A Child Called Happiness

by Stephan Collishaw

  ‘But like our fathers and our grandfathers,’ he continued, ‘we must learn not to take literally Mabuya Nehanda’s words. The bullets will not turn to water. They will not dissolve in the air. She was speaking in metaphors. But now, after two years, we move.’

  We left the village early the next morning and for three days were journeyed south. We kept to the thick bush, well away from the farms and the roads. Occasionally light planes or helicopters soared over and we crouched in the dirt, like animals, and waited and watched in silence until they had gone. At night we built small fires to keep the wild animals at bay. Each day the country around us grew more familiar, more like home.

  As we moved into the Bindura valley, I pushed ahead, I knew the pathways and the caves where we could hide and took pleasure in leading the small group. Hopeful lagged behind. He looked reticent and wary. Our orders had come through and we were to dynamite a railway line and attack a military station. Our job was to cause as much mayhem as we could and then withdraw quickly back towards the border with Mozambique.

  Ours was one of a number of attacks that had been coordinated by the ZANLA leadership, most of whom were in prison. The attacks were to be as close to the capital, Salisbury, as possible, as symbolic gestures intended to strike fear into the heart of Ian Smith’s government.

  Hopeful, I knew, thought the idea reckless. He thought that it would be another Sinoia. We had argued about it long into the night. I cared little about the reasons, or the military campaign that Chitepo, Mugabe and the others were waging. I had my own personal battle to fight.

  It was as we worked down the valley, moving slowly and only after dark that the incident happened.

  The sun had not yet risen, but the air glowed with its approach. The bush was shrouded with a pale blue haze. We had been walking through the night and were tired. Stepping out into a small clearing we stumbled suddenly upon a girl collecting water from a stream.

  The girl was young, no more than thirteen. She had a thin, athletic frame and a pretty face. Her dress was old and frayed and slipped from her shoulder. She cried out, alarmed, as we stepped out of the brush. The bucket at her feet toppled over and the water spilled out across the sandy earth, darkening it. We stopped dead in our tracks and for a moment we were all silent.

  ‘What’s your name, sister?’ Hopeful said.

  He walked across to her, his gun swinging by his side. The girl’s eyes widened with fear. It was possible to see her lips tremble. She bent forward on her knees into a position of supplication. Hopeful stopped in front of her and stood for a moment in silence looking down at the girl. He lifted his boot and put it beneath the girl’s chin, tilting her face up.

  ‘What’s your name, sister?’

  The girl breathed so hard that her thin chest rose and fell like that of a wounded deer. I felt my heart contract. It was impossible not to feel her fear. I glanced around at the men, they were laughing. But I saw something else too; something in their eyes. The way that their tongues ran over their lips.

  Hopeful raised his foot forcing the girl’s face up and then he kicked her and she sprawled backwards against the wet earth, her body twisting away from Hopeful, her torn dress riding up her leg revealing the bottom of her small buttocks. She made no sound.

  ‘Hopeful!’

  I stepped forward. I had intended to speak with a loud and commanding voice, but when I heard it, it sounded weak and trembling. He turned, a grin on his face.

  ‘Comrade,’ he said. ‘Brother, you want to be first?’

  His hand swooped in an elegant flourish, indicating the prone girl. I glanced down at her. Her face was buried in the sand, her fists clamped. Behind me the men were laughing. Hopeful reached out with the barrel of his rifle and pushed the girl’s dress higher. He did not look down at the child, his eyes bored into me.

  ‘Leave her,’ I said. ‘Let her be, she’s just a child.’

  ‘Are you going to stop me?’

  I stiffened. Behind me the men had stopped laughing. I felt their eyes on my back. Hopeful raised the rifle, his finger sliding across the smooth, worn wood of the stock towards the trigger. I tried to laugh, but the sound that came out was sickly.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘She’s too young. Leave her be. That’s not what we came here for.’

  Hopeful stepped towards me. His face creased with annoyance. He was sweating and he stank of the marijuana we had been smoking as we marched. He pushed the rifle barrel up into my face; the metal dug into my skin and cracked against my teeth. I stepped back and pushed it away with my hand. Hopeful laughed. He threw the gun to one of the men behind me and then carefully and deliberately he took hold of the buckle of his belt and began to undo it.

  I moved past him and stood beside the girl. She cowered away from me. Taking the rifle from my shoulder I held it ready at my side.

  ‘Enough,’ I said.

  Hopeful’s trousers fell to the floor. I looked to the others behind him. Their faces seemed suddenly alien and twisted. Brutal. They moved forward, a hand reaching out and pushing me in the chest, forming a semi-circle around the girl. For a moment I struggled, tussling with the men, then I stepped back.

  Hopeful was trying to take hold of the girl, but she began to resist, her body writhing and her legs kicking. He slapped her hard which momentarily stunned her, but as he tried to mount her again, she screamed and bit him and scratched at his face with her nails.

  Again I jumped forward to pull him off her, but the men formed a circle, pushing me out. A foot shot out and kicked the girl in the head. She moaned and lay still. I took the rifle and shot a single round over the heads of the men.

  The noise of the gunshot reverberated from the granite face of the valley wall. From the trees the birds rose in screaming clouds. The air was a sudden cacophony of sound contrasting with the abrupt silence of the men. Hopeful stood, slowly, pulling his trousers up, and fastening his belt. He held out his hand to one of the men for his gun, but I shook my head.

  ‘No!’

  I pointed the rifle at the men. Hopeful’s hand fell back down by his side and the men shuffled back. I knelt down by the side of the girl and eased her head up on to my lap. A thin trickle of blood slipped down her cheek from a cut beneath her eye, but she was conscious. Her mouth was bloody too.

  Before I could speak we all heard the noise of the engine gunning, coming close. Startled, the men fled, crashing through the bushes and dense undergrowth. The vehicle stopped and doors slammed. A few moments later a white man burst into the small clearing, behind him two farm hands. I recognised him at once. His flaming red hair.

  Seeing me and the girl on my lap, the men stopped. For a moment the rifle in my hand remained pointed into the air, but then I dropped it and held up my hands. The girl moaned and clung to me.

  ‘I know you,’ Reginald Drew said.

  His angry red face poked forward and he examined me. He seemed to be searching around in his brain and then he tapped his forehead.

  ‘You’re the son of Zindonga. Moses,’ he said triumphantly. ‘That’s it – Moses.’

  I gazed at him astonished.

  28

  Seeing Moses, something in Natalie’s chest lifted and she noticed that this was the same in Roy and in Kristine. Kristine smiled and looked so relieved Natalie thought she would cry.

  Moses did not move beyond the doorstep. He pointed at the photograph held out in his hand. ‘Look at it,’ he said. His voice was neither aggressive nor friendly. He spoke loudly and clearly, as if he was determined to make a point.

  Roy glanced down at the photograph and then back up at Moses and beyond into the darkness.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ he said.

  Moses glanced at the open doorway, at the lit hallway and Kristine and Natalie. A strange look passed across his face and he shook his head.

  ‘Look at the photograph,’ he repeated.

  Behind him torches moved across the lawn and the sound of singing filled the late night air. There
was no sign of dawn. The sky was ponderously dark. The scent of smoke was heavy in the air. At Roy’s feet the dog stood snarling, its hackles raised. Distracted, Roy stepped forward out onto the gravel.

  ‘What are they doing?’ he asked. ‘Why have they got the torches?’

  A frown creased Moses’ large forehead and his lips twisted slightly. He pushed Roy as he stepped back, surprised. He held his hands up as if in a gesture of surrender. Other faces appeared, swimming up out of the darkness; dull faces, men whose opened shirts displayed scarred, sweat-glistening bodies. The scent of marijuana clung to them. Their eyes were wild. They gathered around the back of Moses, glaring into the neat farmhouse, machetes and home-made axes hanging loosely from hands.

  ‘Look at the photograph,’ Moses said, enunciating each word carefully, slowly, his voice hard and determined.

  Roy glanced down at the photograph again, but his eyes would not hold it, they glanced back up at the men that were closing in around the entry to the house. Kristine stepped forward and stood beside him. She took the photograph from Moses and looked at it.

  ‘What is it Moses?’ she asked.

  Moses breathed heavily, nodding as if it justified something, as though by looking at it they would understand. He said nothing. Kristine glanced up at him and then back down at the old brown piece of card that she held.

  ‘It’s awfully old,’ she said.

  Roy bent his head to look over her shoulder and then he took the photograph and studied it himself. His finger traced the figures on the image. He glanced up again at Moses and Natalie could see that he did not understand what Moses wanted from him.

  ‘Who is it of?’ he asked.

  ‘Ahh,’ said Moses, as if suddenly they were getting somewhere. ‘Who are they? Who are they?’ He nodded and smiled coldly. ‘Indeed, that is the question, is it not? That’s what needs to be asked.’ He looked at the men who drifted around him, as if they too were a part of this bizarre conversation but they milled sullenly, and seemed uninterested.

  A man carried a torch, a crude stick tied with a rag soaked in oil, the flames dancing from it. He walked over to the house, a thick acrid smoke trailing behind him. He looked stoned. Peering at Roy and Kristine he laughed. He held up the torch and thrust it quickly beneath the thatch of the porch. Kristine let out a short, sharp cry and Roy jumped forward, the photograph fluttering out of his hands and landing on the gravel as he lunged for the torch, grabbing the man’s arm and pushing him away.

  ‘Are you mad?’ he screamed at the man.

  A group of them closed in around him. Their faces leapt in the light of the flames, so that noses and eyes seemed to swim loosely back and forth across their faces. The torch swooped around and was pushed close to Roy’s angry, frustrated face.

  ‘Roy!’ Kristine screamed.

  Moses bent down and picked up the photograph and thrust it back at Roy. He pushed the others away, shooing them off.

  ‘Look,’ he said.

  ‘What is it Moses?’ Roy said impatiently.

  Roy turned around to face Moses who was smaller than he was and looked down at him, taking in the wild grey hair, the bare old chest, sunken with age, the tribal costume. He smiled, perhaps seeing the slightly ridiculous nature of the situation. Moses stepped back and spat at him – a thick goblet that landed on Roy’s shoes.

  Roy was startled. He looked down at his shoe and then at Moses.

  ‘Moses!’ Kristine exclaimed.

  ‘Here,’ Moses thrust the photograph up close to Roy’s face. ‘Here in this picture you should see, you should understand,’ he said. ‘These people, do you know who they are? They are my ancestors. This here, my grandfather… ’ His finger pointed at the face. ‘Tafara.’ He held up the photo again so that Roy could identify the man. ‘This here was his wife. And where are they? They are standing right here,’ he pointed at his feet, at the gravel path, and then he waved his hand taking in the land around them. ‘Here!’

  At that moment the first streaks of light began to temper the darkness of the night. A ghostly hue hung over the dimly perceivable ridge behind the farm, as though by the stretch of his arm Moses had begun to reveal the land to them. And that was how his face looked: triumphant.

  ‘This was their land,’ he said, ‘Tafara’s land, and before him his father’s and before his father… ’ he paused, and threw out his arm again to indicate the passage back through time, ‘his father. Our fathers lived here, farmed here. It was our land.’

  He grabbed hold of Roy’s arm and yanked him forward out of the porch and its light. Kristine yelped with fright. The light was coming on fast now, so that the ridge and Drew’s Kopje stood out suddenly stark against the growing day. Moses pointed up to it. The brush around it glowed with a strange energy and then, a moment later, the top boulder flared, lighting up like a beacon against the dark canvas of the fading night.

  ‘There,’ he said, ‘you see that?’

  Roy nodded.

  ‘You know what is up there?’

  ‘It’s Drew’s Kopje,’ Roy said faintly, the words dying away as he said them, as his uncle’s name, the family name, imprinted upon this landscape sounded suddenly strangely discordant in the blossoming light.

  ‘Drew’s Kopje!’ Moses spat, ironically. ‘There, up on that ridge, my grandfather is buried. And his father too. That is the home of our ancestral spirits. This is our land, our home.’ He spun round, his face close up against Roy’s. ‘And you know why my father is not buried there?’

  ‘Your father?’ Roy echoed weakly.

  ‘My father,’ Moses nodded. ‘Zindonga.’

  He stepped back from Roy and a sudden wash of sadness changed the features of his face. For some moments he stood there gazing up at the ridge, at the sudden, vivid brilliance of dawn, as though seeing something else. When he turned back to Roy the light seemed to have left his eyes and he seemed suddenly tired and older.

  ‘They took him. Drew took him and hanged him.’ He waved his arm down across the valley. ‘On a tree down there, when I was a little boy.’ He gazed into Roy’s face, seeing there, perhaps, the faint shadow of Reginald Drew’s features. ‘Drew wouldn’t allow my father to be buried with his father in the sacred place.’

  From the shadows of the lawn another man approached; a tall, thin man, his shirt loose, his trousers ragged around his bare feet. He stopped beside Moses and placed a hand upon his shoulder. Roy recognised him, as did Natalie.

  ‘Your papers have been served, Drew,’ the man said. ‘We are taking the farm.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Roy said weakly, ‘you can’t do that.’

  The man laughed. Most of the teeth in his mouth were missing and when he laughed his gums looked black and swollen.

  ‘On Monday I will be contacting my lawyer,’ Roy said.

  ‘On Monday you can do as you wish. You have five hours to leave the farm. If you don’t go,’ he let the threat hang in the air and then he nodded towards Kristine, or perhaps it had just been towards the house. ‘I can’t guarantee your safety after that.’

  29

  So how does this story end, after so many years? Even my own youth seems like an ancient tale these days.

  Kare kare.

  There was a look in Drew’s eyes as he stared down at me, the girl’s bloody head on my lap. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I imagine it now, but as he looked at me I could see the image of my father swaying from the tree and I knew – knew without a shadow of a doubt – that it had been he who was responsible for Zindonga’s death.

  His face paled, as though he saw that I knew. It was the only time I had ever seen the man lost. His decisiveness seemed to leave him for a second.

  ‘Shall we take him, bhasa?’

  Drew glanced around at the two men by his side as if he had forgotten they were there. He held up his hand. Wait. And in that pause I took my opportunity. The gun still lay by my side and I raised it and fired.

  The recoiling gun hit the girl in my lap and she jumped and scr
eamed, knocking me off balance, and a moment later they were on me, the two men, wrestling me while I kicked and screamed like an evil spirit.

  But in that moment I recalled Tafara; how he brought the rock down heavily on the head of the white soldier, right at the beginning of my story, killing him, and a wave of joy washed over me – righteous, holy joy. That was how this story should end. I, Moses, the good-for-nothing son of Zindonga had killed Drew. My only regret in that moment was that I was so young, that I had no son of my own, nobody who would take possession of this land once again.

  As I turned my head to look in triumph at Drew’s body, I felt a sharp, hard blow to my head and the light dimmed and slowly, slowly the sounds of the world, the girl crying, the men drifted away into the distance and I embraced the darkness.

  When I came to, I was lying on the floor of a truck which lurched and jolted along the uneven dirt road. My head – my whole body – throbbed. Each movement of the truck caused a spasm of excruciating pain to shoot down my spine. I was thrown that night into a dark, crowded cell.

  I was sentenced to ten years. At first I was in Salisbury prison, but then later I was moved out to Gonakudzingwa, the arid plain, a parched and desolate place. They knew that if you tried to run from there you wouldn’t last the night.

  When I was released I went home to live with my mother and worked at odd jobs. My mother was getting old and often she lay in her bed, too sick to move. The pittance I brought in did little to pay for food, never mind any care for her. One night she called me to sit by her.

  She pressed a photograph into my hands. It was black and white, very old. In front of some mud huts a whole line of people stared into the camera, children blurred among their feet. My mother eased herself up on the bed and pointed to the figure standing in the middle of the group, a tall, thin young man, good-looking and confident, a smile playing at the edges of his lips.

  ‘That is your grandfather,’ she said, ‘Tafara.’

  She fell back against the thin sheet, exhausted from the exertion of sitting up. I gazed at the figure in the photograph, traced my finger around the contours of him.