by Andrea Eames
A man! And he looked like a man in that moment, even with his sparse scrub of a beard and the bobbing bone in his throat.
‘Where the hell did you get that gun, Abel?’ I said. ‘Why do you have it?’
Hazvinei was at his side, quick as a cat. Her long fingers sought out the cool length of the barrel.
‘Hazvinei, don’t touch that!’
Abel watched her, still with that smile on his mouth. ‘I bought it, Tinashe,’ he said. ‘How else would I get it?’
‘Who would sell such a thing to you? How much did it cost? Does Babamukuru know?’ I was torn between envy and horror.
‘Of course Baba does not know.’ He rested it against the tree. ‘It is not even loaded. I have to find bullets.’
We were not dead. We were safe. Part of Tinashe lay on the ground with a bullet in his head instead of in his pocket, and a red-soaked shirt. The part that was left followed Abel to the log where he sat.
‘How did you find me?’ said Abel. ‘I am not at the camp. Have you told anyone where I am?’
‘No, we have told no one,’ I said.
‘Except Hazvinei,’ he said. ‘I told you. You cannot keep secrets.’
‘I was the one who found you,’ said Hazvinei.
Abel leaned back. ‘And how did you do that?’
‘It is easy.’
‘Like talking to the njuzu?’
‘Like the njuzu.’
‘She didn’t know,’ I said. ‘It was luck.’
Hazvinei stuck out her tongue at me.
‘You just knew?’ said Abel. ‘That is a wonderful gift to have, that knowing.’
‘I always know things,’ said Hazvinei. ‘The spirits tell me.’
‘She is making it up,’ I broke in. ‘She is just showing off.’ I pinched Hazvinei on the shin, hard. Hazvinei glowered.
‘Sit.’ Abel sat on the ground. He pulled a bag from its hiding place in the crook of the tree’s roots and brought out a chipped enamel pot and a packet of tea. Clearly Abel was better prepared than I had imagined. With the supplies in this bag, he could remain out here for some days. He made a small pile of twigs and leaves and scraped the surrounding earth bare before putting a match to it. He poured water from a flask into the pot, and we watched it writhe and boil.
‘Won’t Tete Nyasha miss the pot?’
He shrugged. ‘I told her a chidhomo must have taken it.’
Just what Hazvinei would have said.
‘And the tea?’
‘I bought it with tuck-shop money. And milk – here.’ He reached into the bushes and pulled out a tin box. Teabags, powdered milk, a packet of biscuits.
‘You are very organised,’ I said. I eyed the rifle propped up against the tree.
‘This?’ He slid his hand down the smooth length, as if he were soothing it.
‘Where did you get it?’
He gave me a sidelong, smiling look. I felt the bulge of the bullet in my pocket and looked down at my milky, swirling cup, imagining that I was sitting in a real guerrilla camp, drinking tea with a real freedom fighter. The image of the poisoned man swam on the surface of the tea for a moment, and I felt a twist of fear in my stomach. I wondered if the tea would taste differently from the tea Tete Nyasha made: whether it would taste of blood, or soot, or sweat.
‘Mazvita tatenda,’ I said before I drank.
‘Do you have any sugar?’ said Hazvinei. I hissed at her to be quiet, but Abel laughed and passed her a brown bag.
Hazvinei was watching a seething puddle of fire ants on the ground. They had surrounded a dead beetle. As I watched, its meat melted and dissolved, vanishing into a hundred tiny mouths.
‘Look.’ Hazvinei rested her hand on the ground, among the fire ants. I shuddered.
‘Hazvinei! They will bite you.’
Abel, however, said nothing. His eyes were intent as he watched the insects climb up Hazvinei’s slender fingers, onto the dusty skin of her arm.
‘Hazvinei, please.’ I dared not touch her. One bite from a fire ant was agony. When they bit your skin, their jaws closed so tightly that you could not pull them off without leaving their heads attached to your skin. She was wearing her smug, cat-like smile. Showing off.
‘See?’ she said.
‘I see,’ said Abel.
The white, squirming bodies made my insides squirm as well, but I could not look away. Soon Hazvinei’s hand had become a pale shadow of itself, a pearly glove of ants.
‘How do you do that?’ asked Abel. He leaned forward, eyes narrowed.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, still watching the ants, her face fat and smooth with contentment. ‘I just ask them to come, and they come.’
Hazvinei looked up at me, smiling. She lowered her hand to the ground, and the ants flowed off like honey.
‘I told you,’ she said to Abel, alight, glowing with energy. ‘I told you.’
‘You did,’ he said, his eyes still on her face. His lips curved in a smile.
‘We have to go,’ I said. ‘Tete Nyasha will be wondering where we are. We need to go home for breakfast.’
‘Of course,’ said Abel, and stood up. ‘Hazvinei, you will come again?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and jumped backwards.
‘Quiet, yes?’ Abel put his finger to his pursed lips in an exaggerated shushing motion. ‘You don’t tell people we’re here. You can keep a secret?’
‘Yes,’ she said. We could keep secrets. Just not from each other. We nodded, two little puppets. Pink gingham Hazvinei and dusty, bullet-fondling me.
‘Do not tell Baba, yes?’ said Abel.
‘But he will find out that you do not go to football practice,’ I said. ‘One day?’
‘He will not find out.’
‘But if he follows you …’
‘He will not follow me. He trusts me.’ Abel looked straight at Hazvinei as he said this. ‘But of course you must tell him if you are too scared.’
‘I am not too scared,’ she said, looking into Abel’s face. Then she turned and ran into the bush, dragging me behind her, and we chased the dissolving shadows all the way back to the house.
Chapter Sixteen
AFTER THAT, WE visited the bush hideout most days after Abel and I had finished school. Hazvinei surprised Tete Nyasha by offering, in her sweetest voice, to run errands for her in the afternoons. When she came home later than expected, she told Tete that she met us at the school gate and walked us home. What a loving family we were! Tete was delighted. She did not keep careful count of the coins she gave Hazvinei for the store either, and so my sister was able to pocket the change.
Hazvinei and I came to know the sloping scrub leading to the camp and the bush where Abel’s tin box was stashed. We came to know the long, smooth shape of the gun, although we did not touch it. Abel did not touch it either, except to clean it and to pretend to shoot down birds. I think even Abel was a little afraid of the gun and what it meant.
In some ways it was just like the old days on the kopje. The air might smell of petrol fumes rather than cooking fires, and buildings and road might surround our small patch of bush, but as we crouched hot and hidden in the encroaching acacias and long grasses, we could have been back home. Hazinei told Abel the ghost stories that she had told me and he listened with his hands folded under his chin like a child rather than the almost-man he was. They told each other the story of Nehanda over and over. I sat a little distance from them, superstitiously clutching the bullet that Chenjerai had given me to avert the bad fortune that choked my breath. Hazvinei’s stories had brought us nothing but disaster, and I did not want to attract the spirits’ attention again.
Babamukuru liked to see the three of us spending time together. ‘Good boy,’ he said to Abel. ‘You are taking very good care of your cousins. You are happy, vana, yes?’
‘Yes, Babamukuru,’ we chorused.
‘And you are getting good at football now, Tinashe? You will be on the team?’
‘Yes, Babamukuru.’
&n
bsp; ‘Good good.’ He patted me on the head. I felt the full weight of my guilt under his hand.
The men outside the shebeen knew my sister now, as she passed by them every day to run her errands at the store and visit us at the school gates. They all seemed to agree that she needed a man to teach her a lesson, preferably in his bed. They joked about her, but there was a dark, secret undercurrent to their jokes, a hunger that made them lick their lips and bare their teeth as they talked.
Tete Nyasha took Hazvinei to the shop in town to buy her bras – mysterious concoctions of wire and cotton – but even then her breasts strained against the fabric of her dress. When we walked to the shops, the men who lounged outside the shebeen and wolf-whistled at passing women did not whistle at my sister. Instead, they stared at her with thirsty eyes and stopped their drinking to watch the sulky, passionate swing of her skirt, the way her waist seemed to beg for an arm to slide around it. It was hard for me to see her as an object of desire, my little sister who still bit me when she was angry. I felt the shadow of bad fortune over us again, watching us from the sky, but I hoped that we were safe. I hoped that it could not find us here in Babamukuru’s house with its big refrigerator full of food.
And then I heard the new stories. As Hazvinei continued to ignore the men, not even smiling at them as she passed, they began to whisper. I wish she had smiled, or even called an insult – then they would have laughed and forgotten about her. But their admiration turned to something else, and their gossip reached everyone – even me.
‘Hazvinei.’ I told her about the men outside the shebeen.
She laughed in my face. ‘Do you know why men say this?’ she asked me. ‘It is because beautiful women are powerful. They want to possess them for their own. But because the men who say this look like a chidhomo, they know they will never have these women. And so they say they are witches.’
‘They say they have seen you naked at night,’ I said. It was difficult to get the words out. ‘They say you ride on the back of a hyena.’
‘What? I walk at night sometimes.’
I did not know this. ‘Are you crazy? Why?’
‘When I cannot sleep.’
‘How do you get outside?’
‘I climb out of the window. It is not hard. And I do not go far.’
‘Hazvinei, that is not safe. You do not know what is out there at night-time.’
She shrugged. ‘Frogs. Owls.’
‘Why? Why do you do it?’
‘I am bored, Tinashe. I am here all day.’
‘I know, but …’
‘I would be glad of a bere to carry me. I get tired walking.’
‘Don’t say that, Hazvinei.’
‘I am just joking.’
‘It does not matter. Do not say such things.’
She was silent for a moment, frowning. Then she said, ‘You mean to say those men have been watching me?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And you said nothing?’
‘Hazvinei …’ I was afraid, I wanted to say. Of course I want to protect you, but do you realise what these men are saying, Hazvinei? Do you realise what it means?
‘Hazvinei, be careful,’ is what I actually said. She flicked my arm off her shoulder as if she was flicking off a mosquito. ‘Hazvinei …’
But she was already running. I followed her, a fearful rock rabbit, running in her shadow.
One man watched Hazvinei more than the others. He was a large, quiet man with a square head and large, square hands. He drank, but he did not seem to get drunk. He did not join in with the lewd remarks of the other men, but listened and said nothing. He watched her at church. He sat in one of the front pews, and he wore a smart black hat, and he watched her.
‘Who is that?’ I asked Tete Nyasha.
‘It is Michael Mapfumo,’ she said. ‘He owns a furniture shop.’
‘Oh-oh.’ I had heard of him. He was a good man, people said.
‘He is very wealthy,’ said Tete Nyasha, ‘but he has not forgotten who his friends are.’
‘Is he married?’
‘No,’ said Tete Nyasha. ‘He lives alone.’
I imagined him in his rooms above the furniture shop, rubbing polish into his perfectly shined shoes every night on his own. Perhaps cooking himself a pot of sadza. Making himself a pot of tea that he would drink alone.
‘I do not like him,’ said Hazvinei.
‘Why not? He is a good man.’
‘There is something about him.’ She shrugged. ‘It does not matter.’
I knew that my sister was bored, and I could not blame her for spending so much time with Abel. To me, it felt like we were playing the vakomana game again, just the three of us. But Abel had the scholarship exam to look forward to, and university, when he grew out of these games, and Hazvinei had nothing. I was worried that she would become too attached to Abel and his ideas and ignore the growing reputation that she had among the men of the town. If she were not to go to school, then she must get married – and who would marry someone with those whispers following her?
‘There is no point educating her,’ said Babamukuru. ‘It is good that you care for your sister, Tinashe, but I know what is best for her.’
I had to be satisfied with that – and, truthfully, I was glad to work at my school books without having to worry about Hazvinei. School had become easier as I caught up with the reading and learned to behave as the other boys did. I worked my way to the head of the class, and I started to think that I might have a chance at a scholarship as well. I hugged this secret thought to myself, guarded it as I guarded my lucky bullet, and did not mention it to anyone – not even to Hazvinei.
I did not always go to the camp after school with my cousin and my sister. Sometimes I would leave them to play their games and walk to the store to buy a Coke and sit on the benches outside with my books. I spent some time there, reading and watching the old men who sat outside the shebeen opposite, playing Tsoro Yematatu all day – ‘Three Rabbits’, a game where bottle caps hopped over each other on a hollowed-out wooden board. At the shebeen I felt like a man among men, but sometimes one of the drunks would stagger over and try to start a conversation. On this day, one man in particular stared at me with peculiar intensity. I tried not to notice him, but his stare was so intent and so unblinking that I could feel it like a red ant stinging my temple. When I looked at him, he smiled and waved, as if he had spotted an old friend, pushed back his chair with a great deal of grunting and effort, and walked over to me.
He heaved himself into the chair opposite me, and mopped his forehead with his sleeve. ‘Oh-oh! Hot?’
He asked it as a question, and I had to agree. ‘Yes.’
We sat in silence for a moment, as he breathed hot, heavy fat-man breaths and sighed loud sighs.
‘I recognise you,’ I said, trying to be polite. ‘Are you a friend of my uncle’s?’
The man waved his hand. ‘You have seen me here before,’ he said. He grinned. He had teeth like clean pips in his fat, purple-black cheeks.
‘Let me get you a drink.’ He waved at the man inside, who brought us two Chibukus, the thin beer that came in fat plastic tubs with screw-on lids. I hated Chibuku. The fat man, however, up-ended his tub and took a long sloshing, gurgling drink from it. When he had finished, he let out another sigh and smiled at me as if we were conspirators together, plotting a wonderful surprise. ‘And do you know what my job is?’
‘I do not.’ I looked around for rescue. One of Babamukuru’s friends caught my eye and lifted a hand as if to wave, but then saw my companion and stopped. He turned away as if he had not seen me.
‘I am a witch-smeller,’ said the man.
I remembered the witch-smellers from the kopje. My stomach turned. ‘What?’
‘A witch-smeller. You have heard of people like me?’
Smoke rising. The smell of burning.
‘Witch-smellers are women. Old women,’ I said.
‘Not always.’ The man laid a heavy hand o
n my shoulder.
‘I did not think you were needed in the city,’ I said. I remembered the old women with red-streaked hair and breasts sagging and wrinkled like old gourds, who pointed their horsetail switches at the varoyi and marked them out. I looked for an escape, but there was no way in which I could leave politely. The man smiled. I did not trust his smooth, fat face and the happy crease of his eyes.
‘There has been misfortune,’ he said. He swigged his beer, and breathed on me. His breath was sweet, tinged with barley.
I bit my lip hard and tasted blood. ‘I do not see what that has to do with me.’
‘Eh-eh!’ He seemed happy to hear me say this. ‘But that is the thing, Tinashe.’ He tapped his forefinger against the table. ‘That is the very thing. It is your sister that I have come to talk to you about.’
‘My sister?’
‘Hazvinei, yes? It is a strange name.’
‘My father expected a boy,’ I said, and the words ‘my father’ felt like a piece of gristle in my mouth.
‘Do you know what the tradition is, Tinashe?’ he said.
I buried my mouth in the warming beer. I did not open my lips, but I felt it fizzing against my skin. The scent of the sweet beer filled my nostrils and made me feel sick. It smelled of decay. ‘You find witches,’ I said, and twitched my shoulders in a half-shrug. ‘You will not find any here.’
The witch-smeller rested his hands on the table and touched his fat fingers together. ‘Women like your sister,’ he said, ‘must be married. It is dangerous for such a woman to wander alone. I have spoken to your uncle about this. Her female essence is not guarded, not protected. Not guided in the proper way.’ He straightened. ‘If she had a husband, things would be different. As it is …’
‘What is she supposed to have done?’ I heard my voice grow sharp, and struggled to control it.
‘Men have complained of their seed spilling in the night,’ he said. ‘Wasted on their blankets when it should go to grow children. Your sister troubles their dreams. She unmans them.’