Hold My Hand I'm Dying

by John Gordon Davis

  The old man lifted up his spears and shook them. The white men were strong but the Batonka people were many and they still had their spears.

  For ten days the old man walked through the valley. Some nights he slept in the villages he came upon and the people gave him food and beer and fire and they talked of the story of the flood. But sometimes when darkness fell through the rain there was no village and the old man could not make a fire to warm his wet body, for all the forest was wet. Then the old man slept in a tree so that if a lion or an elephant came it would not catch him very easily. And as he drew nearer his part of the valley he came upon villages but they stood deserted in the rain, for the people had harkened to the Government’s story of the flood. When he came upon such villages it made him very angry, and he did not take shelter in any of the deserted huts because the deserted ancestral spirits would still be there and they would be angry and maybe they would trouble him.

  On the tenth day the old man came upon the south-em bank of the river opposite Chipepo’s chiefdom. The water was higher than he had ever seen it, nearly to the top of the banks. Across the swollen rushing river he could see his village, called Chisamu, and he could see the smoke of the cooking fires coming from the huts. He could just make out his own huts on top of a small, hill, the highest and best huts in the village, and he saw firesmoke coming from his huts and his heart was very glad.

  But the village on the south bank was empty, the huts stood wet and rotting in the mud and the rain beat in the doorways. And the old man knelt down and wept for his own neighbours, his friends and his own kith and kin of this side of the river, his own people who had deserted. He prayed to the ancestral spirits not to be too angry with them, to forgive them. And he prayed that the Government had not taken them too far away, so that they would be able to return when they discovered the trick.

  Then the old man went to the banks of the river and he called across the hundred yards of swollen water until a man heard him and fetched him in a dugout canoe.

  That night the old man sat around the fire in the kitchen hut of his senior wife and his three wives and all his children, and they drank home-brewed beer and feasted, and many of the tribesmen came to greet him and welcome him home. They talked of the story of the flood.

  ‘Our District Commissioner has told us that before the big flood there will come a smaller flood,’ said the senior wife, ‘caused by the great rains. And he has been urging us to move now to the new land he is providing us beyond the mountains.’

  ‘Pah!’ said the old man. ‘The story of the little flood is also part of the trick of the big flood.’

  ‘But the river is very full, my husband,’ said the third wife, ‘and still the sky opens.’

  ‘Pah!’ said the old man. ‘It is true the river is very angry. But it is angry at the white man for his trick he tries to play upon us. The river will defeat the white men now, and there will be no big flood.’

  ‘But maybe the river will flow over the banks, my husband.’

  The old man grew angry. ‘The river has flowed over the banks before, old woman,’ he growled, ‘and we have never been killed. When the river has broken its banks before we have run to higher ground for a little time, and then it has gone away and we have returned. If the river breaks its banks again, then we will move to higher ground until it is gone again. Not before.’

  ‘It is true,’ the second and junior wives said, ‘it is true.’

  Later that night the old man went to his ancestral graves and knelt before them. He greeted all his ancestors whom he could remember.

  ‘I swear I will never leave you, my ancestors,’ he said aloud, ‘for that is a shameful and a foolish thing.’

  And, like the wise men from the north, the ancestral spirits told him that the flood would not come.

  In the valley the Zambezi river had high banks of white sand. At Chisamu, in Chipepo’s chiefdom, the village and the gardens were below the banks and the high water mark of the river. In the rainy season the river rose to the top of the banks but it seldom flowed over into the land below. It had happened only a few times in the memory of Sixpence, and it had overflowed only a little.

  The flood from the north came to the valley with a murmur and then a rumble that could be heard from far away. The people in Chisamu village paused and listened to the noise and wondered. The river was already at the top of the banks and already the gardens below were like paddy-fields from the rains.

  It came, came in a low wave down the valley, thickly, quickly, a layer of water running over the swollen river. The wave had an angry froth to its nose and it carried great trees and branches and dead animals. It slid over the banks like pus sliding over an eyelid, then it tumbled and cascaded over and threw itself and its debris into the gardens of Chisamu. Then the wall of water built up to a torrent, thicker and thicker and higher and more angry. It roared down the valley like a great flat fat snake, hissing, carrying all before it. It filled the air with the noise of its rush, it drowned the river banks and they were gone, it ran over the fields below faster than a man can run. And it swilled up the footpaths and tracks of the village and ran in the doorways and doused the fires in the kitchens with a swallowing hiss, it tumbled into the goat and cattle pens and rose up around the animals’ bewildered milling legs, to their bellies and upwards. It ate up the grain bins and carried pots and knobsticks and firewood and chickens with it.

  The air was full of the shouts of men and the running, of feet and the clatter of the scramble for possessions. The air was full of the bellows of fathers and the shrieks of mothers and the screams of children and the bellows of cattle and the squeals of goats and pigs, and it was full of the screams of insects that had never before seen the light of day as they scrambled over each other for safety, and it was full of the excited cries of the birds that clouded the air and fed upon them as they had never fed before.

  And still the brown water kept coming. The river was gone. It was a wicked frothing lake such as the people had never seen.

  Many of the people kept running for many miles until they reached the sloping ground, until they had outstripped the running water. They looked back and saw the water rising up the walls of their huts, over the brushwood fences of their goat and cattle pens; they saw men and animals swimming.

  But many of the people, many women and children ran for the small hills and kopjes on which the higher huts stood and many climbed the trees and they clambered to the roofs of their huts.

  Many people ran to the hill upon which the huts of Sixpence stood.

  Sixpence stood in the rain outside his huts on the peak of the kopje and he watched the water. He had run down the hill when the pandemonium first started and he had rounded up his six goats and his four cattle and chased them back up the hill to his huts. They, and his three wives and his nine daughters who were worth six head of cattle apiece in bridal prices, they were his life’s work. The cattle and the goats saw and smelt and felt the water and they had stampeded to the high familiar safety of Sixpence’s kraal. One nanny goat had fallen down an antbear hole in the excitement and snapped her front leg. Sixpence had gathered her up in his old arms and carried her up the hill.

  Many people had run up the hill with them, husbands without their wives, women without their children, children without their parents, the men and women shouting, and the children shouting and scampering in glee and screaming in horror.

  Now they stood five deep outside Sixpence’s huts, the men and the women and the children and the animals and their young, and the air was full of their weeping and their lamentations and their bleating and their milling.

  Sixpence watched the water rise. He was astonished. Never, never had he seen such water, never. The Mambo Joseph-i had once told him about the faraway sea which he said was very big and dangerous, but the sea could never be bigger nor more dangerous than this water. Nothing more terrible had ever happened in the world. He could see the water rise before his eyes, inch by inch. There was a wa
termark, the stick on Chipunza’s cattle pen. Look away at the water, and when you look back the stick is shorter. The water is under Chipunza’s good cow. It is at her udder. You look away at Marombi’s huts, then you look back and already her teats are under the brown water. This was terrible water.

  The people were lamenting behind him.

  ‘It is true, the flood has come, what the white men told us is true—’

  ‘Silence! You foolish people!’ he roared. ‘Can you not see that the river is angry with the tricks of the white men. This is but an omen – silence, I told you!’

  But the silence did not come. Even the womenfolk could see that the long low hill had become an island. And if what the white men had said was true—?

  The shriek of a goat pierced the wet noise. They all searched the muddy running water. Then they saw them nosing their way, big and brown and sinuous and treacherous and greedy through the rising scum, the crocodiles.

  It started raining harder.

  High up on the escarpment Joseph Mahoney sat on the verandah of the Residency. The rain had let up to a heavy drizzle. Through his garden he could see the corner of the verandah of the sergeant’s house, seventy-five yards away. He could see the sergeant sitting on the verandah with his feet up, drinking a can of beer. The sergeant lifted the can to his mouth and took a long slug out of it, then he rested the can upon the wall of his verandah. It stood in a row with several other cans.

  Seventy-five yards away Mahoney lifted his can of beer to his mouth and put it down on his verandah wall.

  It stood with several other cans. Mahoney watched the sergeant for a long time and he looked at the row of cans on the sergeant’s wall for a long time.

  After a long time Mahoney picked up his .22 rifle. He raised it slowly to his shoulder and drew a long careful bead on the full can of beer resting on the sergeant’s verandah wall. He held the bead for a long time, too long. The sergeant’s hand came down and picked up the can. Mahoney lowered his rifle.

  The sergeant’s arm came out again and replaced the can on the wall again. Mahoney raised his rifle again and he drew his bead and he squeezed the trigger.

  The sergeant jumped. His can of beer was gone. He stared down at the wall. Then he turned and stared in disbelief at Mahoney’s house. He could see Mahoney crouching behind his wall. Then three more shots rang out, crack – crack – crack, and the sergeant’s three empty cans were gone too.

  And from Mahoney’s house came his howl of laughter. It was the first time he had laughed in ten days.

  Sergeant Sheerluck Holmes stood there, his mouth open, staring in disbelief and indignation. Then an angry smile broke across his face. He turned and ran into the house for his own .22 rifle.

  The shooting match lasted for two hours, with ceasefires only to allow Samson and the sergeant’s batman to bring on more beer.

  It ended when the Provincial Native Commissioner’s message from Bulawayo came crackling over the police two-way radio. It ordered the Assistant Native Commissioner at Nyamanpofu to get down into the valley with his boat and try to lend a hand to the Northern Rhodesia authorities at Chipepo.

  Chapter Eight

  It took them twenty-nine hours to get down the escarpment in the police Land Rover. There were chains on the wheels and they slid and they churned and they slipped down the escarpment and they stuck seventeen times in the mud and Mahoney and the four black men climbed out up to their calves in mud and crouched down behind the back bumper and shoved and heaved and dug and swore and laid branches under the spinning wheels and the rain beat down on their backs and their hair hung in their eyes and the windscreen wipers went slosh-slosh, slosh-slosh, and the water poured in and their breath steamed up the glass and they were very wet and very tired and they smelt dank and steamy. And when they got to the bottom the mud was deeper, for the water was running off down the sides of the escarpment, and they dared take the Land Rover no further and they climbed out and they dragged and carried the boat the last five miles through the mud and the rain, and they had to leave a constable in the Land Rover to blow the horn every quarter hour, so that the policemen would find their way back to it because they could not see more than fifty yards in the rain. And when they found the water they saw that the river had gone and there was only a new brown swirling rising lake eating up the trees. They fitted the outboard to the boat and Mahoney and Samson climbed in and they shoved off for the north and they disappeared through the curtain of water amongst the treetops, and the noise of their outboard motor was swamped with the noise of the rain.

  ‘Bail,’ Mahoney said.

  The river had gone, but out in the middle where the river had been the current tore at the boat and the water twisted and spun. They charged the current and were swept down with it, but they swung out beyond it and then they were back amongst the bending straining treetops again, and here and there they ploughed through the roof-tops of villages, the water tearing through the conical thatch and washing by were dead dogs and chickens and goats and cattle.

  It took three hours to find the new north bank, and then they turned with the current and churned east down through the trees towards Chipepo. There was a crack of thunder and the sky opened wider and down it came, harder than ever before.

  Samson’s brown arm pointed. ‘Nkosi!’

  Then Mahoney saw him, too, through the rain, dead ahead, a single wet white man clinging in a tree. His hair hung over his face and he was very white but he was grinning.

  Mahoney waved.

  ‘Okay!’

  Mahoney cut the throttle down. The tree was twenty yards ahead. The water tore around the trunk in two deep channels. The current carried the boat. He cut the throttle right down, it made no difference. The tree loomed up, the boat skewered in the water, the water rushed on. Mahoney cursed and ducked. He opened the throttle to capacity and swung the handle aside. The boat roared and surged to the side. They swept under the tree, the branches tearing at their heads and at the boat and the boat rocked and skewered. Then they were out the other side, sweeping downstream with the current, their faces gashed from the branches. The tree and the man were far behind.

  Mahoney cursed again.

  ‘All the river to choose from …’

  He swung the boat into an arc and got clear of the channel. The boat had taken in water and he told Samson to start bailing. He headed the boat back up-river. He opened the throttle right up but it was slow going. The water curved up the prow. He ordered Samson down aft but it made little difference. The old outboard just did not have enough guts for this kind of work. He pushed the boat far up-river of the tree and the man came back into view. Then he turned the boat and cut across at an angle with the current. It was no good. As soon as the boat hit the current it got caught up in it and was carried past the tree. They tried again. They went into the arc and came back down on the tree. Samson knelt in the prow to try to catch a branch. The man shouted and waved his free hand and shook his head vigorously. The current tore at the boat. Mahoney turned it full throttle towards the tree. Samson leant out and grabbed at a branch. He caught and the boat rocked and swung in the current. He grabbed for a bigger branch and caught it, the boat rocked, its gunnel dipped under and the water poured on. Samson staggered and let go. The boat was swept on, stem first.

  ‘Bail,’ Mahoney said.

  He turned her round, and out of the current. He took her back up-river. As he turned the boat downstream again the man started shouting and waving again. Mahoney made for a clump of trees and told Samson to catch one. He cut the engine.

  ‘What?’ he shouted.

  The man shouted again and pointed into the branches.

  ‘Oh,’ Mahoney muttered. ‘Charming.’

  ‘What’s he say, Nkosi?’

  ‘He says there’s a snake in the tree with him,’ he said. ‘In the branches you caught last time.’

  Mahoney had an idea. He wondered why he had not thought of it before. Though he wouldn’t fancy it himself. He signalled
to the man. He made diving and swimming motions.

  ‘Jump in!’ he shouted through the rain. ‘We’ll pick you up downstream.’

  The man shook his head and waved his arm and shrugged.

  ‘Nkosi?’

  ‘We’ve really found a winner,’ Mahoney muttered. ‘He says he can’t swim.’

  He considered what to do. He took over the branch Samson was holding. ‘Keep bailing,’ he said. He took a slug out of the brandy bottle. Then he held it up for the man to see.

  ‘Your health,’ he shouted and the man grinned.

  ‘Must be a Cockney,’ Mahoney said. ‘Well, I suppose the only thing is to try again and try to shoot the snake if it wants a lift too.’ He took the safety catch off his .22 and kicked the motor into life while Samson held on to the branch.

  ‘Let go,’ he said and turned the boat round. The man was watching intently and Mahoney waved again. He tried to hold the boat against the current. The man started shouting and waving again. Mahoney turned the throttle on high and tried to beat the current. The current caught the boat and they were heading straight for the branches at full throttle in full current. The branches loomed up, low and rough and treacherous. The man jumped. Shoulder first he hit the water and he was gone.

  Mahoney swung the tiller hard, the boat swept round the tree. He kept swinging hard till it was out of the channel. They swept in an arc and watched the channel for the man.

  ‘Jesus!’ Mahoney said. ‘That’s a gentleman.’

  ‘Ah! Sterek!’

  There was no sign of him. Only the swirling fluted corrugated surface of the channel water. Five, ten, fifteen seconds. They began the circle the second time, the engine roaring, the water tearing, the rain beating. Their heads turned against the sweep of the boat, anxiously scanning the water. Twenty-five, thirty seconds. No sign.

  ‘He’s a goner.’

  Forty-five seconds and Samson shouted.

  A hundred yards down from the tree a pair of arms emerged, then a wet head. The arms were beating the water like a child and the face was turned desperately upwards bursting and gasping for air. On he was swept in the current.