by Zeilig, Leo;
*
Viktor swung the door open and the sunlight fell on him. Mobutu was close.
The flat was permanently in the dark; the small windows in the kitchen and bathroom overlooked the walkway that connected the flats. The flat held its temperature, heating up only a little in the day. On good days, when Anne-Marie went in late to work, they would eat porridge in bed under the cheap, rough blankets that rubbed their skin, their exposed arms growing numb in the cold, the curtains open so they could see the unobstructed morning sun that filled the sky with radiant, unquestioned authority. The sun obliterated the night, so the twenty-degree fall in temperature that accompanied the bright, black night seemed impossible.
In Zimbabwe it was easy to forget the night. Too easy.
If Anne-Marie knew I was giving away bread to this animal, she would kick me out. Viktor blinked, shielded his eyes, pulled the door closed and looked around for the bird. This morning duel was a contest of masculinities. Viktor versus Mobutu, man versus bird. Viktor was charged. The bird was half-flying, its blood-red, plumed wings extended, its neck and head forward as it rushed him. Viktor would sidestep the bird, deflect the dictator with his bag.
It seemed that crumbling the slices of bread, handing over the food through a crack in the door, had given the bird the notion that Viktor was stealing the bread; stealing the seeds, the grain, the fields and the land from its indigenous owners. Mobutu was trained by Mugabe. The bird is a black nationalist, Viktor realised. Mobutu hates me because I am white and he knows I’m an interloper. Mobutu didn’t just want crumbs; he wanted to control the bakery. Mobutu had memorised the party line.
In a couple of seconds he heard nothing from the bird. He hooked the bag, with notebooks, pen, laptop, phone, books, over his shoulder and started his fifteen-minute walk into town.
Viktor waited on the corner of Tongogara. Crowded buses passed, with faces pressed against the windows turning round heads flat and human beings into frescoes. The sun’s indiscriminating gaze held Viktor as he waited to cross the road and for a few minutes cast out any possibility of thought. The air was already thick; Viktor revelled in the morning sunshine.
As he moved into the shadows sentences came up quickly, jostling for air. Maybe I was always going to be a bad father and it was always going to be like this. I was never going to stay with Nina. It was an impossible collusion, an accident that could never have worked. Viktor thought of the last fight he’d had with Nina.
‘I don’t trust you with Rosa. She comes back with bruises,’ she’d said.
‘So now I’m an abuser and a philanderer. Anything else on the list, while you’re at it?’ He’d slammed the phone down before she answered.
Viktor’s thoughts went to Mobutu; he stopped abruptly in the street. The fucking bird didn’t disappear. It’s in the flat. He turned round and raced back.
Mobutu had pecked, scratched and defecated across every surface in the kitchen. He had also found the plastic box on the sideboard containing the bread. When Viktor entered, Mobutu was squatting silently next to the pecked, plastic bread bag, crumbs scattered around him. Slices of the bleached loaf lay hollowed, half-eaten, strewn on the floor like brown-rimmed picture frames. A single crust hung out of the rooster’s mouth.
Mobutu turned his head to Viktor and eyeballed his foe. He opened his mouth, dropping the crust, and emitted a solitary squawk.
The dictator had won and he knew it. Mobutu put up only token resistance to being bundled, in a grey blanket, out of the flat. Stuffed and satisfied, he emerged unflustered from the blanket, shook his little body and returned to the roost at the end of the walkway, where he lived like a rat in a hollow in the exposed bricks.
Such unambiguous victory: the flat ransacked, reclaimed in a dirty protest that had calmed the bird’s ruffled ego. The following day Mobutu granted Viktor a morning reprieve, free from further assault. But two days later the bird, forgetting its recent victory, screamed at the same hour to be allowed back into the flat.
‘I’m coming,’ Viktor shouted as he rolled out of bed.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Viktor wondered about his love for Anne-Marie. Everything must have its time; authentic life, he believed, germinated slowly in the tended earth. Love, too, needed a season’s sun and rain. Love required careful attention to the emotional harvest. It needed to show itself as a tree, not a sapling, something adamant and large in the middle of the field. Love must look knotted, twisted, old, like Isaac, like Sonia. So this feeling he now recognised, the physical tremble in his stomach, his obsession with Anne-Marie, his worry when she wasn’t near him, his attention to her needs, the constant, panicked ruminations – was this love?
He returned to these feelings as he crossed Samora Machel and came out of the shadows along the pavement; on the road a noisy, slow line of taxis rattled towards him. He turned right past Harare Gardens; the warm late-afternoon sun caressed him. A mother walked ahead of him, pulling a small child behind her. The child fell behind her mother, then skipped to catch up; she stared at her own feet and the shadowed patterns they made on the ground. Viktor watched her dance on the street. The girl wore a pair of flip-flops, the foam soles paper thin. The cheap hawker-bought sandals were no protection against the pavement, yet the girl moved skilfully around the street rubble.
Her momentary skipping joy refused Viktor’s pity; still his chest lurched at the sight of her loose, naked feet. No fucking pity, just anger. Let me feel anger, he muttered aloud to himself. His head sought the facts that he needed. In his head he scanned the newspapers, his recent blogs. The girl was still in sight, trailing behind her mother, then running to draw near. Viktor followed them, turning into Seventh Street. What was the last article I wrote? The new twin-cabs imported from Taiwan for each MP. The expense accounts, the foreign junkets. No, I need more than that. He saw the mother and child stop and join a makeshift queue waiting for taxis. The mother’s brow was dripping wet; the girl looked up at her. Viktor tried, as Nelson had said, to picture the extraordinary collective wealth of Southern Africa – the gold, coal, diamonds, platinum and the land, the rich, fertile land always in the wrong hands. What would this child look like, what would she be wearing on her feet, if this wealth was redistributed? He was almost beside them. The girl stared intensely at him. Still too abstract, Viktor thought. This collectivised, redistributed wealth is too far away. Too late for this child. Fuck. When he was finally parallel to her, so that there was nothing between them except the fading light, she opened her mouth and smiled, revealing a gap between her two large front teeth. Too late for her, Viktor thought again. Too late even for him to smile back before he had moved past them and she had joined the bustle, barging and elbowing into the open combi.
Just like Rosa, those teeth.
‘We’re the same now, Dad,’ Rosa had said, bouncing on his lap, inspecting his open mouth. ‘You’ve got a gap here,’ she put her small finger into the gap where his tooth had been removed years ago, ‘and I have one at the front.’
Viktor walked on. Then – he couldn’t help it – he put a hand to support himself against the wall. He struggled to breathe; he heaved and sucked in the air. He saw Rosa, felt her on him, his own private dentist, her childish breath against his face. He saw the combi hesitantly move past him on the road, weighed down, sagging with the effort, with the people pushed and squeezed together. Viktor saw the girl’s face pressed against the back window.
Rosa, Rosa, Rosa, he said over and over again. Damn it. Damn you, Rosa. Damn Harare. Damn Zimbabwe. Damn Nina. Damn those fucking flip-flops. Damn them all.
Viktor thought he was a victim to his feelings for Anne-Marie; sentiments that abounded and stampeded in him, which, he fancied, were not even about her but drawn from his daughter.
Strange, this African revelation. It meant, after all this time, that he still loved his daughter and she had managed, in her adamant, determined way, to burrow quietly to the centre of his being. Rosa was always there, sitting cross-
legged on his diaphragm, riding up and down with his breath or lying with her head between his lungs, her face pressed against his throbbing heart. There she was, there she would always be; his first and only born. This child that he had not wanted with a woman he did not know, a woman who now hated him and struggled even to pronounce his name. Nina who couldn’t say Viktor, and Viktor who couldn’t recognise his role in his daughter’s life.
The sun was gone now and the patchy dusk filled the sky. Viktor looked for the moon as he stumbled on, stubbing his foot on a broken paving stone. Then why am I here? he thought. Always another question, just when he had finally found the answer. I need Rosa, he thought. I should have given that girl’s mother some money, should have emptied my goddamn wallet.
He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw Anne-Marie’s number flashing brightly; the lit screen flickered against his face like a candle. His stomach spasmed with excitement. ‘Darling!’ he exclaimed into the phone.
*
Comrade,
Delighted that the students are out on bail! A despot’s nerves can make him vacillate! Our comrade students out (even on shit conditions) and an appeal against bail – this is the time to recharge, re-steel, rehearse speeches, yes, from the dock – long ones, VERY long ones – a major emphasis for all supporters now must be to get them to submit any trial to the absolute maximum publicity to try to drag it out for months, not to torment our comrades but to save them from the firing squad. These are Mugabe’s tactics – don’t be fooled by legalese. He is a murderer. Vicious. Biko is not safe while he remains in jail. Is there any news? He is our Lumumba, there is no Plan B without him. No Zimbabwean revolution.
Now: What to do. This is a list from my experience for you to consider, comrade. Let Nelson and Anne-Marie see it – there is more practical passion and common sense in that woman than in anyone I know. I speak here from my experience in South Africa: I was picked up two years after my release for another invented crime. I had been involved in a township group, a sort of Mugabe fan club, fighting the police on a purely black nationalist programme. When I was released I had shit conditions and an accompanying 24/7 constant ‘escort’ of four of their political police thugs with me the whole time. My lover at the time, Lucia, nevertheless did the right things:
1. Phoned up the entire world press: TV, internet video outfits with helicopters. There was the risk they’d arrange an accident if I tried to get my books, files, records, interviews, photos, videos out of the country – I was on my way to Zimbabwe. Half the national press, three TV channels backed me, because any journalist who told the truth and criticised the state and bosses was also given the treatment I received.
2. Despite the fact that Lucia – a coloured women from Johannesburg – never normally cooked (she was as insanely hyperactive as me), she practically ‘force-fed’ me to build up strength, to sustain me for when they next locked me up and beat me, which is of course utterly unpredictable until there’s a physical and visible solidarity movement.
3. Create intense absolute normality for each comrade while they are out of prison, as this undoes a lot of the trauma effect. This refills your mind, conscious and subconscious, with normal thoughts, feelings and sensations. Lucia gave me incessant ultra-sex. ‘Maximum fantasy,’ she’d order me, ‘tell me now.’ This is a fantastic restorative. Obviously we can’t help Biko on this front if he’s in prison, but when he’s out we need to strategise.
4. Hold political meetings for all comrades. Let them relax and rise again politically.
5. BUT also with a large company of comrades from the Society of Liberated Minds, in Bulawayo, in Harare, get them out to a physically naturally therapeutic environment, beautiful countryside or a big park at least, or any moving water is really good – fountains, streams, even artificial ones will also do. I know a place near Gweru. Take them there with lunches.
6. No obvious pampering – just normal comradely, friendly humour and hugs. People who are overwrought, including family, should be ‘diverted’ and given tasks. Tell them to cook home-made delicious food, lots of mealie-meal, ready for them to take back inside if they are rearrested. The funds we are collecting at the university can be used for these purposes. Can you get food to Biko, can you deliver daily parcels? Tell me what to do. I am ready for your orders, Viktor, do you hear me?
And this is the really important part: TUNISIA. Egypt. Say it once, say it twice, shout it, sing it, repeat it every day: Tunisia. Egypt. There are lessons for Zimbabwe from North Africa. I have been watching closely.
What has happened in Tunisia and Egypt is also happening, now, in Zimbabwe, in Bulawayo. Biko could be the match, the ignition, the dynamite. This point is STRAIGHT, DIRECT from how the Tunisian revolution started. The howling, wailing, hysterical mother was given her son’s ashes, went almost loopy with grief and pain (a family member, probably the daughter, uploaded it), lashing, gnashing, screaming deafeningly, pacing up and down their tiny home, with the family unsure what to do. Then suddenly it all turned to fury and she strode out, hands in front, carrying her son’s ashes and just walked in a straight line to the local government and ruling party HQ where her son torched himself and where the policewoman was based who slapped his face after stealing his bananas. On the way, 1,000, yes, I repeat, the video shows 1,000 (I counted while it was still online) INDUSTRIAL/FACTORY/CONSTRUCTION WORKERS, falling in respectfully behind her, like a funeral cortege.
We don’t know. It could come to this in Bulawayo. And Harare. There are NO rule books on how a loved one may erupt at even the thought of her little baby being threatened with death or prison. Biko is OUR loved one. It is completely correct to ENCOURAGE those around the framed victims to ACT BRAVELY – obviously with concrete advice – and to get numbers. Don’t go screaming to the police station at night, or on a quiet, non-working day. Go during working days, preferably as people go to work, as the hawkers set out their stalls, or just before lunch breaks so maximum numbers see the family. This will make the police more careful. They only want to crush and silence this minority, not turn it into 100 or 200 or more. They’ve seen the videos of the revolutions as well. Mugabe has prepared them.
NO ONE in our ranks should ever slap down a family member or a comrade who, out of the blue, might say: ‘I’m going to demand his release. I’m going to burn down the police station.’
IT’S NOT OUR RIGHT TO STOP THEM! Every human being has the right – it’s a human right to grieve in whatever way their deepest feelings dictate. No one else has any right to block that. That parent and comrade has to live with a loss if they did NOT fight hard enough to stop, which is a lifelong death sentence, of guilt, remorse, regret. I know.
The union is still organising COLLECTIONS at the university to send more money. You will lack in nothing – tell Biko that, if you can. NOTHING. NADA. HAPANA. We will use our own internationalism to fight with you.
I’m sure the arrests and torture have shaken EVERYONE in their whole circle of course. But Mugabe and X-Party will fall, Viktor.
It’s going to happen SOONER or LATER.
Sorry if this smacks of abstract ‘preaching’ but so few people ever even talk about it let alone write about it. The dictatorship will fall. Have faith, have hope.
As for you, Viktor, you must lean on someone – Anne-Marie, Nelson, Lenin. There’s usually one obvious person. Anne-Marie is my guess. She is passionate, fearless, but ruthlessly disciplined, intellectually sharp as a razor but totally – like you and me – emotionally crazy for what we fight for. In the West you can easily separate emotion from political operation. In Zim you cannot. Have courage, which I know you do. You have created something, a movement, a campaign. Now liberally apply more practice.
Tendai
*
In the middle of the week Viktor received another email from Nina. As he read the message he felt life rise in him, then tumble out and drain from him. He was breathless. Guiltily he looked around, as if opening the email had sudden
ly released Nina’s words onto Harare’s advertising hoardings, scrawling her insults in red ink on abandoned walls or broadcasting the news in hourly bulletins courtesy of the Zimbabwe Broadcast Corporation: ‘In a shocking new development, Viktor Isaacs – who has been in Zimbabwe attempting to usurp our democracy, to undermine the project of black empowerment and redistribution – received a fulsome rebuff from his ex-wife, revealing his past as a child abuser and wife beater. Speaking on behalf of the government, Gideon Gumbo stated: “We want the racist, imperialist government in Whitehall to take back their white detritus and stop sending us their problem children. We say send Isaacs back”.’
Viktor, I have learnt so much from your abusive behaviour towards me and Rosa. I have suffered much from your behaviour, which I am only beginning to deal with. We were always misaligned, my Virgo’s reliability and intelligence and your Libran hesitation and doubt. I see below the surface and recognise what is right. I discriminate and I am passionate. You are not. Our planets pass on separate orbits; our cycles are not in harmony. I am not angry. I can see that our spiritual paths could never have joined. Do you see this was always going to happen? I have made peace. I have plaited a lock of your hair with Rosa’s and placed it on the altar. N
How, Viktor asked himself, does she have a lock of my hair? The greater her commitment to their planetary incompatibility, the more Viktor ached for her; a terrible, immense sorrow flooded him. Why did she need to call on the cosmos to testify in some almighty spiritual court of their lowly, desperate, irrelevant heartbreak? No, the universe was too puny to judge their immense loss. What was the universe, he thought, to all of their hurt, to their daughter’s unquenchable grief? The universe – didn’t she know, how could she not see? – was frail, mute, unable to articulate a single syllable next to the enormity of their calamity. The universe was nothing to the longing he felt for his daughter.