Hold My Hand I'm Dying

by John Gordon Davis

  ‘One man one vote!’ is all the rage now. All over the world it’s all the rage, now. It’s all the rage to be long-haired now. All the rage to shout ‘Stop being beastly to the Blacks’ at Sunday tea-parties in Chelsea and long-haired booze parties in Kensington, and on the soap boxes at Hyde Park corner now. It’s fashionable to get dewy-eyed and intense about one man one vote now. It doesn’t matter if they are going to wreck the joint with their one man one vote. Look at the Congo.

  Look at Ghana.

  One man one vote – once.

  Jesus.

  Britain? – Jesus. The bastards. The yellow-bellied, two-faced, ass-licking bastards. Was a time when I was proud I was British, Joe. Now? Judases. Judas Iscariots. Sold us down the river. Broke up the Federation when they promised they wouldn’t, just broke it up, without even consulting us. We just woke up one morning and there it was. Judases.

  Like they did in Kenya.

  Harold Macmillan and his Winds of Change.

  Bloody shopkeepers. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full. The customer is always right, provided he’s black. Very handy to be black nowadays. Great future if you’re black and got your Form One. Cabinet Post at least.

  Jesus.

  Look at Ghana. Call that Freedom? The opposition in chains, in jail. Look at the Congo. Call that Freedom? Murder, civil war, genocide? Look at Kenya. Call that civilised, murder and civil war and genocide? One man, one vote? Yeah, once.

  Sitting on a lawn in Hillside having a sundowner. What’s going to happen here? Look at the Congo – that’s what could happen here. Look at Northern Rhodesia: roasted Mrs. Burton alive outside Kitwe.

  It’ll happen here.

  Oh yeah? Sitting in the Exchange Bar having a beer. One man one vote – Oh yeah? Not here. Here it’s not like it is up there. There’s two hundred thousand of us white down here. There were only fifty thousand in Kenya, only seventy thousand in Northern Rhodesia, only two thousand in Nyasaland. We aren’t ruled by Britain like those poor suckers up there, she can’t sell us down the river like those poor bastards up there. And if she tries … oh dear.

  Politics, politics, pessimism, optimism, realism.

  It won’t happen here. Here we’ve got strength, here we’ve got wealth. Here we’ve got guts. There’re too many of us to be pushed around down here.

  And we’ve got South Africa, South Africa is on our side down here. South Africa is strong, South Africa is rich, they won’t let us go under to savages. And we’ve got Portugal, Mozambique and Angola, Salazar’s on our side. The world won’t dare push South Africa around, they can’t let her gold and diamonds go down the drain. We will be the only stable countries in Africa, the other black states to the North will have tribal wars and civil wars and army mutinies and bloody coups and assassinations, not to mention Communists, you wait and see and in the end the world will see that we were right to fight.

  What’s going to happen here?

  ‘What do you think, Sergeant-Major?’ I said.

  The old black policeman shook his head. He was a damn good cop. He insisted on talking English.

  ‘The bastards, sir,’ he said, ‘they make too much trouble, too very much trouble. They burn my father’s house, because his son is a policeman. They frighten my relatives and kill their cattle. You know what they do, sir?’

  ‘What, Sergeant-Major?’

  ‘They cut the tits off the udders of the cows in the night. And they burn the pigs alive in the kraals.’

  ‘Jesus, Sergeant-Major.’

  ‘And they burn the schools, sir. And we African people built those schools with our own hands and our own money, sir. And also they stop the people dipping their cattle, sir, because they say it’s white man’s magic. And so the cattle die from the ticks sir.’

  We were sitting in the multi-racial Empire Bar. The radiogram played Skokiaan over and over again and there was a jabber of voices and young Matabele in their spivvy city clothes twisted and jived with buxom Matabele girls.

  ‘You come back to work in the courts again, sir?’ asked the sergeant-major.

  ‘No, I’m going back to America,’ I said.

  ‘America long distance,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You Europeans,’ said the sergeant-major, ‘are very lucky.’

  ‘Why’s that, Sar-Major?’

  ‘You can go away when the trouble comes, sir. We, where can we go, sir? We must stay in our mother country. And when the nationalists take the country, sir, they will kill us because we are policemen.’

  ‘Why should they kill you? They’ll need all the trained police they can get, and more, to stop their thugs fighting each other.’

  The old black policeman shook his head: ‘I doubt too much,’ he said. ‘Very much. They will kick us out and make the thugs the police. They say we are traitors. They call us Tshombes, because we are like Mr. Tshombe in Katanga who co-operates with the Europeans. You know what I will do, sir?’

  ‘What, Sar-Major?’

  ‘Next year I can retire if I wish it, sir. I think so. I will take my pension and I go home to my kraal. And I will put a high wire fence round my kraal, like it is by the jail sir. And I will buy a shotgun, sir, and all day I will sit with my shotgun. And if any ZAPU boys come to trouble me I will shoot them dead, sir. What else can I do, sir?’

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  When the boys from the office bundle you half-plastered on to the PanAm jet in New York, and you settle back with a can of Budweiser and you feel that wad of travellers’ cheques in your pocket, it’s easy to say to yourself: Home was never like this. When you’re sitting in the Halekelani knocking back Maitais at two dollars a throw on the Company expense account, it’s easy to say: To hell with Africa, I’m an American now and I’m going back to America and I’m going to make a million and to hell with everything else. But when you’re back in old Africa seeing all the old things, the tall grass and the sunsets and the afternoon shadows, and you see an elephant crossing the road with her baby hanging on to her tail, and when an old African calls you Nkosi again and a fat piccanin stands naked with his pot belly at the roadside and waves and you hear drums and singing in the sunset and smell the smoke of woodfires and the words of Sindebele which you have not used nor thought about for years come flooding back to your tongue without thinking, then your decision gets you right here, right here in the heart.

  I left Bulawayo before light, walking out on the Great North Road heading for Salisbury and the mighty Zambezi. When the sun came up I was way out of town in the bush and the tall grass was wet with dew and the tarmac was cool. The gaunt thorn trees which were brown and blistering and shimmering from my old flat window on a Saturday afternoon were beautiful in the. sunrise, alive. There were cattle among the thorn trees and they were nice-looking cattle, dewy in the morning and some looked up at the sound of my boots on the gravel. Africans passed me cycling into town to work and some of them were whistling jauntily and some waved to me. And I thought: see, what pleasant happy people they really are. I passed an old dip tank, not a hundred yards from the road and the thatch upon the tank was burned and scrawled in crude mud letters on the sides of the tank was: ‘zapu puza’ which means ‘Zapu devours’ and I thought: yes, let your coat of arms be an ox-hide shield and round the edge of that shield let there stand the words:

  ZAPU PUZA,

  ETIAM HOMO SAPIENS,

  and let a picture of a petrol bomb be embossed upon the centre of the shield and upon the scroll beneath the shield let there be the motto:

  ‘You’re throwing well

  When you’re throwing Shell’

  and the thought made me bitter.

  A motorcar stopped for me and we whistled along the tarmac in the morning sunlight. There was mist on the land and it filled the shallow valleys like a still atavistic spirit, and the tops of the thorn trees poked above the mist. It was very quiet and very simple and I had forgotten that it existed. As we passed the long low flat mountain where the Matabele chiefs o
nce held their indabas under the mighty King Lobengula I said: ‘There’s Thabasinduna!’ and the driver said, ‘Yes, that’s right,’ and I felt guilty because I had forgotten about the mountain and I felt guilty because I had never climbed up it in my life, and now I never would.

  We drove on and the sun rose bright and hot and the mist was gone and we left Matabeleland behind, and entered the Midlands. And all the way through Matabeleland and the Midlands I looked at the thorn trees and the heat shimmering off the bush and I told myself that I wanted none of it, it was hot and dull and infested with mosquitoes and ticks and savages who were going to destroy the place, themselves and us, that it could not be compared with any state in America, but I could not quite make it. Then we entered the warm fecund Mashonaland where the country rolled and the cattle were fat and the maize stood twelve feet high in the fields and I realised how little I knew my own country and I felt mean and lonely and rootless in my chest. I wanted to tell the driver to let me out so I could walk and feel and reconsider. But we came to Salisbury and I stayed on in the car, heading north for the Zambezi and out of the country, for I had made my decision, which was the only wise one a man could make, and I resolved to stick to it. America has everything, I shouted to myself, great beauty, big money. What d’you want to stay in this desert for and get your throat cut? Look at the Congo. You aren’t deserting, you’re being sensible. It’s the others who’re hanging on who haven’t got the guts to move. Give praise that you’re young and free to get out, that you’ve had the savvy to see the world and get yourself a great job in a great country. You want to be rich and enjoy life. In Rhodesia you won’t get rich and in five years’ time they’ll kick the chair out from under your arse. You want to be able to fly to Bermuda when you feel like it, and to Colorado for skiing in the winter, to Mexico City for a week, and you want to be able to go down Broadway to a decent show and a night club when you feel like it. What about a week at Miami? Okay, let’s go—

  But then late afternoon came as we drove through the bush and the thorn trees threw long shadows and the bush turned to gold. At sunset we drove down into the vast wild Zambezi Valley and there were signposts along the road to warn of elephant, and a herd of great elephant crossed the road. The great bull looked at us and whisked his tail and flapped his ears irritably and led his herd across the road and the cows looked agitated because they had their calves jostling beside them. They shuffled off into the bush and melted into the mauve background and now and again one of them trumpeted. The Zambezi river at Chirundu Bridge was vast and silent and red in the sunset and the great sandbanks were mauve and spoke of hippo and crocodiles and great tiger fish and sable and antelope and guinea-fowl coming down to drink. And I nearly cried out loud in the sorrow I felt that I had forgotten these things and would not know them again and because I was deserting them without considering them.

  So we crossed the Zambezi into Northern Rhodesia and the next day my friend set me down at Kapiri Mposhi, a trading post in the middle of the bush, where the dirt road for Tanganyika begins.

  At Kapiri Mposhi it was very bad. I walked many miles up the road to Tanganyika, then I sat down in the tall grass on my sleeping bag. I spent thirty-six hours at that place because not many vehicles travel that road to Tanganyika. I didn’t mind not getting a ride, not even when it rained. The rain beating down was a suitable penance. I drew figures in the gravel and I watched the soldier ants and at night I made a small fire and lay looking up at the stars. Once a car passed me and I did not even thumb it because I did not want to talk and I did not want to leave the place. Occasionally Africans passed. Sometimes they glared at me hostilely and did not greet me and I ignored them, and sometimes they greeted me by lifting their hands and saying ‘Moni-moni’ and I raised my hand and said ‘Moni-moni’.

  Some of them stopped to ask me where I was going, but I could not converse freely with them because I do not speak Chinyanja and I kept breaking out into Sindebele, and every time I found myself thinking in Sindebele I felt more sad.

  And I remembered so many things I had forgotten about and I could smell the smoke of woodfire under the sadza and the warm human smell and sounds of old servants chatting round the fire in the backyard at night and the wonderful tales of the jungle and of their kraals far off about which they told me, and my heart cried out for Africa.

  I walked all next afternoon and on after sundown, because there was no point waiting in the vast anonymity of the bush, and it was better, I suppose, to be ninety miles from Mpika than a hundred miles from Mpika. I did not see any people that afternoon but I did see fresh cow dung across the road which showed that there were kraals not far away into the bush. Nor did any vehicles pass along the road. When the moon was high I grew tired and I imagined I saw strange things lurking at the side of the road up ahead. I thought of lion and leopard. Sometimes I heard a strange crash in the bush and I started and stared. I though of animals and I though of ambush parties and once I shouted out in kitchen kaffir: ‘All right, you, come out of there!’ But there was only silence thereafter and the cricking of night insects and I continued on my way. Often I thought I saw something flit across the road way up ahead. I weighed up the things a man should do: If I lay down to rest and lit a fire I would scare away any lions and leopards: but I would attract the attention of any wandering groups of terrorists. I thought: You’ll look funny in America with your throat cut. The company is so particular about the appearance of its executive officers. And I thought I would one day write a story entitled: The Inconveniences Resulting From Having Your Throat Cut. At last I grew very tired and I moved fifty paces off the roadside and built a fire. I built a large fire with thick logs that would glow long after I fell asleep. I lit the fire and as it took hold on the thick logs I pushed them deeper into the flames, and I watched white ants and black beetles scurrying desperately from the heat and the thick smoke that was permeating through, their cracks and passages and burrows. Some ran towards the fire, scurrying here and there frantically for cool crevices, sticking their heads and antennae into every place they came across, then withdrawing frantically and scurrying on. They bumped into each other and trampled over each other, each man for himself. The flames crept further down the log and cut them off from the retreat and they ran around in a smaller area. Some of them toppled off the log into the flames but not one of them chose a quick death and jumped off. Instead the flame crept up round the log until they were imprisoned on a narrow strip and they stood blindly, their antennae twitching. When the flame came against them they shrank back but then they could shrink no further and then a tongue of flame licked over them and they suddenly jerked and then they crumpled and then they shrivelled up. And the flame took hold and destroyed both them and the log. And further down the log where the flames had not yet reached, some were making for safety right off the log, but some still dithered and milled around scurrying from the heat but not having the sense to get the hell right out of it. I sat with my back against a thorm tree and I opened my haversack and pulled out the brandy bottle. I drank at the brandy from the bottle and I watched the flames and the dying ants and beetles and I thought: there go I. And I smelt the wood smoke and the crackling heat of the fire and I listened to the cricking of the crickets and the other still African night noises, and I looked up at the vast sky through the thom branches and I felt very sad. At last I lay down in my sleeping bag with the weariness of Africa’s dirt road on me and the tired glow of her sun on me and I fell asleep.

  I heard the car when it was a long way off. The sky was turning pink. I scrambled out of my sleeping bag and ran through the bush to the road. I stopped and listened. The hum was coming from the south. I ran back to my camp and picked up my haversack and my bag. I jumped over to the fire and urinated on to it. Then I picked up my gear, and raced back to the road trailing my bag behind me. The hum was closer. I rolled up my bag as the big Ford Fairlane came round the bend travelling at ninety miles an hour. The big body heaved gently as she whined round the
bend. I stood back and gave it a long sweeping thumb. There was one man in the car and he slammed on the brakes and shot past me to a halt. I picked up my gear and ran after him.

  ‘For Chrissake,’ he said, ‘what are you doing here?’

  ‘Same as you,’ I panted, ‘heading north.’

  ‘Get in,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  I threw my gear on to the back seat. He hunched over the wheel and before my door was closed the great car surged forward.

  ‘For Chrissake,’ he said – ‘Do you know where you are?’

  ‘Northern Rhodesia, about ninety miles from Mpika.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘And do you know where you’re also ten miles from?’

  ‘No’

  ‘The Congo border. And d’you know what was on the news last night?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Didn’t listen to the news last night, regrettably.’

  ‘Good thing you didn’t, I suppose. It was on the news last night that bands of Congolese savages have crossed the border and are whooping it up along this road. Boundaries mean nothing to these chaps. That’s quite apart from the local political enthusiasts. They’re also whooping it up along here.’

  The car was doing ninety again.

  ‘Hell,’ I said.

  ‘This is the real hot spot round Northern Rhodesia these days. Kenneth Kaunda himself comes from these parts.’

  ‘But Kenneth’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘Kenneth’s all right, but some of Kenneth’s followers aren’t as all right as Kenneth.’

  Ninety miles an hour over the long dirt road, swaying at the bends, hunched over the wheel.

  ‘What’re you going north for?’