by Andrea Eames
I felt my fists unclench.
‘You understand that, Tinashe.’
‘No. I do not understand. I do not understand why you do anything that you do. I do not understand why you would bring us here and then leave us. Why you and my sister …’ I stopped. ‘This is your fault. This is all your fault.’
‘It is not my fault that Hazvinei became sick.’
‘Yes it is!’ I stared at him, panting. ‘Do you know why she is bleeding? Why she is sick?’
He shook his head, waiting for me to tell him. I opened my mouth, ready to form the words, and I could not. I stayed silent.
‘I have to go.’
And I let him go. What else could I do? I could not force him to stay with us. He should have wanted to.
I did not watch him leave. The bullet was gone, lost in the struggle. I glanced around for it, but it would be impossible to see among the dust and pebbles. It did not matter. It no longer had any significance for me.
We had enough food for a few days, and there was a stream nearby for water. I pulled myself over to where Hazvinei slept. I looked at her dry, drained face and the dark bruises like purple flowers around her eyes.
‘It will be all right, Hazvinei,’ I said, and covered her with the blanket that Abel had left us. ‘He will come back.’
Hazvinei could always tell when I was lying.
For the most part my sister was asleep, her eyelids and lips twitching as she drew in breaths like a man hauling a bucket up from a well, getting a little further every time before dropping it back down. She looked like a much older woman; in fact, she looked like Amai.
She awoke once in the night, for just a few minutes. The cool darkness must have soothed her.
‘Tinashe.’
‘I am here.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘What are you sorry for? You do not need to be sorry.’
Ah, the lies we tell to the dying! But lies do not seem important, at the end. Nothing does. Except, perhaps, the memory of two children swimming with a njuzu in the slow-moving river.
‘Why are you awake?’ she asked me. ‘It is night-time.’
‘I am looking after you.’
She turned her head and licked her dry lips with a grey tongue that was even drier. ‘Where is Abel?’
‘He is gone.’
She did not seem surprised. ‘Am I still bleeding?’
‘A little.’
‘It was like having my first blood all over again,’ she said. ‘Except that nothing would stop it. I tried ripping up rags and even stuffing them inside, but nothing worked. I thought that the river would clean me out …’
‘You are lucky you did not get eaten by a crocodile.’
‘I didn’t think of that.’
‘No.’
‘I remember you coming.’
‘I am glad that I found you. You should have told someone where you were going.’
She shrugged. ‘None of their business.’
‘It was mine.’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes opened properly for the first time. They laughed at me, those slanted eyes. ‘Yes. It was yours.’
‘Is there nothing you can do, Hazvinei? No one you could … ask? For help?’
She snorted. ‘Why do you not just say it?’
I did not want to mention the spirits out loud. ‘It is bad luck.’
‘How could our luck be worse? And no. That is not how it works. Whenever they give me something, they take something in return. And I have nothing left to give them.’
Except your life, I thought, but did not say. And I could see that she was thinking the same thing.
I fell asleep without realising it, beaten down by the day’s events. I awoke to see Hazvinei’s shining eyes above my own, and pushed myself up on one elbow.
‘What is the matter? Are you feeling worse?’
‘Mbuya Nehanda is coming.’
‘Mbuya Nehanda? The Nehanda spirit?’
‘Yes!’
‘She is coming here?’
‘She is coming here. She is being carried here.’
‘Carried?’
‘She is too old to walk the distance.’
‘But I thought she was Nehanda – the warrior?’
‘She is. But Nehanda chose to enter the body of an old woman who cannot fight.’ Hazvinei shrugged.
‘How do you know?’ I looked for a delirious light in her eyes and saw none. She seemed better; energised.
‘I just do.’
Of course she did.
‘Why is she here?’
‘I do not know.’ My sister pulled me to my feet as we heard the cracking and snapping of twigs from the bush. ‘But she is here now.’
I wondered what magic had cured my sister, but I did not have long to wonder. Four strong men carried Mbuya Nehanda on a litter made of poles and blankets. They settled her down on the dust, arranging blankets around her with care and some fear, and then set about building a fire in our camp. They did not speak to either of us. I thought that perhaps they were dumb – they had that silent, locked-in look about them.
Mbuya Nehanda herself was tiny, frail as the discarded wing of a flying ant, which could blow away at the slightest cough. I had never seen anyone so old. Her face had folded in on itself again and again as it wrinkled, becoming waterless and shrunken. Her skin was blacker than black, certainly blacker than any skin I’d seen before: an ashy grey-black, with no hint of moisture or even flesh beneath, wrapped in a dirty cloth. As I watched, her helpers rubbed a paste into her skin.
‘Dung,’ Hazvinei whispered.
‘Why?’
‘To protect her skin from the sun.’
Her skin looked blackened and burned anyway, and the dung paste made it crackle and turn to powder. She wore jewellery – bangles and necklaces that left dents in her dry skin and looked too heavy for her twig-like wrists. As she moved her arms, the bracelets clanged and clinked and the dung powder fell from her joints as if she were dead and crumbling.
They were on their way back to Zambia, her handlers told us, which presented a problem, as the medium could not cross water until the spirit of Nehanda gave her permission. As Nehanda would only give permission after days of prayers requesting it, it could be a long time before Mbuya Nehanda was safely across the Zambian border.
‘It is meant to be,’ said Hazvinei. ‘The spirits meant her to stop here.’
I felt a fear and awe similar to that I had felt when Hazvinei told me stories of spirits in the night. Nehanda stank, yes, of dung and old-woman smell, and her hand on my head was a thin sack full of bones with fingernails that scratched along my scalp, but I felt something pass from her to me all the same.
When Mbuya Nehanda was settled and warmed by the fire, she told her four helpers to sit. She scanned the group with her milky eyes and found Hazvinei.
‘I must talk to you,’ she said.
Hazvinei came forward.
‘Alone.’
Nehanda’s bearers looked at each other.
‘It is all right,’ said Nehanda.
They moved away together, those two women, and the rest of the group stepped back. Mbuya Nehanda and Hazvinei looked strangely alike in the firelight. I do not know what the spirit medium said to my sister, because I fell asleep, lulled by the crackling of the flames and the unexpected warmth. When I awoke, there was no evidence of a fire – and no footprints. Hazvinei lay unmoving.
‘Mbuya Nehanda?’ I could hear no voices. ‘Hazvinei?’ She did not stir.
I had dreamed it. I had dreamed all of it. There was no spirit medium here to intervene on my sister’s behalf. There was no fire. There was no help to be found.
I have heard people talk about the moment when life leaves a body. I have heard them say that they can see the spirit leave, a pale shadow finally released from its heavy prison, a moth rising towards the moon. I did not see this. I did not see anything. It was only when I said her name and she did not respond, when I touched her forehead and fe
lt it cold and dry and unyielding that I realised. I had expected more from Hazvinei: fireworks arcing across the sky, the howl of the spirits as they called her home. But there was nothing. She looked as she had when she was a little girl, sleeping reluctantly and wishing the day was twice as long, with her sharp little nails hidden inside clenched fists.
Chapter Twenty-five
THERE MY SISTER lay, her eyes open and unseeing and a bloody mess where her unborn child should have been. I half-expected her to brush up a hand impatiently, sticking out her lower lip, saying ‘Bloody flies,’ as she used to do. Hazvinei was not Hazvinei without her smouldering, unhappy energy and her quick, irritated movements.
I knelt beside her. I should have done more. It was my job to take care of her, and I had never managed it. I had failed in my task, and I had failed Baba and Hazvinei. I had killed her.
I told her so, but her expression did not change. I shook my head and the thoughts broke up and scattered. I sat down on the grass. It was dry and pricked my skin, but I welcomed the pain.
The body slowly stopped being Hazvinei and became a corpse instead. It glared at me with open eyes, and I kept thinking that I could see her breathe or her eyelids flicker. In the end I turned my back on her to stop these imaginings. But then I thought I could feel her breath in my ear, or her hand on my shoulder. There was no way to escape, so I closed my eyes and let the ghosts touch me and talk to me.
I dug a hole. I had no spade, no proper equipment: I used thick, sturdy branches and chipped away at the dry ground until my makeshift tool broke, then found another. Hazvinei watched me with blank, dusty eyes. Flies gathered.
I do not know how long it took me to dig the grave. I know that I slept on the pile of fresh-turned earth, before waking and continuing my work. I know that the sun had slid from the sky when I rolled my sister’s body into the hole I had created. Her skin felt like old rubber. When she dropped into the grave with a wet, solid sound (I closed my ears to it and tried not to hear it), I covered her with earth. It fell on her skin like rain, soft and damp. I did not look. I do not remember falling asleep, but I do remember waking up with a dry, dead taste in my mouth.
And I knew then what I had to do. I found a hollow reed, stripped it from a bush and cut it at both ends, and slid it into the welcoming earth of Hazvinei’s grave.
I waited. I waited, sitting on the little mound I had created, letting the sun burn me, welcoming it as I would welcome a punishment from God. I sat still for so long that I forgot what movement felt like. When the thirst or the urge to urinate became unbearable, I wandered to the stream nearby and refreshed myself in whichever way was needed, then came back to sit in exactly the same spot, in exactly the same position. At night I did not light a fire. I slept stretched out on the grave, my head above my sister’s head, my feet above her feet. I heard the hyenas whoop. I heard owls and insects and strange rustlings in the bushes and the snapping of twigs, but I did not move. I knew that nothing would dare come near me, not now. I waited for her.
On the third day, she came. I saw her moving through the low scrub, belly close to the ground as if she were stalking me. Perhaps she was. I crawled off the grave, feeling my stiff knees and elbows creak in protest, and settled a few metres away from her, watching.
She stared at me with flat, uncaring yellow eyes that slanted towards her temples. If I had to choose one colour that reminded me of home, it would be that yellow-brown ochre colour of a lion’s hide – of dry grass and dry earth and the sun on leaves and twigs. The colour of my sister’s skin.
We looked at each other. She walked to the grave, keeping one eye on me. When she reached the hole, she dipped her big, slow head and sniffed at it. Her whiskers stirred the grains of earth beneath her nose.
If I had any doubts, they were gone now.
The lioness held her nose to the hole in the grave for a few moments. When she lifted her head, I nodded to her. This made her flatten her ears and lift one corner of her black lip in a silent snarl. When I got to my feet, she backed away, then turned and loped into the brush. She was invisible almost instantly, blending into the undergrowth.
‘Mazvita tatenda,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
I fell into a fever. The sun became the face of a hyena laughing at me from a swirling sky. I do not know how long I lay there. I do not remember the nights. And I do not know how I survived. After a while I gained enough strength to stand up and start walking.
I walked for days. I started to hear the animals talking to me, and it did not seem strange or unlikely. I could hear the high-pitched chorus of ants in the mud at my feet, the anger of the snake whose slumber I had disturbed. The stars flickered in the sky like bulbs about to go out. Colours were brighter, and more changeable. The sky flashed from blue to green to red to yellow, pulsing with each step. It would take more effort to stop my feet than it would to just keep going. My heart drummed in time with the slap of my feet on the ground. I could not remember my life before this walk. After a while, I could not remember my name.
An orange tamarind moon rose, pockmarked and swollen, from the black water filled with the dust of moths’ wings and the distant coughs of hippos. A lion cleared his throat, stirring the thick air with a deep rumble. The moon passed behind a hill of balancing rocks, dropped crazily in an impossible tower. It glowed behind one round rock, a tiny eclipse, before bulging out above and climbing into the vast skyful of tiny winking eyes.
The balancing rocks creaked and groaned and shifted. The night seemed to be full of spirits. Colours flashed across the sky like strange lightning; eyes blinked at me from the bushes. I heard the roaring of wind in the wings of stray birds. I probed the emptiness where my family should be as you explore the cavity of a missing tooth with your tongue. The pain was distant and happening to someone else. I felt as if I was high on mbanje, but I had not smoked it in weeks. I could feel the plants growing, hear the high-pitched buzzing of the stars, taste the metallic taste of moonlight.
At the first village I came to, the people hid from me. I must have looked like a madman. I know I looked like a deserter. The village N’anga was the only person who spoke to me. The rest looked through me as if I were a ghost. I was in such a state that I only half-believed I was alive, and I would not have been at all surprised to find out I was a ghost.
‘You bring bad luck here,’ said the N’anga, shaking his medicine stick at me. The gourds tied to the top rattled and banged together.
‘I want some food,’ I said. The witch doctor held no fear for me now. My sister was a lioness. I was protected by her and the ghost of my father. I was untouchable. I was all-powerful.
‘What spirit do you carry?’ he asked me.
I felt myself swaying on my feet. ‘I carry no spirit,’ I said.
‘That is a lie.’ He leaned forward and stared into my eyes. I saw my own reflection in them: someone whose irises were ringed with white and red, who had dried spittle at the corners of his mouth. I did not blame them for being afraid of me.
‘I do not carry a spirit.’
‘I can see it in you.’ The man pushed me. ‘Leave this place.’
‘I need water.’
‘Leave this place.’
‘Just a drink. From the pump. One drink.’
I could see that he was about to refuse. I let my eyes roll back in my head, as if I were indeed possessed by a spirit. The man backed away.
‘One drink.’
The water from the pump tasted like water-weed and earth. It felt like a blessing on my lips, a cool hand laid on my forehead. I let some splash over my head. It evaporated almost immediately, the sun sucking it up almost before it could wet my skin.
I heard shouts, and running footsteps. ‘What’s going on?’ I grabbed the N’anga’s arm.
‘The whites,’ he said. ‘They think we are hiding vakomana here.’
‘Vakomana?’ Even here, I was not safe from Abel’s dreams.
‘Freedom fighters.’ He broke away and stared at me. �
�Go. You have brought trouble upon us. Go.’
I stumbled away on legs that felt shaky and unreliable. I could see men in khaki with sunburned necks harrying the villagers, and I dragged myself across the red, broom-swept ground and into the bush, and started to run. I fell, not once but several times. I heard shouts from behind me. Of course the villagers had sent them after me. Of course, of course. They did not need this kind of trouble. No matter their feelings about the war, they did not want a mad, half-dead terrorist, a stranger, bringing the white men upon them. I held my side as I ran, willing the pain to go away. My feet, which had carried me for days in my hypnotic state, without complaining, were now sore and blistered. My body had given up.
Something tripped me up and I fell, sprawling forwards and grazing my outstretched hands. I lay still for a moment, surprised at the sound of my breath. Then I looked at the object which had tripped me. The leg of an elephant.
The elephant was dead – had been dead for days – and was partly eaten. Its chest cavity was hollowed out and stinking, but the ribs would protect me from view, as would the few scraps of leathery skin clinging to them, like grubby sheets on a washing line.
I climbed inside. I tried not to breathe, because the stench was so strong. I don’t know what I had expected to find inside the elephant – a beating heart? Intestines waving gaily like torn flags? – but I found nothing. A stink, a mess, and shelter that would keep me hidden, that is all. I said a quick prayer of thanks to the spirit of the elephant, and crouched down inside. I could already hear shouts, but I could not hear dogs. If they had brought dogs I was dead already. If they were just men, then I might have a chance. I hoped that their white-man squeamishness would make it impossible to imagine someone hiding inside the carcass of an animal. After a while, I was not sure what was the elephant’s blood and what was mine. I felt hysterical laughter rising in my stomach like bile. Perhaps I would live here for the rest of my life, snacking on rotten elephant meat, sleeping with my head gently pillowed on its organs. The laughter felt like hiccups, and I stifled it.
Morning hardened in the sky. I awoke with a dry mouth and the smell of old blood in my nostrils. I felt nothing. No anger, no fear. I left the elephant and walked to the nearest waterhole, where I drank the dank water, not caring if I felt ill, and I did not wash. My bloodied face, looking back at me from the water, seemed fitting.