat fills the silence, but as I watch him I see a smile grow on his face, rising through his features to his bald forehead. Looking up, he begins to tell me about the preparations for your festival, and suddenly, he is no longer eighty years old but eighty years young, excited and energetic, his hands making the shapes of his words in the air.

  ♦

  When I walk out of Leonard’s house onto the small porch the sun is already low in the sky and an African evening light has taken hold of the world, casting long shadows from everything it touches. A chicken struts past, pulling a grotesque jabberwocky shadow behind it. Patches of midges vibrate in the air and the cicadas and crickets trill and tune themselves in from the long grass around the homestead. Leonard is still inside the house, packing vestments and pewter candlesticks into a big canvas bag and preparing to leave for the festival site. I notice that the goat tethered outside which has been bleating has stopped. I turn around and it is no longer there. Then I hear its cracked, pathetic call again, further away, behind the house. I walk to the corner of the bungalow and see Sabethiel, who helps Leonard on the farm, and a couple of bare-footed young boys in torn shorts and T–shirts leading the goat away. The rope around its neck is taut as they pull it behind them up towards a large flat stone surrounded by thorn trees and one leaning jacaranda. Sabethiel sees me watching and waves, then beckons, so I follow them up towards the stone.

  When I get there I find the seclusion of the place emphasises the peacefulness of the evening. The sun is now a bloated orange disc, setting the branches of the trees into razor sharp silhouettes. A swallow dips in the air above us and, higher, an eagle circles in the sky. I watch as Sabethiel leads the goat up onto the stone and the other boys follow. It is only then I see Sabethiel is holding a long-bladed knife, and I know what is about to happen.