Travel Light, Move Fast

by Alexandra Fuller

  “Yes, Mum,” I said, drying my eyes. “I do.”

  “Not even three kilograms,” Mum said. “I do think that’s very average.” She sighed philosophically, her shoulders sagging. “Oh, dear, it doesn’t amount to much in the end, does it?”

  “No,” I said.

  Then we sat with the box between us on Mum’s bed, silently and intolerably sad. We took one of her emergency happy pills. We agreed they were useless; we felt shocked and despondent to the core. “Probably find they’re a useless batch,” Mum said, shaking the pill bottle. “You can never tell with my Indian chemist. Sometimes your head goes off like a bomb, sometimes nothing at all.”

  Neither of us felt like supper; I made us each a cup of sweet, milky tea. We both agreed we shouldn’t cry; it would only make us feel worse, although neither of us could imagine what would make us feel better. We’d hit a looming, terrible, stalled-out sense that we wouldn’t be able to go on without Dad telling us what to do next.

  “What now?” Mum asked.

  I didn’t know what now. I knew what next, but I didn’t know what now. And I hadn’t realized until that very moment that “next” and “now” were, of course, two entirely different things. The future is easier to worry about; the present is harder to do. Also, I couldn’t imagine the present; but I could imagine the future, mostly.

  If all went well, or at least if things didn’t go any worse, we’d be leaving Budapest at five in the morning, flying to Hamburg, and from there to Heathrow. Two days after that, we’d be flying back to Zambia via South Africa. But I couldn’t quite patch together in my mind how I’d get all of us from here to there and from there to Chirundu, and from Chirundu to the farm.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Dad had always said. “Do something.”

  During moments of difficulty, Dad was a big believer in casting caution to the wind. The worse things got, the more likely he was to throw his shoulders back and go over the top. I suppose it was all that early exposure to Winston Churchill, Rupert Brooke, and Rudyard Kipling; those hymns, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” No wonder boarding-school-educated Brits were such easy targets in foreign wars.

  I swung my legs off the side of the bed. “We should pack,” I said. “For a start.”

  “Oh, Bobo,” Mum said. “How clever of you. What a good idea.” She wilted under the covers as if suddenly deboned. “But it’s just hitting me,” she said. “I can’t pack all this lot up. Not without help. Not ever.”

  She looked around the room, feebly uncertain, as if someone else had been camping there for two weeks. “Dad usually does the packing,” she said. And suddenly I saw their marriage, not as I’d seen it until now, a rollicking grand misadventure set in East and southern Africa, romance, racism, and tragedy, but as they must have felt it, a comforting habit, worn into grooves and creases over the decades. In all the uncertainty they’d courted, through all their little victories and their grand losses, they’d been each other’s constant.

  “We’re like a pair of geese,” Dad had once said. “Mated for life.”

  And improbably they’d met somehow, somewhere in the middle of all that life. They’d meted out the costs and the benefits; they’d worked out how to work it out. They’d leaned into each other’s strengths, shored up each other’s weaknesses; delighted in each other’s foibles; tolerated each other’s addictions; respected each other’s opinions.

  “Tub,” Dad might say. “How about we put in a patch of elephant grass this side of plot one? You know, by the dambo?”

  “Mm, and it’s a pull crop too,” Mum might reply. “Sound idea.”

  My favorite childhood nights were when I went to sleep with a heap of dogs snoring on my bed, and my parents murmuring about farming on the veranda. They spoke softly and quickly then, the way people do when they’ve developed a code; the tone was the quieting assurance of escalating agreement—nurseries, nitrogen, pH levels, beneficial microbes, nematodes, suckers, loam, lime, breeding, flowering, fruiting.

  “Divide, conquer, and delegate,” Dad always counseled.

  Mum ran the household, organized meals, took care of the pets. She treated the sick and tended the maimed; a line of patients greeted her every morning as she emerged from breakfast. She was in charge of livestock, poultry, orchards, and fish. Soil conservation, and the flower and vegetable gardens; these were also her purview. She did the careful work, the weighing and measuring, the husbandry. She was the better farmer of the two.

  Dad was the visionary and by the end he’d perfected the art.

  He’d have his grand ideas before dawn, he’d describe them by breakfast, and then he’d dash down to the pub for his eleven-o’clock brandy, leaving other people to do the work. Meantime, he shot rabid dogs and venomous snakes as needed; he did the farm shopping, he made a balls-up of the accounts, and he undertook to do the packing. He was the better organizer of the two.

  It was an art perfected over a lifetime to get our farm shopping balanced in the back of a pickup. There’d be food, of course, irrigation piping always; usually a repaired generator, or an engine leaking oil; fish food, fertilizer, and usually at least one miserable dog returning from a humiliating visit to the vet.

  I couldn’t imagine Mum packing her own suitcase.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  Mum sniffed. “Oh, thank you, Bobo,” she said.

  There had been problems with Customs and Immigration before, not least because Mum breaks into a guilty sweat the moment she’s confronted with uniformed airline officials. She blames hostile border crossings in central Africa, “the socialist banana republics,” she says, darkly. “They do an absolute strip search every chance they get.” But she also breaks into a sweat because she’s a compulsive smuggler. “Dad was always very good at finding secret hiding places for my few bits of comforting contraband.”

  “I think we’re going to have to leave your interesting collection,” I said. “We’ve got enough to explain to the authorities as it is. And you have no room.”

  I turned on the television. It was still tuned to the strange Eastern European channel Mum had found to replace the BBC’s soothing murders. Another marathon was on; a rerun surely, there couldn’t be this many marathons going on all the time anywhere on Earth.

  “Maybe just a couple of beer mats,” Mum pleaded, watching me throw out a block of partially consumed pink Hungarian cheese spread, cracking at the edges. I put a single beer mat into her suitcase. Mum’s attention flitted fretfully between the television and my packing. “Oh, Bobo, you’re so sensible.”

  I folded up the last of Mum’s clothes, leaving out her black trousers and her red silk shirt for the morning. There were three bags of rubbish surrounding the dustbin now, but Mum’s suitcase zipped, effortlessly and neatly. It was easy to lift.

  “Very clever of you, Bobo,” Mum said.

  “It’s late,” I said. “Why don’t you get ready for bed?”

  Mum obediently got up, bathed, and brushed her teeth.

  Meantime, I packed Dad’s small leather duffel. Two cotton hankies, one pair of posh trousers, two button-down shirts, a navy blue sweater, three pairs of cotton boxer shorts, a pair of handmade leather shoes from Thailand, four pairs of socks, a spare pipe, two tins of tobacco, one Ian Fleming novel, half read.

  “Oh, Bobo,” Mum said, padding behind me and climbing back into bed; she was pink from the bath. She smiled bravely, her eyes settling on Dad’s duffel. “Casino Royale will forever have a special place in our library,” she said; she seized the throat of her nightgown. “A sacred spot,” Mum continued. “I’ll smother it in Blue Death to keep the silverfish and the termites out.”

  “Should I leave on the television?” I asked.

  Mum shook her head; “No, no, Bobo.”

  “How about the bathroom light?”

  Mum shook her head again. “No, no, no. No need t
o waste the electricity. I’ll be okay.” She smiled sweetly.

  It reminded me of putting a small child to bed, alone for the first time. On hotel stationery, I wrote down the number of my room as a reminder.

  “Call if you need anything,” I said.

  Mum nodded.

  “The taxi comes at five,” I reminded her.

  “Blue Death to bedbugs,” Mum said bravely.

  “Blue Death,” I replied.

  Mum closed her eyes obediently. It felt cruel to leave her, although the only thing she’d have hated more than being alone would have been me crawling into bed with her, holding her close. That would have been a very American thing to do. She’d have stiffened to concrete on contact. I turned off the lights and let myself out of Mum’s room, the first whole night without Dad.

  “No, no,” Mum said, as if she’d read my mind, as she so often does, correctly usually. “No, no,” she repeated, her voice so faint and reedy she seemed already asleep, or speaking from another realm. “He’s right here with me. Dad’s by my side. I’m not alone, Bobo. Don’t worry. He’s all around me. I can feel him. I’ll be fine. I’ll be perfectly, perfectly fine.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  If You Are It, You Don’t Need to Say It

  Vanessa’s stint at the clinic in KwaZulu-Natal had reversed her circadian rhythms, apparently. She couldn’t sleep at night, and had to sleep instead for much of the day. In any case, she no longer kept traditional hours.

  “Whatever else is wrong with Vanessa,” Mum had said when it was too late and Vanessa was already doing group, “she certainly doesn’t need a drying-up stint.”

  “I think it’s drying out,” I’d said. “Not drying up.”

  “Oh?” Mum had feigned surprised. “Is it?”

  But even Mum couldn’t deny that the initial results of Vanessa’s drying-up stint had been spectacular. She’d swept onto the veranda at the Rock, backlit against a brilliant April sun the day of her release from the clinic in KwaZulu-Natal, eighteen months before Dad had ended up in Budapest; her blond hair freshly washed, her eyes bright. All the oxygen in a three-mile-square area had rushed to greet her. She was the lyric to any number of songs.

  “It was just like boarding school except no one was allowed a razor,” Vanessa had reported, sitting behind the bar, from where she could more easily hold court. She had the Persians on her lap, two of them, Puss Catastrophe and Puss Catapult; Rich had picked their names.

  We’d all been agog about the clinic.

  Or I’d been agog.

  The moment preliminary greetings had been completed Rich had declared his immediate intention to go into the office. “Tycoon magnate time,” he’d said, chain-smoking his way out of the conversation. Dad had patted Vanessa on the shoulder. “I’ll get Mum to tell me all about it later,” he’d lied, and had fled for Lusaka. “Farm shopping,” he’d explained.

  The veranda door had closed with a bang.

  Mum had glared after them, her expression one of sour envy: “Why I am always left with the boring jobs?”

  “An alcoholic stole the cleaning fluid out of the broom cupboard,” Vanessa had continued, persisting with her enthusiastic endorsement of her experience at the KwaZulu-Natal clinic, even with half her audience gone and half the remaining audience in a state of hostile detachment.

  “Whyever would someone do that?” Mum had asked. She’d begun cleaning her fingernails on the edge of a beer mat.

  Vanessa had bravely soldiered on with her account. “And a kleptomaniac stole my knickers off the washing line,” she’d said. “It was hilarious.”

  Mum had looked at her watch and had sighed audibly.

  “Anyway I’m going to have to be very boring from now on,” Vanessa had said firmly. “There will be no more ‘Olé, I am a bandit’ for me, no more ‘Let’s have a party.’”

  With that, Mum had clambered off her barstool, stiffly but with dignity. “Well, you didn’t get that attitude from my side of the family,” she’d said. And then, as if Vanessa had suddenly vanished from the Rock, and as if this were the first time I’d heard of it, Mum had turned to me conspiratorially. “Boofy had funny tendencies, poor thing. Dad’s mother, you know. I met her just the once when I was pregnant with Vanessa; she died shortly after that. Boofy, I mean. Not Vanessa, obviously. She was what used to be called a dipsomaniac.”

  Mum had strung the declaration out—dip-so-maniac—as if the word “alcoholic” didn’t yet exist, as if we’d no need for it in our modern times. “And one or two of Boofy’s sisters were serious tipplers too; your paternal great-aunts, gin at breakfast, that sort of thing,” Mum had said. “I believe, a couple of them anyway.”

  “I know,” I’d said. “You’ve already told me.”

  Mum had glared as if I too were headed down the same road as either Vanessa or Boofy; nowhere good in any case. “Oh, what’s the point? I’m going to put my feet up in Alcatraz with a nice little dog. I’ll ask Nixon for tea. Don’t bother to move if you don’t have to, either of you.”

  Then Vanessa and I had watched Mum as she’d marched with tiny, fiery determination down the little stretch of steep, rocky red road from the Rock to Alcatraz with Paddy, one of Vanessa’s nice little dogs, tucked under her arm. After a while, we’d heard the BBC World News shouting from the veranda at Alcatraz. Then there was the clatter of Mr. Nixon ferrying tea down to Mum.

  We’d pictured the performance: Paddy being momentarily displaced to make room for the tea, Mr. Nixon pouring the first cup for Mum; Paddy being returned to his rightful spot. Mum thanking Mr. Nixon extravagantly, “Oh, zekomo, Nixon. Zekomo kwambili.” And then we knew Mr. Nixon would be taking his leave backward, bowing and scraping his way out of Alcatraz, ironically surely.

  Vanessa and I had watched as he’d slogged up the steep little stretch of red road to the Rock with the empty tea tray. Dogs and cats had threaded around his ankles and jumped up on him. He’d conversed with them amiably. Mum liked Mr. Nixon because he bowed and scraped. Also, he didn’t kick Vanessa’s dogs and cats like the rest of us.

  “She’ll outlive Dad,” Vanessa had predicted at last.

  The kitchen door had slammed shut behind Mr. Nixon and everything had settled down again; the dogs had curled up in their dusty nests, a thousand cats had rubbed back and forth against the closed kitchen door, a sprinkler had flicked diamonds at an emerald lawn.

  “It won’t be easy,” Vanessa had said. We’d both sat for a while in the terror of that truth. It was hard to imagine either of our parents gone, let alone one without the other. She was half his world. He was half hers.

  She’ll sink without him, I’d thought.

  She’ll dissolve.

  “She’ll go straight over the falls,” I’d said.

  “Or,” Vanessa said, lighting a cigarette, “she’ll be fine.” Vanessa exhaled authoritatively. “Watch, Al-Bo. If poor Dad goes first, she’ll be absolutely fine. She’ll probably be the last man standing. Bindi says people like Mum live forever.”

  So then we’d both sat for a while in the terror of that truth.

  * * *

  —

  MUM’S DIFFICULT TO HANDLE, overbred and underschooled. She’s never taken orders from anyone, she wasn’t going to start listening to her two daughters this late in the game. The only person she’d ever listened to was Dad, and this was partly because he never told her to do anything. “Well done, Tub,” he’d say. “You wore this old goat out.” Or, “What do you say we take this show on the road?” Or, “Where’s my other half?”

  Mum had survived a woman’s worst bereavement, not once but three times, and she hadn’t let it destroy her. She’d come back each time, twice as curious about everything; also twice as alive and twice as impossible. She isn’t consumed by life, the way my father was; instead she devours it herself, she is the consumer. Sampling everything life has to offer, but
deliciously, and slowly and methodically.

  Unless with company, my father ate as if half expecting his meal to bite back; a preemptive strike against whatever was on his plate. On the other hand, Mum took all night to peck her way through the tiniest portion. “I can eat only a very little at a time,” she always said. “I must be very careful not to overdo it. I have a delicate constitution.”

  She had the farm carpenter make special bookstands; I have one too. Mum keeps one by her plate, it’s the way she was raised on the Uasin Gishu plateau. Everyone reading at table, everyone feeding half their supper to the dogs.

  “Ours was a very warm, very happy childhood,” she always says.

  “Total bloody chaos,” Dad had agreed. “The only way there was any control was if the old man brought out his shotgun and put a few slugs through the ceiling. That usually got some attention.”

  But the rest of the time, Mum and her wild sister, Glennis, did what they liked. Which was to drink homemade wine, and read their way through piles of books, and to be with dogs, and horses, and to dance at the club with British soldiers sent out from the UK to quell the Mau Mau. Once a week they went to the cinema, and once a year to the Convent School Pantomime, starring members of the community. “My father always went as Old Mother Riley,” Mum said. “Until the nuns put a stop to it. There were complaints about his bloomers from some of the infys.”

  An infy is what Mum calls anyone who isn’t superior. We both stole that from V. S. Naipaul; she’s read his entire oeuvre, of course. Also all of Paul Theroux, she adores his long, grumpy travelogues, his trips around Africa especially. “Angola was the last straw,” she reported. “It was so ghastly, Paul Theroux wrote off the whole of the rest of the continent.” She’s also read most of the classics; she’s actually read War and Peace, and Anna Karenina, and everything by Jane Austen.