The Last Resort

by Douglas Rogers

  First we rounded the block and parked outside the Dairy Den. In the parking bays were Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs, Hyundais and several shiny Nissan sedans. Ragged street kids washed the cars while their owners, black guys in baseball caps and baggy jeans, spoke on cellphones. There were more than thirty of them, all diamond dealers, and the Dairy Den was their open-air office. I felt like the last person to be let in on a joke: how had I not noticed this before?

  Fatso introduced me to some of the dealers. There was Haj, a ninety-kilo hulk in a 50 Cent T-shirt, his bulldog neck dripping gold chains. He gave me a fist bump. No Matter was there, chatting to a chubby Indian named Kapil, a porky bald guy in beige slacks and open-toed leather sandals. I wondered if he knew Salim. Kapil was the Indian in Fatso’s syndicate. But there were other syndicates, too, and Fatso said they all helped one another.

  ‘If we don’t have money for a stone, we can ask other dealers. Or I can tell them about the stone. There is no jealousy. We don’t have guns. There is riches for everyone.’

  It was decided that Fatso, Kapil, and I would do the run to the field – if we could find fuel. At ten o’clock a call came through on Kapil’s cell: there was some in Sakubva, the township past the Indian quarter. We left the ice cream parlour and sped off. Fatso crunched gears down potholed backstreets like he was grinding millet with a rock while Kapil straddled the stick shift between us and talked on two cellphones at once in fluent Shona.

  ‘He’s calling the guys in the fields!’ Fatso shouted over the noise of the engine as he swerved to avoid a goat that had escaped from a broken-down passenger bus. ‘He’s updating the security situation. We know most of the cops out there but it’s getting dangerous these days. They are beating gwejas, arresting dealers, stopping our cars.’

  We came to the petrol station. There were only four vehicles ahead of us. I made a point to tell Mom and Dad about it. They were always looking for new places to score petrol. A tall, light-skinned black man in a leather jacket stood by the diesel pump.

  ‘That man is a diamond buyer,’ pointed Fatso.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Never seen him before. But I can tell by the way he looks and moves and dresses that he’s not a Zimbabwean. See that cellphone and leather jacket? He’s a buyer.’

  We got out to buy Cokes. In a shiny SUV directly in front of us two beautiful girls sat smoking cigarettes. One had a towering Macy Gray Afro and gold hoop earrings, the other a perfectly round shaved head and Jackie O sunglasses. They looked like supermodels – or assassins. Fatso nodded to them as we walked by. Macy Gray blew smoke rings out the window and ignored him.

  ‘A rival syndicate,’ he muttered. ‘Damn, those chicks are good.’

  We filled up the car and returned to town, parking outside Meikles, once the elegant Harrods of Mutare, our flagship department store.

  ‘We must wait for the Baron,’ said Fatso.

  ‘The Baron?’ I asked.

  ‘The Baron. He’s the top dealer in town.’

  ‘Why are we meeting him?’

  ‘I bought this truck from him. He’s bringing me the papers for it.’

  And here the two worlds collided. The pavement and the road were full of activity, most of it illegal or desperate. Fatso pointed out dealers and buyers as they drove past, while half-naked street children came to the window to beg me for money or bread. They didn’t want pens or pencils anymore; they needed the stuff of life. I had the distinct feeling of being in a country out of control, the wheels coming off the town.

  The mannequins in Meikles’s display windows were naked. Although Christmas had barely passed, there were no holiday lights or wrapped gifts on the shop-floor displays. I used to love Meikles at Christmas time – visiting Santa in his grotto, where he’d ho-ho-ho and give out Smarties and cotton candy and toffee apples. The tea-room where Mom used to take Stof, Zaan, Hel and me for brown cows on her Saturday-morning shopping trips had long since closed down.

  I handed a brick of Zim notes to a street kid; he took it and scurried away.

  ‘So how did all you guys end up drinking at Drifters?’ I asked Fatso as we waited.

  ‘When the town ran out of beer we found out about it. It became a place for the e-light.’

  ‘The e-light?’

  ‘Yes, the e-light.’

  ‘Oh – the elite!’

  ‘Yes, the e-light.’

  ‘Do you do deals there?’

  ‘We can. But it’s usually just a place to relax. It’s quiet, very secret. You can take your woman there, or if you are in a relationship with your friend’s wife, that’s where you go. In town everyone knows us guys, but out there it’s like a holiday place, a place to get away.’

  Mom and Dad would be pleased: Like a holiday place… Hadn’t that been the intention?

  A white Mercedes 300SL pulled up in front of us.

  ‘The Baron,’ said Fatso.

  The Baron didn’t move. All I could see was the back of his head through the tinted glass. Fatso went over to him while Kapil and I waited. I saw documents exchange hands through the driver’s-side window.

  Kapil said: ‘The Baron was just a street guy two years ago. Selling bread. Now he is the biggest dealer in town, the godfather. He came into some cars last year. Some Nissan Suns. He told the gwejas, ‘If you find me gems, I will give you cars.’ That’s why there are so many Nissan Suns now. He has lots of money, but he always looks after people.’

  The Baron was thirty-eight years old, a self-made millionaire. I was thirty-nine.

  Fatso hopped back into the car just as two glamorous women in tight tracksuits much like his wife’s walked out of Meikles swinging shopping bags and hopped into the Baron’s Merc. Price controls had long since been abandoned as a disaster; inflation was now over 50 000 percent, and what goods Meikles did stock only millionaires could afford – millionaires like the Baron.

  Finally, we set off for the field, driving on the same road I had taken to the MDC rally with Brian James two years earlier. The sun briefly peeked through low clouds, then hid again, and a light rain began to fall, building up to the daily afternoon tempest.

  I was excited to see the diamond field, but nervous, too. Fatso briefed me: ‘We know most of the cops at the security checkpoints. Things should be okay. Just tell them you are with me, you are my friend, joining me to visit my family, understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. My heart was racing.

  But then, ten minutes out of town, a strange thing happened. Their cellphones started ringing simultaneously, like alarm clocks. Kapil answered as if he was drawing a brace of pistols, and Fatso, steering now with his knees, answered both of his. They began shouting down the line in Shona. Suddenly Fatso slammed on the brakes, swerved off the road and came to a halt in a cloud of dust. He did a screeching U-turn and headed straight back to town.

  ‘What’s up, man? Why are we going back?’ I protested.

  ‘It’s not safe!’ said Fatso. ‘It’s not safe! That was our security. They’ve changed the police on the roadblocks. Bought some CIOs in from Harare. We don’t know them.’

  ‘So we can’t go in?’

  ‘We can go in, but if they see you, a white guy, they will say you are a buyer. They can jail you, or beat you, or make you pay a very big bribe. It’s not safe for you.’

  I was suddenly disappointed. I wanted to see the field. Fatso dropped me at Dad’s car, which I had parked at the back of the Holiday Inn.

  ‘Call me tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We will know more then. We have to go.’

  ‘Sure, man, I will.’

  They sped off in the truck. It was just after midday, not too late. What the hell? I thought. What was to stop me from going to the field on my own? I was in a car with a local licence plate. I had no briefcase packed with foreign currency. I was an ordinary civilian. What harm could it do to try to get in?

  And so, loaded with a tank of petrol and a fresh box of cigarettes, I drove out on my own. Sixteen kilometres out of town, st
ill on the main road, I came to the first police checkpoint. It was not the normal kind of roadblock; this one had satellite dishes, sensors and electronic devices for searching cars. Dealers like Fatso hid diamonds in car tyres and air-conditioning units; they swallowed them or stuffed them in loaves of bread or fruit. The sensors picked up stones.

  The cops searched my car and found nothing.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ I asked a policewoman.

  She smiled. ‘Diamonds.’

  ‘There are diamonds here?’

  ‘Actually, my dear, I can say we are standing on riches!’

  They let me pass. I drove on, looking for the turn off-to Marange. The roadside alternated now between dense green bush, ghostly baobab trees and fields of brown mud. Suddenly, just before Nyanyadzi, a rural farming town my father had supplied with several liquor licences in the 1980s, dozens of dusty, dishevelled boys dressed in honeycomb rags leapt out of the bush or down from the branches of overhanging trees, forming a human gauntlet along the road. They held thumbs and forefingers of each hand together in the shape of a diamond and screamed as I drove past: ‘Dah-mons! Emeralds! Gemstones!’ They were desperate, almost feral.

  I wanted to see a stone, and so I pulled over at a quieter section three kilometres up the road where one gweja stood alone under a baobab. But no sooner had I stopped than twenty screaming kids appeared out of nowhere, swarmed my car, and began shoving mud-stained hands through the open driver’s-side window, shouting: ‘Dah-mons! Emeralds! Buy dah-mons! Five hundred rand! Ten usas! Buy dah-mons!’

  The car was surrounded. I couldn’t tell a gem from a pebble but they were practically forcing them on me. They were knocking at the passenger window now. One tried to open the door; I leaned over and slammed it shut. I now wished I hadn’t pulled over. What an idiot. What was I thinking? They’re either going to rob me or rip the clothes off my back. The driver’s door opened. ‘Dah-mons!’ they kept shouting, ‘Buy dah-mons!’ I slammed it shut again. One kid grabbed my right hand and tried to push a stone into it. They were begging me. Just to shut them up, I almost decided I would have to buy one. But then, just as suddenly as they had appeared, they fled. They raced off into the bush, leaping over tree stumps and running through muddy fields into the hills like terrified rabbits.

  I looked down the road and saw why. My heart sank. Barrelling toward me was a police vehicle, a white bakkie with a radio aerial on the roof and a half-dozen uniformed officers in the back. I tried to start the car. The ignition failed. Christ. It had done that before. But where was I going to go? The police vehicle stopped beside me now, and six uniformed officers leapt out of the back and ran at me, pistols drawn. I froze. I wanted to take time back; I wanted it to be five minutes ago. I would have done everything so differently.

  ‘Get out!’ one policeman shouted.

  I got out of the car. The grey of their pistols matched the grey of the sky and the gunmetal grey of their uniforms. I had never had anyone draw a pistol on me; now I had six.

  ‘You are buying diamonds!’ the lead cop shouted.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said, shaking my head.

  ‘You are – open the boot!’

  They began searching the car. They hauled out the spare tyre and flipped over the back seat. They rifled through the glove compartment and tried to take apart the air-conditioning unit. I had a small rucksack on the back seat with my tape recorder and notebook in it. They ploughed through it. They’ll discover I’m a journalist. They only have to read my notebook, listen to a tape. What’s worse, being a suspected diamond buyer or a reporter? But it seemed they weren’t interested in my notes or tapes. They were after stones or money – foreign currency that would prove I was an illegal buyer, a smuggler. They found a few bricks of Zim notes in my bag and in the glove compartment. They weren’t interested in them.

  ‘Where is your ID?’ the lead cop asked.

  I gave him my American driver’s licence. Would they ask why I had an American ID but was in a car with local plates?

  ‘Where are the stones?’ one asked again.

  ‘I told you, sir. I don’t have any.’

  ‘You have!’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t.’

  They searched again, looking under the passenger seat, behind the sun shades. Gradually I started to feel a calm wash over me. They had nothing.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I am on my way to my parents’ farm over the pass. My car was giving me trouble. I pulled over to check. Then all these guys ran out at me from the bush. I don’t know who they are. They wanted to sell me stones. They said they had diamonds. I don’t know anything about diamonds. I have never seen a diamond before. All I want is some help to start my car. Please, guys, can you give me a push?’ They looked at me, stunned. ‘I can show you – the ignition doesn’t work,’ I went on.

  One of them shrugged, thoroughly disappointed.

  ‘Please,’ I pleaded. ‘Please. Give me a push and I’ll be on my way.’

  The one with my driver’s licence reluctantly returned it. And then they all slowly holstered their pistols. They waited for me to get into the car. Then they lined up, the six of them, at the back of the car. I took off the handbrake. They began to push me down the road. The vehicle gathered speed, and I slipped the clutch. The engine jumped to life the first time. I pulled over, revved hard and leaned out.

  ‘Thanks, guys,’ I shouted. ‘I hope you catch the crooks!’

  They looked on awkwardly as I drove away. One of them waved warily. My heart was pounding through my shirt. I couldn’t wait to get home.

  ‘Rogers junior – don’t tell me! You have very luck, young man!’

  It was the day after the diamond debacle and I was driving west through the valley with Walter the soldier to visit his old battle sites, the places where he had fought the war.

  Dad had been trying to get hold of him for weeks, without success. Walter had finally called to say he had been in Zambia ‘on military training’. I only had a few hours to spare, though; it was my last day, and I really wanted to spend it with Mom and Dad.

  ‘Would they have put me in jail if they’d found me with a stone?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe they will just shoot you, Rogers junior. Let me be certain: there was one policeman stoned to death by those dealers just some days before in Nyanyadzi. Our policemen shot and killed one of them right there. It’s getting very dangerous at this time.’

  ‘Two people were killed?’

  ‘Right there – in Nyanyadzi!’

  I didn’t want to think about it, but then I did. And I thought about life insurance; I was glad Grace had made me get it.

  We turned onto a muddy dirt track and drove through bush and tall wet grass for several kilometres, past mud huts and the ghostly ruins of old farmhouses overrun with vines. Giant domes of granite rose around us, and grey clouds rolled in and boiled above. Walter pointed out farmsteads he had attacked during the war, places he had laid ambushes. He was in war-story mode again, his eyes alive and excited. He reminded me of Mac the mercenary, the white soldier whose war stories I’d so loved hearing at the lodge and when I visited him in Mozambique as a young man. They were on opposite sides, but they were both monumental.

  We parked at the foot of one of the granite domes and began a steep, twenty-minute climb to the top. At the peak, the view was spectacular. You could see the entire valley all the way to Mozambique – a perfect vantage point from which to plot war.

  An eagle wheeled overhead, and a couple of vultures did, too. Walter raised his arms in the air, as if in triumph, and surveyed the scene.

  ‘From here I used to plan,’ he said. ‘I gathered my soldiers before battle. I tell them: “Let’s apply our tactics. I want brave comrades, not cowards!” I used to command with a Star pistol. And a bayonet. Sometimes we used to fight 6:00 am to 6:00 pm. One time we battled with Grey’s Scouts, those Rhodesian soldiers on horseback. That battle consumed a whole day!’

  He pointed out farms below that he ha
d attacked in the 1970s, and he reeled off names: Moolman, Kok, Slabbert, De Klerk. I recognised most of them. Several had stayed at Drifters. Lady Charlotte’s surname was Kok; the gospel singer was Hanli Slabbert. And of course Oom Piet, who had hit that land mine.

  ‘What about villagers, Walter? Did you kill any villagers?’

  Twenty thousand Zimbabweans died in the liberation war from 1965 to 1980, mostly rural black civilians – the most abused and brutalised population in the country, then and now. As many were killed by the liberation fighters as by Rhodesian soldiers, although the fact is not much a part of the accepted discourse of the war in Zimbabwe. Walter fell silent. Then he nodded.

  ‘There were many, Rogers junior. We killed many. The reason we killed them: they did not want us to liberate our country. They were sellouts – mutengesi. They would phone to the Rhodesians when we visited the villages, and the Rhodesians would come and bomb us.’

  I remembered Agoneka’s story about his village being strafed by helicopter fire. How he hadn’t run away, and that had saved his life.

  ‘It’s very open up here, Walter. Couldn’t the Rhodesian helicopters see you living here?’

  He laughed.

  ‘We would take cover under tree branches,’ he said. ‘And we used traditional spirits. We had a n’anga. The helicopters could not see us. We became just invisible.’

  He pointed to a cave between two rocks on the fault line of a granite dome opposite.

  ‘There we buried two comrades: Shingirai Hondo and Shingirai ma Guerrilla. I did not know their real names. We did not use our real names in the whoe. Only after 1980 did we come and collect their bodies and put them to Heroes Acre in Harare.’

  I asked him if he had taken anyone else up here since the end of the war twenty-seven years ago.

  ‘Only the minister. When the war was finished I brought the minister here.’

  The minister. The Top Man. They were still fighting a war.