by Zeilig, Leo;
But the affection Louis held for this shabby, thin-necked traveller he’d adopted made Viktor sad. Despite everything, his freewheeling prejudices nurtured in Africa’s fecund soil, he was lost. Viktor had raised Louis’s expectations, accepted the offer of his embrace, allowed himself to become ‘my boy’ and led him along so he could think that they were, somehow, father and son, and that Viktor was a safe place to put his dried-up old man’s love.
How many times have I been loved? Viktor thought again, sipping his second coffee. How often have I allowed love to grow in someone, seen it take hold and rise, and then gone, stopped calling, not walked through the door again? Breaking hearts is killing me.
Viktor cursed himself as Louis raised his thumb, heralding him, gestured to him from his faraway counter. It had only been two days since he had last visited the café and he could already see the hurt in Louis’s eyes.
*
When the power was down, Nelson fired up a small generator, finding his way onto the balcony in the pitch-black night. ‘Zimbabweans know what death looks like, comrade, because we enter it every night. Lightless shacks and distant, long-dead stars,’ he would say as he groped his way through the flat, his arms in front of him, unsteady from cheap wine, kicking the balcony doors open, finding his path to the generator and then resting his foot on the machine, fingering blindly for the rip cord.
With profits from informal trading, the small import-export business he ran from his stores in the second bedroom and garage, he sank a borehole for fresh water in the communal garden and then decanted the water from grubby plastic bottles into an incongruous glass carafe, presenting the drink as ‘mineral water from Harare’s mountain spring’, accompanied each time by his bass baritone laugh. Always the same joke, each time only his laughter. The crazy paving around the block’s swimming pool was crumbling; the pool had been drained of water by residents of the block.
In a recent meeting Nelson had exclaimed, ‘Comrades, we’ve become environmentalists! Eighty-seven per cent of Zimbabweans are food insecure. They go to bed hungry every night, and though we might not be able to eat, we’re green. We have simply stopped consuming, and the air above Zimbabwe has never been cleaner. But the problem, comrades, is our lack of consumption. You might,’ he said, looking at Viktor, ‘have diagnosed that our species is burning too much carbon for the planet to sustain human life in one or two hundred years. But we must see these facts in the context of a global system of unequal states. In Zimbabwe we are dying because we do not burn enough carbon. Comrades, don’t look at these issues simplistically. We are not African nationalists. We are not in this together.’
To the ragged poor, the destitute students and unemployed workers, the landless peasants in the meeting, this was a point of negligible interest. Nelson continued, ‘In the Paris siege of 1871, the rich continued to eat well while the poor started to eat cats, dogs and rats. As the siege continued, the rich raided the zoo and served game in the most expensive restaurants. Except the monkeys. They didn’t eat the monkeys because of their resemblance to us.’ The audience laughed. ‘Our rich have no such scruples. Have you seen the delicatessens? The imported cheeses, fine wines, salamis, meats available at Fife Avenue Shopping Centre? Have you seen the wine bars that have opened across Harare? While the poor collapse and die in the street, starve slowly in the townships, die next to barren fields.’
He paused, opened his arms, questioning, appealing. ‘What do they want? Todya marara here? Do they really want us to eat dirt?’ The group groaned in agreement. ‘The Zimbabwean siege has exposed our class cleavages. It has forced the enemy into the open, exposed their drinking holes, their restaurants, their fortified farms and warehouses. Workers, the unemployed, students, hawkers, peasants on one side and black capitalists, bankers, politicians, imperialists on the other. In two words: oppressor and oppressed, now in constant, open, uninterrupted opposition.’ Unusually measured, working his way to climax slowly, Nelson rapped the table with his knuckles and spoke loudly, giving up, for once, any effort at control. ‘At last, comrades, these groups are in open struggle. How this battle ends – common ruin, global environmental collapse or a revolutionary reconstruction, a classless society – depends on our unity, our forces, our organisations.’
What sense did it make to talk like this? Viktor thought, as Nelson waved his hands over the heads of the small crowd in the room. Like a conjuror in his front room, the TV pushed to the side, the sofas against the wall, broken plastic chairs carried in from the balcony, two long single-plank benches for the exhausted, hungry crowd; Nelson’s chosen, his wretched of the earth. Our puny forces ready to lead the world to revolutionary reconstruction and ruination. Is this the reason Anne-Marie doesn’t come to the meetings any more? He might be right, but the distant, reconstituted planet flickered too faintly in the unreachable starry filament. Nelson, Africa has had too many revolutions and revolutionaries: Lumumba, Amin, Sankara, Taylor, Kabila.
When Viktor entered the next day he didn’t sit down. Instead he stood at the door. Nelson was lying across his sofa, saw his visitor and raised an arm in greeting, slowly sitting up. He pointed to the TV. ‘Do you understand this thing? It’s a South African version of Big Brother. What are people saying about it? How do you understand it?’
Viktor didn’t move or answer Nelson’s questions. The TV was always on, when Nelson read, when there were guests and now while Biko festered and rotted in prison. Viktor wanted this man to move. Nelson was impatient for the great goal of his life, but calm and deliberate in his refusal to rush anything else.
‘Come and sit down, com, drink.’ Nelson swung his feet off the sofa and patted the cushion with his open hand, used for the remote control.
‘No, Nelson,’ Viktor said, still standing, resolute. ‘I need to speak to you about Biko. I need the number you promised me. The MDC member, the Y-Party member who will help.’
Nelson’s smile was wry and cunning; it irritated Viktor.
‘Of course I’ll give you the number, but come in first. Do we have any news?’ Nelson aimed the control at the TV, found the news, stared at the screen. ‘Do you see that? Do you see? Those bastards, do they think their bombs will work? That they will overrun the resistance? Have they learnt nothing from Iraq? From books?’
Viktor inched closer, rested his hands on the back of an armchair. ‘Please, Nelson. This is important. It’s Biko. We need to move.’
Nelson turned his head again to Viktor, his face broad and open. ‘Farai is a bastard. He won’t help you, but it will be good for you to see him.’ He tucked his loose locks behind his ears, his head turned to the television again, his attention lost once more to the screen.
Viktor felt his face flush, his skin bristle and sweat. ‘Nelson, comrade, I need your attention. How can you sit there with the TV? It’s Biko! Months in prison and we haven’t’ – he choked, stumbled on his words – ‘we haven’t been allowed to see him. I need your help.’
Slowly Nelson stood, walked to the wall and flicked off the power to the TV from the socket. The screen fizzed and a momentary light burst on the set, then the noise, the commentary, the sound of helicopters and explosions, vanished and the room was left to the crickets. Nelson walked, dragging his feet, to Viktor and put an arm on his guest’s shoulder. ‘Comrade, Biko is strong. All of us are doing everything we can. Lenin with the students. Stalin and Blessing in Bulawayo. You’re leading the international campaign. Anne-Marie is onto the lawyers. Tonight we need to breathe, rest, take the long view. Fight when we can, but know when we need to rest. You too must rest. We will be no good to Biko as empty shells, run out, exhausted.’
We grow into stupidity, Viktor thought. A skin hardens and calcifies around our soft, supple souls until everything we see – our comrades, friends, our lovers and family – becomes like us, hardened, rigid. Then the constantly altering world comes at us, unchanging, and the new ossifies into the old before the day has finished. Viktor looked into Nelson’s soft eyes, the skin
loose, his face lined.
‘Mugabe will fall,’ Nelson said suddenly, ‘like countless Mugabes have fallen on this continent. X-Party, national liberation, this false freedom, this curse, will give way to resistance and the edifice will crumble. It has not yet fallen. We are going back into the trenches with no illusions that the regime is on our side.’ His hand still on Viktor’s shoulder, Nelson swallowed, breathed in and continued, ‘In two weeks, comrade, I wanted to tell you, we are spearheading a mass mobilisation to throng the prison. A day of action internationally. I want you to coordinate crowds in London, Washington, South Africa and Australia, on the same day we are outside Chikurubi Prison.’
Nelson went to a small box by the glass balcony door and drew out a leaflet. He handed it to Viktor. ‘Marx’s favourite historical figure was Spartacus. The slave general. Not Aristotle, not Plato, not a thinker or theoretician, but a man of action, of brutal, raw practice.’
Taking the leaflet, Viktor said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘But I am, Viktor. Comrade, I’m telling you now.’
*
Even to Viktor, the idea that Biko could be saved online had begun to lose its power. Though the campaign was successful, #FreeBiko was trending, emails and petitions clogged inboxes, Viktor felt increasingly anxious. He spent breathless seconds as he waited for his Facebook page to load, for the pleasing red alerts with numbers – 60, 80, 100 – to appear over his inbox: requests to join the group, to become part of the movement. One enterprising group in Maryland had, on day one of the global picket, printed T-shirts with a grainy image of Biko, his pointing Lenin finger, his other hand hooked into his belt. On day two a comment posted on the campaign wall informed Viktor, ‘Sirs, Steve Biko is dead. He died in police custody in 1977 in South Africa. Please inform your members.’
Politicians, UN officials and bureaucrats, minor police officers in Zimbabwe, senior supporters of the regime in Libya were contacted. Letters were published in two UK newspapers, with a list of signatures: professors, film directors, retired radicals and ‘fifty others’. Yet the satisfaction Viktor had expected, the hope of publicity, the vindication of his way of doing things, proof that Anne-Marie was wrong and that his embrace of the internet’s restless postmodernity would bring him satisfaction, was not forthcoming.
Instead Biko’s silence was compounded by the frenzied activity of the internet. The absorbing, thick prison walls trapped his cries. The machine that Viktor had thought could be wielded for justice, wrestled free from the corporate giants, had left him feeling enslaved, like a piece of human software, an appendage. The stiff concrete perimeter walls of Chikurubi, the soundproofing in State House, the hard, protective skin around the state seemed impenetrable. Only the demonstration in Harare could arouse the regime, force from it a statement.
Each time, Nelson always left Viktor feeling capable of doing what had paralysed him an hour before. Nelson’s gaiety, his optimism, raised the ground, filled the chasm. His blind faith in the future, in the coming fall of all dictators and systems, in Spartacus, was its own unbending, irresistible agency. He refused to countenance Viktor’s irrefutable belief in humanity’s evidently useless passions and cosmic insignificance.
Viktor read the leaflet:
The arrest of Biko (Stephan Mutawurwa) on the charge of public violence and disorder in Bulawayo on 19 March is an example of the dictatorship’s desperation. Zimbabweans face renewed attack by the state which strikes at the very heart of their hopes and dreams for democracy. When we express legitimate dissent and criticism, we face vindictive retribution. When the poor defend their rights, we face repression. We are all Biko. Join us for a march on Chikurubi Prison in support of Biko, a fighter for democracy and justice in Zimbabwe.
Convene Harare Gardens at 12 p.m.
In the corner of the A5 leaflet was another grainy photo of Biko addressing an audience, wearing a white T-shirt, his mouth open, his hands out, a single finger pointed towards the camera, instructing the crowd to charge, the photographer to click, the way to the light.
As Viktor read, Nelson took a few steps back and fell onto the sofa. ‘We have printed twenty-five thousand of them. We’ll distribute them everywhere, in the unions, in a few townships, and send a bundle to Bulawayo with a similar demand for a march to the police station where you were first held. You see, com, Mugabe craves attention and love. An international protest will humiliate him. He longs for the days when he was the blue-eyed child of the West, the Queen’s impeccable dinner guest, the English knight – when Grace could shop in Harrods on the arm of her renowned, obedient, respected husband.’ Nelson was getting excited. ‘He is a spoilt child! The protest will rattle him. He can be a cruel and violent father in Harare, but he wants the tyrant’s crown, he wants to be seen as a just anti-imperialist. We’ll expose him from the left.’
Viktor thought quickly how the day would look, who he’d email, the Facebook event announcement, the people he could call for support, the words he’d use: BIKO LIVES. #FREEBIKO.
‘Excellent, Nelson. I’ll spread the word.’
As Viktor folded the flyer, he noticed green print on the back. He turned the sheet over and read:
Dr Rashid Bajja, Healer And Wealth Consultant
1) I Can Bring Back Lost Lovers
2) I Can Do Penis Enlargements
3) I Prevent Bad Luck and Jealousy
4) Making Your Partner To Be Yours Again
5) Getting Rid Of Evil Spirits
6) Financial And Domestic Problems
7) Broken Marriages Solved Quickly
8) Make Your Children Love You
Home Visits On Request. Telephone 04 2927194
Along the side of the advert was a series of clip-art images: a woman in a headscarf grinding maize, a raised palm, a tree plucked from the ground, its roots exposed.
Viktor looked up from the leaflet. ‘What’s this?’ he asked. ‘The printer has printed on both sides.’ Viktor flapped the paper at Nelson. He pulled back the corners of the pile of leaflets and fanned through the top sheets. ‘They’re all double-sided, with this, this crazy Dr Rashid Bajja, Healer and Wealth Consultant.’
Nelson stretched out his legs, crossed his feet. ‘Yes, I struck a deal with Dr Rashid – his real name is Edmore Nyazamba. He paid for two-thirds of the printing costs.’
For a moment Viktor was silent. ‘That’s terrible, Nelson. It means that we, Biko, you, the Society of Liberated Minds, will be associated with this, this’ – Viktor waved the leaflet – ‘quack! A bloody purveyor of fake solutions!’
Nelson laughed, his head tipped back, his mouth wide. Viktor saw lines of grey fillings along both sides of his jaw. He read from the list: ‘I Can Do Penis Enlargements. Come to our demonstration and get a bigger cock and find your lost lover. We can’t make these kind of promises!’
Viktor read the last point on the leaflet again: Make Your Children Love You. Children cannot be made to love their parents. Their love is already there, unconditional. Children love their parents even if they have been abandoned by them. Children mourn lost love better than lovers.
‘Listen, Viktor, most Zimbabweans will read both sides of the leaflet and separate the content. If we lose a few to Dr Rashid, then at least we won’t be marching with the gullible poor.’
‘This is feudal. Peddlers of medieval dreams, preying on the poor and helpless. We can’t be associated with him. Dr Rashid would probably advocate stoning Biko to death.’
‘Edmore used to be a comrade, he’s quite progressive.’
‘My god.’ Viktor stood, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know, Nelson, it’s a dangerous conflation.’
‘Conflation!’ Nelson roared. ‘I love the way you speak.’
‘I’m being serious.’
‘Viktor, this is not the bloody sealed train. We need the flyers. The printing industry in Zimbabwe has collapsed. Paper comes from South Africa. The costs are high. I made a deal, and we will have a thousand-strong chorus shouting outside the
prison.’ Then, after a pause, Nelson spoke quickly. ‘And don’t you see? If any of our comrades are stopped, they simply say they are distributing publicity for Dr Rashid. It’s perfect.’
Viktor smiled. ‘Maybe next time we should ask Rashid to include Potions To Help Overturn Entrenched Dictators.’
The two men laughed.
*
Viktor met Anne-Marie outside her office, driving with the front seat of her Golf pushed back so he could operate the pedals. When she came out she was with three colleagues. Anne-Marie waved. Viktor turned off the engine and stood by the car as the group walked slowly towards him.
Feeling himself growing anxious, he rehearsed a greeting: ‘I am Viktor, from London. I write on Zimbabwe for an independent website. I’m covering the development of the new government. I’m a socialist. I am an anti-racist. I have a daughter, she’s called Rosa, after Rosa Luxemburg, the revolutionary. I listen to opera. I am trying to free Biko. Have you heard?’
The man in the group spoke. He touched Anne-Marie’s elbow. His broad chest and strong arms strained and rippled under his work shirt. That easy confidence, delight at life, his freedom from Viktor’s interminable preamble – what a contrast to Viktor’s chattering, doubting, kvetching, all the noise that clogged his head. The two women laughed loudly. Both were young and beautiful – each of them stood straight, their postures perfect, their presence on earth sure-footed, like God’s emissaries. Like gods themselves, Viktor thought.
‘Mudiwa, come over and say hello!’ The group had stopped in the middle of the car park. They stood together, ready to distribute themselves to their parked cars.
Viktor thrust his hands into his pockets and walked across the drive. Biko had spent almost four months in jail. One-hundred and twenty two days. Twelve weeks and two days, in Harare. As Viktor approached the group he fought to push back the day, the layers of images, sounds, colours, that separated him from Biko. If he worked hard enough he could part the heavy pages in his mind, the endless ephemera and find the stout, tall man from Bulawayo, but to do this he needed to look behind the beatings, the police rape, Biko’s insolent one-man stand against the regime. Viktor tried to remember when Biko had met him at the train. He tried to focus, to concentrate on the Bulawayo sun setting behind them in the café, the night they’d spent together.