Diamond Boy

by Michael Williams

  Before I could say anything, Arves slipped his finger down his throat and vomited. He coughed and groaned loudly, clutched his stomach, as a second plume of sadza-onion-tomato-vomit landed exactly where I had indicated, and Arves collapsed right on top of it. All eyes turned to the vomiting boy, and as I reached down to help him, the blue-sky girazi found its way into my hand. Arves looked up at me, winked, and then, never one to let the perfect moment pass, he puked once more into my hands.

  “He’s sick,” I called out to the nearest soldier. “Help me. He’s the HIV boy.”

  The soldier winced. “Not me,” he said. “You get him out of here yourself.”

  I slipped the girazi into Arves’s hand and together we stumbled toward the soldiers guarding the mine entrance. They patted me down, looked once at Arves, and the bits of sadza and tomato on his shirt and legs, and let him pass. Everyone knew about HIV and bodily fluids. When we got to our tent, I brought him a basin of water and Arves stripped off his shirt.

  “Pretty spectacular performance, hey?” he said, grinning, then he rinsed out his mouth and splashed his face clean. There was no girazi in either of his hands.

  “Oscar-winning, but where did you put it?”

  “Time will tell,” he said, tapping the wristwatch on his skinny arm.

  How was it that I didn’t know Arves had his own secret place for diamonds?

  “We’ve got to go,” I said. Now that I knew for certain my father would never come for me, there was no point in staying. It was time to leave this place. Arves and I would slip out of the mine, fetch Grace from the sheds, find Boubacar, and get the three stones to the Baron and leave Marange. “Tonight. We’ll go the same way Chipo and Kamba went.”

  “Yah. Let’s do it. You’re going to be rich, Patson,” he said. “I can’t wait to see the Baron’s face when he sees your stones.”

  I turned away so Arves would not see my tears. My girazis meant nothing to me now without my father. Searching the soil for stones had been for him, to prove that I could do a man’s work, and help look after our family. My diamonds had meant my father could be a teacher again, and fulfill his dream of seeing Grace and me back in school. Now there was no purpose to any of it and I no longer had anyone to prove anything to.

  We heard a jeep skid to a stop outside and the soldiers hurriedly ordering everyone back into lines in front of the tents. Outside, Commander Jesus stood in the jeep yelling. His soldiers barked orders at the miners, who quickly dropped their tools and were herded at gunpoint before the jeep. Commander Jesus stood over us, with one foot up on the dashboard, scanning the crowd as we shuffled closer.

  “Oh no, not more campfire singing,” quipped Arves.

  The silver lenses of Commander Jesus’s reflective glasses zeroed in on me and Arves and a sliver of fear ran down my spine.

  “I thought we had come to an agreement,” he shouted, his voice booming over us. “You work Mai Mujuru, and we pay you for what you find. We give you good food, water, medicine, and a dry place to sleep. But this is not good enough for you.” His words were chillingly sarcastic, his voice deadly calm. “People run away. They are unpatriotic. They are not loyal to our president. They are not men. They are traitors. We must now put an end to people leaving Mai Mujuru without permission.”

  A fearful mumbling went through the crowd. Some miners protested, others shook their heads. A few brave ones called out that as they had not run away, they should not be punished.

  Commander Jesus raised his hand and the men fell silent.

  “I do not punish loyal workers. But some of you have thought of running away. Such thoughts must be reconsidered,” he said, reaching down to a soldier who handed him up the oven glove Kamba had stolen. “However,” he went on almost casually, “I have decided to let one of you go.” The mitt came flying through the air and landed in the dirt at my feet.

  “Patson! Come here,” he said.

  The miners backed slowly away as if I were suddenly toxic. I was alone, except for Arves’s small hand curling around mine and squeezing it tight.

  “Show him no fear,” he whispered. “Bullies hate that.”

  “Come here, boy. Don’t be frightened,” Commander Jesus said pleasantly. “I know about you and your family.” An image of the scarlet-lipped Wife dancing in an army shirt flashed into my head.

  “You want to leave these mines? Well, you can go. I will not stop you.”

  Confused, I glanced at Arves. He shook his head.

  “Come closer, boy.”

  I hesitated while Commander Jesus jumped down from the jeep and waited for me. I stopped before him and he laid his hand on my shoulder. He turned me slightly away from the miners and spoke in a voice only I could hear.

  “Did you like what you saw last night, Patson? Your stepmother dancing in her bra and panties. Did it turn you on?”

  I was too stunned to answer. My throat dried up and I couldn’t stop trembling. I shook my head, not daring to look at him.

  “That’s okay.” He chuckled, squeezing my shoulder painfully. “Sylvia told me all about you, and how you like looking at her breasts. I don’t blame you. I was once a boy in love with an older woman. And Sylvia is a real woman. I know, I’ve tasted her.”

  He jerked my shoulder, forcing me to look up at him, and gave me the smile of a man whose mind was not smiling. I had nowhere to look but at the reflection of my terrified self in his mirrored glasses. Commander Jesus turned me around to face the company of miners and stood behind me, his hands resting lightly on my shoulders. “I have decided that this boy can leave Mai Mujuru. We only want men who wish to work here. Men who serve our president. So you are free to leave, boy,” he announced, pushing me forward. “Go!”

  I jumped at his command, looking desperately at the miners who viewed me now with pity instead of fear. I spotted Uncle James and Musi and stared hard at them, willing them to do something, but they shrunk back, dropping their eyes to the ground. Arves met my gaze and forced a smile. I was waiting for the branches with thorns and the soldiers with their sticks, but none of the soldiers moved. They stood watching me, their rifles slung limply across their backs. I felt small and pathetic, too scared to do anything.

  “I said you can go,” insisted Commander Jesus. “Go, the same way you went last night.”

  Totally confused, I looked up at him, hoping it would be for the last time.

  “Leave. Now! Before I change my mind.”

  I turned toward the gate and saw that a jeep had blocked the road. I walked slowly out of the mine, feeling all eyes on my back. My head was spinning. How did he know it was me at Kondozi Farm last night? He seemed so sure. Could Jamu have told him? Or did the Wife somehow get something out of Grace?

  I headed out past the barbed-wire fence, behind the toilets, and glanced back at the mine. Nobody had moved. Commander Jesus had climbed back into the jeep for a better view of my departure.

  “Run!” he shouted, drawing his pistol and firing it twice into the sky.

  I started jogging across the field, my heart beating in my chest. Was he planning to shoot me as I ran? I picked up speed, my heart now thumping, my body darting from side to side, making sure not to run in a straight line. I expected the sound of gunfire, bullets hitting the ground around me until one smashed into my back.

  I ran harder.

  No gunshots. No bullets.

  I was elated with every stride that took me away from the mine. I had managed to escape. With my diamonds. I’d fetch Grace. We’d be free.

  And then I felt a metallic click under my left foot. There was searing heat and a flash of bright white. A crack of thunder; a cloud of dust.

  I was airborne. A violent force from within the earth propelled me off the ground. My breath was sucked from me as if I had been splashed with freezing water. My ears stopped working. In slow motion I saw myself falling back to earth and landing on my side with an enormous thud.

  I tried to get up but couldn’t.

  As I looked
down, I saw a bloody tangle of white bones where my left foot should have been. The skin of my leg was smoldering. Some distance away lay a running shoe that looked very much like my own.

  I lay there thinking how strange all this was, until pain roared through me like a blast of furnace wind, blowing away my thoughts and replacing them with an uncontrollable, raw scream that went on and on and on.

  And then I went away.

  Wake up, Patson!”

  Sunlight. Blue sky. A face.

  Why was Arves slapping me? He was shouting at me, but I could barely hear him. He lifted my shoulders from the ground. I was upright.

  Dizzy.

  The world was zooming in at me from every angle. The ground was the sky. The hills were the tents; the soldiers were the miners. Commander Jesus was Uncle James running toward me.

  “I was flying, Arves. Running and then flying.” I was gasping for words, wondering why I couldn’t move my legs, why I was so cold when the sun was so hot.

  “You stepped on a land mine,” came his voice from far away.

  Arves was dragging me back toward the mine.

  “The mine is in the land,” I said. “No time for jokes now, Arves.”

  “Stay awake, Patson.”

  “My leg hurts,” I said, aware I was crying. “There’s something wrong with my leg.”

  Many hands were on me now. People shouting. A man with a belt, twisting it tightly below my knee. The back of a jeep, hard metal ridges. My head banging against the door handle. That should have hurt, but somehow it didn’t, the furnace of pain coming from somewhere else.

  “Careful!” someone shouted. “Slow down.”

  “Look at me, Patson!” shouted Arves.

  Now my head was cradled in his lap and I saw his upside-down face. I was being rocked from side to side, inside a cacophony of white noise: Arves shouting, rushing wind, wheels humming over gravel, the scream of a motor, at times far away, and then thundering through me. I wished it could be quiet; I wanted so much to close my eyes. But Arves glared down at me, his eyes drilling into my own.

  “I see you, Arves,” I said. “Make them turn off the noise.”

  And somebody did.

  I awoke with a porcupine staring at me. A black snake rose up with a flame in its mouth. From nowhere the old woman appeared and handed a jar to someone kneeling behind me on the floor.

  “Drink, boy, drink,” she ordered.

  The noise was gone. I lay in a balm of quiet shadows, candles flickering. Someone poured a foul-tasting milky liquid into my mouth. Why couldn’t I drink by myself? My arms wouldn’t move. I gagged, trying to spit it out, but it was too late. I swallowed and more words passed over me.

  “Talk to him, T’kai. Tell him what happened. He needs to know everything,” said the old woman, forcing something different down my throat. “Keep him awake. Long as possible. Talk, boy. Talk to your friend, and hold him still.”

  “Patson, can you hear me?”

  I nodded, choking down more bitter brew.

  “You stepped on a land mine. Your leg is badly injured. But my granny can fix you. She has done this before, many times. In the liberation war. She traveled with the soldiers in the bush. They called her Dr. Muti. Can you hear me?”

  “My leg?” It was as if, by mentioning my leg out loud, I had roused a sleeping monster with razor-sharp teeth that began feeding upon my lower limb. I heard myself gasp as pain spiked through me.

  “It was nearly blown off. She needs to clean it.” Arves’s voice broke through. “She’ll stretch your skin to close the wound, cauterize it to stop the bleeding. You have to stay awake.” He pried open my clenched hand and forced something into it. “It’s a lion’s tooth. It will give you strength.”

  “How did you know?” I asked the old woman. “I never told you about my mother.”

  “You stay awake, boy,” said the old woman, sharpening her liver knife beside me. “This is going to hurt. Hoh-hoh. Hold him tight, T’kai.”

  “Arves, you take my stones. They’re in my shoe. Give the biggest to Grace. You keep the other two.”

  The old woman’s knife pierced the monster that had become my leg. It growled as she cut into its flesh, and my body jerked upward, fighting against the sharp blade. I saw the mangled beast then, its swollen stump-head wreathed in blood, devouring my leg. The beast roared pain that ripped through my body, delivering me into blackness.

  The old woman showed me the oil pot. Why was she cooking my girazis? The anger-stone, rain-stone, and dream-stone were boiling away. They rattled around as she stirred them, steam rising from the pot on a gas stove. She was talking to me but her words made no sense. They were as obscure as the glass eyes in the porcupine, the flickering of a candle on an animal skull, and the fearful expression on Arves’s face.

  The old woman took up a heavy, red-hot flatiron off the flames. She continued talking but now I could not hear her. I was too scared of the iron, so hot, so close to me.

  Why did she need to do her ironing now?

  Seared flesh; burning blood.

  The monster screamed at the sudden heat; its jagged teeth tore into my body.

  I floated away through the ceiling, leaving my body on the floor of the photocopying room. I watched the old woman pressing the iron against a leg, Arves trying desperately to hold down a body that writhed and jerked as it waged a losing battle with a bloodthirsty monster.

  I didn’t care anymore.

  Let them get on with it, I thought, and so I left.

  Familiar voices pulled me back from the darkness.

  “—and he knows a doctor in Mutare. My father will help you, Patson. He knows about the girazis. You give them to him and he will take care of you, get you a new leg.”

  This was Jamu talking, talking.

  “Grace told me about your diamonds. My dad said he will take you to a hospital. He’ll get the best doctor there is to make you better. He just has to wait for Commander Jesus to come back to the mine.”

  Jamu’s words passed through me.

  “The soldiers say he will be back in a week. Then my dad will ask permission to leave the mine and he will come for you. It won’t be long now. My dad will help you, Patson. It will be okay. We’re family. You give him the diamonds and he’ll get you everything you need.”

  I wished Jamu would stop talking.

  “Does he understand what I am saying?”

  My head was too heavy to nod.

  “Patson, can you hear me? Where are the diamonds?”

  “You told your father about our syndicate?”

  That must be Arves, but his voice was hard, unfriendly.

  “Does Musi also know?”

  “It’s over, Arves, there is no more gwejana. Chipo and Kamba are gone. It’s just you and me.”

  “You told them about our gwejana syndicate. You told your father everything.”

  “I had to, Arves, I had to.” Jamu sounded frightened. “Things have changed. You have to understand, the soldiers are in control now. We have to be clever to get any diamonds past them. My father told me to come here. We’ve got to help Patson. My father promised to help him.”

  “Yah. I’m sure he will,” said Arves. “Just like he helped me when I was sick.”

  Why was Arves so angry? I tried opening my eyes, but my eyelids seemed glued closed. I forced them open, peering with difficulty into the shadows, and saw only the shape of Jamu’s mouth, crooked in his round and sweating face. Why was he sweating? Had he been running? His eyes glistened in the candlelight, darting around the room, searching, searching. I could not see Arves, but his hands rested light and cool on my shoulders.

  And always the pain, pain that keeps my brain from fully understanding.

  “Give them the diamonds,” I muttered. “I don’t care about them.”

  I don’t know if anyone heard me.

  Jamu was no longer there. The room was lighter. More words floated in the air.

  “Hoh-hoh. Now trouble makes more trouble.�
�� The old lady’s face appeared out of the shadows. Jars and potions flew off the shelf and were stuffed into a canvas bag. “Storm coming now. Mm-mm. When one knows, they all know. Hoh-hoh. Big-big trouble now. Quick, T’kai, move. Hoh-hoh. We have much to do.”

  Who cares where I am

  Or what day it is.

  Why?

  That’s all I want to know.

  Why did this happen to me?

  Somewhere in the room the old woman snores. Arves sleeps. I’m awake alone in the night and darkness presses down on me. Awake. Eyes wide open. Sleep just out of reach. Brain working overtime. My thoughts feeding on themselves.

  A single candle is all that keeps me from crawling out of this room and into the yard and into the bush and into a hole to crawl up and die and let this sentence never end because if it does I will end up crying and crying until my insides turn into slush and I don’t know why I want to write in my diary when I can’t understand why this is happening to me and the candle flickers and reminds me of people and warmth and light and now I have to find the place for a full stop because my hand aches as I write this and so it has to be somewhere round about now.

  Baba help me. God help me. I think I am dying. The pain is too much. I can’t think straight. I just want this to be over.

  Please let it be the end…

  PATSON’S GAME

  The boy tossed the ball into the air, bouncing it from knee to knee, and then, as if by magic, he caught it with his foot. He stood on one leg, the ball poised in the crook of his right foot, the embodiment of perfect physical balance. The next moment, he flicked the ball into the air, headed it twice, allowed it to fall to the ground and, with a flourish worthy of a magician, trapped the ball neatly under his foot. He looked up as if expecting applause from the crowd gathered before the Beitbridge Border Post.

  But I hated him.

  I hated the way he stood so effortlessly on one leg. Hated the casual way he transferred his weight from one foot to the other. Despised how he took for granted his talent to make that soccer ball do his bidding.