The Old Drift

by Namwali Serpell

  * * *

  Her fingers deep in Judas’s purr, Matha was laughing and wincing. Bartholomew’s paws tickled and scratched the skin of her ankles as he tumbled over them in mesmeric wander. Upside-down Godfrey canted back onto his feet and grinned at her, the round black moons of his shoulders curving against the noon-blue sky. Bartholomew ceased looping Matha’s ankles, gave her a look of disgust and sauntered off. Judas scampered after him. Always a follower, that one.

  ‘Come, Sister of the Heavens. We are starting just-now,’ said Godfrey, pointing at the SPACE banner. He reached down and pulled Matha to her feet. She tugged down on her leather bomber jacket, a gift from Ba Nkoloso. She was wearing it despite the heat because it set her apart from the other girls here, the hangers-on and would-bes. Some of them had babies on their backs – as if one could properly space-train with such a burden! Those girls teased Matha – they said she wasn’t serious, that she laughed too much. But while they were busy wiping poo and snot and spit and piss from their babies’ wet holes, Ba Nkoloso had taught Matha how to drive a car, fix an engine, and put together a circuit board with a handful of wires and an old battery.

  Matha gave the girls a pitying look now as she and Godfrey jogged over to where Ba Nkoloso and the other cadets were lining up in front of the SPACE sign. There was a camera facing them: a square black box with a tightcurled horn, balanced on three long thin legs. Behind it were the reporters, microphones and notepads dangling from straps around their necks. With their dull stares and occasional flicks of the hand, they looked like a dazed herd of cows.

  Ba Nkoloso led the cadets through their drill exercises: jumping up and down and back and forth, clapping and singing. He paced in front of them, his voice booming vigorously: ‘Nkoloso watemwa malaila wateka nsongo tapema.’ He had revised the Bemba warrior song to include his name. Matha wondered if the reporters had any notion of what the cadets were singing, or of its relevance to the fight for freedom. Probably not. These men didn’t seem to grasp the political situation here at all. They kept asking the same obvious questions.

  ‘Mr Nkoloso.’ A British reporter with a goatee stepped forward now, the camera rattling on its legs behind him. ‘I understand that you have a rocket. Where is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ba Nkoloso said with his wry smile. He pointed at Cyclops I in the distance. ‘That is my rocket, and with it, we will go to the moon.’

  ‘And who will be the first Zambian on the moon?’

  ‘You have come at a most propitious moment,’ Nkoloso grinned. ‘We have just decided which of our astronauts will have the place of honour in the space capsule for our historic moon shot. Mr Godfrey Mwango has demonstrated an outstanding ability to walk on his hands.’

  ‘Walk on his hands, you say?’

  ‘That is the only way a man can transverse the moon, given the gravity conditions.’

  The reporter nodded, his neck tendons straining like tree roots.

  ‘Mr Mwango has also passed the acid test of any aspiring astronaut,’ Ba Nkoloso continued, ‘simulated recovery from a space capsule following a landing on water. A fearsome test for a young man who has only just learned to swim! We must now prepare him for our anti-gravity drill.’ Ba Nkoloso bowed slightly and marched over to the training drum.

  The reporter turned and spoke directly into the camera. ‘To most Zambians, these people are just a bunch of crackpots and from what I’ve seen today I’m inclined to agree.’

  Matha giggled at his nasal voice. What did he mean, cracked pot? Something broken and useless? Or something sharp and dangerous, something that explodes on the fire like a bomb? These bazungu all spoke a strange and unwieldy English, an English that brokered no other tongue. Matha could barely understand them, especially the American, who was now beckoning her over to his permanent spot under a thorn tree.

  When she reached his station in the shade, he smiled at her, sweat hanging from his upper lip like a veranda after the rain. He introduced himself – Arthur Hoppe – and asked her questions with his hilly, hairy accent. Her name (Matha, she spelled it out carefully), her age (sixteen), her level of education (Form I). His next questions were harder. She ran each one through a sort of thought experiment: What would Ba Nkoloso say? What would be best for the Academy?

  ‘I hear you have been training to go into orbit. Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said politely. ‘It is so. I am the one going to Mars.’

  ‘You’re way ahead of us!’ Hoppe grinned. ‘We don’t have any girls at NASA.’

  ‘Oh-oh? Is it?’ she giggled, covering her mouth with her hand.

  ‘Miss Mwamba,’ he leaned in confidentially, ‘I hear you have been raising twelve cats as part of your training? What is their function?’

  ‘Yes, please. They are to give me companionship on the journey. But they are also’ – she took a deep breath to get the pronunciation right – ‘technological accessories.’

  ‘Technological accessories?’

  ‘Yes, please. When I arrive on Mars, I will open the door of the rocket and I will drop the cats on the ground. If they survive, we will know that Mars is fit for human habitation.’

  Hoppe laughed. ‘And what will you and your cats do on Mars?’

  This answer she had memorised: ‘Our telescopes have shown us that planet Mars is populated by primitive natives. A missionary will accompany me on my trip but the missionary must not force Christianity on the Martians if they do not want it.’

  Hoppe squinted at her, his smile wavering. He cleared his throat. ‘And do you find space training thrilling, valuable or merely routine?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘It is a bit worrisome.’

  ‘Miss Mwamba, how did you become an astronaut? When did you meet the director of the…’ he checked his notebook, ‘Zambia National Academy of Science and Space Research?’

  ‘And Philosophy,’ she added. ‘Me, I have known Ba Nkoloso a very long time.’

  * * *

  ‘A-okay?’ said Ba Nkoloso, thumping his fist against the steel drum lying on its side in the grass.

  ‘A-okay!’ Godfrey’s muffled voice echoed from within. The cadets were gathered around a forty-gallon oil barrel, Cyclops I’s darker, dented twin. Reuben was holding the ceremonial spear aloft; Bambo clutched Ba Nkoloso’s overstuffed briefcase against his chest; Fortunate was busily waving the new Zambian flag. The British photographer bent down and snapped a picture with his Kodak, its flash casting a silver glow over the measled inside of the drum and giving them all a glimpse of Godfrey’s sweaty, smiling face.

  ‘All systems go!’ Ba Nkoloso shouted. ‘Countdown!’

  ‘Ten…nine…eight…’ the cadets chanted like schoolchildren.

  Matha’s heart beat in double time. She knew all too well the stuffy dark smother inside that drum, the reverberation of voices outside it – a buzzing echo in the metal and skin – the gentle rocking of the cylinder against the ground, like a canoe about to capsize.

  ‘Two…one…Blast off!’ the cadets cried.

  Nkoloso gave the drum a shove with his boot. It began to roll and the cadets began to applaud, but the decline was too shallow and Godfrey taller and heavier than the average Zambian. The drum rocked to a stop, balanced against a tuft of scrub. The applause pittered out, a rain shower changing its mind. The photographer stood up from his crouch, lowering his camera. Reuben and Matha glanced at each other, then ran forward and gave the drum a four-handed shove. Now it rolled freely, picking up speed as it bounced down the hill before bumping to a stop against a tree. Everyone ran after it – the reporters, the cadets, even the girls with babies on their backs, ululating with the thrill.

  Matha got to him first. The drum was banging with hollow booms as he righted himself.

  ‘Wow!’ he was saying over and over, or maybe ‘Ow!’

  ‘Are you fine?’ Matha asked as his head crowned from the dark c
ave.

  ‘What a ride!’ he shouted as he crawled out of the drum. His uniform was smeared with brown streaks from the remnants of oil inside. ‘Your turn, Miss Mwamba!’ he grinned, swaying a little as he touched the back of her neck, setting it aglow with anticipation. She glanced at Ba Nkoloso for confirmation. He was busy speaking into the American’s microphone, his lips grazing its perforated silver head.

  ‘This is how we are acclimatising to the space travel,’ he was explaining. ‘It gives my cadets the feeling of weightlessness, of rushing through space.’

  ‘Do you think that this training session has been a success?’ the British reporter sneered.

  ‘We have learned a great deal,’ Nkoloso replied with a twinkle in his eye that Matha recognised as preface to a punchline. ‘For one thing, we are going to need a bigger barrel!’

  * * *

  Matha was swinging. The ropes hanging from the tree were creaking; the branches to which they were tied were creaking; the birds in the leafy canopy above were creaking; her bomber jacket was creaking. Matha tipped her head back and laughed, delighting in this questing sound of things moving, stretching, on their way. The other cadets were watching her swing, their heads pivoting back and forth as if the wind were tossing their skulls to and fro. Godfrey gave her an occasional shove to keep her going. Ba Nkoloso, standing a few feet away from her, rattled out his explanation to the reporters, the words fading in and out as she swung.

  ‘Mulolo…swinging technology…ahead of the Americans and…greater thrust to soar…deep abysmal heavens…theories of Diocletes…flew towards the sun…obscure flights of birds…yes, fishes too!…way forward…turbulent propulsion!’

  Matha had heard all this before, the way Ba Nkoloso blended together science and fable, African technology and Western philosophy. It confused others, but she had learned to see the world through his double vision. It was as natural to her now as the air through which she was swinging. She turned to face the television camera. She knew its square black mouth was quietly eating a picture of her. The British reporter stepped in front of it, his back to her. As she swung towards and away from him, she caught snatches of his commentary:

  ‘Zambian astronaut…finally airborne…self-styled indigenous…far-sighted if unconventional…toothless space enthusiast…Zambia’s village idiot…an amiable lunatic who…a manifesto that…“Wherever fate and human glory lead…”’

  We are always there, Matha whispered the end of the Academy motto, opening her eyes to the tilting, untilting world. Would the white men believe Ba Nkoloso? Would they give him the money he had requested for his Space Programme? Or would his plan for revolution backfire?

  * * *

  It was time for the water landing. Godfrey and Matha faced each other. He slid his hands under her armpits and lifted her up, trying to hide the strain of it – she was a heavy girl now. The oil drum was already in the stream, Reuben and Fortunate holding it in place as Godfrey lowered her inside. As soon as Matha’s feet touched the bottom, the drum bucked violently. She gripped the sides and Godfrey gripped her shoulders.

  ‘Are you fine, Sister of the Heavens?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she smiled. He let go and gave the drum a push and off she floated. The cadets waved. The reporters stared. The cameras gnashed their teeth.

  As she wobbled from the shore, Godfrey’s figure receding in the distance, Matha giggled. Who would have thought she would end up being an astronaut? When Ba Nkoloso had invited her to join his new revolutionary academy, she had assumed it would be like entering combat. There were uniforms, yes – the bomber jacket she wore, the metal helmet that Ba Nkoloso wore – but they were more like costumes, and the battlefield more like a theatre of war.

  The drum spun and dipped as it neared a rock in the stream. She leaned out and grabbed a branch jutting from a tree on the shore. She steadied the barrel, keeping it wedged against the rock so the reporters could take some footage. The sound of the river beating against the steel was like a giant kalimba – the plonking and plinking made her ankles hum. Matha gazed up at the sky, trying to look contemplative, but the trees above tangled her view.

  Yes, serving as a cadet in the Zambia National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy involved quite a bit of drama. It meant waking at dawn to paint signs – DOWN WITH FEDERATION! AFRICAN FREEDOM NOW! – on the colonial governor’s house. It meant staging sit-ins at all-white venues in Lusaka like the Rendezvous café and the Ridgeway Hotel. It meant writing protest songs with Godfrey, who had formed a band – the Just Rockets – to play at freedom rallies. It meant making homespun bombs with paraffin and cloth, and sometimes with wires and triggers. It meant crouching behind bushes at roadblocks to throw them at cars and sneaking out at night to plant them under bridges.

  And sometimes, it meant pretending to be an astronaut, giving interviews about cats and rockets and technology to white men with squinty eyes and sweaty lips, trying to convince them that Zambia would land a man on the moon before America or Russia. Matha thought of Ba Nkoloso’s words: This is a guerilla campaign and a propaganda campaign. This is Cha-Cha-Cha! We will make the white men dance to our tune!

  Matha smiled at them now, the white men. The reporters were packing up their beastly camera. One had wandered off to sit under a tree. Another stared at her, his head tilted to one side. She heard a crackle in a bush on the shore. Godfrey had come to help her disembark. He splashed into the stream, grabbed the edge of the drum, and dragged it onto the bank. He lifted her out of the drum and she swayed before him, the ground see-sawing beneath her. He glanced over his shoulder, then pulled her behind a bush and stepped closer. He slowly unzipped her bomber jacket halfway down.

  ‘Comrade,’ said Godfrey, by way of greeting.

  ‘Comrade,’ said Matha, smiling against his lips.

  * * *

  Edward Mukuka Nkoloso lay on his back on a bench at Independence Stadium, looking up. The sun had set and the moon had risen, a fingerprint smudge in the greyblue sky. Below it was the round rim of a stadium lightshade. And below the shade he could see Matha’s forehead and cheekbone in silhouette, curving above the round of her breast, which in turn curved above the mound of her stomach. The moon, the shade, the rounds of Matha standing above him – each sphere darker than the last, each overlapping, moons on moons. Nkoloso sighed. The spheres were eclipsing. Apollo 11 had landed.

  Nkoloso directed his grief at Matha’s belly. Once, he thought he saw the tiniest of spheres, a tear, slip down her cheek – a rolling movement, a flash – but it was an illusion. He had summoned her here to discuss the Academy’s misfortunes – both external and internal – but she had offered neither apology nor reassurance nor consolation.

  ‘But what is it, Ba Nkoloso?’ Matha said instead, her brow crumpled in frustration.

  ‘WHAT IS IT?!’ he thundered back, his voice echoing in the empty stadium.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  Nkoloso exploded to his feet and marched back and forth on the bench, steps ringing out.

  ‘Cyclops could have been launched from this very place’ – he waved around at the stadium – ‘nearly five years ago. Z Day, 1964. But no, they said the rock-bang would contaminate the heavens. Now the Americans have beat us to become Controllers of the Seventh Heaven of Interstellar Space! They even promised me two million dollars. But these imperial neocolonialists, they have delayed payment because they are scared of our space knowledge. And now we must disband the programme. The revolution is over.’

  ‘No, Ba Nkoloso, the revolution, it cannot be over,’ Matha protested feebly.

  ‘Pah!’ he groused. ‘It is finished! Apollo has landed.’

  ‘Ba Nkoloso, you did not seriously believe we would get there before the Americans?’

  He stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘What was the Space Programme about for you, Matha? You and that Mwango boy were busy looking at each other. You sho
uld have been looking at the moon!’ He jabbed a finger at the sky.

  * * *

  But Matha was no longer listening. She didn’t understand why Ba Nkoloso was going on about the Space Programme as though it were real. She wondered, not for the first time, whether he had in fact lost his mind like all the newspapers were saying. He was still pacing back and forth, his purple cape wafting as he raved about the cadets and their ingratitude, about the death of his dream to reach the moon, which Matha had always assumed was dead on the ground to begin with – a political ploy, a prank like the others. At some point, night fell and the stadium lights clunked on, lighting Ba Nkoloso from behind – a freeze-frame, an explosive black shadow backed by screaming white light.

  Was this what James Brown would be like? There were rumours that the American musician was going to perform at Dag Hammarskjöld Stadium in Ndola next year. Godfrey was dying to get tickets. Ever since he had heard James Brown on the radio and seen pictures in Jet magazine, the Just Rockets had gone electric. Their afros and repertoire and the ankles of their trousers had all gone shiny and round. There was a new shimmer to Godfrey too, as he squealed into the practice mic – a stake in the ground with a chimanga husk strapped to it – as he twirled in his silver cape, dropped into the splits, and bounced back up like the handle of a water pump.

  After another hour or so of withstanding Ba Nkoloso’s plaints, Matha left him nursing his wounds at the stadium and went in search of Godfrey. The Just Rockets practised in a shed behind a shebeen in Kalingalinga, but she didn’t hear their crunchy, wailing Zamrock sound tonight, just Congolese rumba twinkling into the air, duelling with the crickets outside.