by Andrea Eames
‘That is ridiculous,’ I said. ‘No one can control dreams.’
‘And the bad fortune that has come to us?’ he said. ‘The accidents? You know that Cephas slipped and cut his head open on this very bar,’ he knocked his fist against it, ‘last night, as he was talking about your sister?’
I shook my head. I wanted to shake out the sound of his voice that was buzzing in my ear like the whine of a mosquito. ‘He was drunk. You cannot believe these things.’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But I have heard other things.’
‘If they are as stupid as a drunk man slipping and hitting his head …’
‘I have heard that your sister consorts with spirits,’ he said. ‘That she talks to them. That she walks alone in the night.’
‘She has done no such thing.’ I felt a muscle in my leg jump, and my knee hit the table. Lightly, ever so lightly, but the witch-smeller had felt it – I could see on his face that he had felt it.
He tapped his nose. ‘I am a witch-smeller, Tinashe,’ he said. ‘It is my job to know these things.’
‘You know nothing,’ I said.
‘I am saying these things to you for your own good, Tinashe,’ he said. ‘Do you not want to help your sister? Would you rather not know what people are saying? I am giving you a chance.’
‘A chance to do what?’
He stood. ‘Do you know what happens when I find a witch?’
I looked at him, and said neither yes nor no.
‘You will find out,’ he said. ‘Everything has been tainted. You. Your aunt and uncle. Your house. Everything.’
I could not look at him.
‘Your sister is like a putzi fly. She coils under your skin and she eats you up from the inside, leaving nothing but poison,’ he said. ‘I know these things.’
Hazvinei telling Amai it was I who had eaten all the peanut butter. Hazvinei talking to the njuzu, brandishing the N’anga’s medicine stick, bringing drama and complications into my life at every turn. Hazvinei offering me her school shoes, looking lost and confused when the spirits of the rain dance left her. Hazvinei’s smile.
I scraped back my chair and I left the witch-smeller sitting there.
The white policemen lingered in our area, as they had done in the kopje after Chenjerai’s visit. This did not deter Abel. He loved thinking that the police were looking for him as the source of the rumours of vakomana. He greeted them with exaggerated friendliness, finding excuses to walk past them and smile and wave. He liked to stand and talk to them, bumming cigarettes off them when he could.
I did not join them. I felt the white men’s eyes on me as I hung back, and they shamed me.
‘Tinashe!’ Abel tried to wave me over, to include me, but I did not come.
‘I have to do my homework. I have to study.’
‘You worry too much about studying. You will dry up like an old branch if you work too hard.’
I kicked at stones on my way home and I developed a habit of clenching my fist around the bullet in my pocket as I walked, as if it would protect me from the things I feared.
I remembered a time when I had believed that Baba patrolled the house at night, protecting us from the leopards. There was no one to protect us now. The leopards were getting in; I could see their claws in every crack in the walls. I smelled smoke – the sweet, greasy smoke of burning flesh. I saw the flames above the kopje, saw the shuddering woman in the thin cotton dress. At night, my dreams tormented me with witch-smellers and white policemen and the smell of burning.
‘What is wrong with you, Tinashe?’ Abel gave me a friendly shove. ‘Your face is long.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then smile.’
I did not tell him about the witch-smeller. I did not tell anyone – not even Hazvinei. I tried to study, but the black words on the white page made sinister shapes and I could not read them.
And everywhere I went was the witch-smeller. He seemed to arrive everywhere just before I did: standing outside the supermarket, or sitting in the shebeen, or cycling down the road on his too-small bicycle. He grinned at me with his missing-tooth mouth, and waved as if to a very good friend. I did not wave back. How I wished that Hazvinei were a quieter, gentler sort of sister, one who would not trouble me with night-time imaginings!
Abel and I were walking back from the camp when he saw the witch-smeller too, sitting in the middle of a knot of men. The witch-smeller remained silent, but the other men catcalled and shouted. I heard Hazvinei’s name clearly, and the word muroyi. Abel’s face closed down and he walked faster, so that I had to scurry to keep up. We waited until we were a safe distance away before we stopped.
‘What the hell is going on, Tinashe?’
He really did not seem to know. Did Abel never speak to any of the men? He did not seem to speak to anyone these days apart from Hazvinei and me, and then it was all about the vakomana and stories of war.
‘Who do they think they are, speaking about my cousin that way?’
‘I am taking care of it, Abel,’ I said. ‘I am watching her.’
‘They have no right to talk about her at all.’
I tried to keep him quiet. ‘I do not want Babamukuru to know. They fight enough already. Please, Abel.’
‘Tell me who is saying these things. Tell me and I will deal with them.’
‘No. Calm down.’
‘Tell me their names.’
I turned away from my cousin and his clenched fists. ‘I am taking care of it, Abel. I am taking care of my sister.’
He stared at me, flat-eyed. ‘You had better take care of her, Tinashe. I am going to be watching you.’
I pressed my mouth into a thin line and said nothing. I did not need Abel to tell me these things. As I watched him walk away, I wondered why he felt so strongly about this. He and Hazvinei spent a great deal of time together and had become close, but he could not have fallen under her strange spell. Such things were not allowed between cousins. The mhondoro spirits would not allow it. I put it from my mind, along with the other suspicions that the witch-smeller had sown in me. I would watch Hazvinei. She would be safe. That was all.
Chapter Seventeen
‘SO. I HAVE made you an appointment at the college.’
Babamukuru had come home fat and fizzing with pride. I was wondering what had puffed him up, and now I knew. I had seen boys from the college before. They wore maroon and gold uniforms; blazers with shiny metal buttons. This was the college that Abel was to attend for his final two years of school – the one that would almost guarantee him a place in a good university. It was also one of the first such schools in the country to accept black pupils.
‘You will take an entrance examination.’
‘The same exam that Abel is taking?’
‘Yes. That one.’
I wet my lips. ‘Is it for a scholarship?’ Was I supposed to compete against my cousin for the place?
‘No. I will pay your school fees.’
‘Really, Babamukuru?’
His smile smoothed out his face. ‘Yes, Tinashe.’
I did not know what to say.
‘You remember that I promised I would take care of your education,’ said Babamukuru. ‘I have not forgotten. And I have seen how hard you work at school.’
‘But what about Abel, Babamukuru?’
‘You are both my boys.’ He rested his hand on my head. ‘I want you both to grow up to be educated men. Yes?’
I did not know what to say. ‘Thank you, Babamukuru.’
‘You are welcome, Tinashe,’ he said. He rested his hand on my head, as if he were blessing me. ‘You are a good boy,’ he said. And those four words made me feel so ashamed of deceiving him that I became sick to my stomach and had to sit on the toilet for an hour.
‘He is so excited that it has made him ill,’ said Babamukuru to Tete Nyasha.
The next day when I left school I did not go to join Abel and Hazvinei at the camp. Instead, I walked for a long time along the streets.
Jacarandas popped beneath my feet and left purple bruises on the soles of my shoes. I did not realise the length of time and the distance I had been walking until I stood outside the gates of the college, the fancy school that prepared young men for university, looking at the coat-of-arms on the iron gates and listening to the rough-voiced laughter of the boys who scattered from it like ants from a stepped-on nest.
I stood outside the gates, staring up at them, conscious of my scuffed shoes and too-long shorts flapping around my knees. There was the usual crush of street kids, vendors and ice-cream men outside, but beyond the wrought iron I saw a smooth green smear of lawn and stone buildings, and a black boy in the college uniform. He was taller than me, and lighter in skin – closer to Hazvinei’s height and colouring. He had a row of little badges down the collar of his blazer, and they were all different colours with collections of little white letters on each. As I watched, he looked up and smiled at the white boy next to him. I ducked away, as if he might sense my gaze and look up at me. I did not want him to see me, because then he and I would be separate people with separate lives and achievements. I wanted him to be a Tinashe for me, an empty gourd on which I could draw my own face, like the pod dolls that Hazvinei and I made when we were very small.
What did I know? How could I tell from that one quick glance that the black boy was happy at that school, that he had friends and was doing well with his studies? I did not know, of course. But I chose to believe that no one could be happier and luckier than that boy: that no one would be happier and luckier than me when I got in to a white boys’ school and got an Education, a proper one that could take me out of this place and into the world.
I told Hazvinei when I got home.
‘Why do you want to go there?’ she said. ‘It is full of whites.’
‘It is a good school.’
She shrugged irritably. ‘It is just school.’
‘It is where Abel is going.’
‘Abel is not going to go to school. He has more important things to do.’
‘But he is taking the exam.’
‘He says he won’t take it.’
‘He is lying. Babamukuru will make him.’
‘No one can make Abel do anything,’ she said with pride.
I picked at some dirt under my fingernails. ‘I want to go to university and get a proper job, like Babamukuru. You think I should leave school like Abel wants to? Live in the bush?’
She snorted. ‘I am going to see Abel,’ she said. ‘You stay here and study your books.’
I waited for a while, so that she would think it was my own idea to go to the camp. After hearing Hazvinei’s reaction, I decided I would not tell Abel about the exam. As it turned out, he had heard already, and did not care.
‘It is a big waste of time,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why you are bothering to do it.’
Most weeks, Abel took my homework and copied it. He was meant to be studying for the entrance exam as well, but I did not see him so much as open a book.
‘It is your contribution to the struggle,’ said Abel. He poked me in the ribs and grinned.
That was fine by me. The solutions to maths problems and the answers to comprehension questions were simple and comforting when compared to the shooting of a gun. Abel had managed to buy bullets now, and had started shooting at tin cans lined up on tree branches.
‘Someone will hear us.’
‘Stop worrying, Tinashe. No one will hear.’
The sharp snap and echo of the shots sounded very loud to me. I covered my ears whenever Abel took aim.
‘It is because he has such big ears, like an elephant’s,’ said Abel, and pinched one of my earlobes to make me squeal.
Abel did not let Hazvinei handle the guns, but she wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to! Her eyes shone and her fingers twitched as if she could feel the trigger already. Her lips parted as the shots rang out, and she licked her lips to taste the ash and powder.
‘It is too dangerous for you,’ said Abel with authority. ‘Girls are no good at shooting. You will kill somebody.’
‘I will not!’ Hazvinei was all over him, tugging at his sleeve and jumping so that she could catch his eye. ‘Let me try.’
‘No.’
I did not try to shoot either. I could have asked. I think Abel would have let me. But I did not want to. He did not comment, but I saw him watching me as I sat with my back against the tree, working on his homework and my own.
‘You enjoy this,’ he said to me one day.
I shrugged. ‘It has to be done.’
‘No. You like doing it.’ He leaned over my shoulder to see what I was doing. I covered up my neat, rounded handwriting with one hand, suddenly embarrassed. Abel smiled and moved away.
Sometimes, I found it hard to concentrate on school and on the entrance examination after our afternoons in Abel’s camp.
I sat at my desk and wrote in my exercise book, but I saw sun-warmed gun barrels, boiled sweets crushed by army boots, bitter tea in chipped mugs. I imagined having a gun of my own. I could feel the long, smooth weight of it against my hip. I fingered the smooth, cool bullet in my pocket and was excited by how small and innocent it was, this little bead of grey. I could not imagine shooting someone. Hazvinei could. She hoisted imaginary guns to her shoulder in our games. ‘You are dead,’ she announced. And she grinned.
Soon, playing at the camp after school was not enough for Abel. ‘We haven’t done anything yet,’ he said.
‘Like what?’
‘Like actually helping the freedom fighters. Doing something – for the struggle.’
‘We are not ready,’ I said, hoping that he would lose interest. Where was he planning to find these freedom fighters, anyway? They were out in the bush or lying low, not strolling the streets looking for teenagers with one gun between them. ‘We need to practise more.’
‘We are never going to be ready unless we do something,’ said Abel.
I enjoyed sitting and talking about our grand plans, cooking on our fire and cleaning the gun. I was content to keep playing this game. I did not want to do anything real. I voiced a thought that I had not shared with Abel before. ‘The radio said that majority rule is coming soon,’ I said. ‘Do we really need to fight any more? Surely the fighting will be finished now?’
Abel sat back on his haunches, contemptuous. ‘Are you stupid?’
I got enough of that from Hazvinei.
‘You believe the whites when they say these things? Do not be an idiot.’
‘But it was on the news.’
‘And who do you think writes the news? You think the freedom fighters write the news?’
I was silent.
‘We are still needed,’ said Abel. ‘You will see.’
It was hard to believe in a war, here in town. The guerrillas attacked farms and rural areas and did not come to these wide, dusty streets lined with jacaranda trees. We saw graffiti proclaiming loyalties to one party or another, and we saw the shadow that hovered in the air like petrol fumes, but our lives were largely untouched by that wider world.
I was grateful to be going to school in town. I had heard about the rural schools – mission schools, some of them – that had been attacked by freedom fighters. Many schoolchildren had been abducted and taken across the borders to train as guerrillas themselves. Abel would have loved that, I thought. There were whispers about Nehanda, as well; that she had returned, and that she would lead the freedom fighters to victory this time. The word had its own magic – nehanda, nehanda – soft syllables that sounded like a whisper even when spoken aloud. We listened to all of this every morning and evening, and then we came to school and learned complicated mathematical equations as if nothing at all were happening.
I awoke one night to feel a weight on the bed and an insistent pinching of the soft skin at my wrist.
‘Hazvinei?’
‘You snore like an old sekuru,’ said Hazvinei. I could see her eyes glinting in the darkness.
‘It is nig
ht-time. Go back to bed. Do you want to wake up Abel?’
‘Abel sleeps like a dead person. He never wakes up.’
‘Babamukuru will give you a hiding if he knows you are in our room. Go back to bed.’
She bounced a little on my mattress. I saw the gleam of her white teeth. ‘I think I am like Nehanda. I am going to be a spirit medium. I can help Abel.’
I sat up on my elbow, fully awake now. ‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Hazvinei, you are thirteen years old.’
‘So?’
‘You are crazy.’
‘But I have a gift.’ She wriggled on the bed, restless with glee. ‘You heard what Baba said about Mbuya Nehanda.’
‘Yes, but … Hazvinei, you are not Nehanda.’
‘No, but I could be like her.’
‘We are not of royal blood,’ I said. ‘Baba is … was not a chief.’
‘So?’ Hazvinei sat upright, righteous, glowing.
‘So, you cannot be carrying a mhondoro spirit.’ I rested my head against the pillow again. ‘You must not talk about these things. People will not believe that you are carrying a clan spirit, or even that you are a N’anga. You know what they will say. You know what they call girls like you.’
‘Perhaps I am the exception.’
‘You are not.’
‘How would you know? You know nothing about these things. You do not know what it is like for me.’
‘Yes, and I do not want to know.’
‘Abel does.’ Her eyes narrow, golden. ‘We have talked about it.’
‘You have?’ A worm of jealousy in my breast.
‘Abel knows how important I could be.’
‘You just want to think you are special so that Abel will like you better,’ I said. ‘I am sorry, Hazvinei, but it is true. You are just a little girl with too much imagination.’
She opened her mouth to speak, but I was faster.
‘If you continue to talk like this, I will tell Babamukuru.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
‘I would.’
‘That would mean you would have to stop going to the camp as well. You will no longer be the little mujiba.’ The errand-boy. A bead of spittle landed on my hand. I wiped it off.