‘Once a week,’ she said, ‘I was going again tomorrow. Goldilocks has got twenty-two eggs! They’re due out today or tomorrow and Mrs. Nkrumah’s got fifteen she’s been sitting on, they’re due out in ten days …’
‘Good for old Cocky! How is he?’
‘Cocky as ever. Golly, what a menace, I have to take a broom to keep him from getting me with those wicked spurs when I go to check up on the maternity ward. And he flies out of the run the moment I drive up and chases the car. I’m terrified of him.’
They were leaving the gracious houses behind and now they were in open rolling country. He turned down a dirt road at the bottom of the valley and then in at a wooden gate. There was a long drive up to the house and the rose bushes along the drive stood among tall grass. The house was obscured by two frangipani trees and there were two great msasa trees.
Ferdinand the bull and Pregnant Wife were grazing on the lawn. He parked in front of the house and hooted for his servant.
‘Tickey’s not here,’ she said, ‘I haven’t seen him once all the times I’ve been here.’
‘Swine. He’s hopeless. I’m going to fire him anyway, my old boy Samson I’ve told you about’s coming back at the end of the month.’
‘Is he?—’
‘It’s quite funny, I’ll tell you about it later. Will you open the house?’
‘I love this house—’ she said.
It was a good Rhodesian house. The roof was thatch lashed to wooden rafters and the four rooms stood in a long row with a red cement stoep running the length of it.
They walked into the lounge. It was a big room with a red cement floor and the walls were sprinkled with battle axes and spears, murder weapons that Mahoney had collected from bloody trials.
‘Hey, what’s this?’
The tattered old lounge suite Mahoney had picked up at an auction sale was a different colour and the tears were patched up.
‘I haven’t dyed it, I gave it a good scrub with that furniture cleaner stuff.’
‘Did you? Thank you, Ugly-mug.’
‘I’m not ugly.’
‘Ugliest girl in town,’ Mahoney affirmed as he walked ahead down the passage into his study: ‘Hey, curtains—’
There were curtains on his study windows.
‘I dug them out of Mom’s storeroom.’
She was standing admiring her work smugly. He kissed her.
‘Thank you, Hotpants,’ he said.
She stepped back, ‘I am not a hotpants—’
‘I can tell a hotpants a mile off.’ He kissed her on the nose and walked through to the kitchen. It was big and there was the old electric stove in which Tickey had built a wood fire the first time Mahoney had told him to boil some water.
‘I am not a hotpants—’
Mahoney turned the key in the back door and swung it open.
‘I am not—’
She was facing the door as it swung open and her eyes opened wide and her fingers shot up to her mouth and she screamed.
He spun around and faced the door.
The white Leghorn rooster was hanging on the outside of the back door by its neck. It was dripping blood and the small noose was made of string. The word ‘Hokoyo’ was daubed underneath the door in blood.
They stared at the big white bird. Then he put out his arm and touched it.
‘He’s only been dead a little while.’
‘What does “Hokoyo” mean?’ she whispered.
‘It means “Danger” …’
Chapter Forty-Six
Samson Ndhlovu was pure-bred. His father was a growing youth when the mighty Lobengula’s word was law in Rhodesia from the Limpopo to the Zambezi. His grandfather had been an induna, senior warrior, under Mzilikazi, who was Lobengula’s father, who in turn was the General of Chaka, king of the Zulus. Mzilikazi had rebelled against the Zulu Chaka and had led his fighting people north from the lush seasides of Natal, up across the Limpopo and settled in the flat cattle plains of Matabeleland. Every year when the impis of Mzilikazi and Lobengula set off on their plundering expedition from the royal kraal of Bulawayo they brought back many strange captive women. But there was no strange blood in the veins of Samson Ndhlovu. He was all Zulu. Being, therefore, a gentleman, Samson Ndhlovu hated no man. Other tribes, not excluding the white man, were just not worth worrying about. Samson did not want to be a white man, he did not want a white woman for his own, he did not want to drink in white men’s bars and he did not care who ran the country as long as nobody pushed him around. He treated the authorities with the distant politeness he expected from them. He was not interested in the fur-hatted politicians and he had ignored the Party thugs until it was impossible to ignore them, whereupon he had retaliated. When he had been beaten up three times Samson had joined the Party for the sake of peace, carried his Party card as a warrant of safe conduct, and he ignored the Party again. He did not believe the promises of the politicians and their thugs that when they ruled the country every black man would be a boss with car and refrigerator and a white man’s house and a white wife. Samson would have liked a car and a refrigerator but he was not interested in living in a white man’s house with a white wife. He wanted to live in his kraal with a few buxom black wives and drink beer and sit in the sun and watch his cattle until it was time to go hunting again. That was the way for a Matabele gentleman to live. He liked the city only because it gave him much opportunity to drink beer and to copulate.
When Samson Ndhlovu had left Mahoney standing on the road to Johannesburg, he had no intention of working for another white man as a servant. He had walked back into Bulawayo, packed all his belongings in his cardboard suitcase, counted his money and gone on one last fling of the beerhalls and shebeens. Two days later he left Bulawayo with two split lips and broken teeth, a black eye, a gash in his head, a delightfully tender penis and the satisfaction in his heart that he had sorted the men from the boys and the women from the girls and had left a good few broken hearts behind him.
When he arrived at his kraal ten days later he found things were very bad. His women had ploughed the lands and planted the mealie pips but the rains had not come and the cattle were thin. He sat on his haunches in his bachelor hut and thought and then he collected up his spear and his knobstick and his axe and he had set off for the Zambezi Valley again to hunt elephant and crocodile.
But—ah!—it was not the same valley. The valley was now full of water and the animals and the people had moved to new pastures, and the elephant were scattered far and the shores of the lake were so wide that it was not easy to find crocodiles any more. What he needed was guns and a boat, like the Nkosi had had, but he had no money. Ah! He wished the Nkosi was here now. The Nkosi had plenty of money and he would buy another boat and it would be like it was in the old days. Samson dearly wished he had not spent so much money in the shebeens in his two years in Bulawayo. For a month Samson followed the game spoor and lay in wait along the lakeshore, but it was not like the old days and then he had returned to his kraal and packed all his belongings in the cardboard suitcase again and he had set off walking to Northern Rhodesia, faraway across the Zambezi to the copper mines where he had heard that a black man could earn forty pounds a month, to earn the money to buy a boat and an engine and some rifles.
It was good on the copper mines but the Party was there too. In fact there were three parties and three armies of thugs. Samson Ndhlovu had his head kicked in three times and then he got tired of it and he joined all three parties and carried three different party cards. Samson Ndhlovu, quickly distinguishable in a crowd by his six foot of black muscle and with the reputation he earned as a hard-hitting, hard-drinking Casanova, did not manage to deceive all three parties for long. He took the beating of his life from a gang of the smallest and newest party, who left him for dead in an alley, he spent six weeks in hospital and when he came out he took the sensible course of openly espousing the biggest party, which happened to be the original Party he had joined in Bulawayo, becoming One of
the Boys and making the minimum contribution possible. It was after this the Party moved in on him. He was making time with a chubby little half-crown whore over a mug of beer at the Mine Compound beerhall when the messenger tapped him on the shoulder.
‘Ndhlovu, the Vakuru – the big ones – wish to see you.’ Samson looked peeved.
‘Which one?’
‘The Branch Secretary,’ the messenger said in English. He pronounced it ‘Brunji Sekiturry.’ Samson was irritated.
‘I will come on Monday,’ he said. ‘I have been working hard under the ground and now I am drinking beer.’
He turned back to the girl.
The messenger went away and twenty minutes later four young men came back.
‘Ndhlovu – why do you trouble the Vakuru—?’
Samson went with them peevishly. He was not interested in the Vakuru and he had had nothing to do with them before. Besides, the Branch Secretary was a Mashona by tribe and Samson considered the Mashona the lowest form of Bantu life. Had not the Mashona been slaves to the Matabele in the days of Lobengula?
The Branch Secretary was a short spindly man with a broad flat nose and crisp curly hair brushed straight up. He wore a dark blue suit with a yellow tie with a white girl in a bikini painted on it. With him in the plush office was Kamisu, the young scarred thug with thick lips who was recognised as the Officer in charge of the gangs, who held the rank of organisational Secretary and who had been trained in Peking as a soldier. The Branch Secretary did the talking.
‘Ndhlovu, you are a lucky man. You have belonged to our Party for only a short time, but already the Party is going to reward you. We are going to send you on a scholarship to a university over the sea.’ He spoke in Sindebele except for saying ‘ma-Party’, ‘ma-scholarshi’, ‘ma-university’, and ‘ma-sea.’
Samson’s mouth opened and his eyes widened. He had only heard these words when he first came to Zambia.
‘Ma-scholarsheep—?’ he said. ‘But I do not know anything about the ma-university—’
Samson considered the Branch Secretary beneath contempt, and he had no desire to mix with the Party thugs more than was necesssary for his well-being, but the idea of going over the sea, possibly even in an airplane, intrigued him.
‘Therefore you must learn these things,’ the Secretary said.
‘But,’ Samson said, ‘I do not know how to read and how to write, only a very very little which I learned when I was a small boy, how can I go for the ma-scholarship?’
‘They will teach you those things at the ma-university,’ the Secretary said, ‘and many other things too.’
‘What other things?’ Samson demanded.
‘They will teach you’—the Secretary hesitated—’to be a good farmer.’
‘Aah—’ Samson said slowly.
‘When we rule our country,’ the Secretary said quickly, ‘every man will have a big farm and it will be a good thing that you know how to be a good farmer.’
Samson nodded. It made good sense to be a good farmer. ‘The ma-scholarship is given to you by the u-Government for America.’
‘America—’ Samson said slowly.
Kamisu spoke for the first time. ‘Do you agree?’
‘I will tell you tomorrow,’ Samson said curtly. He had no time for Kamisu, whom he considered a bully. Kamisu was a Manyika which was only one up from a Mashona.
‘You must decide now,’ the Secretary said.
Samson shook his head firmly.
‘I have many things to think about. I have been saving my money and I now have almost enough to buy the things I need. How long will I be at the ma-university?’
‘Six months,’ the Secretary said, ‘and the Americans will pay you some money too. You must decide today.’
‘How much money?’
‘Seventeen pounds each month—’
Samson turned and walked to the window. Seventeen pounds each month for learning …
He turned back.
‘I agree,’ he said.
Samson Ndhlovu did not go to America. It was not until he was met at Cairo airport by the resident Party official that he learned that he and the other nine scholarship winners were going to Russia, and not to America. They did not go to a university, but to a house forty kilometres outside Moscow. They were not taught to read and write, nor did they learn land husbandry: they were taught Leninism and Marxism and they were trained as saboteurs.
Chapter Forty-Seven
In fact, Samson Ndhlovu thoroughly enjoyed himself in Russia. He enjoyed learning how to clean and assemble and fire sub-machine-guns, rifles and half-a-dozen kinds of pistols and he was a crack shot; he enjoyed learning how to make explosives and how to blow up bridges and buildings and railway lines, how to tap telephones, use radio, how to use trick cameras and invisible inks, unarmed combat, how to track and how to smuggle, how to blackmail and how to kill. It was all very interesting and Samson Ndhlovu was good at it. His Russian instructors praised him. He was well fed and clothed, the seventeen roubles per month pocket money that the Russian Government gave him was enough to keep him in cigarettes and vodka, and the Russian girls liked him, particularly the girls who came to the camp every day to cook their food and clean the rooms. In fact the white Russian girls liked the black Freedom Fighters in general and Samson Ndhlovu in particular so much that the Russian boys of that neck of the woods got cheesed off and there was a punch-up one Friday night outside the camp in which Samson Ndhlovu dispatched two Russians to bed for a week with concussion. The Russian authorities, embarrassed by this exhibition of racial hostility and anxious to keep favour with their black comrades, arraigned the Russian youths before a People’s Court and dispatched Samson and his fellow Freedom Fighters to Uzbekistan for a week on holiday. The Russians saw to it that Samson Ndhlovu and his black comrades had a good time in Russia and Samson made the most of it. But he did not understand half the lectures on Leninism and Marxism and what he did understand he did not think a good idea at all. Samson Ndhlovu had two wives and fifteen head of cattle and a hundred and twenty-three pounds in the bank and he intended buying a rifle and a boat and an outboard motor and he didn’t propose sharing all that with anybody and he didn’t propose letting any Party official, not even a Matabele let alone a Manyika or Mashona, tell him how he should spend his time. Samson Ndhlovu did not propose becoming a Freedom Fighter in Rhodesia or anywhere else: he proposed making a lot of money as a hunter and a fisherman and then sitting on his buttocks in the sun drinking tshwala and watching his cattle and his wives and his daughters grow fat.
When they returned to Zambia the Party officials met them at the airport and hustled them to the Party Headquarters. They were given a hero’s welcome. After a week they were given their orders by Kamisu. They were to return to Rhodesia, each to a specified town, they were to find civilian employment, then organise cells of saboteurs and start blowing up things. Caches of arms and explosives would be supplied them by the Party. Samson Ndhlovu nodded co-operatively and said he would do all those things. Kamisu drove them to the north bank of the Zambezi and arranged for them to be ferried across the river in dugout canoes by fishermen. The group split up and Samson Ndhlovu sprinkled his farewells with appropriate Party slogans and ‘comrades’. And Samson Ndhlovu melted into the bush. He made his way up the south bank to Kariba, he bought himself an old boat, an old outboard motor and an old rifle and he chugged out towards the mauve horizon. He set up his base camp two hundred miles away to the west near the mouth of the lake, only fifty miles from his own kraal, and the Party never heard of him again.
The police and the Game Department rangers heard of him, however. Four months later Samson Ndhlovu was in jail for contravention of the Wildlife Conservation Act, and for unlawful possession of firearms. He told the police his name was Paradise Mpofu, lest the Party got to hear of him. The authorities confiscated his gun and ammunition and when he came out of jail the Native Commissioner refused to give him a licence to buy another and refused to giv
e him a concession to hunt crocodile. Paradise Mpofu took his boat across the lake to the northern bank and bought himself another gun and three months later he was back in jail. After coming out of jail the third time Paradise Mpofu decided to go in for something less noisy than crocodile and elephant hunting. He went in for illicit gold buying and selling. He had to journey to Bulawayo to sell his unwrought gold and in Bulawayo a Party man eventually recognised him. He was waylaid outside a shebeen before he had got rid of his swag. He woke up in hospital under arrest for unlawful possession of unwrought gold. From then on Paradise Mpofu was a marked man, both by the police and by the ma-Party.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Personally, Samson Ndhlovu was glad that the white men had declared independence – whatever that meant – because they had cleaned up the townships and restricted the thugs to remote areas at the same time. Samson Ndhlovu came out of prison full of hope. The white man had sorted things out at last, the Nkosi had a job for him in Salisbury. Salisbury was a big place, like Johannesburg people said, the townships were big and the women and the beerhalls many. And maybe the Nkosi would decide to buy a boat again and return to the valley and then it would be like the old days again and they would make plenty money.
Samson Ndhlovu whistled as he swung the panga sideways over his shoulder and slashed at the tall rough grass that grew in Mahoney’s garden. The grass fell under the slash and he carried the panga through and up over his other shoulder and slashed down again. It was Friday, the last day of the month, pay-day, and the post-dated cheque the Nkosi had left behind when he left last week to hold court in Fort Victoria fell due. At about noon he would get on his bicycle and ride into town and cash the cheque at the bank. And from the bank he would ride on to Harare, the best African township for beerhalls and dancehalls and women. Friday night, pay-day night, there would be plenty of beer and women in Harare tonight. A-haa-ah—!
Samson Ndhlovu was pleased with life. It was a good job he had working for the Nkosi. The Nkosi had made him bossboy over the little farm, to look after the animals, and he would get a bonus on any profits. Together they would make money on this land. He only regretted that the Nkosi spent so much trouble in trying to help the people in the Reserves. The Nkosi was very foolish about that, because any Matabeleman knows that the Mashona are very stupid and idle people. Half the time and sometimes more the Nkosi travelled very much to Fort Victoria and Umtali and Gwelo and Bulawayo with the ma-High Court-i. The Nkosi said it was because he had no wife that the u-Guvmenti sent him around the country so much. That was a good thing too, the Nkosi having no wife. It was good because the u-Guvmenti sent the Nkosi away very much and there was no washing and ironing and cooking to do for the Nkosi. He liked the Nkosi very much, the Nkosi was an induna, but no man likes washing, ironing and cooking. And the white men’s wives were very troublesome people. They were not docile people like the Matabele wives. Samson could not understand why the varungu let their wives be so troublesome. A Matabele would never stand for it. A Matabele would give his wife a good beating and if she did not mend her ways he would return her to her father and reclaim the cattle he had paid for her and then the father would give her a good beating too. But the varungu were not sensible people like the Matabele. The varungu let their wives command their houses. Sometimes the wives could shout at their husbands and yet the husbands did not beat them.
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