An Ounce of Practice
Page 34
Tim stepped closer to Viktor. He had a lot of thinning black hair, tightly curled and oily. He wanted to speak, to let it out, make Viktor understand the tension. ‘You have to understand us – we think this is all a joke. We’ve saved thirty-eight thousand dollars, which we won’t even touch, but it allows us to do what we want, to say what we want. We could live comfortably on it for five years here. If we decide to settle here we’ll probably choose Mutare. Ideally we are looking at a place in Melbourne and one in Zimbabwe, eventually even Chiang Mai. This, these parties, the NGO jungle, it’s not our game.’
Viktor found it hard to concentrate. Through the terrace doors he saw the man gesticulating in front of the microphone, the crowd nodding, agreeing. The man raised his glass and his black jacket sleeves rose high on his arms. ‘A toast, then, friends,’ he was saying, ‘to the tireless and thankless work we do.’
Tim continued: ‘The bottom line is this: we’ve got some investments, some capital from our families and lots of doors are beginning to open. We need freedom, the ability to do what we want.’ Innocently, confused, Viktor asked, ‘But why, Tim, do you want investments? Are you going into business?’
Tim straightened, tilted his head back and let out a single loud laugh. The guests around them turned and looked. ‘You’ve got it. You’re a real Englishman. The accent, the expressions. The English manners, the direct way of speaking.’ He looked furtively around him, saw Anne-Marie and Andy speaking a few metres away from them. ‘The bottom line is, you could go far here, we could do a lot together.’ Viktor’s head started to swim again. He felt himself slipping – his glass had been filled again. He looked towards Anne-Marie. She saw him, rolled her eyes, blew a kiss.
Tim had taken his arm. Viktor saw his forearm tense, the muscles ripple. ‘You can’t always see it, but we are lucky men. Look at them, they both have a really nice feminine quality.’ He pointed his head to their partners. In case Viktor had not understood, was still adrift, he clarified loudly, ‘Our women, Anne-Marie and Andy. We are lucky, Viktor. Look at the attention they are getting.’
Viktor was both flattered and disgusted. What was this man saying? What did he mean? Yet he felt a strange connection – this was a man, strong, proper, undoubting, who was seeking an alliance and a belonging with him. Viktor thought about what had just been said. What is it about this environment? He pulled back his shoulder, sipped his champagne, took in the crowd. The heat, the power, corrupts the mind and heart of the expat in Africa. Even if they weren’t before, they become idiots. This get-rich-quick class incapable of original ideas and inventiveness. They stew and canker in the Third World – their flesh turns in the heat and poverty and they become avid, insatiable, lost.
‘God damn this place,’ Viktor said suddenly, aloud.
Tim had put an arm around Viktor’s shoulder and held him in place. Anne-Marie and Andy returned to the men. ‘We need to go outside for the pantomime,’ Anne-Marie said. She took Viktor’s hand and squeezed. The two couples tottered onto the terrace, apologising as they pushed through the crowd circling the pool until they could hear the speaker. The clarity of the night, the slight breeze, felt good, like a release.
‘Brandon Joseph runs Hands On,’ Anne-Marie explained. ‘This evening was his initiative. He’s a joke.’ She spoke roughly, confidently, and Tim and Andy nodded knowingly. There was something unstable and frayed about Anne-Marie’s energy. She was impatient – she knew what this evening would be, but had thought that she could introduce Viktor to a few liberal political players who could provide some assistance to Biko and the campaign. Instead, almost as soon as they stepped out of the car, she had become intolerably frustrated with the place: the platitudes, the lack of any commitment from the people she knew. She had even imagined that Tim and Andy could help, the couple who existed on the fringes of the NGO world, who drank, smoked locally sourced marijuana and listened to African music – but, she realised, even this had been an illusion. And now she was drunk and pissed off. Andy’s private conversation with her had been to fucking gossip and complain about Tim’s womanising. She had felt herself beginning to regret everything: the evening, the calamity, her work. These friends.
Their anger moved in different directions. Viktor tended to fall in, to become entangled in his neuroses, while Anne-Marie’s drew her out of herself and became clear and sharp. Both couples were drunk; their glasses had been refilled too often. Anne-Marie was beginning to burst – outside she breathed in deeply.
She looked around her and saw faces she recognised. Automatically she smiled and mouthed hellos. She saw a man and a woman she had seen in her offices several times, always impeccably dressed, clean and untouched. The woman’s porcelain-cream face, her delicate nose, were in profile; the man, carefully unshaven and mannered. They were talking quietly to themselves and didn’t want to be heard, but Anne-Marie could just make out the conversation. ‘Even these meetings,’ the man was saying, his head slightly bowed, leaning into his partner, ‘are run by illiterate fools just out of the bush and into office jobs.’ His accent was a broad South African drawl, the consonants long and drawn out. ‘Gumbo is tolerable, but the rest of them are ignorant alcoholics.’ The woman’s mouth curled up as she laughed quietly.
Anne-Marie turned back to her group, shook her head slightly and tried to focus on the man at the microphone, who raised his voice at odd, inappropriate moments. He was congratulating the crowd, the guests, for being there, for helping Zimbabwe – the word he had used was saving. Every few sentences he would stop to sip from his glass, and the audience tittered. ‘My first mission in Zimbabwe was in the early eighties, when Hands On was a small organisation of ten run from our Chicago office. The problems we dealt with then are in many ways the same we confront today, only the depth of rural poverty is much greater. But now, my friends, as a consequence, my missions are much longer in Zimbabwe.’ A few of the guests turned to each other and nodded knowingly. Brandon joined in, smiled, sipped once more at his champagne. ‘I am thinking of asking the president for Zimbabwean nationality, I certainly deserve it.’ There was further chuckling.
Anne-Marie suddenly regretted the argument with Viktor in the morning. There had to be some sort of political response to the situation, to this absurdity. She almost had to suppress the desire to shout, to pull Viktor away and run from the hotel and these people. Viktor held her hand tightly. She could see him grinding his teeth, his face pulled tight.
Tim had commandeered an entire bottle of wine and leant noisily across Andy to Viktor and Anne-Marie, refilling their glasses. There were a few sideward glances at the four. Some guests moved slowly away from them.
Brandon put his glass down and held onto the microphone stand. ‘Hands On wants to welcome a small dance troupe from a village near Chinhoyi who we have worked with since the early eighties - the School of the Born-Frees, as we used to call it. When I first arrived in the country I worked in the school, which was made up of two old shipping containers and whatever I could scrape and beg from colleagues in the States – a blackboard, chalk, even chairs. Now, I am pleased to say, it is a brick building with classrooms and a playing field.’ There was a spontaneous round of applause. As he spoke, the crowd started to part and a line of children, of different heights and ages, hunched in their sky-blue uniforms, moved in single file towards the stage.
‘Oh, god,’ Anne-Marie said loudly, involuntarily.
Concerned only with guarding the bottle of wine, Tim heard her seconds after she’d spoken, and then said, even more loudly, ‘Terrible. What is this, a circus?’
Andy nudged him angrily. ‘Respect the children, this is for them. This is their moment.’ She stared at Anne-Marie.
Brandon announced that they would now dance, a performance they had prepared entirely by themselves. ‘Amazing they can actually teach themselves how to dance,’ Viktor whispered to Anne-Marie.
People shuffled away from the makeshift stage and stepped onto the lawn to make room for the children.
There was complete silence – except from Tim, who in genuine enthusiasm yelled, ‘Yeah!’ and started to move, running his hand down his chest and stomach.
His face puckered, confused, Viktor looked at Anne-Marie. For a moment he didn’t recognise her: her nostrils were swollen, her mouth open, eyes ablaze. Viktor then looked up. The hotel was not just wide, spread out from below, it towered up – he tried to count the floors. The light was faint but he could see lit windows and faces looking out of the floors soaring above him. The building was in poor condition. A few floors above the party there was cracked, crumbling concrete, window frames exposed, shattered panes.
He lowered his head and surveyed the party. Viktor had never seen Anne-Marie like this. He leant in, tried to get her attention. ‘Are you okay?’
‘No, I am not. Can you believe this? These people.’
‘Can you believe this hotel?’ Viktor enjoined. ‘Look up, it’s falling down.’
Anne-Marie swivelled round so she stood with her back to Viktor and followed his finger up the building, to the lit windows. Tilting her head back so it rested on his chest, she said, ‘You don’t know the story of the bâtiment? It was a fully operational hotel a few years ago – Harare’s finest. But now it’s followed the rest of the neighbourhood. It is populated from the third floor to the twenty-second by elderly whites who used to live in the Avenues and have now moved into the hotel to die. It’s cheap and they have no family – none that want them, anyway. Triste, non? It is more of a retirement home for ancien whites who have nowhere else to go. Ils sont tous perdus. They are not allowed on the lower floors or by the pool. They have their own entrance and a private garden.’
‘So those are their faces.’ Viktor indicated the bodies standing in the windows on distant floors.
‘I guess so, watching this ridiculous spectacle for free.’
When they turned back, the song was ending. There was embarrassed applause. The group, with the musicians stepping forward, bowed slowly. Brandon was visibly nervous, his forehead wet. ‘From a former pupil, Class of 2011, thank you.’ He brought his hands together, one hand on the microphone; there was more applause.
Anne-Marie was consumed again, her hands on her hips – she had moved closer to the children and away from the group. Holding the wine bottle in one hand, Tim followed her, still moving to the finished song. ‘Can you hear what the kids are saying? Can you?’ Anne-Marie said when Tim was next to her. ‘No, I don’t speak Shona,’ Tim replied.
Anne-Marie turned quickly to him. ‘They are not speaking Shona.’ Then she added, ‘They are complaining that they haven’t eaten.’
The crowd resumed their loquacious insouciance, turned away from the stage. Brandon seemed aware that something needed to be done with the children. There was now another man next to him, a Zimbabwean in an expensive suit, his chest raised, his face clean and bright. They were speaking.
Viktor and Andy walked to Anne-Marie. Tim was drinking directly from the bottle. He explained, ‘Anne-Marie has just told me that the hotel manager’ – he indicated with his bottle the man speaking to Brandon – ‘is a ZANU supporter who runs this hotel and a score of others. He also funds Hands On and is providing the food for this event, this,’ correcting himself he added, ‘this junket.’ Viktor looked around the garden. The crowd on the terrace had thinned a little as guests strolled into the gardens or returned to the lobby for food. The children were looking around, still talking nervously among themselves. There was a small child, about eight, with large, dark eyes. Rosa, Viktor thought to himself without hesitation. That could be Rosa. His stomach turned. His head was unfocused, muddled.
Viktor recognised Anne-Marie’s words in Tim’s mouth. ‘This is a nasty little NGO carnival.’ Then Tim shouted, cupping the sides of his mouth, ‘We need to feed those kids.’
The children looked up. It happened quickly. Anne-Marie rushed forward and spoke in Korekore, and in a couple of seconds all of the children were around her.
The commotion was total. Guests in the garden and others inside the hotel looked up and started to shuffle back to the pool, curious to see if there was further entertainment. Brandon and the hotel owner had been trying to funnel the children away from the pool to an entrance at the side of the hotel, where they would be driven away in waiting combis.
Anne-Marie turned and the children followed her, through the open terrace doors. They shouted, ‘We want food! We want food!’ their confidence growing with each repetition.
When they had finished, Anne-Marie spoke directly to the guests. ‘These children tell me that they are hungry and have not been given anything to eat all day. They say they are staying on the floor of a community centre in Highfield, without bedding. They say their school has not been open for six months. These children want food, and I propose we let them have ours.’ There was total silence as she spoke. Then she instructed the group around her – speaking to them quickly and fluently – to follow her inside the hotel to eat.
There was now a pageant of cheering and dancing as the children moved towards the hotel, the guests mutely moving aside. Tim grabbed Andy and pulled her with him. Viktor felt his stomach and heart lurch. He skipped after the group. The children, who seemed to have multiplied in number, suddenly had the place. They ran round the pool in flip-flops and bare feet, one child splashing the water with her foot, another jumping on a sun lounger.
Even with the mayhem, several guests thought it was another performance for them; some even started to clap. The hotel owner rushed ahead of them into the hotel, his composure lost, his face flushed and panicked.
Anne-Marie waved to Viktor and shouted for him to hurry. Tim staggered and swayed into the hotel, holding the empty wine bottle. ‘Fucking brilliant,’ he said. ‘We should do this with our kids, Andy!’
The children had circled the tables inside the lobby, grabbing what they wanted: tearing the chicken with their teeth, spitting out the bones, swigging wildly from the carafes of juice, the bottles of water, grabbing handfuls of peanuts, stuffing olives and cheese into their mouths. Between mouthfuls there were more cheers.
Anne-Marie put her arm around Viktor’s waist. ‘Now follow me,’ she ordered, breathlessly, to the children. Half-singing, half-shouting, she began, ‘I’m a socialist, I’m a socialist, I’m a socialist. My mother was a kitchen girl, my father was a garden boy and that’s why I’m a socialist.’ Andy and Tim joined the couple. The song was repeated three times, the children stumbling, struggling to keep up – the whole inharmonious choir of children and adults, shouting, trying to find the tune. When they finally stopped, the smallest child, wearing a torn blue school shirt and no shoes, shouted, ‘We are free!’
Andy nudged Anne-Marie. ‘We need to get out of here, mate, and get the kids out as well. Come on.’ She moved around the food tables and walked quickly in the direction of the reception and exit. The others followed. Tim grabbed two fresh bottles of wine from a box stored under one of the tables. ‘Here, Vik, take one of these.’
Filling pockets, emptying plates, packing their mouths again, the children followed them out.
Completely calm again, Anne-Marie turned to Viktor and said, ‘Haven’t I been telling you, mudiwa, that we need action and that liberation must happen now – or not at all?’
Viktor’s eyes filled. His long strides propelled the couple forward. There were children running alongside them, two dozen Rosas, he imagined. All his
children. No, he thought finally, ours, mine and Anne-Marie’s. He answered her, breathless, ‘Is this your idea of the Grand Soirée, comrade?’
There were no ramifications, no aftershocks – however Brandon played it, the evening had to be written off. Hard-nosed and pragmatic, the hotel manager was pleased when the rabble of slum kids and their cheerleaders left the building of their own accord. The other guests dispersed noisily, twittering knowingly to each other that this was typical of the Zimbabwe they all knew so well. Only Anne-Marie felt as if she had broken something that could not be fixed – that she could take no more of these evenings.
Chapter Thirty
Samuel brushed down his trousers, crushing in pincer fingers the lice in his clothes and blanket. ‘I can’t even smell the cell any more.’
‘Habit,’ Biko stated.
‘I mean, when I first came in I couldn’t breathe, the smell of shit was so thick, but I don’t notice it any more.’ Samuel continued his work, his head bent.
‘We’re adaptable as a species – we adapt to rapid changes in conditions,’ Biko commented.
Hopewell was now on his knees cleaning, according to the schedule scratched onto the wall with a chipped stone. It was his democratic turn to kneel and sweep the floor with his hand, shake and fold the blankets. The other men rested, delousing their clothes.
‘If we couldn’t adapt, how would we live together in this toilet?’ Samuel said.
‘Because you and Biko are fucking Ndebele peasants, used to shitting in pit latrines in the open – while I come from a family of city workers. In the township we had separate toilets and concrete floors.’
Biko ignored him. ‘We have to be careful. We adjust too quickly to barbarity. Soon a concentration camp can seem normal, hunger, killing your neighbour, dying like these lice.’ Biko held up his fingers to illustrate his point, snapping them noisily together. The insect in his fingers split in two and its parts divided and flew into the cell. ‘Dying of HIV that no one needs to die of. The cell even seems normal. We are already being snuffed out, in the open prison outside this cell, and we think it’s normal, God’s will. We accept at our peril, comrades.’