by Peter Rimmer
Tatenda found the elephant trail that had been used for thousands of years on the third day of his flight and even the burden of going north was taken from his mind. The annual migration of the herds moving one behind the other took them south out of the Zambezi River valley a month or more after the end of the rainy season, depending on the grazing in the valley. The great bull led the mammals up the escarpment to the high ground and then down to the well-watered plains that stretched to eternity. The journey back was north and the rugged outcrops that sloped up to form a high ridge looking down into the distant valley. Among the great outcrops there were many places to hide, and pockets of fertile soil scooped into the rocks to grow millet and pumpkin away from the scavenging impi of Lobengula. The afternoon of the first day of his longer stride on the beaten trail he heard the horsemen far enough away to hide behind an anthill in the tall grass off the trail. He watched the four well-armed men ride south down the trail with a purpose. They were prospectors, judging by the picks and shovels strapped to the horses’ rumps, but they were not looking at the ground. Their backs were straight, and they laughed as they went on their way, unaware of Tatenda twenty yards into the bush clutching his puny shotgun.
The next morning he was forced off the trail again by two horsemen, white policemen in the uniform of the British South Africa Police, one of whom he recognised as the man in charge of the open bush to the far north and to three miles south of the Mazoe River and Elephant Walk. It was this man’s job to keep the peace, and he was heading south with the same purpose as the prospectors. That afternoon two more white men cantered past looking neither to the left nor right.
On the seventh day, he reached the foothills and followed the winding trail of the elephants through and around the outcrops of granite. Some of the boulders were hundreds of feet high, thrown down as he knew by the gods in anger when the tribe of man was sent away in wandering bands sacrificed to the mercy of beasts. Now his people had gone back to the place of the desolation and his search began as he climbed higher and higher watched by eagles and vultures from their nests. The trail swallowed him and he went on and round. Whole trees grew from splits in the mighty rocks, searching down with their roots for soil and sustenance. Leopard watched him from ledges high in the broken outcrops, so far away they looked the size of Harry’s cats, basking in the late September sun, only retreating to the cool interior of the lairs when the colour of the sun in the morning changed from white to yellow and waves of heat rose from the bald heads of the giant boulders. With the heat of the day and rising thermals the clouds built in the rainless sky only to fade in the colder night. Rock rabbits scurried again in the cool of the morning and they reminded him of the plight of his people. By the end of the tenth day, when he was approaching the top of the mountains that ranged away to west and east, he had seen no sight or trace of his people, only the white men moving south on their horses.
That evening he stood next to a small stream that had found its way out of a cleft in the mountain and plunged in gentle fury out into space and down to the canopy of trees two thousand feet below on the floor of the Zambezi Valley that stretched as far as he could see. Despondent, he sat on his haunches and wondered if all the people of his tribe were dead. To his right, down a gentler slope to the valley floor, he could still see the elephant trail. As he sat and looked down into the great distance, he caught the first whiff of fetid breath, the first smell of foul air trapped for centuries. Facing him as he turned to find the source of the sickening smell was an old, gnarled, tangled tree not ten feet from his face. Leaving the stream behind him to continue its endless plunge over the cliff he found the small opening to the cave behind the tangled roots of the wild fig tree. Pushing his saddlebag and gun ahead of him he squeezed his way into the cave, disturbing a small rock that dropped inside and echoed its way deep into the bowels of the mountain.
For half an hour he waited until his eyes were accustomed to the dark. Little light found its way into the cave that spread into the darkness thirty feet below his feet. He was on a ledge and to his right, crude steps were cut into the rock leading down to the bone-strewn floor of the cave. However much he wrinkled his nose to catch the smell there was no trace of fresh dung or living cat, and he climbed down into the cave to see where it went, convinced the steps had been cut by his people.
The witch had watched him stand. All the time she stroked the soft fur of the crouched leopard, the yellow eyes fixed on Tatenda standing on his ledge, the predator waiting for the witch to let him go. The animal’s stomach rumbled with his excitement. The witch felt the leopard’s tail twitch against her back and smiled in the dark in deep anticipation. The distance between the leopard and the man as the man took the crudely cut steps to the cave’s floor was eighty yards. The man’s movement made the tail thrash and still, the witch stroked the leopard’s head, calming the deadly instinct. The witch was waiting for the light and when the ever-rising sun high outside the mountain that encased the cavern reached the small entrance to the hole, hundreds of feet above the cavern floor, a bright white light beamed clarity on the ancient bones and the witch let go of the leopard to find the brief light that the witch used to terrify her people. In the shaft of light, the leopard stopped, commanded by a click from the witch’s tongue.
At the moment the leopard showed its face it spoke, the yellow eyes fixed on Tatenda.
“This is the ancient home of Kalanga,” spoke the leopard. “Who are you?”
The light and the leopard disappeared at the end of the sentence leaving Tatenda rooted to the spot. With fear savaging his brain he did not hear the double-click of the witch’s tongue calling back the leopard, her throat sore from her ventriloquy that had thrown her voice to issue from the leopard’s mouth. As silent as the leopard, the witch withdrew further into the cavern, listening for the terrified departure of the stranger who had entered their sanctuary. When it came, a long moment after the sun passed over the hole in the roof, she smiled with toothless satisfaction.
The moment of pure fear, honed by thousands of years of superstition, made Tatenda shiver in the heat of the sun, his rigid hands still clutching the gun and saddlebag. The wind had come up and blown into his face taking away the smell of ancient death. A black eagle circled soundlessly, ignoring the man on the road below. Taking a down current, the great bird dropped vertically to the face of the escarpment, searching the jutting rocks for prey. The wind made a thin whistle passing through a rock cleft above Tatenda’s head, and the sound of the normal wind soothed his shivering and stopped his urge to run out and dive towards the eagle soaring down below through the spray that was all that was left of the plunging stream. Dropping to his knees the ancient man within him, now dressed in European clothes, called for his ancestors to intercede with God and take the terror from his mind. He plunged his head in a running stream thirty feet from the lip of the escarpment, crawling further into the stream that dragged him slowly to the plunge, the current gentle with its balm, the rock floor smoothed by the years of rushing water. Luxuriously as he faced his ancestors, Tatenda turned on his back, still floating inch by inch to his death at the end of the stream, his body bumping the bouldered floor of the riverbed. A man was standing on the last rock beside the plunge with the saddlebag in his left hand and Harry’s shotgun in his right, the belt of cartridges across his chest. A jackal skin hung from his waist and hid his genitals.
“You better come out of there,” he said in Shona. He was about Tatenda’s age.
“You spoke to the leopard,” he said as a statement. “I have been following you for two days. The white men are leaving the country. It is time for the struggle. You are Kalanga or the leopard would not have spoken.”
“Those things are mine.”
“Where did you get them?”
“From the white man.”
“You have been with the white man?”
“For many years after the Zulus killed my family.”
“And now you have come home. Go
od. We are going to kill the white men and women before the soldiers return. It is said so by the witch. The Kingdom of Monomotapa will come again and we will walk as men without fear in our own land, masters again of our destiny. The witch has spoken to the ancestors and they give us the word of God. We must kill the white people.” Carefully, so as not to lose his balance and with the gun set aside on the rock, he put down his hand and helped Tatenda from the water.
The witch was satisfied with her work when Tatenda, still terrified by his ordeal, was brought into the village that backed away from the labyrinth of caves, a sanctuary known to the Kalanga priests for centuries. The witch was head priest, and she knew she was the most powerful member of the tribe, smelling out anyone for death by clubbing if they disagreed with the instructions she fed to the people through the paramount chief. Each tribe that made up the Shona-speaking people were ruled by a paramount chief and each chief was controlled by the powers of the witch-priests. And for the first time in centuries, their words were being challenged by the white men and their God of love and forgiveness. The witch had travelled for nine days to attend a secret meeting. The word had reached the witch-priests that the white man’s army was moving to the south for battle with the Boers. The Matabele and Shona people became of one mind. Together they would destroy the white man and drive them back across the Limpopo River. The witch-priests at their meeting agreed to unleash a war of liberation.
The witch watched Tatenda while she stroked the leopard’s head. She was old and wrinkled, her breasts hanging in long black leather pouches to her navel. No one sat near her out of fear and the self-knowledge of her power was intoxicating. She had been a girl of three when she was taken for training by the witch before her. For forty-seven years, there had been no other contact with the people except through her power of fear and the magic she had learnt from her predecessor. Sometimes she laughed at the stupidity of people but the sound was silent in her throat. Sometimes she threw the laugh high into a tree at night, the cackling shattering the peace of the people and sending fear deep into their genitals. Whenever the chief questioned her words of suggestion, she used her power of magic, the tricks of her trade the other old crone had taught her before she died from the poison the witch had slowly fed into her food. The witch knew that power, absolute power was the most intoxicating experience of human life, and she was not going to have it usurped by these white people who did not belong in her country.
The man they called Gumbo after a Matabele assegai shattered his hip when he was twelve and left for dead, limped towards Tatenda who was standing alone next to the chief’s hut where he had been taken. Tatenda watched the man approach. The gun, bag and cartridges had gone from Tatenda’s possession and the limping man was smiling like someone who had just done a favour.
“The women gave you food?” asked Gumbo.
“No. I have not eaten.”
“You will. There is food since the white people stopped the Matabele stealing our food.”
“Then why do you want to kill them?”
“You have heard?”
“Everyone talks about a war of liberation. You chase out the white man and the Matabele will raid your cattle again.”
“They are our friends. The chief says they are our friends. An enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“The Matabele need you after Jameson defeated Lobengula and chased him out of Gu-Bulawayo. The Matabele impis came to the walls of Fort Victoria and slaughtered our people in front of the eyes of the white man. Jameson made up an army and rode against the Matabele.”
“And he rides again to chase the Boers out of Johannesburg to give the gold to Rhodes.”
“If you succeed, you will live in fear of the Matabele. War is the only business. There are many Englishmen with powerful guns. I have seen them. You chase away a few and more will return. There is plenty of land for everyone. I have walked for days through the bush and you were the first black man I saw. White men, a few on horses going south.”
“When the chief gives the word, we attack the farms and mines of the white men and when they come out of the forts, we will kill the men and then go to the forts to kill their women and children. They will have great fear of us. They will not come back.”
“You are well informed.” The knowledge of Doctor Jameson and Johannesburg had impressed Tatenda.
“I am the chief’s son and they call me Gumbo. What is your name?”
“Tatenda.”
“Gumbo. The man who limps. That is me.”
“Gumbo. Be careful. Tell your father. I have lived with these white people for many years. They will never go away.”
“Then why did you leave them?”
“To find my own people.”
“Precisely. People live with their own. They feel comfortable. We also do not wish to live with these white people who treat us as slaves.”
“It is better to be a slave of the white man than dead or hiding in the mountains like a rock rabbit, frightened of the birds. I have come to tell you to come out of the caves. The white men will protect you. There is a life of joy again for us.”
“Do not say that. The witch is watching. You will have to fight with us.”
“I will not.”
“Then she will kill you. You have heard the voice of Kalanga’s leopard and the priests are instruments of the leopard.” Thinking of the leopard Tatenda shivered in fear, and the witch watching smiled to herself. ‘Fear is the best controller of man,’ she told herself, and for good measure threw a cackle at the msasa tree above Tatenda’s head.
One hundred and thirty miles away to the south clouds had built up all day. The heat and humidity were oppressive. For the third time that day Emily snapped at Harry and sent him crying out of the house, which sent four-year-old Madge into a tantrum and stretched Emily’s nerves to breaking point. All the men were out in the lands and Gregory Shaw’s fancy wife had not come back from Salisbury in three weeks. Despite Gregory’s bragging, the lady was not pregnant and Emily doubted she would come back to the farm. Romantic farming in faraway Africa, from the comfort of the Savoy Grill in London, was very different to the reality of a house built from raw timber which the termites ate with relish, sending fine clouds of chewed wood from the rafters dusting every cup of tea and making Alison Oosthuizen sneeze until she was ready to burst. Even after three years on the tract of land they were grandly calling Elephant Walk, she longed for the solitude and calm of Hastings Court and cursed the day she ever heard of Africa.
She loved Sebastian with all her heart but hated Africa with every fibre of her body. She was never free of bites whether tick or mosquito. Bats hung from the roof lattices that held up the open thatch, and twice she had found a dead snake in what they emphatically called the bathroom consisting of a tin tub that needed water lugged up from the Mazoe River. Even the joy of living with her father could not dispel the nightmares and if she ate wild boar again or venison, she would scream down what was left of their house. Even the buck ate the few flowers she had been able to grow in the patches of open land between the msasa trees, and Tatenda running off without a word to anyone had been the last straw, as the only other person who could speak Shona to what they referred to as the house servants, which even Alison thought was a bit of a laugh, was Harry and he was more than sparing with his workload. But above everything, it was hot, hot, hot. Giving full vent to her feelings Emily Brigandshaw screamed out loud and felt a little better. The noise shut her daughter off in mid-cry and brought Harry back into the house with an expression on his face that, under better circumstances, Emily would have registered as compassion.
Doing what every Englishwoman had done for a hundred years, she went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea from the permanently hot kettle that sat on top of the wood stove making the kitchen as hot as the oven even in winter. And to cap her misery, that the tea only slightly tempered, she was pregnant. Her only consolation was that nothing could possibly get worse.
Taki
ng her second cup of tea into the garden they had created by cutting away the undergrowth between the trees for fifty yards around the cluster of three thatched houses, each of two rondavels joined by a corridor that housed the euphemistic bathroom and the kitchen, as well as a passage from the bedroom rondavel to the one they called the lounge, Emily found the wooden bench made by Tinus Oosthuizen and tried to think on the bright side of life. The door was open to a separate rondavel that gave Sir Henry Manderville his bedroom and she hoped nothing creepy crawly had got inside. It was the regular routine to check the inside of their beds for bugs and reptiles before climbing in between the sheets below the billowing white mosquito nets that hung from the termite-chewed rafters.
Then she smiled to herself and somehow felt better. Both her children had sidled up quietly and she told herself not to scream again, Harry and Madge were just as hot and Harry missed Tatenda. With the cup of tea set down beside her, she let too small sweaty hands slide into hers. In the last of their houses she could hear Alison talking to Barend in Afrikaans and for a brief moment, she heard the new baby cry. An ox bellowed somewhere far beyond the trees where the men were ploughing the land they had finally stripped of trees and tree stumps. Then the good thoughts rushed through her mind whilst sitting with her children, knowing the men were fighting for survival. The memory of the vindictive Captain, of her divorced husband Arthur, the marriage annulled for lack of consummation, the bitter cold and bitter loneliness of Hastings Court came back in violent memory, and when Harry next to her said it would all be better when the rains broke, she began to cry silently with joy.