But the Nkosi was sensible, almost as sensible as a Matabele. The women knew they could try no nonsense with the Nkosi not even the woman Jek-i who came to the house very often. She looked after the Nkosi like a Matabele woman. She was always looking at his clothes to see if they were needing buttons or sewing, which was a good thing because otherwise the Nkosi would have him sewing things. The umfazi Jek-i was a little bit troublesome sometimes when she came into the kitchen and started giving him orders about the skoff but for a varungu umfazi she wasn’t too bad. He approved. She was better than any of the other women he sometimes found in the Nkosi’s bed in the mornings. The varungu women were strange people.
And the Nkosi himself was a strange one. The Nkosi had some strange spirits in him. He was not like other white men who were always seeking pleasure and money. He was not a happy one, the Nkosi, not a very happy one. It must be an evil spirit maybe that bedevilled him. He drank very much tshwala, the Nkosi, but he did not drink like the other white men at the hotels and at ma-club-i. He drank in his ma-study while he sat at his table and wrote all his words on the paper. Always he was sitting at his table writing on the paper. Sometimes in the early mornings the light was still burning in the ma-study and when the Nkosi left for the Court-i his face was white and his eyes were red and a man could see that he had been writing his words all the night. Sometimes Samson looked through the window late at night and he saw the Nkosi sitting at the table and staring across the room for a long time with his pen in his hand. And in the mornings all the ashtrays in the ma-study would be full and the floor would have many cigarette ends on it and sometimes the Nkosi’s skoff would still be in the oven the next morning. When he found the Nkosi still working very early in the morning he knew that the following morning he would find a woman in the Nkosi’s bed. But never the woman Jek-i.
Samson Ndhlovu paused in his swiping and felt in his pocket for a cigarette. He found one and put it in his mouth. As he finished lighting it he saw the man standing on the roadside outside the gate. He was leaning against a tree and he was watching him. It was the same man who had been standing in the same place yesterday.
Samson held the smoke in his lungs as he studied him. Then he let the smoke out and he spat carefully on his hands and he turned his back and began swiping the grass again.
Samson Ndhlovu was drunk, happy drunk. The Ma-Petticoat Cocktail bar was a good place to be drunk in on a Friday night, payday night. The Ma-Petticoat was full of beer and noise and music and laughing and dancing and full of those fat black bouncing-breast five-shilling whores. There was an impromptu band of two guitarists and a drummer and a trumpeter competing with the canned music of the loudspeakers and there were two groups of thumping bumping sweating dancers and there were gambling schools.
Samson Ndhlovu was a good-looking man. His was the tall loose-limbed muscular blackness that a white tee-shirt and a pair of faded jeans became, the type of nigger who in London would always have a blonde Maisie or Violet or Betty hanging on his arm. He looked very good tonight with the sweat glistening on his broad black grinning face, his long legs and back and arms swinging and undulating to the thump of music. He danced by instinct, to the rhythm that thumped in the air and his Zulu veins. Samson Ndhlovu was immensely pleased with life and with himself. And he was pleased with the big shiny-faced woman dancing with him. She was the best-looking umfazi he had seen in a long time and she was all his for five shillings, a sensible way for a man to spend five shillings. And she spoke Sindebele.
‘Let us go now,’ she shouted.
Samson stopped dancing and grabbed her arm and pulled her through the thronging beerhall. She followed laughing and shouting to her friends. He led her outside into the big enclosed dirt yard. He pulled her behind a lavatory wall and shoved his hand on to her breast and pinned her against the wall.
‘Let us go to my house,’ she giggled fatly.
‘Let us go then.’
They staggered happily across the enclosure to the main gates. She was laughing and shouting to her friends sitting on benches outside, Samson was humming to the music blaring out from the hall.
‘This way.’
They passed through the gate into the darkness of the gravel road. The streetlights were dim and a long way apart and the old houses on the sides were in patchy darkness. There were dim forms of people walking and now and again they passed through the dusty pools of yellow streetlight. She led him down a dirt lane with patchy rubber hedges on both sides. He had his left arm round the woman and his right hand was on her breast.
‘How much further is it to your house, woman—’
‘It is near.’
The black forms stepped out of the rubber hedge from both sides and Samson turned to face the movement. Before he could lash out a knobstick crashed down on his head and he went down. As he lay on the ground they beat him on the head. Then they picked him up by his arms and they carried him down the lane and into the backyard of the woman’s house and in through the back door.
‘Tshombe—!’
The black hand swiped across his face and jerked his head to the side. He fell sideways off the chair and lay in a heap with his wrists tied behind his back.
‘Sell-out – Vatengesi—!’
The youth behind him kicked him in the back and Samson grunted. The short man yanked his head up and then punched him in the mouth.
‘Tshombe—’
Then they stopped and the big man came and stood over him. ‘Now tell us who you are.’ Samson looked up at him from the floor. ‘I am Paradise Mpofu,’ he said through fat raw lips.
‘You are Samson Ndhlovu.’
‘I am Paradise—’
‘You are Samson Ndhlovu. The Party sent you to Russia to leam how to fight for the country. And instead you are a Tshombe.’
Samson closed his eyes and shook his head and waited for the kicks. They came and then the big man told them to stop.
‘The way to this man’s tongue is through his testicles. Put him on his back.’
Samson bucked on the floor and twisted and kicked out and screamed and shouted but they held him down on his back and they held his legs apart.
‘First I will kick you not very hard.’
The shoe came back and it jabbed between his legs and Samson screamed.
‘Who are you?’
The sweat was wet on his face and chest and the pain was screaming between his legs. ‘Samson—’ he shouted. ‘Samson, Samson—’ The black faces grinned.
‘The Party sent you to Russia?’ The black shoe was hovering between his legs.
‘Yes – yes—’
‘You are a sell-out—’
‘Yes – yes.’
‘Put him back in the chair, boys.’ They heaved him up into the chair again. He sat hunched forward with his head on his knees. ‘Are you suffering, Tshombe?’
‘Yes,’ he groaned.
‘Do not hit him any more, boys. We want him alive, not dead.’ He turned to Samson. ‘Do you like your life?’
‘Yes,’ Samson said between his knees.
The big man paced up and down the room.
‘The Party wanted you to take action when you came back but instead you are a Tshombe.’
Samson said nothing.
‘Do you know what has happened to the Freedom Fighters who went to Russia with you?’ Samson shook his head.
‘Some are in jail waiting to be hanged. The others are in jail for many years.’
Samson waited.
‘You are the only one who has not done his duty.’
The big black man bent down and grabbed Samson’s head and yanked it back.
‘Now it is time for you to do your duty,’ he said into his face.
He shook the bleeding head from side to side.
‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’ The word was shaken out of his head.
‘And if you do not do your duty we will catch you again. And if you run to the police we will inform them that you ar
e a trained Freedom Fighter and you will go to jail for many years’—the man was still shaking his head and his words were coming out in jerks—‘and even in the jails we will get you, for the jails are full of our men—’
He stood back snarling and his fist crashed into Samson’s face again. The chair crashed over and Samson sprawled. They picked him up and put him back on the chair.
‘Are you alive, Tshombe?’
Samson nodded.
‘Do you like your life?’
Samson nodded again.
‘Then listen to me. Even when you come out of jail we will catch you again. And when we rule the country you will be burned alive with all the other Tshombes. Do you understand?’
Samson nodded.
‘And your wives and your children will be burned alive, do you understand?’
Samson nodded.
‘Do you understand!’ he screamed.
‘Yes,’ Samson said, ‘I understand.’
The man squatted on his haunches in front of Samson and peered up at him.
‘Now I will give you your orders,’ he said. ‘Are you listening carefully?’
Samson looked him in the eyes.
‘There will come soon a night which is called the Night of the Long Knives. On that night every man will kill his employer, and his employer’s wife and his employer’s children. There will be no white men left, and then we will have the country. And men like you will have to fight the police and the soldiers. The Night of the Long Knives is near. You will be told about it. Before that, you must take some action. Your first action will be to throw a petrol bomb.’
Samson nodded.
‘It will be good action, Ndhlovu. It will show the varungu that the people of Zimbabwe are very unhappy about their country. You will throw it into the house of a man who has been responsible for many of our Freedom Fighters being hanged by their necks. That will frighten the varungu very much.’
Samson nodded and waited.
‘Do you know whose house you will throw your petrol bomb into, Ndhlovu?’ Samson shook his head.
‘You will throw it into the house of your own master, Ndhlovu.’ Samson’s eyes widened.
‘And if you fail to throw it, Ndhlovu, we will kill you and somebody else will burn your master, as we burned the policeman Tambudza—’
Chapter Forty-Nine
‘Samson’ – rap rap rap went the knocking on his door – ‘Samson—’ rap rap rap. ‘Where are you, wake up – vuka vuka – why aren’t you working—?’
It was dark in his hut, only slivers of light coming in through the cracks and under the door. The door was rattling. Samson woke up and lifted himself on to his elbow and he winced. His head was thumping and his whole body ached. He opened his mouth to speak and it was dry and fat. From the chinks of light he could tell it was late in the morning. He remembered the beating of the night before in a flash.
‘Vuka, Samson—’
He recognised the woman’s voice. The woman Jek-i, the Nkosi’s woman. He shoved himself up on his elbow again and answered her but his voice was a croak.
‘Okay, Nkosikazi—’
‘Wake up, Samson,’ the voice came through the door, ‘it is late and you aren’t working. The Nkosi has telephoned me from Fort Victoria to say he is coming home tomorrow early and the house is not ready—’
‘Okay, Nkosikazi—’
He heard her turn and walk away down the back path to the house. He swung his legs to the floor and he winced again. He was very stiff and aching and his head was thumping and he could feel his left eyelid fat over his eyeball. He put his hand to his head and rested his elbows on his knees. He remembered it all now. He remembered them unblindfolding him and their footsteps running away into the night and when he got the scarf off his eyes he was in the middle of a dark lane somewhere in Harare.
It had been dawn when he found his quarters. He remembered his instruction and his stomach turned over but he shoved it into the background. He stood up and straightened himself experimentally. Then he went to the cracked door and unbolted it and pulled it open. The sun broke into the dark smoke-stained room, on to the old ashes of his cooking fire and on to his rickety iron bed and his paraffin boxes on which stood his things. He screwed up his face against the light and he winced again. He saw the woman Jek-i’s car shining in the sun through the bamboo thicket. The hens with chickens were resting with them in the shade of the wild rose hedge that grew round the side of the chicken run. The kitchen door was open. He looked up at the sun. About midday. He turned and picked up the chip of mirror from the paraffin box and examined his face. It was swollen and his mouth was encrusted with dried blood. He pulled on his tunic and picked up a handful of cold ashes from the fireplace and went to the garden tap and scoured his teeth with his finger and the ashes and he doused his face and then he walked down the kitchen door.
‘It’s very naughty of you.’ Jackie had her back to the door as she ran her eye along the pantry shelf taking stock. ‘Just because the boss is away it does not mean that you can take a holiday—oh!—’ She looked at him. ‘Samson – what’s happened to you?’
Samson grinned sheepishly and then winced when it hurt.
‘It is nothing, Nkosikazi, I have just been fighting.’
‘Samson – you look terrible …’ She stepped up to him and touched his face lightly and peered short-sightedly at his puffed face. ‘You must go to a doctor—’
‘It is nothing.’
‘But—’ Jackie studied him, ‘are you sure?’ She peered at him again.
‘Sureah, Nkosikazi.’
‘Whatever have you been doing—?’
Samson hung his head and looked around for something to do. ‘Some boys fight too much Friday,’ he said.
‘Well, you must report them to the police—’
Samson tried to grin again and stopped when his lip cracked open. He shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Police send me to jail—’
Jackie put her hands on her hips and sighed. She decided he was all right.
‘You and the master—!’ she said and she grinned. ‘You are both very bad men, that is why you like to work together, hey? Too much women, hey Samson? – you fight over the umfazis?’
Samson was relieved.
‘Too much tshwala, Nkosikazi—’ he said trying to look sheepish.
‘Yes, well—’ she dropped the kitchen kaffir and said in English – ‘I have no sympathy.’ She moved to the electric mains and switched on the refrigerator.
‘In my car,’ she said, ‘there is a box of beer. Bring it in, please.’
Samson came back with the box. It hurt him to carry it but he dared not show it in case she insisted on taking him to hospital. Then the policeman on duty at the Outpatients Department would start asking questions.
‘Put them in the fridge, please,’ she said, ‘so the boss has some cold beer when he comes in—’
She was packing tins of food on to the shelves. Samson squatted down in front of the fridge and groaned out loud. She turned and looked at him. Then she went to her handbag and took two Veganin tablets from the phial she carried for her period pains. She picked up a quart of beer and snapped the cap off it and held them out in her white hands.
‘Here you are, big boy,’ she said. ‘On behalf of the Nkosi who is most sympathetic to drunks—’
Samson took the tablets and the bottle with a wince of a smile. Jackie nodded to the back door.
‘Go’n sleep it off,’ she crisped, ‘I’m going to play golf now. When you wake up come back here and make everything nice. The boss is arriving first thing in the morning. See that everything is tidy for him because he is very tired. Too many skellums in the Court in Fort Victoria—’
Chapter Fifty
Samson felt better when he had finished the quart of beer but his hands were still shaking and he felt very nervous. Jackie had gone. He went down the path to the kitchen and took another beer from the refrigerator. He reckoned that the Nk
osi would not mind if he knew what troubles he had. Then he remembered the bottle of red pills in the bathroom, the pills the Nkosi took when he had been working all night and still had to work all day, the pills he had tried in Bulawayo. He swallowed two and went back to his kia and sat down on the bed and thought.
He thought again about going to the police and he realised over again it was no good. The Party would see to it that he went to jail, if they didn’t kill him first. There was only one way of doing it so nobody got hurt. It had to be done tonight, before the Nkosi came back. If he waited it might be many days before he had another opportunity. Tonight it would be safe and nobody would be hurt and maybe the Party would be satisfied. Maybe the police would even catch the Party men. Then he realised that was even worse than he telling the police first, for the Party men would report him first and then the police would surely never believe him.
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