Something my father had once said came to me: Britain claimed this land and called it Rhodesia. . . . It was anything but fair.
I even opened my mouth but Greet sent my tongue scurrying back.
“You’re just a fucking Pom, what would you know about anything? Shut it.” He chuckled to himself and took out his smokes. “I’m kind of looking forward to it because, once we’ve gone, the blacks will start fighting themselves.”
“It won’t happen,” Ivan insisted.
“ ‘The whites will have to be culled.’ Mugabe actually said that. Our leader. Has everyone forgotten that we’ve got a gook running our country? A terrorist. And terrorism is all a terrorist knows.”
He finally turned my way, but only to blow angry smoke rings at me.
“No use looking to your boyfriend here for sympathy, the Poms are on Mugabe’s side. Now hadn’t you better run along and show him your farm, while you’ve still got it?”
We ate our ice creams in the back of the pickup with barely a word, and Ivan ended up tossing his over the side with still more than half left, his appetite gone.
The road retreated in a cloud of diesel and the city shrank beneath the msasas and kopjes. His dad was going fast now. Occasionally a cluster of African huts appeared off to the side, where children stopped to wave; and at one stage, when it felt there was nothing but us and dry bush in the world, we overtook an old-timer pedaling hard on naked rims. He wobbled and nearly fell over yet still managed to flash a huge smile at us two white boys in the truck.
This didn’t look like a nation still at war to me.
After more than an hour from the city, we left the tarmac and hit dirt. The tires rumbled over corrugated track and red dust swirled around the open cab and got in our eyes. We passed a sign that read HILLCREST FARM. We were on Hascott land but it was still another ten minutes before we turned between high-security fences and onto the edge of a green oasis.
The farmstead was an ornate, Dutch-style bungalow, probably over a hundred years old, robed in bougainvillea and with a raised veranda as wide as the house. The garden ran down a gentle slope, the borders of the flower beds carving sharp, European order between bursts of wild African color. And right at the end of the lawn, a swimming pool rippled a reflection of the sinking sun. Beyond, miles and miles of brown-green vlei all the way to the hills.
Mrs. Hascott was on the veranda. She put down the book she’d been reading and leaned forward as though watching a train come into view.
“Howzit, Mom.”
“Hello, my boy,” she said in an accent that was harsher than I expected and pulled a sweater over her shoulders.
She might have been quite pretty once, with green eyes like Ivan’s and jet-black hair, but closer up she was tired and drawn. She looked old before her time, and I wondered if that’s what living through a bush war—out here, actually in the bush—did to you. I thought of my own mother and wished I was at home with her.
It was strange that she didn’t get up to welcome her son, but as we climbed the steps I spotted her crutches. Only one leg found its way out of the blanket on her lap. I tried not to stare.
Mrs. Hascott got Ivan to give her a peck on the cheek then ruffled his hair. Ivan made a face.
Over by the gate, Mr. Hascott let out a strangled cry and slammed the door as he jumped back into the pickup. The very tall farmhand who’d been speaking to him had to jump out of the way to avoid getting hit.
“Where’s Dad off to in a hurry? Luckmore done something wrong?” Ivan asked.
Mrs. Hascott sighed. “No. Trouble on the perimeter again, you know how the old workers like to make trouble. They’re still bitter, but if they think they’re going to get their jobs back they can think again. Now go on, don’t be long. Dinner in an hour. The dogs are out, by the way.”
It was scant warning. The sound of barking erupted and a couple of huge Rhodesian ridgebacks came bounding around from the back of the house, showing their teeth. I stayed as still as possible while Ivan wrestled them to the ground and played with them until they yelped.
They weren’t the only ones happy to see him.
“Mastah Ivan! Mastah Ivan! Kanjani.”
A large African woman appeared at a side door. A simple floral dress hung from her enormous bosom, and the baby strapped to her back in a towel bounced as she danced and clapped cupped hands.
“Hey, Robina! Kanjani.” Ivan went quickly over to her. He seemed more pleased to see the maid than his own mother. “I’ve missed you, the food’s even worse this term. What are we having?”
“Tonight you have shep-hedds pie, your favour-itt. I make it special special, number one.”
I was stunned. This wasn’t an Ivan I knew. And the surprise went on when he took me to the workers’ village and we kicked a football around barefoot with the little piccanins until it was too dark to see. When we left they danced around us, laughing and singing, “Bye bye, Mastah Ivan.”
On the way back he detoured us to the pool and produced some Madisons.
“You want a gwaai?”
I looked around nervously and said no. He fired up a match and lit his smoke, and then we sat in front of the blackness, the vague outline of the hills against a starry sky all we could see.
“Greet’s an arsehole.” He took a big drag. The cherry glowed and lit his face, and in that moment I knew what he would look like as an older man. I shivered, perhaps from the cold.
“He’s a bastard,” I said.
“That’s because he hates you. I wouldn’t take it personally, he hates all Poms. Poms killed his brother.” Ivan spoke flatly. “That’s how he sees it. In the war, gooks divided the unit his brother was fighting with, and they found him the next day pinned to a tree with his own cock in his throat.”
“Jeez . . .”
“A few weeks later the Poms signed the country over to the blacks at Lancaster House, when they should have been sending troops to help us.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do. And don’t you dare tell him I told you. Greet’s going to keep at you as it is. Don’t haul me into it.” He took another long drag.
“Does your old man know you smoke?”
“You’re kidding, right?” He pointed to his backside. “If he gaffed me he’d lash this so hard I’d have an arse for a nose and sneeze shit every time I got a cold.”
“Your old man beats you?”
“Of course. Doesn’t yours?”
I didn’t answer and pretended to swat away a mosquito that wasn’t there, while inside I felt a strange swell of jealousy. My father didn’t do anything.
Ivan lit up a second smoke with the first. I took one, too, drawing angrily and trying not to cough.
“He has this stick he calls Moses,” Ivan went on, “because he reckons he could part the Red Sea with it. He uses it on the workers, too. It’s the only way blacks learn. My old man’s good to them, but you’ve got to keep a firm hand.”
“Is that what your dad was doing earlier?” I asked, shocked. “Beating them?”
“No, that was the local blacks causing trouble. We only employ Matabele now, you see. That’s my old man for you—Mugabe is Shona tribe and the Shona and Matabele have always hated each other, so my old man sacks our Shona workforce and goes all the way to the other side of the country to get Matabele hands. Any chance to piss the government off. The Shona lot come back and stir now and again. Robina’s Shona but she’s all right, she knows her place. She looked after me and my boet during the war.”
“You don’t talk about your brother much,” I said. Ivan strangled his cigarette with his fingers so I quickly changed the subject. “The war must have been scary, hey?”
Ivan came right up close. His eyes glistened in the light of the quarter moon.
“No, actually it was a laugh and a half. We couldn’t stop creasing up the day Mum found a mine.” I was starting to wish I was stuck at school after all. “Listen. To what’s out there. Listen hard.”
<
br /> I did. There was nothing.
When I looked back, Ivan had gone as if he’d never been. I was completely alone. Then, in the distance, an eerie rustling. Perhaps cattle shuffling over grass. Whatever it was it was getting close. I strained and shapes started to swirl. A snapping twig. A feral grunt. I had to tell myself it was just a warthog, or something, because otherwise . . .
“Now remind yourself there are gooks out there,” Ivan breathed right into my ear. I almost screamed. “Gooks the color of shadows with guns and knives, who want to steal your land and think nothing of cutting a guy’s dick off and making him eat it.”
He started back up to the house.
I trotted to catch up.
Dinner was around a large mahogany table too big for the four of us. Mrs. Hascott asked a few of the usual questions while Ivan’s dad attacked his meal.
“Dad?” Ivan had been itching to ask. “The farm’s not going to be taken, is it? You know, by the government.”
“Why the bloody hell would they do a thing like that?” came the gruff response between mouthfuls.
Ivan shrugged. “To give it to the blacks. Ian Smith isn’t leader anymore, so who’s to stop them?”
His dad met Ivan’s gaze with the closest thing to a smile I thought I was likely to see.
“Blacks can’t farm. It’s a ridiculous idea; I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”
“But if Mugabe wanted to,” Ivan went on, “could he?”
Now Mr. Hascott put down his fork.
“Look, my boy, Ian Smith might not be our leader but that doesn’t mean blacks can just walk onto someone’s land and take it. This is ours; we have title deeds. My grandfather bought it perfectly legally and the law is there to protect us. The Kaffirs may have won the war, they’ve got Mugabe, but this farm still belongs to us and will be ours until we decide to sell. Which we won’t. Okay? This is our land.”
Yet again, my dad’s voice haunted me about whose land it had been in the first place, but no way was I even going to think about saying it this time. I made myself get rid of the thought.
Ivan wouldn’t let go. “Surely it’s only legal if Mugabe says? He’s in charge. He can do what he wants.”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid. He made an agreement when he took over this country: He’s not allowed to take it.”
“But he said—”
Mr. Hascott had started to take up his beer bottle and cut Ivan off by dropping it.
“Since when have you been a bloody expert in politics? You’re boring me now.”
“He said he’d give them land if they won.”
“That Mugabe said a lot back then. Their sort will say all sorts of shit to get what they want.”
“Language, please.” Mrs. Hascott tried to intervene. “We have a guest.”
Only Mr. Hascott shot her a glance that made me go back to wishing I hadn’t been invited.
“He said he would, though.” Sometimes I didn’t know if Ivan was trying to make things worse or was just unaware. “He said the whites had stolen the land from the Africans and it was their right to take it back. He promised. How do you know he won’t?”
“He won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because if even one Kaffir steps onto my farm screaming land rights I’ll slot him with a bullet.” Mr. Hascott stabbed the air. He probably didn’t know he’d started to shout. “You see if I don’t.”
“And fifty?”
“Enough.”
“A hundred? Five hundred?”
“You’re pushing your luck, my boy. This farm will stay in this family for another hundred years, I can promise you that.”
“Ian Smith said the country would stay white for another thousand, only that didn’t happen because we lost. Besides, what if I don’t want it? Are you going to leave it to Steven and his long line of children?”
Mrs. Hascott gasped and put her hands to her mouth. Mr. Hascott was on his feet, chair crashing to the floor. He undid his buckle and ripped the belt from his shorts.
“You dare bring that name into my house.” His voice hissed. “I told you, I won’t have it. That boy is dead to me. Get to your room.”
Ivan didn’t go. Not straightaway.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?” he said, perfectly calm, his face a picture of serene clairvoyance. “You’re scared because you think it’s true—what he said. I heard it on the radio, but you said it was just Kaffir-loving journalists scaremongering. But Mugabe really said that about culling the whites and you think he still might.”
Mr. Hascott threatened a hand to his son’s face and stopped just short.
“Go to your room.”
Ivan went, and all at once there was just me and Mrs. Hascott. She tried to smile but it wouldn’t quite work.
“Ivan does push his father. He’s turning into a young man so quickly, I think we forget.” Her voice quivered out of control. Then: “Steven is Ivan’s brother. He left home some years ago to live in South Africa with his . . . friend.”
She started crying. I didn’t know what to do.
Much later, I crept in to see Ivan. He was lying facing the wall, knees curled to his chest, sniffing. I didn’t go close because I knew what it was like to have other boys see you trying not to blub.
I stood and looked at the pictures on his wall. There weren’t many. On one side, a shot of a massive waterfall spewing torrents above the words VICTORIA FALLS IS SUPER, while in the near corner I spotted photographs of white troops in combat gear, smiling and pulling V-for-Victory signs for the camera as they headed for the bush. In some I recognized a leaner, fitter Mr. Hascott with a bullet belt around his chest, a huge gun in one hand, and with a young Ivan riding on his shoulders.
“I hate him,” Ivan croaked, making me jump slightly.
I wasn’t sure if he meant his dad or Mugabe or Greet.
The silence came back so I moved back to the door.
“Check you tomorrow,” I said.
“Ja,” he said.
NINE
My eyes sprang open. The soft predawn light stroked the curtains and I struggled to distinguish the strange shapes of Ivan’s brother’s room. I’d been dreaming that the war was still on and that the gooks Ivan had put into my head were crawling outside the house; only I was back at school in Selous and trying to run away to England, racing against lots of Nelsons wearing camouflage and carrying guns, and to my side, boys were cheering for their houses as they always did.
“. . . Come on, Willoughby . . .”
“. . . Go, Heyman . . .”
“. . . Show us that Burnett spirit . . .”
“. . . Selous is the best, best, best . . .”
Then I woke properly.
Ivan was standing at the foot of the bed. He threw me a tracksuit.
“Here. You’ll need this, it’s chilloes out there.”
Outside, by the garages, he hooked a small rucksack onto his back and asked if I’d ridden a motorbike before. I lied and said I had, so he nodded me to one of the off-road bikes in there.
I copied what he did and kick-started mine into life, but then stalled it four times in a row. He turned his bike around and came back. I thought he was going to shout but instead gripped my clutch hand until it hurt then released it.
“Do it slowly,” he said.
We rode. Out of the gate and onto the farm roads. I felt a whole new exhilaration as the cold air blew into my face. The track was blood red and bumpy, on either side the fields remained obscure and uncertain as the sun struggled to breach the horizon, and by the time it eventually got there we must have gone miles.
We turned a corner and headed up a steep hill toward a kopje as big as a house—rock balancing on rock like magic and looking like it could topple and roll down on us at the slightest puff of wind. How many people must have gazed with wonder and thought the same on first sight?
We got off our bikes, and as night p
eeled away the ghostly landscape came to life under a golden mist: cattle, maize stalks, ostriches, blankets of tobacco leaves . . . Ivan must have seen this a million times but even he stayed quiet as it emerged into view. A Lourie bird began to screech its familiar cry of “G’way,” while above, the black and white of a fish eagle swooped low and then out to the almond-shaped dam.
“I fucking love this place.” Ivan spoke perhaps more to himself than me. “I’ll never let them take it.”
Then, nearby, a lone antelope emerged through the trees—a kudu, fawn in color with thin white stripes down its sides. Young and nervous, it paused with every step, ears twitching, scared by its own sounds. When it was twenty feet away, it suddenly became aware and stood rigid, looking right at us.
Ivan had very slowly and very carefully taken off his pack and extracted a semiautomatic handgun. It glinted dully.
He clicked the safety. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget the look on his face.
The crack split the morning in two. It made me jump even though it wasn’t as loud as I’d expected, and to my relief the kudu was already springing away among the branches.
Ivan was kicking his bike back into life.
“Come on!”
We hurtled down after it, twigs and thorns whipping my skin. I tried to keep up, but then a clearing came out of nowhere and I came face-to-face with a barbed-wire fence. I jinked left, panicked, and almost sent myself flying over the handlebars as I grabbed the front brake. The bike slid and ended up on its side.
“Get up!” Ivan yelled, and he slowed past me.
But I couldn’t right the bike on my own so now he was really mad. He looked about and the kudu was nowhere in sight.
Ivan parked up at the edge of a tobacco field to squeeze a few frustrated rounds off at some rats, only they were all too quick and he ended up screaming at them.
Out of Shadows Page 5
