He handed me the tray.
My three girazis sparkled up at me. The anger-stone, the rain-stone, and the dream-stone lay shining and bright in the corner of the tray. I picked them up one at a time, amazed to be holding them again. Their familiar size and shape hurtled me back to the mud between my toes, the water around my knees, the sun on my back, and the repeated action of sieving, sieving, and sieving.
“Your diamonds caused quite a stir around the operating table when they came out one after the other from your leg.”
The doctor smiled at me, but I was too bewildered to respond. I was back in the photocopying room with Arves holding me down; his granny boiling my girazis in her pot; the red-hot iron glowing in the dark. She had hidden the stones in the wound of my leg, the one place she was sure no one would find them.
“You didn’t know they were in your leg?”
“No, I didn’t,” I answered, and let them fall back into the tray.
“I thought so. I knew you were telling the truth in the foyer, Patson. Of course you didn’t have the diamonds. They were with me,” he said, smiling. “Whoever put them in your wound knew what they were doing.”
“It was an old lady. People called her Dr. Muti. She worked with the soldiers in the bush war,” I answered, stunned, staring down at the stones I had for so long prized above everything else, stones I believed were lost, and stones that caused me so much trouble. But now my girazis had come back to me. I didn’t know why or whether I deserved them, but there they were, lying in the corner of the metal tray, each with its own history: the first because of the angry words of Banda, the second dislodged from the bank by a downpour, and the third, the most beautiful one of all, sent to me in a dream by my shavi. I remembered the flickering candles, the smell of herbs and burned blood, and the tinkle of diamonds boiling in an oil pot. “All you need is within you, Patson,” the old woman had said, and now I understood. She was telling me, even as she was putting those stones inside me, that I would have to rely on something far deeper than anything diamonds could provide.
“Take them away,” I said quietly, handing Dr. Morris the tray. “I don’t want them. I don’t want to see them ever again.”
He looked surprised. “These are your stones, Patson. Didn’t you find them?”
“Yes, they’re my stones. My father and I worked together on Banda Hill until Commander Jesus took over the mine and called it Mai Mujuru. My father was shot by Commander Jesus’s soldiers and I found these—” I stopped. My words were all wrong, as if finding the stones had been some sort of compensation for losing my father. “No. That’s not what I meant. My father was shot by the soldiers simply because he was a miner. And all I have from my time at Marange are…” I couldn’t go on, my voice had turned to stone in my throat.
“Then they do belong to you, Patson.”
“But I don’t want them,” I said. “You take them. Use them for your hospital or something.”
Dr. Morris looked down at me and waited. And even as I was wishing he would take them away, I felt the desire to hold them building up inside me again. In that very same instant, I hated them and prized them. I wanted nothing to do with them, but at the same time, I wanted everything they could do for me. I realized I had to make decisions about them, good decisions that would benefit other people and not just myself. Then I understood that owning these stones was a responsibility, and one that I was not yet strong enough to deal with.
“Please, Doctor, take them away.”
“Okay, Patson. I will keep them in the hospital safe, and later, together, we can discuss the matter with Boubacar. You trust the man who brought you here?”
“With my life.”
“Very well then, but now it’s time for you to rest and grow stronger. I’ll ask the nurse to give you a mild sedative, and I want you to sleep as much as you can,” he said, pressing the nurse’s call button. “And no more adventures for you for a while. Okay?”
“Yes, Doctor. And thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure, Patson. I want to see you up and about. That’s all I care about.”
The doctor left as the nurse came in to give me the pills. Once I was alone, I closed my eyes and felt my body sinking into the bed. My mind was racing, my thoughts spinning out like a spider’s web. I lay there thinking about how I had carried the stones in my leg the whole time, completely unaware of their existence, and the pain they caused me on the journey each time they reasserted their presence. And as I closed my eyes I remembered the last words my father said to me.
Never let the stones become more than you, Patson.
“I won’t, Baba. I promise you,” I mumbled out loud, remembering again how I had turned my back on my father, pretending to be asleep, on the last night we were together.
Rest now, son. That’s the most sensible thing to do in these circumstances. The body needs time to recover. You will be strong again, but first you must rest.
My father’s presence in this room was overwhelming: You’re right, Baba. You were always right.
Wake up, Patson,” Grace whispered into my ear. “You’ve been sleeping too long, big brother.” I felt my eyelids gently prised open, and my sister’s face came into focus. For a brief moment, I saw hints of my mother in her eyes and my father in the shape of her cheekbones. It all had the feel of a dream, until her fingers stroked my cheek, and with her warm, soft breath on my face, I knew she was real.
“Grace,” I said, smiling at her. “You’re here.”
I struggled to sit upright, blinked away tears, and embraced my sister, folding her tightly in my arms. We held on to each other, neither one of us wanting to let go. She was my family, my only connection to my parents, and now the most important person in my life.
“Boubacar?” I asked.
And there he was, standing next to Regis at the foot of my bed, grinning at the two of us. “I did not rescue your sister. Mademoiselle Gracie rescued herself,” he said, chuckling.
“She did?”
I turned back to Grace, and her eyes sparkled with pleasure and pride. “Don’t look so surprised, big brother.”
“But what happened? How did you—”
“When I saw Boubacar on the platform in Johannesburg I knew that I would have to get away from Determine by myself,” she explained. “So before the train got to Cape Town, when it was late at night, I pretended to be asleep. When I heard Determine’s snoring, I went looking for the conductor. I told him what had happened to me and how you and Boubacar had come for me at the station and how we just missed each other. He was a very nice man, and he let me stay in his room for the rest of the journey. I never saw Determine again.”
“And when the train arrived at the Cape Town station,” added Boubacar, “I was looking everywhere for that scoundrel until I saw a girl in a Girl Guide uniform wearing my tie. And it was Mademoiselle Gracie, getting off the train with the conductor. She ran straight to me, introduced me to her conductor friend, and voilà! Your sister completely organized her own escape.”
“And Determine?” I asked. “What was he trying to do with you?”
“He said he had an auntie in Cape Town, and that after the jamboree he would take me to live with her,” she answered, rolling her eyes. “He knew you were following me, Patson. After we missed each other at the Johannesburg train station, I told him that Boubacar was after him. He was very frightened of him.”
“He had every reason to be,” growled Boubacar. “Stupid young man.”
“And just as well he ran away,” said Regis. “Boubacar would have eaten him for breakfast.”
It felt so good to laugh, to laugh with relief and a sense of wonder at these people standing around my bed. And then we were talking, one on top of the other, our words overflowing, sentences interrupted and completed, recounting our separate journeys to Cape Town: I reveled in Grace’s exclamations of surprise at how we had crossed the river and run through the game park; Grace explaining how the Doctors Without Borders in Musina ha
d taken Sidi and No Matter from Determine, and how frightened she was to be alone with him; Regis hilariously demonstrating to Grace his role as a fake CIO agent; Grace’s troubling account of the unfriendly time she spent in Alexandra township and how she had tried to escape from the shack, but was caught by the old man; Boubacar repeatedly promising to pay every one of Regis’s speeding fines that he got between Johannesburg and Cape Town; how Determine thought Grace was playing games on her cell phone; how Boubacar could have jumped on the train, but decided he couldn’t leave me behind; Grace bravely walking through carriage after carriage in the middle of the night looking for the conductor; Boubacar aware of my deteriorating condition on the road trip to Cape Town, and how quickly the emergency staff at the hospital whisked me away; Regis describing how I spoke to the Wife and stood up to Commander Jesus on one leg, as steady as a rock, until he caught me.
Grace’s hand never left my own as we talked and laughed together. I found myself unwilling to let her out of my sight for a moment, acutely aware of what more I could have lost.
“What are you staring at, big brother?”
“At how much you’ve grown up in three weeks. The last time I saw you, you were in the sheds surrounded by your toys.”
“I never want to go back there. Never,” she said, squeezing my hand, a frown forming on her brow.
“That part of our life is over, Grace. We will not be going back to the sheds,” I said. “You will never be alone like that again.”
She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly. I could feel her body tremble against mine, and when she pulled away she was crying. “You sounded just like Baba then, Patson. All serious and kind.”
When you go on a journey you’d like to believe that it will change your life in some way. I could never have known, when I left Bulawayo almost four months ago, how different my life would be now. I had hoped that we would arrive at a place better than the one we had left, but it was not to be. For there was no place on earth that held my father anymore. During the two weeks that I was in the hospital, the finality of my father’s death finally hit home. Grace and I spoke about him constantly, recalling for each other all our separate memories of our father. The Shona believe that death is a journey, the success of which depends on the living. My father was on that journey now, and how I lived my life would be all he needed to reach his destination.
But he was not entirely gone from our lives.
One of the first things I did after I left the hospital was to take Grace and Boubacar to the mountain I could see from my hospital bed, to welcome my father back into our lives. We disembarked from the cable car that carried us swiftly over the cliffs to the top of Table Mountain and made our way along one of the many paths that lead to spectacular views of the city and sea below. And though I struggled with my crutches along the uneven path, I was determined not to let my leg be the focus of our day. I found a private place among the rocks that looked out over the gentle curve of Table Bay, and where far beyond the horizon lay the continent of Africa.
“Zimbabwe is in that direction,” Boubacar said to me, pointing straight ahead. “A thousand five hundred kilometers from here, due north.”
One thousand five hundred kilometers. It was hard to believe that I had traveled so far, but harder still to grasp all that had changed within me. The Patson who had begun his journey in Bulawayo was nothing like the Patson standing on this mountain above Cape Town.
“The food is ready,” Grace called, and I marveled at the confident way she served the bowl of sadza and meat stew she had prepared for this occasion, placing it in the center of a small cloth spread neatly over a rock.
In the last few weeks I had begun to appreciate just how much Grace’s journey to Cape Town had changed her too. She seldom left my side and we spoke for hours about all that had happened to her on her journey. She told me about the abandoned children she had seen drifting through the Showground at Musina; how in Alexandra township she had felt the hatred the local people had for foreigners; and she admitted to a fear of being alone among strangers. That sparkle I had always taken for granted was gone now, and at night she often had nightmares I could only guess at. Boubacar reminded me that, just as it would take time for me to accept living with one leg, Grace would need her own time to accept all that she had lost as well.
“I didn’t know your father had the habit of taking snuff,” said Boubacar, handing me the tobacco and sorghum beer that were required for the bira ceremony.
“He didn’t. These are the ingredients that are always used,” I said as I solemnly placed the small packet of tobacco next to the food and then slowly poured the sorghum beer over all of it. The bira ceremony was a way the Shona welcomed back into the family the wandering spirit of the deceased. The ritual was always held sometime after the family member had died, to call back the ancestor’s spirit to look after the children left behind. We held hands, and I did the best I could to remember the words my father had said so long ago to my mother’s spirit.
“We are calling you back, Baba, to be with us. I am asking that you will guide and protect your family. Be kind to us. Remember Grace and me, for we remember you. We welcome you back into our family.”
“Come back, Baba, we miss you,” Grace whispered.
Then we sat together in silence, enjoying the view, until the solemnity of the moment passed. Boubacar pointed out Signal Hill to us, the place where the cannon went off every day at noon, and Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela had spent twenty-seven years in prison, and to the west the vineyards and faraway mountains of Stellenbosch. We talked about the city below, what it might be like to live here, and how different it was from Zimbabwe.
“Have you decided what you want to do, Patson? About the stones?” Boubacar’s question was long overdue. On the day I left the hospital, after saying my good-byes to all the people who had taken such good care of me, I told Boubacar about the diamonds in Dr. Morris’s safe and how they got there. It seemed wrong to leave them behind. I had carried them for so long they were a part of me now, and only I could take responsibility for them. I had given them to Boubacar for safekeeping, knowing that sooner or later, I would have to make a decision about them.
“Phone the Baron,” I said finally. “Tell him I’m honoring our agreement. And that I have something special I want to sell.”
Moyo Home
Sea Point, Cape Town
5 December
Dear Baba and Amai,
My beloved parents, Joseph and Shingai Moyo,
I never understood the meaning of the dream I had the night you came to me, Amai. I don’t know if dreams are meant to be significant or even if one should pay them any attention. I think perhaps they are there to help you work out all your thoughts of the day, or maybe they are meant to be puzzles from the ancestors that we are challenged to solve.
So this is how I have understood the dream I had on my last night on the diamond fields: The Y-shaped stick was a symbol of me; the curling vines had to be you, Baba. Together the goddess and baobab tree were watching over me, your son, your creation. You both wanted a future for me that gleamed like a skyscraper soaring through the clouds.
“This is all for you,” you had said, Amai, when you showed me the entrance to the many brightly lit rooms.
And so, after talking with Boubacar and Grace about the diamonds, and what they meant and what we should do with them, we decided that they were gifts from you. Look to Grace, you told me, and if I hadn’t come to find her in Cape Town, Dr. Morris would never have found the stones. So I decided to walk through the doors of that skyscraper to explore all that life might bring me. The girazis may help me a lot, but only I can build the skyscraper of my life. And I promise you, Baba, I will not allow them to drive me into any tree.
The Baron came to Cape Town, inspected the stones with his loupe, and a few weeks later I became a very wealthy young man. Then a lot of things started happening all at once. I got two new prostheses, one very much like the
one Innocent showed me and the other for general use. I’m still struggling with my physio but I’m getting stronger and Dr. Morris is pleased with my progress.
Boubacar has found a job as a bank security officer, and the three of us have moved into a flat in Sea Point overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Every day I exercise along the promenade with the taste of the sea in my mouth. Grace goes to St. Cyprian’s School for Girls and loves being in class again. I was accepted to a school called Bishops, and I have a whole term under my belt. And Baba, you would approve of how strict my teachers are.
Everything that happened in Marange is behind us now. There’s no point in going back there. I feel sad about what is happening in Zimbabwe, and on some days when I get a bit homesick I feel I have lost my country too. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll go back.
There was one thing that took me a long time to do. I had to work up a lot of courage before I was able to phone Sheena. I told her the truth. About everything. It was a long phone call, and by the end we were laughing and I invited her and her family to come to Cape Town for the December holidays. I hope they come.
And so I have told you everything now, Baba, and the story I’ve told is who I am today. But when I finally came to this page—the very last page of the diary you gave me back in the tobacco shed—I found a message, words scribbled in the bottom right-hand corner, waiting for me to find them. It seems only right that they be the final words of my story:
Yah, Half Prince, I know you are going to make it. Even though it looks bad now, you’re going to be all right. Did I ever lie to you? No, so believe, Patson! And it will be good again, because the Geez are in the Knees. That’s all I’m saying and somebody as “bright” as you should know what I’m talking about. You’re my best friend, Patson, always will be, till the day I die. ARVES!
For more great reads and free samplers, visit
Diamond Boy Page 26
