The Boy Next Door

by Irene Sabatini

  Maphosa says that Mphiri has been behaving strangely of late. Yesterday when he passed him on the way to the shops and made his greeting, the old man looked at him without any recognition. Maphosa repeated the greeting but the old man made no response at all. “That mukhiwa boy has a lot to answer for,” says Maphosa. “It is time he packed his bags and took off to South Africa.” Maphosa thinks that Mphiri is in the process of being bewitched and if action is not taken the old man will die in the hands of evil spirits. This cannot be allowed to happen.

  15.

  He picked me up at the bus stop just at the entrance of the cemetery. He was almost forty minutes late, and I was about to cross the road and take the next bus home.

  “Mind the chips,” he said as I was about to sit down. “Help yourself.”

  “So, the party, was it lekker?” he asked as he checked the mirror.

  “It was okay.”

  That’s all I said.

  He turned and looked at me. I thought he would say something, ask me more about the party, why it was just okay, but he didn’t; he concentrated on his driving.

  It made me feel better to see that he’d chosen my favorite flavor, Salt and Vinegar. He didn’t say anything about being late as he drove, and I concentrated on eating the chips without making too much noise. In the parking lot we drank the Cokes and watched people strolling about at the station. Then he had the idea to go to the Railway Museum, for old-time’s sakes.

  Walking up the footbridge from the railway station, he said that his best memory of school was his class visit when he was in Standard One, when he was seven or so. The history teacher, Mr. Scolds, took them, and if there was ever a name to fit anyone, Scolds was it.

  “Boy, could that man let rip.”

  Anyway, on that day, he remembers being allowed to go on his own in the yard, looking at the carriages and engines, making drawings, notes, scrambling on the locomotives to check something out.

  “It felt good to be out there; I reckon Mr. Scolds took off to the bar because when he finally pitched up he was way too happy. Heck, he even brought the whole class ice-lollies.”

  We are standing outside Cecil John Rhodes’s private carriage looking through the large windows. The teak table gleams in the dining-room carriage. It is set with beautiful chinaware and silver, crystal decanters, and goblets, which make me think of Mummy and her collection. Everything in there looks as though it is waiting for Mr. Rhodes to come in. I keep looking towards the doorway; any moment the founder of Rhodesia might duck his head and enter his carriage. He will draw out a chair, sit down. He has a hat, which he puts on his knee, his leg outstretched. A black steward will soon arrive and start preparing the table for dinner, the dinner that is being cooked in Mr. Rhodes’s private kitchen. Maybe Mr. Rhodes will turn and look out of the window, watch the countryside gently roll by. His country. Rhodesia. That must feel good. And then dinner, a cigar, a bath (perhaps), bed.

  “My old man signed me up with the Cubs—what was it now?—Fourteenth South Grove Troop, met every Tuesday over by the hall near the fire brigade station; used to go camping at the Matopos. Come school holidays no schlepping round the place; the old man thought he could toughen me up a bit. Hated every shit minute of it. Bloody Scout leader, Mr. Caldwell, Mr. Fuck-Well to me, a New Zealand bloke, always had it in for me. Only joy I got out of it was when there was bugger all to do but take myself off somewhere and just sit and scribble things in the notebook. Drove my old man penga that book.”

  I think of Mr. Rhodes who used to stand so proudly on his pedestal in Main Street, his hands crossed behind his back, his head leaning a little bit to one side; looking, in his wise and fatherly way at all of Bulawayo going about its business around him. And now he stands all by himself behind the museum, forgotten, his only company weeds, insects, and the birds who don’t know his greatness, pooing on him. His Bulawayo, now.

  I think of Maphosa finding out about this train; how it brought Mr. Rhodes all the way from Cape Town in South Africa up to Matopos, in Bulawayo. A journey of over two thousand kilometers, the plaque says. That Mr. Rhodes was dead, lying in his train, waiting to be buried up there in World’s View.

  I think of Mrs. Palmers, my history teacher in primary school, whose eyes became all wet when she told us Mr. Rhodes’s words as he lay dying: “So little done, so much to do.”

  “May that be an inspiration to you all,” she said, snapping shut her book.

  The railway platform is full of soldiers disembarking. They are speaking in Shona.

  Ian quickens his step.

  “Come, let’s get a move on.”

  Whenever I’m in the car with him, I can’t relax.

  When we stop at robots or intersections, I keep thinking that some pedestrian will suddenly stop in the middle of the road and look straight at me.

  “Lindiwe!” they will shout out.

  Their eyes will move from me to the driver and then back to me.

  “What are you doing here, who is this…?”

  So I sit quietly, my eyes on my lap and listen to him.

  “It’s a pity about Matopos. I was thinking about making a trip there. Sit on the rocks and think fuck all like the good old days. Man, I hope the dissidents teach the Shonas a lesson. They’re getting way too arrogant. Pride comes before a fall. They’re flooding this place with Shonas to neutralize the Ndebeles. You can trust a Ndebele; the Shonas now, as slippery as hell.”

  I think of the soldiers on the platform. They seemed very young and their uniforms looked as if they had just been taken out from packages. Those soldiers didn’t look like killers. They looked like boys pretending to be soldiers. Even the street girls who hang around by the station were not intimidated by them. They were calling out to the soldiers, “Come, boys, come; good times here, come.” Maybe they were just beginning their training. Maybe when they went back to Harare, they would be real soldiers. They would know all about killing. No one would call them boys. It’s funny but I don’t even remember if they had guns.

  “The thing with the Shonas is that they have to learn that they didn’t win the war; it was a negotiated settlement. They were backed into a corner; it was a no-win situation. They had to accept whatever the Handbag and her windie, Lord Carry on Selling the White Man Down the Drain, was prepared to give. Now I think of it, who knows if the Shonas are running about all over the place because they’re so blimming ashamed. Could be something in that: trying to convince themselves that they actually won the war, that it wasn’t a Surrender. If they can’t take out the white man, they’re going to give it a go with the Ndebeles, for old-time’s sake.”

  We’re in his car at Khumalo. He has come to check out an old buddy of his, but I think he’s having second thoughts. He keeps twirling the car window handle. We’ve been sitting in the car talking and being quiet and waiting.

  And then he looks at me and smiles. “Yah, well, all that’s straight from the horse’s mouth, the Rhodesians running to South Africa. You should hear that lot yakking on. Sad. They don’t know what’s hit them. And the Afrikaners and the Brits can’t stand them. At least my old man stuck it out. Eeesh man, what’s so fricking funny?”

  I don’t tell him it was the “Lord Carry on Selling the White Man Down the Drain” bit. I know he meant Lord Carrington and I know that white people are really angry about the whole Lancaster thing and how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe—how Smith sold them out after he had promised them that not in a thousand years would blacks ever rule Rhodesia.

  “Yah, smile now, wait till they come tshaying you. And anyway, if they want to see real racialism, they should take a trip across the border. That’s Hardcore racialism. There an Aff even looks at an Afrikaner the wrong way, he’s had it my boy. The Afrikaners have a cruel, mean streak. As hard as diamonds that tribe. They should think themselves lucky this lot.”

  I want to ask him about his life in South Africa—if he went to school, if he lived with his mother, if he has brothers or sisters.

&nbs
p; “Jeez,” he says. “I wished I smoked or something. The old man smoked like a chimney; smelt of bloody smoke big time.”

  He hits the steering wheel with his hands; I jump a bit on my seat.

  “Sorry. Jeez, I’m jittery today. Shit, let’s get out of here.”

  But it’s too late. There’s someone by the gate, and a dog barking. He gets out of the car.

  The dog is a Ridgeback. He’s baring his teeth and gnashing at the gate. He looks like he hasn’t been fed in days.

  “Hamba Zulu! Foosake man!” shouts the man, giving the dog a kick in its hind leg. “Heh, Ian, is that you man, howzit?”

  “Howzit, John, long time no see, heh?”

  They give each other a high-five over the gate, and then they stand there looking at one another.

  “So, I thought I’d come and check you out.”

  “Bad timing, man. I’m on my way out. Got to hop over to the garage, some munt having a kadenze about overcharging; you won’t believe what ideas they’re getting these days.”

  His buddy shakes his keys. “Tell you what, how about Grey’s Inn, six o’clock. Check out the chicks. New stock just arrived from England, come to save the natives.”

  Ian turns a bit. I sit in the car very still.

  “What’s that?” says his buddy looking over the gate to the car.

  “Nothing. Just giving a lift.”

  “So Grey’s Inn, right?”

  “Right.”

  They stand there until Ian says, “Okay, see you then,” and turns round.

  In the car, on the road, he says, “The look on his face. To think we were mates. All the way through primary and now, that look. Didn’t want me anywhere near his property. Jeez. What did he think I was going to do?”

  Later, while we are waiting for some cows to pass, he says, “Can’t blame him though, can I?”

  The cows are moving slowly and they keep knocking into each other. There is no sign of the herd boy, who should be waving his stick about, directing them to safety.

  We sit in the car for a while. Ian taps the steering wheel with his fingers. I look at the last cow that has stopped at the edge of the road and is looking back at us with very sad eyes. It looks as though his legs are about to buckle, and he will collapse right there in the heat.

  “Herd boy probably rolling off in the grass, suffering from Class One babbelas. Just take a look at the skinny things, can hardly walk. It’s going to be a bloody scrappy year, that’s for sure. Bobs had better have his act together, get the GMB guys in order; they’re exporting so much maize to Mozambique when the shit hits the fan here, ‘sorry, no stocks, hapana food’—man, lots of hungry fuckers equals lots of angry fuckers. You should check out the mess in Khami.”

  White people had started calling Mr. Mugabe, Bob. And sometimes they put “comrade” in front. Daddy says it’s a way for them to belittle him, turn him into a boy, someone manageable like their workers. In truth they are frightened of him.

  I had thought of how when I was at the telephone exchange with Daddy, sometimes the whites (some of them apprentices straight out of school) whom he was training would call him Danny or Danny Boy and he would just laugh. I had also noticed that, since independence, he didn’t tolerate that anymore.

  I want to tell him that I’m not nervous anymore, even though I jumped a little bit before. I want to say that I don’t think he is a bad person; that I like his name, Ian; that I’m not afraid of him.

  But instead I say, “It’s hot.”

  He turns to me and says, “Hey, madoda, kuyatshisa,” and laughs.

  I laugh back.

  And I can hear Maphosa. “Bastard!” “Settler!” “Sellout!”

  We stop over at the old mineshaft. I want to say to him that we had better hurry; Mummy should be almost finished with her group.

  He gets out of the car, looks down at the quarry.

  “Man, once when he was all boozed up, he started mouthing off about how many gondies they’d kicked into abandoned shafts, makeshift graves. Said they cut off their tongues, threw those in first, and then the poor buggers.”

  He looks back at me. “Shit, sometimes I forget you’re just a lightie.”

  “I’m not a lightie.”

  “Touchy, touchy.”

  He puts his hand on my head and then steps away. “Shit, we should be going back. Your mother is going to throw a right old kadenze.”

  Before he starts the car, I say, “They’ve captured some dissidents, over at Nkayi.”

  “They’ll be lucky if they get off with any balls left. Word is Commies from North Korea are drilling the Shonas with new and improved torture techniques up in Inyanga.”

  I tell him to stop at Alton Heights. I’ll catch an Emergency Taxi home. Just to be safe.

  “Thank you,” I say. I turn to open the door and suddenly I feel his hand on my shoulder.

  “So, Lindiwe, it’s good to have someone to joll with, someone who doesn’t think I’m bad news.”

  I wait for him to say that now it is enough. To say something like thank you, good-bye, it’s time to move on.

  He takes his hand away, but I still feel the pressure and heat of it. I want to put my hand on my shoulder, where his was. To keep it there.

  “Listen, man, we should try and arrange a way to meet.”

  “Like an appointment?”

  “Jeez, I’m not a doctor. I mean meet like friends.”

  He puts his hand through his hair. “Asch man, forget it. It’s just… I’ll see you when I see you.”

  “You can write something maybe, put it in the letter box.”

  “What, so your mother can find it, no ways.”

  “Not if you put it in at night, anytime after six. A small piece of paper.”

  “With the appointment? Date, time, location.” And he smiles. “Okay, works both ways, you do the same your end if you want to meet up.”

  “Yes.”

  And my heart jumps and skips.

  Rosanna gives me a funny look when I come in. Mummy is still not in.

  Ever since Rosanna became pregnant, Mummy has become short-tempered. The more Rosanna’s stomach grows, the shorter Mummy’s temper becomes. Rosanna should have gone back to the village to have the baby. But now with all the problems in the rural areas, it is not safe. When she saw Rosanna’s stomach, Mrs. Ncube said that this was surely a big healthy boy growing in there, as heavy as anything, pulling Rosanna’s stomach so far down. That evening Mummy gave me a slap when I asked her for the keys of the pantry so that I could get a new packet of sugar out, and then she locked herself in her room.

  Rosanna will not say who the father is.

  “Who is going to support this child?” shouted Mummy. “How can damages be paid when there is no culprit. Ba-Lindiwe you must throw her out.”

  Whenever Mummy addressed Daddy by “Lindiwe’s father,” it meant that a very serious request was being made and Mummy was calling upon Daddy as head of the household and my protector to act. Even though Rosanna was Mummy’s relative, once she had come to our place she became part of the family under Daddy’s guardianship.

  Daddy said we must be charitable.

  “We are not a charity!” shouted Mummy.

  Mummy wanted to know where Rosanna was getting the money to buy all the fancy maternity wear and shoes from Bata. And what of all the bags she kept bringing back from Babyrama, Woolworths, and even Meikles. Mummy told me to keep an eye on her and not to leave anything lying around.

  “With the excuse of this pregnancy, she is doing nothing. ‘I am tired,’ ‘my feet are hurting,’ but not too tired to go shopping.”

  Rosanna is fairer skinned than Mummy and her face isn’t marked by dark patches because of using Ambi Fade skin lightening cream. Rosanna doesn’t wear a glossy black wig like Mummy, but her short hair is neatly plaited in rows. She is also taller than Mummy, and before she became pregnant the boys at the shops called her Miss Coca-Cola and made smooth movements with their hands to illustrate the
shape of her figure. Rosanna didn’t pay them any attention.

  “I don’t like her change of attitude at all. She is acting as though she is the mistress of this house. When Mrs. Ncube came yesterday and I asked her to fetch a glass of water, she actually started saying ‘but I’m…’ and I gave her such a look that she thought better of it. Even Mrs. Ncube was surprised. That’s what happens when you act in a Christian manner, people take advantage. She must watch out. I won’t stand for any nonsense.”

  16.

  We are at Chipangali by the lion enclosure. The lions have been fed, and they are lying down, their jaws matted with blood, sleepy eyed, content. But they still make me nervous. Something, anything might provoke them.

  I have the lighter in my pocket. I want to give it to him. I want him to know that I am on his side.

  This is the furthest we’ve driven off and we met one roadblock. The policemen told us to get out of the car. They checked the boot and under the seats. They asked us where we were going. They said we should not go any further than Chipangali.

  I told Mummy and Daddy that I was going to the public library after school to study.

  There is no one around but us and the animals.

  “I wanted to be a bloody vet,” he says. “Jeez luck, didn’t even get round to sitting my O levels; had to get away from that house. Education, that’s the key. The be-all and end-all.”

  He sounds a bit like Daddy.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Asch, I’m sick of looking at these lazy fossils. Let’s go and get a drink.”

  In the gazebo it is very cool and we can hear the birds chittering away. The lady serving behind the counter looks at me and makes a face. Ian orders two Cokes and some buns and chips. We sit at a table in front, and I put my hand in my pocket to get a tissue out to blow my nose. The lighter makes a tinkling noise on the stones. Ian bends down to pick it up. The lighter is in his hands. He turns it over, sees “Rhodesian Army” on it. His face changes. Splotches of red by his cheeks, on the side of his head. He squeezes the lighter in his hand.