An Ounce of Practice

by Zeilig, Leo;

  *

  Biko woke from a thin, fraught sleep. He was constantly surfacing, then falling down again, his mind lost in a bludgeoned, restless slumber. He called for his father. ‘Baba?’

  ‘It’s me, comrade. It’s Samuel.’

  Biko tried to find Samuel’s face, to focus, concentrate, bring himself back. ‘Is there anything to eat?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing until morning.’

  ‘Comrade, can’t you cook some of the roaches?’ Biko tried to smile. A large cut that curled from his eye to his cheekbone opened and the crusted blood broke. He breathed in deeply, drawing the air through his teeth.

  ‘Take it easy, com. I’ll get you some water.’

  ‘No, don’t. Stay here. Why aren’t you asleep?’

  ‘I am up waiting for the dawn.’ Samuel adjusted his position and cradled Biko’s head, lifting it into his lap. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I feel as though my head is going to burst.’

  ‘It can’t be long now. They’ll have to let us out. Your friend, that man from the UK, is making a lot of noise. The guards were talking about him. The demonstration. We heard them.’

  Samuel massaged Biko’s temples, moving his fingers in small circles. Biko looked at him, the whites of his eyes illuminated by the dull light.

  ‘I’m scared,’ Biko whispered.

  ‘I know. I know. Ndinozviziva ndinozviziva, ivai neushingi mukoma.’

  Samuel had not been singled out for special treatment, though he was regarded as a problem as long as he was with Biko – binding his wounds, treating him with his ration of water. The guards in Harare were crueller than the thugs in Bulawayo.

  Months before Biko and Samuel were transported to the capital, they had been shoved into Zimbabwe’s dog-catching van, the police transport. The men sat on the floor of the van handcuffed, the chequered sun shining through the barred window.

  They arrived eight hours later at Harare’s Chikurubi Prison feral, with wispy beards, knotted hair, caged. Still, those first minutes, the removal from the cells in Bulawayo, the sun on their bodies in this shit-free mobile cell, felt like freedom, like hope.

  Biko had become talkative again, speaking loudly to the driver and the police guard with the shotgun across his lap. ‘So you can kill us, that’s the easy part. How many do you think have already died? You’ll kill us all and then there’ll be no one left to vote for the old man. You can have your elections, your lies, the stolen votes, but you will never have us. Your wives and parents are ashamed of you. Your children won’t look you in the eyes. All the people you kill, the hundreds, thousands, will come back. And the people will inhale the dust from our bones and we will be inside them. The corpses you dumped in the Limpopo will be eaten by fish, and the fish will be eaten by your children and then we will be in their stomachs. We will never be gone. You can never crush us.’

  Biko had winked at Samuel with a broad, boundless smile. He needed to exercise, send out his words, let them curve around the bars and bend and moisten the policemen in the cab, who shifted uneasily, swore, told Biko to shut up and show respect to his elders, to the Old Man.

  ‘You arrogant boy. Don’t you see you have to be taught a lesson? You must learn how to respect your superiors. We have taught all of you university students that you’re not better than us. Your college girlfriends with their degrees and certificates, they think we’re stupid, they don’t go out with us, but now you have to obey us. You should see what we’ve done with them.’

  Now Biko screamed in pain. Samuel, with his friend’s head in his hands, wished for silence, for the pain to be gone.

  ‘You are fucking illiterates. You are Mugabe’s dogs. His fools. You are as poor as us but he feeds you, he gives you guns and you do his bidding. And he despises you. You are his murderers. Fuck, what’s the point in speaking?’ Biko had rattled his handcuffs, made the van resound with the sound. Then he had resumed his lesson.

  ‘Everything is ending. I can only see the dark. I can’t find the way back to Baba, Mother, the township, the comrades. I open my eyes and I can only see the dark. Are you there, Samuel?’

  Samuel felt his mouth dry. ‘I’m here. We only have to wait a few more hours until morning. Let’s carry on talking.’

  Samuel had not understood: if the guards beat Biko because he teased them, called them Mugabe’s dogs, then he should stop, give them what they wanted, apologise and live. But Biko, with every breath, cursed, blasphemed and decried the dictatorship, the lapdogs, the guard dogs, the mongrels, all the dogs barking, hunting, killing on their master’s orders.

  Whatever the words, the stories, there was always the beating on the floor of the cell with his hand, laid out flat, in time, the percussion to his talking, his constant, permanent pedagogy. Samuel still thought that life, any life, was better than death – yet Biko, his brother, seemed to be calling up the ancestors to carry him off in a hail of invective and lecturing. Biko was mad. The prison, the beatings had snatched away his sanity.

  ‘If they want you to scream, to cry, then they’ll soften the beatings.’ Samuel continued to turn his fingers in small circles on Biko’s temples.

  ‘The darkness is inside me and I can’t find the way to the light.’ Biko’s voice was faint. He wanted to move, but each time he tried he felt a jarring pain that shot through his arm, ran down his face to his back and took his breath.

  ‘All I know, comrade, about the dark is that’s when we wait for the morning. Com, just speak, tell them what they want. Let them think you have learnt their lessons. Show them respect. Fucking pretend.’

  The appeal seemed to rouse Biko back to consciousness. He rocked his head gently between Samuel’s legs. ‘It’s not for me to show them respect and apologise. I have no right. There can be no respect for them.’ He tried to lift his hand, to indicate the place beyond the prison. ‘I cannot give them respect from our comrades, my family, for being poor, for being born in Zimbabwe. This is my life. We can never give them what they want, don’t you see?’ He paused, tried to find his breath. ‘You’re as stupid as those dogs and illiterates.’ Biko smiled; his teeth shone, catching the meagre, coarse light from the cell window.

  Then they were silent. Biko relieved the pain in his head by lolling in the cushion Samuel had made of his bent legs. Samuel tensed his hands on either side of Biko’s head and pressed. He felt a mass of love between them, but he didn’t know what to do with it, how to wield it so he could reason with Biko.

  Biko slipped back into unconsciousness, then into the darkness.

  *

  Even the rain had come, a rare occurrence in the city. Droughts were common, and when they occurred, public announcements were made on national radio and television. Stickers were printed for Harare hotels and the grotesque five-star complexes at Victoria Falls requesting that tourists restrict their use of water, wash off their holiday sweat with a short shower, sleep for two nights in the same sheets. On the day Samuel was released from Chikurubi Prison, four days after Biko had died, the sky filled with clouds and fell. The city’s climate was extreme – weeks of reliable and steady weather was broken by explosive storms.

  ‘This fucking prison is even more disgusting in the rain,’ Nelson shouted. He sheltered under his umbrella, its pathetic wire arms broken, the plastic batwings hanging loose, water pouring off them in four small waterfalls. Lenin, Stalin and Viktor were with him, a delegation from the Society to receive Samuel, each still stunned by the news they had received two days before. After weeks of silence, it had left their heads pounding with grief. To Viktor’s surprise, Nelson took the news worse than the others. Despite his bombast, his irrepressible vitality, his ability to see behind every apparently random event the logic of a system in terminal sickness and decline, he was unable or unwilling to show his grief in public. Instead he retreated for two days into his bedroom, the curtains drawn, lying on the bed or curled up on the floor. He stifled his pain in his pillows, biting his fists to dissipate the hurt, drawing blood; thought, f
or once, was useless, analysis unable to reach his distress. When he was finally shaken out of his room forty-eight hours later, the pain had somehow been incorporated.

  Lenin handled the logistics, ploughing his own incomprehension at Biko’s murder into organising the Society, barking orders at Viktor, Anne-Marie, anyone and everyone who needed to be moved into place. Lenin had a keen sense that death is always with us – however deep the daily charade, no true Zimbabwean of any age could take a single step without the presence of death jostling noisily against them.

  Lenin began living in the office, issuing orders with a precision that came from shutting down every superfluous emotion in order to survive. In the hours after the news arrived, Lenin said to Viktor, ‘We need to think like Biko. That is the only thing we can do. We have nothing left. Hapana. We can’t answer his death with death. We can’t meet him, go to him, reach him. True, com? We only have one thing and that’s life, right? We’re alive and Biko’s dead. We can’t respond with death. We have to respond with life. The more they silence us, kill us, the louder we have to shout. The more of us they kill, the more of us have to live. Our voices need to sound with Biko’s. Right? Do you see? Viktor, are you listening?’

  Viktor was listening, all of his cells bristling, more awake than he could ever remember being.

  ‘You see, the answer – to everything – is simply life itself.’ Lenin no longer sounded like Lenin but Nelson or Biko, some hybrid, patchwork comrade assembled from the parts of every Society member.

  ‘Viktor, we need forty-five hundred dollars from the campaign for the funeral. For the six combis to take comrades to the funeral, the plot, the food. The rest goes to Biko’s sister. Then the rest – how much is left?’

  Standing, his mouth open, dry, Viktor stared at Lenin.

  ‘How much, Viktor?’ Lenin repeated.

  Looking up over his glasses, making a quick calculation, Viktor said, ‘We have eight thousand in the bank, so minus forty-five hundred, that leaves us with thirty-five hundred dollars – but there are other expenses.’

  ‘Eight thousand dollars. Okay then, that leaves plenty. Two thousand to Samuel and fifteen hundred for the Society.’ Grinning, pleased at his cunning, Lenin stepped forward and put his arms around Viktor, pressed him hard. ‘Remember that everything we’re doing, everything, is for Biko.’

  Nelson continued to shout against the rain, the others sheltering under the overhang of the gutter to the small outbuilding next to the razor-wire fence and boon where they had demonstrated weeks before. Nelson was going for it, taking on the weather, shouting against all earthly odds. Only the occasional word reached the others as the rain thundered down, steam rising from the ground, bellowing around him.

  ‘Every prisoner will be released when we liberate Zimbabwe. The worst elements, those who are broken and rotten, will have to be given therapy in a secure place until they can be reached by psychiatry, psychoanalysis, medicine. The others will need nothing other than the freedom that we will secure for them. Each one reprieved.’ Nelson moved in front of the men lining the narrow wall. ‘There are eight thousand souls in here. These brothers and sisters are our natural allies, with a hatred of society we can only imagine. Cellblocks A through C can be immediately emptied – these are just the poor, petty traders, shoplifters. We will need to be more cautious with cellblock D. Here the prisoners are violent, brothers and sisters suffering extreme mental distress. We will need to get our facilities for the reform of prisoners operational immediately.’

  Suddenly the rain stopped so abruptly that, simultaneously, the three men against the wall looked up, stepped forward and scanned the heavens. The clouds opened and the sun spilled quickly onto their upturned faces. Nelson didn’t notice. He was still shouting, his umbrella hanging over his face: ‘Good food, clean, nourishing sadza and fresh stew – we’ll have great vats of it here,’ he indicated to his left and right, ‘and here, for when the prisoners are released. And a bonfire of lice-infested blankets.’

  Nelson dropped the umbrella to the ground and a few drops of water fell on his face. He blinked them away and continued his wild, utopian frenzy on post-penal Zimbabwe. ‘They will see they are not in an open prison – not the place they left – but free, a freedom they can taste. We will give them complete, total love. Gut the prison, remove all remnants of the old and make this building’ – he pointed towards the building in the distance – ‘a school or hospital. Once we have thoroughly deloused it and ripped off the iron doors, cleared the rooms of torture and death. Lenin will take charge of it.’

  They were silent. Disbelieving the details of Nelson’s dream of institutional overhaul, confused by the precision of his imaginings, the three men stared blankly at him.

  ‘After we have won, I don’t want to run Chikurubi. I will take a holiday,’ Lenin declared. ‘I will go on a tour of Africa, from South to North. A big holiday. I am not running bloody Chikurubi, comrade.’

  Viktor got caught up in the conversation. ‘There will be too much to do once we have got rid of X- and Y-Party. There will be no time for holidays, Lenin.’

  ‘You will be exhausted from everything we have to do day and night, but a holiday! A holiday? Pah. Who do you think we are? Grace Mugabe? Holidays? It isn’t the fucking bourgeois revolution we’re planning!’ There was real anger in Stalin’s voice.

  Nelson scanned the wire fencing, the hut the group were standing next to – planning, surveying the material, deciding what could be saved, what would have to be thrown away. From the prison in the distance, its long, sandy, thick walls sealing everything in, there was movement.

  A door within two giant doors opened and a single man came slowly out, pausing when he was finally standing outside the prison to shield his eyes from the sun and look slowly around. There was shouting from the gatehouse that sheltered the Society members, instructions to the man to walk to them. Samuel was holding a plastic bag, his clothes too large, trousers too wide, tied round his waist with a scrap of rope. A large striped office shirt hung off his shoulders. His boots also looked too big, the trousers rolled over them. As he walked unsteadily across the dirt moat, skirting the puddles, coming into clearer focus, he gave the impression of a clown. There was no painted smile, no teardrop, but his face was unreal, drained and gaunt, deep hollow half-crescents under his eyes, the skin stretched tight, his expression vacant. His trousers filled out in the wind and his arms hung limp in the shirt.

  Samuel was greeted by two uniformed men outside the guardhouse on the inside of the perimeter fence. He was quickly, aggressively patted down, then led by an arm through the building to the door at the other side of the small building.

  When Samuel emerged, Lenin and Nelson went to either side of him and spoke quickly in Shona, identifying themselves, then led him to the car and put him in the back seat. They all climbed in. Lenin opened the glove box and removed a cold drink, opened it and handed it to Samuel. Samuel held the bottle in both hands, brought it to his mouth and drank, the liquid spilling out of his mouth and down his shirt. He dropped the bottle and looked at the faces around him, breathing deeply. Viktor and Stalin sat either side of Samuel, with Nelson and Lenin in the front.

  Samuel’s voice was a whisper. The sun that he had longed for, that Biko had referenced every waking minute, was now an irritant. He was battered by it, they could see; he was blinded. Lenin, still issuing orders, snapped to Nelson, ‘Com, drive over there to the tree, so we are out of the sun.’ Nelson complied, crunched the Toyota into gear and spluttered fifty metres to park alongside the large trunk of the gumtree. The car instantly cooled down. Samuel’s face relaxed.

  There was talk in Shona. Samuel spoke first, so softly the others craned towards him to hear, then Lenin answered. Viktor picked out words he knew: ‘the Society’, ‘Biko’, ‘kurohwa’, ‘mhuri’. He knew what was being said from what they had decided on the journey to the prison – Lenin would describe the campaign, the money they’d collected, what the Society was, and then offe
r Samuel anything he needed: a bed in Harare, transport to his family in the rural areas. He would explain that money collected for Biko was now Samuel’s.

  Lenin spoke quickly and pulled out the envelope with the dollars that Viktor had given him – that Louis had given him. Samuel took the envelope, then put his hands together, bowed his head and muttered something. Then Nelson spoke, repeating what he’d said in English so Viktor would understand: ‘No, comrade, you owe us nothing. You are our guest now.’

  When this was done, Samuel turned his head slightly and addressed Viktor in English. ‘All the prisoners used to have a word for Biko: kumedza.’ He looked to the other faces in the car and Nelson translated, ‘Bird, a swallow.’

  ‘Yes. We would say, the kumedza is making noise today. The kumedza is pecking at the walls. The kumedza is eating outside, looking in.’ Samuel paused. His pulse seemed to have quickened. He sucked in a breath and continued in Shona, speaking quickly. When he finished, he looked to Nelson and nodded for him to translate.

  Nelson started slowly. ‘It’s a story we were told as children, that the first man and woman lived in darkness because the sun had not been found. Yet the sun had to be found so that people could live properly. The strength of the sun is that its light reaches even in the darkest places, as a swallow can fly across the earth before anyone can trap it. He says Biko was a sunbird, a swallow, who could fly higher than any other bird and not be caught.’

  Samuel now spoke directly to Viktor. ‘He knew what you were doing. We all did. Biko knew what you were doing.’ With effort, he moved his left arm, put his hand on Viktor’s, took his fingers and tried to squeeze. He left his hand resting on Viktor’s. His skin felt hard and dry. ‘He knew what all of you were doing. He kept me alive, he never gave them anything. He was a type of madman – munhu uyu ibenzi. A mad, clever man. When he went, when he left ...’ Even the soft, almost inaudible words took more from him, more than he had. ‘I told the others. Got the news out on the door, and the prisoners started to sing.’ Pausing, recovering his breath, he started to sing with surprising gusto and skill, ‘Ngatirege huvengana, Tibate pamwe, Tese vanhu veAfrica, Tiri rudzi rum we, Tisazviparadzanisa, Tiri rudzi rum we.’ The other men in the car nodded their heads. Breaking off, Samuel continued, ‘Then they protested. They sang and then protested. Some in the large cells below set the main hall on fire and burnt their blankets, shouting, “Mukoma wedu akafa. Shinga Mushandi Shinga! Qina Msebenzi Qina”.’ Nelson quickly translated: ‘Our brother is dead.’