An Ounce of Practice

by Zeilig, Leo;

  All this Nelson had said.

  The small crowd filled a room barely large enough, Viktor thought, for a bed. Between those standing he could make out the words to ‘The Internationale’ written in a thick marker in Shona, taped to the wall. Nelson moved his arms, facing the group like a conductor, taking them through the text.

  They were better in Shona, singing loud, dangerously imprudent, their backs heaving up and down, trying to push the walls back, to make more room with the force of their singing. And Viktor thought, What great gusto. How large their ambition, how just the cause, but how few our number, always so few. He felt sadness, pity. What can this room with its hungry and sick souls hope to achieve? Clinging onto the wreckage of a movement, to a single, short moment, as the furious, angry storm broke them one by one, ripped them away, pulled them under before their time.

  The last line of the song was repeated even louder than before, in case Mugabe hadn’t heard this final declaration, this challenge, the attempt to reclaim the song for the Zimbabwean poor. Viktor sat amazed, almost believing, as the crowd raised their fists and sang:

  But if the ravens, the vultures

  One morning disappeared

  The sun would shine still.

  ‘Romantic nonsense!’ Anne-Marie exclaimed. ‘Dangerous, too.’ She stood and placed a hand on Viktor’s shoulder. ‘So, finally we meet.’

  ‘I enjoyed the singing. I come from a family of tone-deaf opera singers.’

  ‘But I doubt you sing the songs of the Zimbabwean dictatorship.’

  The meeting was over. Nelson spoke loudly to a group around the table, shuffling his papers into a pile, his glasses perched low on his nose.

  ‘I suppose you want to see the General,’ Anne-Marie said.

  ‘The General?’

  ‘Oh, he hasn’t told you? It’s our nickname for him. He loves it.’

  Viktor stood, almost skimming the ceiling with his head. He could never blend in. Instead he was obliged to separate himself, peel away from his family, stand aloof from the world, gesticulate from his airless summit.

  ‘So we are out of the virtual and into the real. From theory to practice, Viktor.’ Anne-Marie got up and turned her body towards Viktor. She was strong, broad, full, beautiful – properly made, Viktor thought. She radiated a physical, confident presence. There were no excuses or hesitations in the way she looked; all parts of her a statement that was complete. Her pleasing roundness; her full, absolute breasts; her adamant, unequivocal legs and arms; her buttocks strong and insistent. There was something delightfully arrogant about her appearance. For once Viktor did not need to work anything up in himself; for once, he could just feel.

  The sense of concreteness coming from her physical presence said to Viktor, You’re really here, you’re really here in front of me. Though he was giddy from her actually being there, the proximity of her body, it was not even really about her body. It was about the feelings that flowed over him – and this was something Viktor was not accustomed to.

  Viktor answered her. ‘I already have several interviews set up, and trips to Bulawayo and Mutare. It feels good to be here.’

  Anne-Marie’s feet felt good; she stood flat and firm on the floor. Lucidity and desire did this to her, gave her fluency. If it was her clarity and resolution that drew Viktor in, Anne-Marie decided, it was his utter, unusual looseness, his near refusal to be like any man she’d met, that attracted her. Much of this was bullshit, of course, and she knew it – Viktor was like other men. He flinched when challenged, needed to speak and be heard as though his very fucking life depended on it and wore his insecurity in the raw, painful open. He chafed, stumbled, doubted, undermined, like all men she knew. But he was also different. He listened intensely and strangely – craned forward, lowering himself to her, thought about what she said, paused, chewed on her words. When Anne-Marie spoke and he agreed, when he thought she’d found something, he would nod so furiously that his head would blur, his features streaking in the slipstream of agreement. Anne-Marie found this sensation strange. His focus and attention on her worked up between them like static electricity; the invisible jolt of connection made him irresistible to her. And Viktor was oblivious, of course. Utterly fucking ignorant.

  Yet she’d been irritated by Nelson’s melodrama, his beliefs. With Nelson life was always about to be fulfilled. There were constant ridiculous promises, another dawn because the last one had been destroyed. Revolutionary maximalism, absolute absurdism – no better, she thought, than a preacher offering salvation in a church. Life after death, freedom after we’ve won. I know what I am. I know what I want. I know how to dream today. Nelson, the prophet of becoming. The striving to arrive, the perfect moment, the fucking Promised Land. Not for me, Anne-Marie thought. I have always been present. I am. I do. I give.

  Anne-Marie saw herself as a child: the back door of their house in Kinshasa, the concrete garden, the plastic umbrellas that magnified the naked, ferocious sun, suffocating her when she played under them. She felt the humidity running off her skin, her tongue sticking to the inside of her mouth, tasting the salt in her sweat. Even then, in the Congo, I was practical. My whole childhood, lived for years in that high-walled outdoors, was led sensibly – time had to be used for practical, small projects. Small dawns.

  She rested her hands on her hips and turned back to Viktor, who was standing astride his bag, looking around the room. She felt her pulse slow.

  ‘Welcome!’ Nelson gripped Viktor’s hand and kept hold of it. ‘We’re pleased you made it.’

  Nelson looked to Anne-Marie and smiled.

  ‘You shouldn’t sing in this building,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you just put the megaphone outside the flat and send an invitation to X-Party?’

  ‘You see what we have to put up with in our ranks?’ Nelson’s voice was deep and soothing.

  ‘I enjoyed the meeting,’ Viktor said.

  ‘Good. We can do meetings. You will have to do one for us. Where are you living? We need to talk, plan.’

  Anne-Marie felt the ground slip, her feet sink into the concrete. Don’t let him get to you. A movement of becomers – that’s what he is. In Nelson’s future they would finally be free, all of them: in South Africa, in Zimbabwe, in the region, even in the Congo, in this mixed-up, complex, impossible world. Nelson only arrives when we have sex. Only then does he become. Two weeks ago they had fucked – his plans with her as real as the crimson, out-of-reach Promised Land he conjured in these meetings. No more, she had said to herself, no more sex. Always the same thrusts, the same position, the same characterless sex – practical only in his fucking. The political sweet nothings he whispered to her after he came. ‘Mudiwa, darling,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you about our position in next year’s elections.’ And he wouldn’t even notice if I stopped seeing him, if I took Viktor in.

  Anne-Marie spoke. ‘The General is the most dream-prone comrade in the movement. And his songs are the most ridiculous.’

  ‘Come, come, comrade, don’t demoralise us. We need to show our overseas visitor our best side.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ Anne-Marie snarled.

  ‘We need dreams, great big dreams,’ Viktor said calmly.

  Anne-Marie laughed loudly from the back of her throat. ‘In that case, you’ll be in good company here.’

  Nelson tucked his hair behind his ears and looked at Anne-Marie without irritation, a slight smile turning up his mouth. ‘We’re not in the business of dreams – they won’t get us anywhere, unless the working class can move beyond X- and Y-Party. Y-Party is what we call the MDC,’ Nelson added for Viktor’s benefit.

  ‘Yes, I know, and X-Party is ZANU-PF,’ Viktor replied.

  ‘Exactly!’ Nelson’s easy, broad smile relaxed over Viktor. ‘A few years ago we had to take struggle names and code our language, so we could talk openly without exposing comrades. I’m sometimes known as Oscar, the General. Anne-Marie as Hopewell.’

  ‘That sounds quite romantic. Quite Bolshev
ik,’ Viktor said, trying to mimic Nelson’s confident, generous explanations.

  ‘Nothing romantic about it, comrade. In the nineties our organisations depended on it. We had no choice.’

  ‘But he’s right,’ Anne-Marie interjected. ‘You are a romantic. All the communist insignia, the old bearded white men, “The Internationale”.’

  The room was decorated, almost wallpapered with posters, a life-size print of Lenin staring stocky and rosy-cheeked into the fields. A chipped plaster bust of Marx sat on the table, his white features soiled by handling. On another wall was an enlarged photograph of a short-haired man speaking, one forefinger extended, pointing into the camera and the room. Nelson saw Viktor looking.

  ‘That’s Oscar, the real Oscar. He set up the Society of Liberated Minds. The HIV tsunami has dealt the group a heavy blow. We need to plan, comrade. I liked the articles you wrote on your first impressions.’ Nelson quoted, ‘“Zimbabwe is a monument, a ruin to a failed project” – excellent.’ He moved back to his desk, pulled a sheet from the pile of papers and read: ‘“I feel as though I have arrived in a country of the living dead, a dictatorship which doesn’t seem to be visible on the streets, only in the faces of the poor.” Good, but wrong. You see, Viktor, every dictatorship has to build up its social base – in this sense, X-Party is a social movement. It was the war veterans, the old liberation fighters, who we almost won to our side in the late nineties – but now they’re with Mugabe. His Praetorian Guard. Behind them the Youth, the Green Bombers, who were trained at National Youth Training Centres in the rural areas. Both of the old man’s social bases are visible ... you’ll see.’

  Nelson, Anne-Marie thought, dropping into the chair again, kicking away her shoes, runs his own Counterblast News Agency to explain the true nature of things, the unnatural order. Even when he comes down from the podium he makes speeches. Everything he says is a desperate attempt to clarify, to push his understanding against the great cacophony of society’s deafening norms. He truly believes he is indispensable to the movement and can’t be replaced – the weight of bloody history upon him.

  ‘We can make good use of the website,’ Nelson continued. ‘None of us, apart from a couple of students, have had much time to work on the internet, but we need it. You will be useful for us.’

  Viktor’s mouth was dry. He rested against the wall. ‘Of course I want to be helpful, though I have to cover all bases. Hear what everyone is saying.’

  Nelson threw back his head and laughed deep and slow, his long locks of hair swaying heavily. ‘A true liberal. A true English liberal. Of course, of course. There’ll be no problem on that front. My comrade here’ – he nodded his head to the side, indicating Anne-Marie – ‘thinks I’m too soft on X-Party, that I should be harder, and some think I’m ultra-left with Y-Party. So don’t worry, comrade, you’ll get the whole story and we will use you.’ He laughed again.

  Nelson’s generous, free confidence was deeper, more compelling than his stage show. Viktor liked him, and didn’t know how he’d be able to refuse the dizzy gusts and headwinds of his charm.

  ‘Soon you will need to see the students. Our best students and militants are in Bulawayo, but that can wait. You need to understand Harare first. You must meet Guthrie Madhuku – he writes for the government paper, the Herald. He’s a friend, an X-Party intellectual. He thinks we’ve got it wrong and that land redistribution, the development of a black propertied class and delinking from the West are real advances. He’s impressive, very smart.’

  ‘But he’s ZANU,’ Viktor said limply, perplexed.

  ‘That doesn’t make him a fool,’ Nelson answered quickly.

  ‘But it does make him complicit! The rag he writes for backs up everything the government does. He’s a fucking bully,’ Anne-Marie snapped.

  Nelson paused, then persisted with his plan. ‘Then you need to meet Arthur Biti, Y-Party financial and legal adviser. He was one of ours, we trained him. He was at the University of Zimbabwe with me more than twenty-five years ago. He was a good socialist. Now he is hopelessly out of touch. He travels to the US, the UK, fundraising – goes everywhere Business Class. We drink together sometimes.’

  ‘I’ve got to go.’ Anne-Marie stood, holding her shoes in one hand. Her eyes were ringed with exhaustion. Her large silver earrings flashed, her heavy lipstick still showing up bright red. ‘Where are you staying, com?’ She addressed the question matter-of-factly to Viktor.

  ‘I was planning to stay in a guest house ten minutes from here.’ Viktor longed to say something serious, to show Nelson and Anne-Marie that he understood and that they could rely on him.

  ‘That’s no good, probably not safe. Those Avenue guest houses are crawling with the CIO. The Central Intelligence Organisation, comrade. Stay with me, here. You can have that mattress.’ Nelson indicated with his head the folded, stained rectangle of foam in the corner.

  ‘You’ll drive him out of Zimbabwe in a week,’ Anne-Marie said. ‘I have a lounge and a sofa. You can have that – of course you’re staying with me.’ She reached for Viktor’s arm and squeezed.

  Viktor tried to object. ‘No, I’m fine, probably best to stay where I am.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Anne-Marie said firmly. ‘We’ll get your stuff now. I have running water, a proper kitchen, security. You won’t know you’re not in London. You can even pretend that I’m white, if you like.’

  ‘London? That’s not what I meant—’ Viktor spluttered.

  Nelson polished his glasses on his shirt, put them on again, pushed the frame up his nose and stared at Anne-Marie. ‘I will fix an appointment with people this week, or next week. You’ll have to be careful with Anne-Marie. She thinks we can change the world one microloan at a time.’

  ‘I’m not interested in changing the world, only Zimbabwe. And today, not sometime when the people have risen up against your X- , Y- and Z-parties, the old man, capitalism, the church.’

  ‘You see, Viktor, you’ll have to watch her.’ Nelson was laughing again.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Viktor was pleased to be leaving the flat, following Anne-Marie’s bare feet peeling against the concrete floors, showing him the way to the stairwell. How strange it felt to be suddenly presented with a new life, with friends, comrades, meetings, a bed. And Anne-Marie, who he felt as though he’d known for years and years, with her anti-politics and her good sense. What does it all mean? Viktor thought.

  Before they left the flat Viktor had introduced himself, his head bowing slightly, to each member of the Society. The students, the workers, the groups, the organisers, each of them had names he recognised, that he asked them to repeat: Trotsky, Stalin, Lenin – there were two Lenins – Sankara, Lumumba, Cabral. Each name presented without irony, without even the prospect of humour.

  ‘Bad activists copy, good activists steal,’ Anne-Marie explained later, shaking her head. There was even a Rosa.

  ‘Like my daughter,’ Viktor said automatically, excited.

  ‘Yes, of course, your daughter.’ Anne-Marie drove, speaking fluent, accented English.

  Anne-Marie thought about her offer to Viktor; she warmed to him, to his odd assumption about them. Nelson’s unfocused, faraway eyes had looked through her when she invited Viktor to stay with her. The offer had come out suddenly and surprised her. Had she wanted to deprive Nelson of a plan, of his ordering of everyone’s lives?

  She was unaware that Viktor had been speaking, a whole outpouring about his daughter, his ex. ‘I mean, I didn’t tell you much when I was in London. We would have killed each other. We only survived the first years of Rosa’s life with drugs, and only enjoyed Rosa when we were alone, away from each other.’

  ‘Who took drugs?’ Anne-Marie asked, her interest mildly stimulated.

  ‘We did. Nina and me. I was on antidepressants and for her it was painkillers – Valium, Tramadol, anything she could get hold of. We were either at war with each other or stoned. That’s why I left.’

  ‘Because of the drugs.
’

  ‘No. Yes. Because of the war – the extremes. Lurching constantly from insults to blowing our minds. You know the poem, “half the time sloppy stern, half the time at each other’s throats”?’

  Anne-Marie didn’t understand. It was late and she needed to sleep, so she could get up early and drive to Gweru. ‘I am beginning to get this, Viktor; you came to Harare to escape.’

  For a moment Viktor didn’t answer. Then he spoke in a rush: ‘I suffer from depression. I’m introspective. Not the defensive guilt of a paranoid person, rather a conscious, ego-syntonic sense of culpability.’

  Anne-Marie laughed. ‘Do you always speak like this in the flesh?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like a book? Like a doctor?’

  ‘When I’m accused of something I haven’t done I feel guilty.’ Viktor stared ahead. ‘These are classic traits, you see. The sadness a characteristic of anaclitic depression. Oppression and injustice drive me crazy and I can’t act. I don’t have the anger to act. The anger of the paranoid, the moralisation of the obsessive, the anxiety of the hysterical. They all act. Move. Rage. Not me, I am just sorrowful. Sorrow.’