A Child Called Happiness

by Stephan Collishaw

  ‘The photograph was taken on the farm, before the white men took it,’ my mother said.

  ‘One day we will get the farm back,’ I promised her.

  She laughed. Her laugh was hollow and sad and I could see that she did not believe it. Did not believe things would ever change. She closed her eyes and breathed out a long sigh as if she was letting go of things, and then she was still. I shook her arm and she opened her eyes.

  ‘Go to school, child,’ she whispered.

  For a moment I thought she was confused; that the years had slipped away for her and I was young again. But she fixed me with her eyes and they were clear and bright and sharp.

  ‘It’s only by being educated that we will beat them. We have to be better than them. Your father knew that.’

  Two days later she asked for the priest and I fetched him. He was a small man who walked with a limp. I had never liked him. His obsequious manner and ‘refined’ etiquette, like he was trying to be a white man. As he knelt down on the dirt floor of our home beside my mother’s bed, I stood in the corner and watched. Her mumbled confession was too quiet for me to hear and I could not think of what she would have to confess, this woman who had done nothing in her life but worked.

  ‘This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,’ the priest muttered as he presented her with a fragment of the host.

  ‘Lord I am not worthy to receive you,’ my mother said.

  When the priest stood up I was crying. He put his hand on my shoulder as he left and that made me angry, because he thought it was his superstitions that had moved me. My mother died in the early hours of the morning. I was sleeping on the floor by her bed.

  After her burial I tried to do as she had asked. I went as far as enrolling on a course at the university but on the day that I was supposed to start I went to a bar and got drunk.

  The bar was dirty. A couple of old men sat slumped in one of the corners in semi-darkness. The floor was earth and the bar little more than a piece of wood stood on sacks and a beer keg. As I sat there, the beer in my hands, I felt the anger rising within me.

  What had Mugabe done? What had any of them done, with their English degrees and their smart suits? Yes, we had a black president now, black politicians, but what else had changed? Nothing. The whites still had the best jobs, they owned the industry. They still had all the best land, nothing had been done about that. While black farmers scratched a living on the barren reserves they had been pushed onto, the whites exploited the beautiful arable land.

  ‘Give me another,’ I said to the boy behind the bar.

  I fished in my pocket for the last money I had. Pulling it out, I glanced at it and laughed. Mugabe’s face stared out at me stonily.

  ‘Here boy,’ I said, wafting the crumpled note in front of his nose. ‘This is what we fought for. This was what it was all about, those years of struggle, prison; so that we could have a black face on our bank notes.’

  The boy took the note from me cautiously.

  When I staggered down to the ZANU PF offices they were locked. I banged on the large wooden doors.

  ‘When are you going to do something?’ I bellowed. ‘When are you going to give me my land back?’

  At the edge of town I thumbed a lift from a truck and travelled up the valley towards the farm. The day was hot and there was no shade from the sun on the back of the truck. I had eaten little and was drunk still from the beer and when the driver dropped me off near Drew’s farm I was weak and exhausted. I collapsed at the side of the road.

  For some time I was out cold, sprawled in the dust. I woke to the sound of an engine. A Land Rover pulled up beside me and I heard the sound of voices. White voices. My head pounded and when I tried to open my eyes they were bleary and I could see little.

  ‘Is he alive?’

  ‘Stay in the car, Kristine.’

  I felt something prodding me. I moaned and rolled away.

  ‘Get some water,’ the man called.

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘There’s some in the back for the dog.’

  The woman was young, no more than twenty-five. She was attractive, with shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes. She carried a baby in her arms. Opening up the back of the Land Rover, she took out a bottle and passed it to her husband who was crouched over me.

  ‘Drink some of this,’ the man said.

  I drank thirstily, the water spilling out over my lips and chin, only half of it going down my throat and that then choked me, so that I was coughing and spluttering. The man laughed.

  ‘You’ll live,’ he said. ‘He’s just drunk,’ he said to the woman, screwing the top onto the bottle and handing it back to her. ‘I’ll send the boy down to get him and take him up to Pasi. Somebody there’ll look after him until he sobers up.’

  The ‘boy’ was in his eighties. He walked slowly and spoke to me kindly. Thin blue films obscured his eyes.

  ‘Cataracts,’ he explained. ‘I haven’t been able to see for years.’

  ‘Who was the white man?’ I asked.

  ‘The white man?’ The old man chuckled. ‘That would be Roy Drew, the owner of the farm.’

  ‘Is that old man Drew’s son?’

  ‘No, his nephew. Old Drew didn’t have any children as far as I know. That was before my time, I’m not from around here. Ten years or more ago Drew died, back in the seventies. Roy came over from England.’

  Pasi was a small village just over the ridge, no more than five huts, the roof of one had half collapsed. A couple of families lived there, scraping a living from some rough land at the back of the village.

  ‘You sober up, you could ask if there is work up at the farm,’ the old man said thoughtfully when he left me there. ‘Drew’s a good farmer, he always needs more hands. He isn’t bad.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘As you like,’ said the old man.

  After a while he left me and I lay back on the straw bed of the one of the huts. My head throbbed and I felt nauseous. Laying there I recalled the years in prison; the chains constantly rubbing and chaffing the wrists and ankles until large calluses developed. The frustration and fear and the beatings. I looked into my heart and all I could find was darkness and anger, and that made me hate them more, that I had been reduced to this, that my life was defined by anger and hatred. Solely that; there was no other meaning.

  The next morning a young woman woke me. She was a plump girl, little more than sixteen or seventeen with bright, playful eyes. She brought me water in a can and sadza. She sat by me, close to my feet, as I ate.

  The sadza was good and gave me strength and I recovered quickly. The girl’s father was going out into the field and I went with him and helped him to thank him for having given me shelter. There was a view from the fields, down over the valley. Lower down the slope there were some buildings and beyond that the river. Though the land was poor and it was hard to scratch something from it, I felt a sense of peace in the village and that night I slept there again.

  When I awoke in the morning the girl was there once more with my water and sadza.

  Roy came to the village the next day to see how I was. I had just sat down on a bench outside one of the huts when he drew up in the Land Rover. He was a young man, fit and lean, but fair haired and nothing like his uncle.

  ‘How you doing today?’ he asked, his accent odd; English with only the hint of the inflections of the local accent he had picked up over the ten years in the country.

  I nodded. ‘I’m fine.’

  He stood in front of me for a while and I think he thought I might thank him, and when I didn’t, he didn’t seem to know what to say.

  ‘I thought you were dead at first,’ he said.

  I nodded slowly.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  And I saw no reason to lie to him. ‘Moses,’ I said.

  ‘Well, Moses,’ he said, ‘if you ever need a job, I’m always looking for extra hands.’
r />   I said nothing. He turned away then, just as the girl was coming out of one of the huts. The sun fell on her shoulder and her skin gleamed golden. Roy glanced over her and the look in his eye, proprietorial, caused a spasm of fury to rise in me. I half rose, but he had turned away already and was on his way over to his car.

  The girl’s name was Miriam and we were married after the rains. The next year she gave birth to the first of our daughters and then ten years later to our second. I had no sons.

  Over the years, Roy would drop in at the village from time-to-time. Often it would be as he was on his way down to the school at the bottom of the valley where the teacher was politically active, a member of the MDC. Roy knew the weather was changing; that Mugabe, now that he had consolidated power for himself, was becoming less cautious. The economy was difficult. Things were getting tougher for everybody, but the whites weren’t stupid. They were putting their money on Tsvangirai and the MDC. Get them in power, they thought, and their position was safe. I made sure that the local ZANU PF office knew all about the teacher and in one of the raids they took him.

  As the years passed the only thing that sustained me was the photograph of Tafara and the stories I had heard from my mother. I believed those stories. I believed that Nehanda’s bones would rise, that finally the white man would be driven from the land and it would be ours again.

  In many ways my granddaughter, Memories, became to me the son that I did not have. I would take her up to the ridge and tell her the stories my mother had told me. Tell her about Chimukoko and Tafara, and Zindonga and the land that had been ours. She was upset, of course, when the school closed down, but I gave her other dreams.

  ‘The time is coming,’ I told her. ‘I can feel it, it is coming close now. The land will be ours again and our ancestral spirits will return to their own land.’

  Memories looked at me silently, those large eyes of hers boring into my soul.

  ‘Just you see,’ I whispered. ‘Just you see.’

  30

  It was at that moment that a trail of cars sped up the road, headlights blazing and pulled up at the gates of the farm. Boyle jumped down from the front vehicle, a green Land Rover Defender. There were four more jeeps pulled up behind and moments later these, too, had disgorged their passengers. Dogs ran loose, barking and snarling viciously. Boyle carried a gun. He held it at waist height with both hands. His face was dark with anger.

  Boyle let out a loud bellow. His face was red and contorted as he marched through the farm gates. The men followed after him; each carried a gun and the dogs ran around their heels growling and barking. The veterans shrank back from Boyle and his men as they approached the house.

  Roy stepped forward to greet Boyle, Kristine followed behind. As he moved past Moses, Roy’s shoulder caught the old man’s, knocking him off balance. Moses fell to the floor, the photograph crumpling in his hand.

  ‘Roy,’ Natalie called.

  One of the veterans shouted out angrily. Someone waved a machete and another veteran ran up from the fire brandishing a flaming torch. Lights danced across the front of the farm. The first rays of sun lanced across the landscape, the headlights shone through the gates, the firelight flickered. Moses looked down at the photograph in his hands. Natalie stepped forward and bent down beside him.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked.

  Moses did not reply.

  A gunshot startled Natalie. Her head shot up and she quickly scanned the scene. Boyle continued up the drive, the men and dogs behind him, his rifle pointed up in the air and it was clear that it was he that had fired.

  The veterans began to shout. Running with the torch towards the cottage the man tossed it, flaming, onto the thatched roof. Natalie screamed. Roy and Kristine spun around and saw her on the floor beside Moses. Kristine turned back, but Natalie pointed towards the roof of the house. As Kristine glanced up towards the roof, one of the veterans ran forward, his machete glinting in the light and Kristine, seeing him coming for her, dropped to her knees on the gravel drive.

  Natalie watched as if in slow motion. She was aware of the thudding of her heart and the sound of the shouting, though this seemed suddenly distant. The machete rose high above the head of the veteran, catching as it did so a ray of early morning sunlight so that it seemed to flame in his hand. Kristine’s arms rose above her head. A scream formed on Natalie’s lips, but she was a silent witness.

  Boyle leapt forward, barreling into the man.

  Natalie exhaled sharply as the two men fell to the ground. Beside her Moses was groaning in the dirt. Natalie reached out and looped her arm under his, pulling him to his feet. Moses clung onto the photograph, bent and torn in his hands. He seemed dazed.

  Boyle pinned the veteran to the floor as Roy dashed over and picked up his wife from the gravel, worry etched across his face. As he straightened, he glanced up and noticed the thin column of smoke that rose in the still air from the thatch roof of the farm.

  ‘Fire!’

  Moses looked around. The sun had risen and the farm was bathed in the warm light of dawn. The place was in chaos, with men tousling and shouting on all sides and dogs barking. On the gravel Christopher Moyo, the chairman of the local branch of the War Veterans, lay flat with a large, red-haired man straddling his chest. Moyo was shouting incoherently, waving his arms. Natalie stood at his side talking to him, but the words did not register.

  ‘Fire!’ Roy was shouting.

  Moses looked up. The pillar of smoke that rose from the roof of the farmhouse was thick and acrid. A thin smile spread across his face.

  A couple of the white men had dashed around the side of the house and a few moments later they hurried back, rolling out a thick hose that squirmed over the lawn. The thatch crackled loudly. Yellow flames jumped into the clear sky. All eyes had turned to the farmhouse. Boyle climbed off Christopher Moyo while Roy stood like a statue, his hands on his head, mouth open. Beside him Kristine’s face was covered with her hands. Moses thought that perhaps she was screaming. Somebody was screaming.

  The jet of water arced into the air and fell down upon the thatch. The smoke billowed more thickly, the column broken, spreading across the lawn in front of the house so that soon they were coughing and choking.

  Kristine ran for the front door of the house, but Roy chased after, pulling her away.

  ‘The dog,’ she was shouting. ‘The dog is still in the house.’

  Moses bent down. At his feet was a small rock. Somebody must have thrown it, as it lay incongruously on the neatly clipped green grass. He straightened, cradling the rock in his hand. Roy was stood beside him shouting to the two men with the hose, directing them. Moses looked at him. There was no hint of red in Roy’s hair, in fact there was very little resemblance in the man to Old Drew at all and yet this was his nephew, this tall, thin man that stood beside him. The stone was the size of the palm of his hand. It was smooth and heavy. He found himself weighing it, considering. His hand rose, the fingers clenching the stone. Roy turned to him and for a moment they looked into each other’s eyes.

  ‘Sekuru!’

  The voice reached him as if from a very great distance.

  ‘Sekuru!’

  A figure was running across the lawn towards him. Moses lowered his hand and turned. Natalie was beside him, squeezing between him and Roy, her hands reaching out.

  ‘Memories!’ she shouted.

  And suddenly the spell was broken. Moses shook his head. The sound came flooding in; the sound of the shouting, the crackle of the flames, the hiss of the water on the burning roof. Memories was charging at him. Slowly, he opened his fingers and the stone dropped from his grasp onto the grass. By his side, Natalie fell to her knees and took his granddaughter into her arms as she ran up. The girl looked up at him and he saw the fear in her eyes.

  ‘Grandfather,’ she said. ‘You did not come home last night.’

  Moses gazed down at her.

  All he had wanted was to take back the farm. To right the wrongs that ha
d been done to his grandfather and to his father. His granddaughter looked up at him, her eyes wide with horror and around him across the neat stretch of lawn and the gravel drive, men roamed angry and bewildered. Moyo was laying still flat out on the grass. Roy had taken hold of the hose, while other men ran for pails of water. Kristine had her face buried in the pelt of her dog.

  Moses reached out and took his granddaughter.

  ‘This is our land,’ he said to her. ‘This is our farm.’ But his voice was despondent.

  ‘You think they will let you have this land?’ Kristine said, her voice sharp and full of bitterness. ‘Do you think it’s on your behalf that they served those papers on us?’

  Kristine stood up, and wiped her hands on the legs of her jeans. There were dark marks smeared across her forehead and cheeks. Her face was set and hard.

  ‘They’ve just been using you and the vets, Moses,’ she said. ‘Can’t you see that? Mugabe will give this land to one of his supporters, one of the ZANU PF men from the area. Nobody is going to give you this farm, Moses. Nobody cares that it used to belong to your grandfather. The children are starving, a quarter of the population have AIDs. There are no schools. Is this a government that cares about its people?’

  She walked across the grass to him. For a moment they stood facing each other in silence. Memories clung to her grandfather. Natalie stood close by, watching.

  ‘We aren’t the enemy any more, Moses,’ Kristine said, her voice softer. ‘The struggle against Ian Smith, against the old regime, that was legitimate. But now… ’ She held her hands up in the air. ‘We’re not the enemy any longer.’

  Christopher Moyo walked up and stood behind Moses. Natalie noticed Boyle eye them. He still carried his rifle, but it was slung now on his back as he coordinated the men bringing the pails of water to throw on the flames. Some of the veterans had joined the line of men, passing buckets from hand to hand. The flames had died down, though the smoke still rose thickly. The young man who had thrown the torch on the roof of the house was sat beneath the jacaranda tree, leant against the wide, old trunk, his head in his hands. One of Boyle’s men stood over him, rifle in his hands.