by Zeilig, Leo;
‘I wonder what Engels would have made of Great Zimbabwe?’ Viktor spoke aloud to himself, staring at the photo. The exercise books with their grainy, dotted brown paper fell apart; the pages would crumble under Viktor’s biro and Louis would bring out the sellotape and place it down gently on the table.
On the day Viktor left, the bus set off early, driving into the morning sun. He sat writing when the road allowed it, staring out of the window, wondering how he had been bullied into making the journey. Next time I will tell Nelson to shut up. The comfortable old coach was half-full. Adjacent to him sat two women who spoke and laughed. When the bus pulled off the even tarmac onto a grassy verge, the passengers filed out. The sky was now overcast, great dark-grey clouds turning violently overhead, constantly changing shape – even the meteorological situation in Zimbabwe was more harrowing than the grey skies of Britain. Passengers found trees and bushes to urinate behind. The two women bargained for food with roadside hawkers. When the bus shunted into gear again, picked up speed and turned into the road, one of the women sitting on the aisle – her old face uncreased, her hands large and fleshy – reached over the aisle and offered Viktor her brown bag. ‘Take one! Mopani worms.’
Viktor had exhausted his notebook and grabbed another one as he was leaving the house from the pile of clothes and books at the bottom of Anne-Marie’s wardrobe. It was an older notebook with a few spare pages that he had arrived with; he’d written his valedictory blog post on the flight from Heathrow in it, under the wary eyes of the flight crew. Viktor opened the book and flicked to the last blank pages. He dreaded the beginning, as he did every morning; it took three coffees to pull him fully out of the night, force him to cast a rattled gaze at the world and write. It seemed to Viktor that he only achieved anything when he stood on the edge of a cliff, the frothing white surf hitting the sandy beach, the rocks and shingle littered with bodies. Only then, when his pulse was hammering in his ears, did he feel alive, could he think.
Louis got up from his till stool and stood with his legs apart in front of his coffee machine, a large chrome La Marzocco Linea that was bolted to the work surface. It sat in full view in the middle of the café. Louis made a face for his loved customers, those for whom he changed currency and discussed in gruff, hushed voices business and the racial inferiority of the kaffir government. (The bankers he treated as honourable, exceptional whites.) With methodical precision he operated the machine with his eyes closed, moving his hand over the dials and switches, scooping the coffee grains into the portafilter, packing it down in the tamper, fixing it on the showerhead. Then he was still while the water filtered through to the machine, black liquid trickling slowly into the cup. Louis rested one hand on the black handle of the filter, the other on the cup heater. With his Marzocco Linea his soul was calm.
Viktor, shocked to see Louis for the first time standing in worship before his mechanical god, his eyes sealed, thought, This is how Louis loves. He can only love machines. With his wife, with Zimbabweans, his anger at life returns.
Louis frothed the milk, turning up the pressure on the steam until it screamed and his clients were forced to repeat their sentences. He embraced the cup and saucer and weaved his way through the room to Viktor around tables and chairs, bags and crossed legs. His face was calm, the muscles relaxed, his head temporarily impervious to the usual irritants. He stopped in front of Viktor, lowered the cup to the table, bent close to Viktor, put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Viktor came to, looked up and smiled. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he said quietly.
Louis turned away and squared his shoulders, his head cleared. ‘Don’t leave the bloody dishes piled up like that, goddamn it. The place is a mess!’ he screamed.
Viktor brought the cup to his lips, sipped, sighed, closed his eyes and let the hot liquid roll down his throat. The notebook fell to the floor, the pages fanning open. He carefully returned the coffee to its saucer and bent to the book on the floor. It had opened to a page that was blank except for a few sentences written at the top of the page, not in his own hand. He peered at the smudged writing:
May your words flow from your heart to your pen to these pages, so others may share in the truths you see. Nina. May 2008.
Under this, in lopsided, uneven lettering, there was another message.
Daddy, write me a story with pictures and a princess who does magic spells. Never-ending love, Rosa.
Viktor pulled the page closer to his face. The sound of Louis’s shouting faded. He stared at the words, tried hard to decipher them. His heart sounded noisily inside his chest. He felt his tongue dry in his mouth. He yanked off his glasses and read the words again: ‘from your heart to your pen’. Large tears fell quickly off his nose onto the page. The paper absorbed the water and more tears fell, from his heart, down his nose to the page trying to wash away the words, blur them into something else, tell him that what he had done was right and that he should be in Harare with Louis, in Anne-Marie’s bed. Even the page gave in: rivulets formed, water ran along the binding and onto his lap and trousers. ‘From my heart to my page to my daughter,’ he mumbled.
When he looked up, his sleeve wet from wiping his nose and eyes, Louis was standing over him.
Viktor held the sodden pages open, the inscriptions wet but still legible. Louis grabbed the book, swivelled it round, lifted his glasses onto his head and read. ‘For God’s sake, Viktor. If you miss her, then go back. Just do something. Make a decision. Bloody act, man.’
‘It’s not that simple. If I go back I might not be able to see her, and when I do, Nina gives me hell. That’s why I am here.’
Louis yanked a chair from under the table, turned it round so the backrest faced his chest, his legs astride. He faced Viktor like a cowboy, his muscular arms hairy and tanned. ‘You’re in Zimbabwe because of your ex? Then you need to be tough, face her down. If she lived here I could help you.’
Louis spent his life fixing problems like an engineer: replacing lost and broken parts, hammering hard to cajole the human machinery into submission. Louis’s only lasting love affair, his metaphor for all human relations, was his antique coffee machine, older than Rhodesia and Zimbabwe combined.
‘Thanks, Louis. I’m just being silly. Nina thinks I’m the devil, and she has said it so often I now believe her. Maybe it’s better for Rosa if I am not in her life.’
‘Rubbish. You should have brought her with you. She would live like a princess here,’ Louis said. He pointed at her writing. ‘Swimming in our pool, a nanny, sun, open spaces. Vicki would love to look after her. God knows, she must be dying in that overcrowded island. All those people.’
‘You mean I should have kidnapped her?’
‘No, Vik, she’s your daughter. How can you kidnap your own daughter? You have a responsibility to her. You should have brought her here.’
Viktor stared into Louis’s dark eyes. He’s right, he thought, his head spinning. I should have just taken Rosa. We could have gone on the run together – father and daughter. Images and ideas collided, ran together, jostled, twisted in his head, freezing his speech. Isaac and Sonia, their last words to him: ‘Darling, are you eating? How are your bowel movements?’ Rosa, freeze-framed in her bunches and her fancy-dress costume, a green sequined ballgown and cape, impractical for their excursions in the rain, to the zoo. ‘I want to show the animals. The monkeys, Dad.’ Rosa dissolved as quickly as she’d formed; her face melted, giving way to the dark, bristled line of Louis’s face. Cars backed up, bodies on the grass verge, the brilliant, hopeful glare of the morning sun and Louis’s hard, scuffed hands slamming down on the man’s chest. When the images of Biko on the floor came again, he shook himself back to reality.
‘Listen, Viktor, come over tonight. I’ll cook. No, Vicki will cook; she is amazing in the kitchen. You need to keep busy. You have too much time on your hands with your internet and your politics. Come and stay with us.’ Viktor saw Louis’s eyes soften; the lines and marks on his face yielded. ‘What do you say, boy?’
*
Each evening Viktor came down from the flat so he was ready, cleansed for Anne-Marie. How he jumped up when her car swung into the block. She would slow, lower the window and kiss him.
Today a boy Rosa’s age came out too, commanded by his aunt not to leave the block, to play inside the walls. His name was Edwin. He was a pale, orphaned child ordered around by a distant aunt and uncle in a neighbouring flat. Viktor told him stories as he sat waiting for Anne-Marie. Edwin curled up, the gravel marking and sticking to his skin. Each day he edged closer and closer until he now sat, then lay, on Viktor’s lap in his dirty school uniform, the blue shirt and torn grey trousers that he wore on the weekends as well as during the week. Viktor spoke in hushed tones, told him the adventures of Lawrence and his dog growing up in London. The fairground where Lawrence lived and worked, the night-time rides on the ferris wheel, his dog, a mongrel with sad eyes and loose jowls who was called Benji. How they’d steal secret entry to the ferris wheel that would lift them into the sky high enough to see everything, even the bend in the river, all the way to Africa and the boy and his tall friend telling stories in Harare. As the ferris wheel spun, Benji and Lawrence were brought together tightly; they would sit entwined, cheek to dog jowl, so that when, finally, at the end of every night, they got off the giant wheel, they would not know for sure who was the dog and who was the boy. The dog was humanised by the boy and the boy animalised by the dog.
Without a word Edwin would slowly lever himself up from Viktor’s lap, climb down and run back to his weary, hollering uncle. Then each night he would skid on the backs of his shoes just before the stairwell, sending the gravel and sand billowing around his ankles and trousers and turn. It was his game, Viktor realised. Edwin was pleased with his new, strange friend. He waited for Viktor to come home in the afternoon the way Viktor waited for Anne-Marie.
‘He likes you, Vik,’ Anne-Marie said. ‘His uncle is brutal – he drinks in the day and hawks petrol at night. The aunt travels to Johannesburg every fortnight, loads their twin-cab and bribes her way across the border. They get by, but that boy, that boy,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘he’s suffering.’
‘Where are his parents? His mum?’
‘Where do you think? You’ve been here long enough not to ask such stupid questions.’
Viktor wasn’t offended. ‘Dead. They’re dead,’ he stated.
‘Which doesn’t make that boy ...’ Anne-Marie left the sentence unfinished.
‘Edwin,’ Viktor corrected her.
‘Which makes Edwin part of the average.’
‘We should take him in.’
‘You’re too soft, Vik. You rub up Edwin’s emotions and make him need you. He already expects too much. Take him in? Come on. Like a dog? Only do it if it’s for the long haul.’
‘Maybe you’re being too hard,’ Viktor protested.
‘Why do you want him to love you, Vik? Don’t you think he’s been let down enough by life already?’ Viktor was silent. ‘Don’t give unless you can carry on giving.’
Anne-Marie saw them together night after night, waiting, enveloped, their thin, plaited limbs in the shade by the gate – he feeds the cockerel and seduces the orphan, this ridiculous man who falls in love with animals and children, Anne-Marie thought. What is wrong with him? His heart beats on the outside of his shirt. Pourquoi t’es dans la lune? Pourquoi t’as salé ta vie?
Viktor sat up again on the chair. The boy reminded him of Rosa, his melancholy like hers, like his. If I leave Anne-Marie, I will hurt her, he thought. Viktor calculated as Anne-Marie parked the car at the back of the block. Rosa needs me; Anne-Marie is tough, she’ll be fine. She’s wise and practical, each day dragging someone back from the brink without fanfare or street fighting. Viktor pulled the key to the front door out of his pocket. I love her, her theories, her sayings. Viktor inserted the key into the lock, turned it, felt the bolt snap open. Edwin. I could bring the boy with me to the UK. Nina came into focus: crying alone on the sofa, Rosa in bed, beneath the rage her tears, the panic and loss – like his. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, curl her up too, with Edwin and Rosa, each of them, on his lap.
That night Viktor gave up waiting and made his way back to the flat.
He didn’t hear Anne-Marie come in. He stood trying to think, his fingers pulling at the knot, pinching the rope, his nails splitting against the rough cord – he couldn’t find a fingerhold, a way in, a way out.
Anne-Marie came behind him, put her arms around him, pressed her head against his back, between his shoulder blades. ‘Maybe, Vik, mudiwa, you just need to realise that you can’t fix up Zimbabwe, or all of us, or even all the people in your life. Be careful with yourself. Take care with your love. Ration it.’
Viktor brought his hands to Anne-Marie’s. The deep, warm fragrance of her day jolted him back to the room, to their life.
*
Two days later, to clear their heads of the incessant, necessary noise and activity of the campaign, the couple walked together by the dam. They stopped walking and stood over a rough, broken lawn of flowers.
‘What do you suppose they’re called, Anne-Marie?’
‘I don’t know. I am a city girl.’
‘I think they must be crocuses. They’re spring flowers.’
‘So we’re going to get a change of season after all.’
As they approached the car they slowed down, reluctant to return to their phones.
In the distance there was the sound of thunder, though the sky was clear.
‘What’s that?’ Viktor asked.
‘It’s the sound of guns, or cannons,’ Anne-Marie answered. They’d stopped outside the car as she searched for her keys. Viktor pointed his face to the dying sun, which flickered through the bare branches of the trees.
‘They’re burying another struggle veteran at Heroes Acre. Soon there’ll be no one left. All the heroes will be dead and Zimbabwe will have only born-frees and traitors,’ Anne-Marie said, looking up at Viktor. They leant against the car, felt the breeze; the metal of the car warmed their backs. ‘Then we can stop talking about the struggle. Everything has to be a struggle. The only history that has any value is struggle history, the only people who have any worth, struggle veterans.’
Viktor reached for Anne-Marie and took her hand in his. ‘Yes. The struggle is the marker of citizenship, of humanity. And people are fighting today, but they’re denied any value, as you say.’
‘I’m not just talking about the struggle, but all of you who talk about the fight, the next revolutionary moment. The failed transition, the compromised independence and the potential in the coming storm for a new dawn, for a proper struggle, for the reckoning.’ Anne-Marie spoke sharply. The cannon fired again.
Viktor enjoyed Anne-Marie’s teasing, her challenge to him and Nelson – that she linked them. Viktor pictured Nelson standing with an arm resting on his hip, his back straight, his locks across his chest. Nelson and Viktor, he thought, and it pleased him. ‘What we have got is not the only thing that we could have won. In the strikes and revolts, in Zimbabwe, in the Congo’s second revolution,’ Viktor answered.
Anne-Marie laughed. ‘Now you’re an expert on the Congo?’
Undeterred, Viktor continued, ‘Inside those movements, the broad front that created the MDC, there was a fight for direction, an attempt to win more than the compromise. Y-Party was our victory and defeat at the same time.’
‘Our? You mean yours as well?’ Anne-Marie moved to Viktor, rested her body against his, wrapped her arms around his waist.
‘How could an organisation with white landowners, NGOs and workers ever overturn poverty? How could it refigure Zimbabwe?’ Viktor asked.
‘Life has to be lived now, not spent planning for the future struggle. All you see in the past is failure. There are too many ideal types in your politics and Nelson’s. History doesn’t move like this. It tramples on us, on the poor, on all of us.’
Viktor brought a hand to her breast, felt her n
ipple harden. Anne-Marie pressed herself into him. ‘Exactly, if we don’t build now, win the arguments, carry through the revolt to revolution, then we will be trampled, as you say.’
‘Not you, whitey. You can always leave before history catches us, before we’re trampled.’
‘But I won’t.’
The cannon fired again, vibrating the ground.
‘Life has to be lived now,’ Anne-Marie repeated. ‘Lives saved today. We’ll all be dead by the time you have built your perfect movements and parties. We would need lifetimes to win these things. Your bloody struggle, all this macho talk, has done nothing for us.’ Anne-Marie moved her hand and rubbed Viktor’s erection. She spoke more softly now. ‘We have to live now, right now. Our lives are too short for your revolutions. There is a biological limit, Viktor, to your struggles.’
The cannon discharged, they felt the tremble under them again and were silent for a moment.
‘It makes me sad,’ Viktor said, quietly, softly. ‘The cannons. Like Tosca.’
‘Tosca?’ Anne-Marie asked.
‘The opera, at the end of Act One, the distant cannon fire, the tolling of the church bells and the sound of the firing squad. Te Deum laudamus: Te Dominum confitemur!’
Anne-Marie laughed. ‘“Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord”. We’re a good pair, mudiwa.’
*
Viktor gave in to Louis. He took a taxi from the cinema in Glenview, the driver weaving his wreck between the plunging rocky potholes and debris. The city’s roads had caved in, like the country’s entire infrastructure, railways, highways and utilities sucked into the ground. The car swung into Louis’s drive, the rear wheels spitting up gravel.