The Tin Heart Gold Mine

by Ruth Hartley

  Adam calls downstairs from his bedroom.

  ‘Mum, read this book to me.’ He adds ‘Please.’ just in time to forestall Lara’s reminder.

  ‘When I’ve finished. ’

  Lara is on automatic response as she puts clean crockery away. A moment later she catches up with the question.

  “What book do you mean?” Adam doesn’t need help reading.

  “It’s a Tintin book, Mum, but it’s not English.”

  The wine-glasses seem jumpy and irritable.

  Blast! Lara thought. I should have thrown that ugly book away. I should have used a tray instead of making my fingers into cup-hooks and risking dropping them all.

  “Read another book, Adam.” The wine glass she pushes into place in the cupboard knocks another two over. They make a clear sharp sound, one breaks into shards and the other cracks. Lara gathers up the slivers with one hand and picks up the glass stems with the other.

  “That’s a horrid Tintin book. You won’t like it.”

  “Why have you got it then, Mum?”

  Why indeed?

  ‘Tintin au Congo’ had not been published in English because it was considered too racist both in content and illustration. Ownership of it would have put Lara high on the hit list of the Animal Liberation Front. Lara doesn’t know why she has kept it. She doesn’t like the complex reaction it arouses in her. Liseli gave it to her as a joke of sorts very many years ago – perhaps 15 years – maybe less – maybe more. Lara isn’t sure.

  Lara remembers her sly look as she handed over ‘Tintin au Congo’.

  “Here. It’s a good luck charm. It’ll protect you,” Liseli had said.

  “From what?”Lara had asked, puzzled but smiling.

  “From colonial exploitation and sugar daddies.”

  Liseli and Lara had been laughing about the rich older men who bought Lara’s paintings and who seemed ready to consider ownership of Lara as part of the purchase. Lara had explained that she might be asked to paint some commissions for the famous Oscar and she had confessed to Liseli that she found him both fascinating and frightening.

  Liseli had laughed wickedly.

  “It is sure to end with you sleeping with him!” she said.

  Lara had given her friend a shove and made a squirmy, shuddery movement of her shoulders. At the time she had not been displeased by the joke.

  Now, standing by the empty dishwasher, Lara’s world begins to implode in slow motion. She feels an immense pressure on her body, her limbs are weighted down and exhaustion overcomes her. Her guilty dreams and the horror of her long-suppressed memories crowd around her. She can’t possibly read or explain to Adam a comic book that takes such gruesome pleasure in the slaughter of wild animals and that ridicules the people of Africa. She can’t read a story to Adam in which a journalist hero uncovers and defeats a Mafia boss who has instigated tribal wars in order to exploit the diamond wealth of the Congo. She cannot let herself think of Oscar.

  The winter darkness leans in and breathes on the windows. The electric lights dim as the neighbours turn up their heating. Lara collapses heavily on the chair beside the kitchen table. She tips the broken glass from her hands onto the scrubbed pine surface and stares at the shards of glass lying between her wrists. The kitchen lurches, spins dizzily and turns upside down. The reckoning has arrived. The past reaches out for her and enfolds her in its pain. She wants so much for the terrible unacknowledged hurt to shift from inside her chest. She wants to cut herself, to see the lines of beaded red appear against her skin so that all the pain can surface and bleed away. She wants to crush her forehead onto the glass fragments so that her memories will die. She wants to take the sharp curves of glass and slice her ears off, stab her eyes out, slash at her tongue. She wants to destroy all her senses so that Oscar, the Tin Heart Gold Mine and all the events of that time can never be recalled. She wants to be dead as Liseli wanted to be dead. She understands at last why Liseli sometimes finds life intolerable. Lara wants not to exist so that Oscar can never have existed. So that Oscar could not ever have been born.

  Tim has gone.

  Lara has been abandoned.

  Her throat makes an involuntary wrenching cry. She must not abandon Adam.

  She must not leave him. She must get up. She must make supper for him.

  She must burn ‘Tintin au Congo’.

  But what is she to do with herself?

  Adam calls out.

  “Mum, what’s wrong?”

  Lara can tell from his tone that he isn’t worried and he doesn’t want to leave his room and come downstairs if he can help it.

  “I’m okay,” she says twice. The first time her voice is feeble – a mere croak. The second time it is audible and firmer.

  “I’ll get us supper Adam. Won’t be long. Hang on.”

  Chapter Two

  Nightmares

  Lara starts to have her nightmares again soon after Tim leaves for Uganda. They always follow the same pattern. She dreams she is back in the wilderness in Chambeshi. At first she feels so free, so happy. It is as if she has just come home after boarding school, then the dream would change and she would wake sweating and horrified. Last night she had dreamt again almost the same dream as the night before.

  At the start of the dream Lara feels safe. As safe as if she rests in the neutral comfort of her bed. Underneath her the golden sand is washed cotton-soft. Over her head a laundered sky is neither hot nor cold. Her left hand props a book open at a page of print that is even, regular and unreadable; her right hand supports her weightless head. The shore on which she rests is grooved and ridged with horizontal exactitude by the retreating water until it is reflected in an isolated pool left in a quiet meander of the river. Minute particles of grit suspended in the clear water reflect motionless light. There is no current, no movement at all. It seems the ideal place for a picnic.

  Without warning or explanation, Lara flies through the air until she flops like an escaping fish into the oxbow pool. As the still surface shatters into sparkling rain, her belly’s expectant cringe changes to instant delight at its pleasant warmth. The water caresses her with the intimacy of a traitor or a lover. From her new viewpoint with her eyes level with the curved meniscus of liquid Lara sees that she is afloat in an elliptical pool surrounded by soft steep banks of collapsing sand. Immediate and total terror overcomes her. It is the same shape as the long red laterite oval of bare earth that surrounded the Tin Heart Gold Mine.

  Help me! Help me!’

  Her voice sounds strange and outside her control, panic makes it deep and harsh. She knows she must not scream or splash. Eddies from her own desperate doggy paddle encircle her, obscuring her view of a river bottom that she is afraid to touch with her feet. If she attempts to scrabble her way out, the sandbank will collapse onto her and hold her down in the water. Underneath its golden fragility is a curving shadowed hollow that is a perfect hiding-hole for crocodiles. Lara’s head twists round this way, that way, her eyes stare through the clouding water. She sees for the first time in the sand above her the indented lop-sided stars and plough marks of crocodile spoor. She knows yellow-green eyes have blinked open at the sound of her voice; she senses the surge of powerful armoured muscles thrusting through the river to her unprotected flank. Oscar was stretched out reading on the bank above her. Lara can make out the familiar round of his solid skull, his loved short-cropped grizzled hair against the sky. She calls his name, hope increasing her buoyancy.

  ‘Oscar! Oscar, help please!’

  Oscar turns his head towards her. Lara sees his chin lift, his cheek crease with the quizzical smile with which he always greets her but he does not rise to help her. He seems to miss seeing her at all. It is then that Lara realises that his eyeballs have the thick grey opacity of lizard skin.

  Chapter Three

  Therapy
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  Though Lara’s thumb has been hurting for fifteen minutes she only becomes aware of the pain as she nears the zebra crossing. She is on her way once again to her routine rendezvous with Brendan. Her wrist aches with the tension of forcing her hand into the front corner of her pocket. The exposed stitching there slots into well-worn grooves in her ragged nail. Now the thread cuts into her flesh. As yet she hasn’t managed to push her constricted thumb through the lining. The coat is of too good a quality. It is warm and the only one she owns at present. With an effort, Lara shrugs her arm loose, twists her wrist free then flaps it about as if it doesn’t belong to her. There is a sharp stab at the junction of her scapula and her shoulder as she does so. The pain continues as persistent small shocks. Lara sighs and thrusts her hand back. Then the dusty grey pavement requires her attention. A sweet wrapper obscures some frail grass next to a cement step. It invites her to lie down next to it. Lara tries to balance her need to place her cheek on the hard cold paving stones next to the wrapper and the grass against the effort required to shift her body from the vertical to the horizontal. After a moment she turns away fretfully to concentrate on crossing the road. At this point the road goes downhill and it is a little easier to keep on moving.

  Walking is good for her, according to Brendan. It is therapeutic. Someday, or one day, Brendan says the grey clouds will lift. Now Lara is an ambulant corpse, a ghostly nomad on grey streets, among grey houses, on a grey autumn day with a long winter ahead of her. She continues to walk about the streets at weekends. Adam is spending weekends with Hilda and Lester, or with his grandparents Sydney and Gwen. She continues to walk to her studio each weekday to stare at her static dull canvases under the constant grey north light of her studio window. She walks to Brendan’s every Thursday evening. She talks to Brendan. Brendan’s personality is of a quality as good and warm as Lara’s winter coat. Brendan has a common sense that Lara can push against with her stories as she pushes against her common sense coat pocket with her thumb. She tells Brendan about the bright white light that burnt above the rivers of the bush veld. She tells Brendan how Oscar’s blue eyes had turned to grey lizard skin in her dreams. She doesn’t tell Brendan yet that she considers herself as morbid and mad as her best friend Liseli Ngoma Dawkins, but she is afraid. She is afraid that she will never get better, that she will never escape the grey sludge of depression; never make a good life again for herself or for Adam.

  When Tim left she had been angry.

  “I’ll take a lover,” Lara had thought, stalking off to stand at her easel, “why should I do without sexual pleasure?”

  Half an hour later she was scrubbing at the canvas trying to remove a daub of the wrong colour. Nothing was working for her.

  “The trouble is that lovers are so demanding – they take time and work – not like husbands. Marriages may also be work but they are convenient for sex. Besides there’s Adam to think about – Adam belongs to Tim – not to any lover – it’s time away from Adam – not time shared.

  “I’ll spend more time painting – that’s what I’ll do.”

  It wasn’t working out like that, however. A lifeless weight of heavy cloud occupies her brain. She lacks the energy to lift her paintbrush. Her thoughts go in descending circles. She is listless, dull. It is certain she will never paint again. There is no meaning in that activity.

  “How did I ever believe that I was able to paint? How could I ever have visited the Umodzi gallery and felt full of confidence about my first ambitious solo exhibition?”

  Lara sighs, remembering the first time she visited Helen Ioannou at the Umodzi Gallery. That was when she had once again met Chimunya Mbewe. Years before Chimunya had been an unhappy girl whom Lara and Liseli had known at school. Now Chimunya, under Helen’s generous patronage, had become a well-respected Chambeshian artist.

  Part Five

  The umodzi Gallery

  1983 – 1985

  Chapter One

  Chimunya

  Lara wandered around the Umodzi Gallery looking at the paintings on the walls while she waited for Helen. It was a mixed exhibition, some woodcuts and lino prints, a few paintings of scruffy landscapes outside the city not chosen for their scenic value, but nevertheless atmospheric, and some super-realistic market scenes of humorous incidents. She hadn’t thought much about art as part of life in Chambeshi and she wasn’t sure what to make of these works. They certainly were not avant-garde in any recognisable way. They were nothing like the work of Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin and the Young British Artists who had rocketed to fame so recently in London.

  “What do you think of them?” Helen said smiling at her, “Most of the artists are self-taught – or teach each other – you can see some replication of Congolese art styles and even Senegalese abstract styles. Artists from Senegal and the Congo consider themselves the masters of African art. I try to encourage our artists to develop in their own way but also to learn to understand painting techniques and use art materials properly. The first paintings that artists brought to me were made variously with sand, coffee and house paint. Men take up art because they can’t find other paid employment. There are no women artists yet – except for Chimunya here – who also works for me as my receptionist.”

  “Chimunya?” Lara looked around in surprise. Could it be the Chimunya she and Liseli had known at school? Lara saw a handsome woman in a loose cotton dress of a bold African print with an embroidered bodice. Her hair was plaited and beaded, her earrings dramatic and heavy. Her smile was shy as Lara remembered, but it lit up her face.

  “Oh, Chimunya! It is you! Hello – how are you doing?”

  Chimunya was still as hesitant and seemed as unwilling as ever to be recognised but with encouragement from Helen she relaxed and became friendly.

  “Hello, Lara.” Chimunya’s voice was soft but she carried herself with a proud dignity. “I am an artist too now. Do you want to see my paintings?”

  She led Lara into the storeroom at the back of the gallery where she pulled out a stack of canvases and turned them around to face Lara.

  “Gosh!” Lara said, “These are different.”

  “I try to paint our traditions.” Chimunya said in her quiet voice. “I don’t paint the dancers like the men artists do. I paint the spirits of the dancers and the spirits that we believe in.”

  Helen had followed them into the store room.

  “Chimunya draws well too.” she said, “I showed her the work of some Australian Aboriginal and Maori artists, also some by Inuit people but she has taken off in her own direction. People like it and buy it. Chimunya also earns a living by making Batik wall hangings”

  “Your paintings are really interesting – and lovely too. They do make me wonder what I am doing with my stuff,” Lara agreed.

  She bit her lip thoughtfully, then continued.

  “I don’t know what to think about art at all at the moment. I didn’t expect to find artists here – I haven’t really thought about where my own art is going. The more I draw the more I feel as if I have nothing to say that’s new and I don’t even know if that is what art is supposed to be – endlessly new all the time or representational so that people will buy it.

  “I stopped liking the art I saw in England because I didn’t know what I was supposed to feel about it. In fact I didn’t feel anything for an awful lot of it.”

  On an impulse she asked Helen to have a look at her work from art school. Helen smiled.

  “Sure.” she replied, “ Don’t know if I’ll be useful – I did History of Art at Oxford – among other things but I am not an artist myself – I just love it – that’s all. Do let’s have a look at what you are doing.”

  “Would you like to be included in my next group exhibition, Lara?” Helen asked.

  “Oh gosh, yes! Please – I’d love that!”

  “I’ll probably call the show something like ‘Chambes
hi: The Artist’s Eye.’ or ‘Aspects of Chambeshi’ – I’ll show your work and that of Pascal, Chimunya and two other artists. It’s already planned to follow the current show but I can include you easily, as you’ll fit in with the theme, which is local life.”

  Helen had other plans as well and she wanted to enlist Lara’s help in running some workshops for local artists.

  “The artists are keen to learn. They teach each other but some of the techniques they have picked up are rather dubious, to say the least. A little art history would give them more of a perspective on what they are doing. I’ll see if I can get some cultural association to fund it but there won’t be much in it for you financially.”

  Lara hesitated at first. She had never considered teaching art. Could she analyse her own methods and explain them to other artists? A little self-reflection would be useful for her own practice but what would be the best way to go about it? The more she thought about it the more she liked the idea.

  “Chimunya, what do you think? Is there anything or anyway that I could help you with your art?” Then as she saw Chimunya’s doubtful expression she added, “Chimunya – perhaps you can help me with my art – perhaps we can help each other – Pascal as well maybe?”

  It was the first time Lara had considered sharing what she had learnt about making art. How could she share her knowledge? What did she know that might be useful to Chimunya and Pascal? How should it be done? Chimunya was her age and Pascal older. In fact, most of the Chambeshian artists were older than she was and were working in very different ways. They knew things she didn’t, had lives and experiences that she could never have had or known. Suddenly humble, Lara understood that they would politely resist any suggestion of patronage from her. She recalled her art school tutor Nancy’s words.