An Ounce of Practice

by Zeilig, Leo;

  ‘So these price controls could be rolled out across Zimbabwe, is that what you are saying?’ Viktor asked.

  ‘No, no, not exactly, but they are a start. We can humiliate the market that’s come to privatise our services and challenge the regime and provide an example. You know, there are good cadre in ZANU who believe in land redistribution, nationalisation, indigenisation. We can take them on.’

  Biko was sitting cross-legged on the bed. Night had fallen and Viktor could only see the outline of his face, his arms moving in wide, bountiful arches, the still air disturbed, his hands casting his words across the room to his solitary, worn-out auditor.

  Viktor replied, ‘Okay, what I think is this. You operated a macho posse, imposing presidential decrees that might be impressive but satisfy your desire for a personality cult. You say the students cry “Biko, Biko, Biko” when you enter the campus. You might be part of the problem. We need movements without leaders – without leaders like you, at least. Too much charisma, Biko, that’s your problem.’

  Biko laughed loudly. ‘Wrong. But there is a danger, I see that. I just pushed, and we need organisations and individuals in them to push.’

  Soon they were lying down. Biko slept, as if sleep could be simply willed. He had none of Viktor’s discomfort. He had brazenly stripped and now lay pressed against his companion.

  Before Biko fell asleep, he thought, Strange, this comrade sent from – he had forgotten now – Harare, from London? He enjoyed Viktor’s insistence and intensity, like his own, he thought, but without laughter – how serious, these ... these men from Europe, they really mean business.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be parked outside the police station? Picketing? We’re sleeping while they languish,’ Viktor had said, enjoying the warmth and comfort of Biko beside him.

  ‘We need our rest and sleep to better campaign, comrade. They will be released. It’s me they want.’

  Biko woke in the night, pleased that his companion was asleep, impressed that he could sleep in this damn heat. He knew he wouldn’t be able to beat his way back to sleep, so he got up and moved silently round the bed to the hall and the small, rubbish-strewn front lawn. A cat was scratching at a black plastic bag; he kicked it out of the way. ‘Ibva pano!’

  He pissed, leaning against the side of the house. The moon lit the street with an uneven glare. I should move to Johannesburg, he thought again. The idea was on a loop he was powerless to unhook; round and round it went. Mongezi can get me work in the garage. I can send back medicine and food for the family. Onward to the conclusion: But the struggle at the university, in Bulawayo, would collapse.

  Biko snapped up his boxer shorts and remained leaning against the house, the cat mewing loudly in complaint at this interloper who had snatched its spot. He saw his sister before him, her sick, thin body on his last visit home, thankful for the scraps he had hustled from the city. A bag of biltong, already broken into; face cream, the lid broken; a small sack of mealie. Scraps all. He had wanted to hold her, to cry, rest his head on her lap – talk, like they used to, about their mother. Instead he had hurried back to Bulawayo, speaking to her with the bombast he used at university. He withdrew to the politics he knew in town, as his father had.

  Now, in the familiar routine, he remembered his father visiting him on business two years before, in his only suit, looking too smart, but with an arrogance and pride that made it impossible for Biko to pity him when he got out of the bus. How he had brushed away his son’s offer to carry his bags, already too heavy for him, with a dismissive wave: ‘Asi unofunga kuti handina kugwinya zvekuti ndinga takura nhava dzangu ndega here nhai mwanangu.’ Then the beers they had shared in the evening with his friends, how his chest had inflated in pride as his father entertained them with stories about the seventies, before you born-frees ...

  ‘Your problem,’ he said, pointing his beer at the group, ‘is you think my generation is only Grade Four and you are very educated, you think you are now so learned and there is nothing that we, those who freed Zimbabwe, can teach you. I want to show you that we can still outthink you, outfight you.’ He got up and started to sway and dance on his feet, swinging his leathery fists at his hosts, the boys. Biko’s friends laughed and hooted. ‘You see, when I was your age I was already fighting the whites, and you think you are special, so today I want to reduce you to size.’

  How he had loved the chiding, the reprimands from these children about the failures of 1980, the failure of the Second Chimurenga. Of course there was no business in Bulawayo; of course the city was on the way to nowhere. Biko knew that his father had planned the visit for months because he wanted to see his son, because he missed him. He thought suddenly of his mother, her image forming before him clearly.

  Biko started to cry, tears rolling down his face in large, salty drops. The cat edged back to the bag, the rubbish and food. Biko dropped to his knees, the cat curled around his outstretched arm.

  The vision of his mother – seventeen years ago – was so clear to him, the blemishes on her face, her worn eyes vivid. If only he could reach out to her like this, as he was doing now with the cat, and pull his mother back, grab her up in his strong grip through the years that separated them, the irrelevant, unnecessary events that had dragged on, since his mother’s death, and pull them in, make them nothing.

  Biko stood straight, rubbed his nose and eyes with the back of his arm and stumbled dizzily into the house.

  Wasn’t his father here, right in front of him, not lost, his breath heavy with beer, hot against his son’s neck as they staggered, all of them, back from the bar, to the same house, to the same bed?

  Biko lay next to Viktor, whose breathing was soft and steady.

  *

  Hitler closed his hand tightly on Viktor’s balls, crushing and twisting them in his hand. Viktor felt a sharp, jarring agony and passed out. Hitler released him from the wall and moved away. Viktor’s body crumpled to the floor.

  Biko too slid to the floor, repeating in his head, I mustn’t make a noise. Mustn’t give them what they want. The floor felt comforting, the cold tiles steady and reliable against his face. His back pulsed numb. He knew that the pain was about to swallow him, and that then, only then, he would want to scream. He saw the police bent over, panting, their batons lying on the floor.

  Moments later, Viktor was conscious. ‘I will report you, you sadistic bastards,’ he cried, his voice quivering.

  Shut up, you white man, shut up, comrade, Biko thought. His nose and mouth were running, a small pool of saliva and blood forming on the tiles. Stupid, crazy, brilliant white man. Biko struggled to remember the man’s name again, the murungu. What’s the bloody murungu called? What’s he called? He heard Viktor gasp in pain and tried to move, to get to him. Suddenly he felt the rush of his own pain, a thick, long ripple across his back and up his neck. The gasp was his own.

  ‘Let’s give him the hose. Let’s give Mr Englander a lesson, show him how we deflower our youth. The Bulawayo Treatment.’ Hitler was in the centre of the room, pointing and ordering his men again. ‘Are you looking, Mr Englander?’

  The policeman kicked Biko into place and forced him to straighten his legs, lie with his arms and legs spread out on the floor, on his stomach. He felt his trousers being pulled down, the floor cold and threatening against his penis and his bare stomach.

  ‘Get it in!’ Hitler shouted, his voice breaking.

  Biko tried to move again, his chest widened to breathe, and he shuddered as the pain sent the air tumbling out of his lungs. He tried again to catch his breath, only to lose it to the suffocating, stabbing agony in his chest.

  ‘Make it wet and push it in!’ Hitler screamed.

  Biko heard the sound of throats clearing, spitting, and felt the spittle against his naked back and buttocks.

  The thickset policeman squatted and with his hands parted Biko’s buttocks. For an instant it felt pleasant; then Biko heard a grunt as the stick was rammed inside his anus. He tried to twist, turn over, dislodg
e the force, but he couldn’t move. The rippling, reeling pain left him pinned to the ground.

  *

  ‘I am a journalist and blogger based in Zimbabwe ... Where? ... In Bulawayo. Two days ago I witnessed seven students being attacked and arrested by the police. They are still being held. I would like your help to get them out.’

  ‘I will see what I can do. We are busy in Harare.’ Jonathan Goodmore was a Y-Party minister in the government, now in coalition with ZANU, and his voice was stiff.

  ‘I am told you were a student leader yourself, here in Bulawayo. I am sure it would only take a few calls. We have good reason to think they are being beaten,’ Viktor said.

  ‘Of course they are, this is Zimbabwe,’ Goodmore replied.

  ‘Then please do something, sir,’ Viktor added.

  ‘I said I would try. Phone me back later.’ He then hung up and refused to answer the phone, each of the fifteen times Viktor called that day.

  Viktor started his calls from the list sent by Rajeev, incautiously, as though he had learnt nothing, thinking as he announced himself that it was important to forget the lessons, the refusal, the failures, and become naive again. In Zimbabwe, to believe he needed to forget the nightmares of the past, the impossibility of change.

  Viktor made these calls fluently; he enjoyed the feeling that he was right, without any distractions. Biko sat next to him, mouthing the script, hand-signing what words to emphasise, describing who were the scoundrels and sell-outs, warning him, immunising him against the entire caste of profiteers.

  Biko scoffed loudly: ‘Jonathan is a coward.’ Viktor shielded the mouthpiece as Biko continued, ‘We get in the way of their business, we disturb their bonuses. Their deals with X-Party.’

  Still covering the receiver, Viktor replied, ‘I have to try. The man is in the bloody opposition – on your side.’

  ‘Pah,’ Biko snarled, his face spreading out in a smile. ‘He is not on our side. He is like them, a fallen giant. He is lining his pockets, getting fat in government. He is on his own side, comrade. That, that’ – he tried to find the word in his mouth – ‘fool, idiot, capitalist, dog. That dog.’

  Viktor, sweating in the sun, returned to the call.

  Biko reassured him, his arms flapping, that they could run their pavement campaign like this, in a high street café. Why do we need to be so needlessly cocksure? Viktor thought. ‘We can’t concede the city to them or they’ll come after us,’ Biko said, smiling, hitting the table with his hand, spilling their coffees. ‘They’ve already got so many of us, com, that’s the point.’

  Biko had woken Viktor early, when the morning was only beginning to break over the horizon, the eastern skyline tilting to the sun, the sky slowly lighting, the pale, full moon turning translucent, losing consistency. They walked through the overgrown suburb, along the clogged stream that ran into the city.

  Viktor awoke resolute. Sleep had washed him clean.

  It had been Viktor’s idea to lobby the police station. The station could fool you, with its ordered facade and neat red bricks and signposts: Reception, Assistance, Report Any Theft or Criminal Behaviour to Your Local Police. These things lulled Viktor, told him he could make a proper complaint; though broken, the legal edifice of the state still stood.

  Viktor announced himself. ‘I want to speak to the chief asshole. Not you, the sergeant, the officer in charge, the inspector who runs your station. Innocent people were arrested. And I want to know where they are. I want to see them now.’

  Once more Biko had to half-drag, half-carry Viktor from the police.

  The sergeant, bemused, stared at Viktor, who stared back until the sergeant asked the two men to stay where they were. His round face and glasses and swept, neat uniform made the policeman, like the station, look ordered and reasonable. ‘Don’t move, this is very important. Interesting. A complaint,’ the officer said. The sergeant left the desk.

  *

  ‘Are you watching, Mr Englander?’ Hitler bent over Viktor, whose foggy, clouded vision had started to clear. He rolled Viktor onto his side and cupped his head in his hands. ‘Look at this show, Mr Englander. This is what we do to our naughty children; we learnt it from you people, from Her Royal Highness.’

  At first Viktor could only see the feet of the desk, the white tiles on the floor, and the shoes and trouser hems of the two men, but slowly his focus sharpened and narrowed on Biko’s naked thighs and buttocks beyond the feet of the desk, head turned towards the wall.

  ‘Again, man, you missed it,’ Hitler repeated softly like an uncle.

  Viktor saw a single baton lowered slowly to Biko’s back, then firmly dragged along the spine so the skin gathered along the rounded head of the stick, rippling the flesh like water. The baton was raised suddenly; then Viktor saw it plunge violently between Biko’s buttocks. Biko’s body shuddered and convulsed.

  ‘Once more. Harder!’ Hitler shouted, still on his haunches, cradling Viktor’s head.

  Before Biko passed out he saw his mother. He felt ashamed and didn’t want her to see his naked legs and buttocks, his failure. Biko thought of his university study and the money that he’d managed to send to his sister. He’d done this for his mother, to return, somehow, to her the love he felt so keenly, with such abundance. But now she is watching me and I have failed her. The pain and humiliation came together loudly, buzzed hysterically in his ears, and then it was over and Biko’s whirlwind of sensations shut down.

  Hitler dropped Viktor’s face to the floor and exhausted, exhilarated, stood.

  *

  ‘Nicely done, com, but if we don’t leave now we’ll be arrested.’ Biko tried the door, which was locked. Quickly he jumped over the counter, ran his hand under the desk, searching for the button.

  Voices could be heard along the corridor behind Biko, a clutter of movement as policemen moved towards them.

  ‘Get to the door,’ Biko ordered. ‘Hold it open for me.’

  Biko found the button. A light thud sounded as the magnetic plate released. Viktor pushed the door open. Biko sprang over the counter again, levering himself with his arm on the desktop in one clean leap, as though he had practised the manoeuvre. The door to the back offices and corridor swung open and two policemen in green uniforms came through. Biko landed on the right side of the counter, his legs bent, for a second invisible below the reception desk. The men stood silent. Viktor held the door, ready to run, waiting for Biko. Biko scooped Viktor around the waist with one arm, pulled him away from the station and forced Viktor to move at his speed.

  There was shouting behind them.

  Now they ran, hand in hand, Biko in front, leading Viktor as they jumped clear of the cardboard pavement stalls, past hawkers selling juice cards, then across two streets, over bodies slumped in the gutters, the shouting behind them, the sound of the street. When they arrived at the café they laughed, sucking in the air, falling on the chairs around a table arranged on the pavement.

  I can trust him, Biko thought, he is serious. What stupid, brilliant audacity. He doesn’t hold anything back. Like me. ‘Like me,’ he repeated aloud. ‘You called the dog an asshole!’ Biko laughed, slapping Viktor’s back. Viktor heaved breathlessly. ‘Totally reckless, comrade, insane, but brilliant in its way.’

  The café was shaded by a broken canopy; the sun beat down on them through the torn awnings. Viktor needed the heat. He raised his face to the sky, to feel the sun on him, the large, forgiving expanse of sky. He was comforted. He thought that if he stared hard enough beyond the loose clouds he could see where the night lay watching over the day, its own vastness, its huge frontiers, even greater, more forgiving and ignorant of them than this temporary, fleeting day.

  Viktor felt proud.

  The tables, similarly half-shaded, were occupied with small groups of men huddled over coffees and beers. Viktor and Biko continued to plan and make phone calls with more stupid, brazen bravado. Hadn’t they challenged the universe enough? By late in the afternoon their pavement table, no
w a campaign headquarters, was strewn with two phones, papers, a notepad.

  An old man, his face creased, his clothes loose on him, leant on the edge of the table, beckoned to Biko and muttered in a rasping, deep voice, ‘Tora mari iyi chikomana, ndoda kuti uwumbe bato rino bvisa kamudhara ako pachigaro.’ He then removed a note from his pocket and gave it to Biko. Still leaning heavily on the table, he stood, straightened himself and walked away.

  ‘What did he say?’ Viktor asked.

  Biko hesitated. ‘Well,’ he said, searching for the words in English, ‘I think he said, “Put this in your funds, comrade, and build a fucking riot to bring down the government.” I am not sure he said fucking.’ Biko smiled with his mouth open, showing his fleshy, pink gums and missing teeth.

  ‘I think that is a good sign. How much did he give you?’ Viktor asked.

  ‘More than he could afford,’ Biko answered.

  Viktor turned his head back to the lists of numbers and contacts they had written. Biko wiped his eyes.

  Two hours later the night elbowed out the day. The couple still campaigned on the pavement, the last table occupied in the café. And when they were ready to shuffle their papers, pack away the recorder Viktor used to interview Biko and withdraw, like the day, to the squat – the table was surrounded by plainclothes policemen. They were arrested.

  Part Five:

  The Campaign

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Viktor felt chastened, ashamed. He put off thinking, refused to do it on the train back to Harare, in the empty compartment. He had bought each of the beds so he wouldn’t have to share. Nor did he think as he walked from the station, knowing the route, along the broad avenues, past Harare Gardens. He lifted his gaze so he didn’t see the hawkers and potholes, only the distance, the buildings reflecting the late-morning sunlight. Like this, he could pretend the city worked.