Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness

by Alexandra Fuller

  Bo barely keeping up with Dad on the farm. Zambia, 2010.

  WORK ON THE FARM begins at dawn, while it is still cool, and I awake to find it well under way. There’s Mum marching up to her fish ponds with a walking stick and a collection of dogs in her wake. “Those kingfishers are very greedy and very naughty,” she says, waving her walking stick at a hovering shape over one of her ponds. There’s Dad striding down to inspect his bananas—“Thirty-four kgs for a first bunch!” he announces triumphantly. My parents’ farm is a miracle of productivity, order and routine—measuring, feeding, pruning, weeding, weighing, packing.

  From the camp, Dad’s bananas appear as a green cathedral of leaves. In the early days of the farm, elephants would make their way onto the farm at night and raid the fruit, stripping leaves, crushing stems. “They make a terrific mess,” Mum says. Dad would wake up and hear them ripping through his plantation. “Talk about selective hearing,” Mum says. “He can’t hear a word I say, but let an elephant harm a hair on the head of one of his bananas and Dad bolts out of bed.” Dressed only in a Kenyan kakoi and his blue Bata slip-ons, he raced down to the field waving a torch, “Come on you buggers that’s enough of that. Off you go, go on!” Until eventually sleep deprivation forced Dad to put up an electric fence. “So that put an end to the elephants’ picnics,” Mum says.

  Mum has taught herself everything she can about farm-raised tilapia—even flying with Chad Mbewe, her fish-section manager, to Malaysia for conferences on the latest techniques. “We both nearly died of cold in the icy air-conditioning,” Mum says. “You need a serious down jacket and a scarf. I came home with bronchitis.” In ten years, she has become the premier producer of fingerlings in the country, perhaps even the region. Her fish are famous for their quality, their ability to gain weight and their remarkably unstressed conditions. “Everyone has to be very calm and nicely turned out around Mum’s fish,” Dad warns. “You know what she’s like.” And it’s true; it’s not enough for Mum’s ponds to be efficient, they must also be pleasant for the fish and artistically pleasing, as if she is substituting her farmwork for something that in another time and place she might have painted (sheep and geese grazing mostly peacefully along the ponds’ edges; reeds picturesquely clumped at the corners; baobab trees, serene and ancient as a backdrop).

  By midmorning, farmwork has been ongoing for five hours. Mum and Dad come in for breakfast, a meal consisting of pots and pots of tea, a slice of toast and a modest bowl of corn porridge. Then Dad puts his hat back on his head and Mum grabs her walking stick and her binoculars and out they go again. “Details, details, details,” Mum says. “The devil lives in the details.” But by early afternoon, the heat drives everyone indoors or toward shade and we retire to our frog-infested rooms for a siesta.

  After our siesta and more tea, my parents are back out on the farm, Dad trailing a fragrant pulse of smoke from his pipe, Mum’s walking stick thumping the ground with every stride. The soil under the bananas is being sampled for effective microorganisms; the fingerlings in several of the ponds are being counted; the shepherds are beginning to bring the sheep in for the night. Then the air takes on a heavy golden quality and we walk along the boundary with the dogs to Breezers, the pub at the bottom of the farm, in time to watch the egrets come in from the Zambezi to roost.

  Before it is quite dark—“You don’t want to bump into a bloody hippo,” Dad says—we meander back up to the Tree of Forgetfulness, agreeably drunk. Mr. Zulu, a couple of his wives and several of his children are sitting on their veranda as we pass. Mr. Zulu nods a greeting and we exchange brief pleasantries. “Good evening, Mr. Zulu.” “Yes, Mr. Fuller.” His dogs mock-charge our dogs, which provokes Isabelle and Attatruk (Mum’s turkeys) into hysterical gobbling, and then Lightning begins to bray (Flash died of sleeping sickness a few years ago). “It’s quite like the musicians of Bremen,” Mum says happily.

  BEFORE SUPPER—my parents take the last meal of the day late, like Europeans—Mum makes for her bath with a glass of wine. Dad and I pour ourselves a drink under the Tree of Forgetfulness and play a languid game of twos and eights. “It’s not nearly as much fun without Van here to cheat,” I say. The dogs split themselves among laps, beds and chairs across the camp and begin to lick themselves. From the bathroom we can hear Mum drowning out Luciano Pavarotti. “Ah! Il mio sol pensier sei tu, Tosca, sei tu!” There is the occasional plop of an inattentive gecko falling from the rafters in the kitchen, where Big H has made a dish of turmeric rice to go with Mum’s fish curry bubbling gently in one of the Le Creuset pots. All is as domestically blissful as it can get.

  Suddenly the three dogs in the guest cottage start a loud, hysterical chorus of barking. It’s been years since I’ve heard that particular bark, but I recognize it instantly. I put my cards down and look at Dad. “That’s a snake bark,” I say.

  Dad takes his pipe out of his mouth and cocks his head, listening. “Oh bloody hell, you’re right,” he says. He hurries up the steps and I follow, hoping to look supportive, while also trying to ensure that I don’t get to the door first. Dad walks into the guesthouse. “Okay, Bobo,” he says, putting up a hand. I look down. He has just stepped over a beautifully patterned snake with a diamond-shaped head, as thick as a strong man’s forearm—a puff adder. Puff adders kill more people than any other snake on the continent; their preferred diet is rodents and frogs (of which the Tree of Forgetfulness is an endlessly, self-replenishing buffet) and they strike from an S position so that they can hit a target at almost any angle. This one is in an S position now.

  “Fetch Emmanuel,” Dad says.

  “A manual?” I repeat, my mind racing with the possibilities—The Care and Prevention of Snakebite, perhaps; or Where There Is No Doctor.

  “Yes,” Dad says. “First house on your left as you leave the yard.”

  So with Mum still singing her opera—“Vittoria! Vittoria! L’alba vindice appar”—I run under the brick archway at the top of the camp and into the pitch-dark Zambezi Valley night yelling for Emmanuel like a crazed missionary, “Emmanuel! Emmanuel!” And it occurs to me that this could very well be our triple obituary: Dad bitten to death by a puff adder; Mum drowned drunk in the bath listening to Puccini; me fallen into the dark and raptured into heaven while yelling for the Messiah. I imagine Vanessa at our mass funeral saying, “Well, this is bloody typical, isn’t it?”

  But between them, Dad and Emmanuel manage to kill the snake—or as Dad says, “give it a fatal headache”—using one of the many stout walking sticks Mum has bought over the years from a deaf-mute carpenter in the village. “How can I say no to the poor man?” she says, by way of explaining why she has so many. “I’m almost his only customer.” And by the time Mum comes out of the bath, refreshed and ready for another glass of wine, order has been restored to the Tree of Forgetfulness: Emmanuel has gone back to his house; the deceased puff adder is in an empty beer crate behind the kitchen; the dogs are back on chairs and laps; Dad is shuffling the cards for another round of twos and eights.

  “There was a puff adder in the guesthouse,” I tell Mum.

  Mum doesn’t look suitably impressed. “Oh?” She shakes the box of wine. “How much of this have you drunk?”

  “Most of it,” I say.

  “Oh Bobo, really!”

  “But my nerves,” I object. “They’re in shreds.”

  Mum sighs. “One tiny little snake and you collapse.” Then Mum notices the broken walking stick and her face falls. “Oh no, that really is too bad. You didn’t break one of my deaf-mute walking sticks, did you?”

  “Well, which would you rather?” I ask. “Your deaf-mute walking stick or me?”

  “I’d rather have my walking stick in one piece,” Mum says, scooping up one of the Jack Russells and nuzzling its ear. “Wouldn’t I, Papa Doc?”

  “Right, that’s it,” I say. “I’m going to write an Awful Book and this time it really will be about you.”

  Mum sits down under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Papa D
oc on her lap. She looks at Dad. “Did you hear that, Tim?” she says, her lips twitching. “Bobo’s going to write the sequel.”

  “Say again,” Dad says.

  “AWFUL BOOK!” Mum shouts. “BOBO’S GOING TO WRITE ANOTHER ONE.”

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Mum and Dad. Lake Kariba. Zambia, 2008.

  I wish to acknowledge authors whose work was most informative in the course of writing this book: Caroline Elkins; Trevor Royle; Leonard Thompson; Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg; Meryl Nass; Peter Godwin and Ian Hancock; Paul Moorcraft and Peter McLaughlin; SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret).

  Deepest thanks to my agent, Melanie Jackson, for support and encouragement and for knowing that I had this story in my bones.

  And also to my editor, Ann Godoff, for unfailing patience, compassion and for guidance, one sentence at a time.

  Thanks to Joan Blatt for above-and-beyond extreme friendship.

  Thanks to Mo Blum for healing amounts of wine, basil oil and soup.

  Thanks to Bryan Christy—the smartest person I know—for reading every word of this book and for always making my words sharper.

  Thanks to Katie Pierce for talking and walking this book out of me; and for putting mind, body and soul back together when they fell apart.

  Thanks to Susie Rauch to whom I could always retreat when I most needed intelligent life, or a walk with too many dogs (which may amount to the same thing).

  Thanks to David Shlim, who figured out what was ailing me and fixed it, and for compassion and encouragement.

  Thanks to Terry Tempest Williams for knowing this territory so well and without whom this would have been a much lonelier work.

  Thanks to Robin Binckes for help with translations (any errors are my fault entirely) and to Piet Smit for help with translations and also for reminding me that love of land is our African disease and our souls’ cure.

  Thanks to Carly Suek and Katie Thomas for providing a crucial pillar of support. Also thanks to Kate Healy.

  Thanks to Melanie Schnizlein who quietly and calmly restored my home to tranquility so that I could write.

  Thanks to my beloved Auntie Glug and Uncle Sandy for love and support and for all those days and nights in the nursery-comfort of Langlands.

  Thanks to my sister, Vanessa Fuller Wootton-Woolley, for unflagging love, for protection and support, and for knowing.

  Thanks to my children, without whom I would be lost: Sarah, for picking up the pieces and for providing endless humor and inspiration; Fuller, for abiding wit and kindness, for plates of scrambled eggs, for cups of tea; Cecily, for her sustaining lightness of being.

  Thanks to my husband, Charlie, for forbearance and love.

  But above all and always, I am indebted to my matchless and wonderful parents—Nicola and Tim Fuller—for their resilience, their humor, their compassion, their example and their generosity.

  APPENDIX

  Nicola Fuller of Central Africa: The Soundtrack

  Mum with Papa Doc and Le Creuset pots. Zambia, 2010.

  “Come Fly with Me”—Frank Sinatra

  “The Skye Boat Song”—Robert Louis Stevenson

  “Fly Me to the Moon”—Frank Sinatra

  “The Bandit”—Cliff Richard and The Shadows

  “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”—Joe South (Lynn Anderson)

  “From Russia with Love”—Matt Munro

  “Sentimental Journey”—Doris Day

  “God Save the Queen”—BBC Symphony Orchestra

  “Shanghai”—Doris Day

  William Blake’s “Jerusalem”—BBC Symphony Orchestra

  “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”—The Platters

  The Hallelujah Chorus from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah

  “The Banana Boat Song”—Harry Belafonte

  “Everybody Loves My Baby”—Doris Day

  “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille”—Kenny Rogers

  “The Last Farewell”—Roger Whittaker

  “Dammi i colori . . . Recondita armonia,” Tosca—Giacomo Puccini

  GLOSSARY

  A Guide to Unusual or Foreign Words and Phrases

  amore (Italian)—love

  antbear (Oryceteropus afer)—aardvark

  arrivderci (Italian)—good-bye

  asante sana (Swahili)—thank you very much

  ayah (Hindi)—children’s maid

  baas (Afrikaans)—boss

  baobab (Adansonia digitata)—an enormous and iconic tree with a shiny bark reminiscent of elephant hide

  batman—an officer’s orderly or personal servant

  boma—a chief’s enclosure; a district government office

  bywoner (Afrikaans)—sub-tenant or farm laborer; tenant farmer

  cent’ anni (Italian)—(may you live) a hundred years

  choo (Swahili)—latrine (pronounced “cho” as in “know”)

  che bello (Italian)—how beautiful

  ciao, come stai? (Italian)—hello, how are you?

  dit is jou perd (Afrikaans)—this is your horse

  eucalyptus—see gum tree

  fynbos—shrub land of mixed, hardy plants occurring in a small belt in the Western Cape

  gum tree (Eucalyptus bicostata)—from the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, also known as eucalyptus. A diverse genus of flowering tree primarily originating in Australia but cultivated all over the tropics. The particular trees referred to here are commonly known as blue gums.

  hadeda Ibis (Bostrychia hagedash)—a large dark brown ibis, common throughout much of east, central and south Africa

  hensopper (Afrikaans)—someone who surrenders to, or joins, the enemy

  high veldt—high plateau in southern Africa (cooler, wetter and generally more fertile and pleasant for human habitation than the low veldt)

  hujambo askari (Swahili)—how are you, watchman?

  huku (Shona)—chicken

  il me nome e Nicola (Italian)—my name is Nicola

  impala—a kind of antelope

  kikoi (Swahili)—a brightly colored piece of cloth particular to East Africa, rather like a sarong

  kirima kia ngoma (Swahili)—the place of devils

  kloof (Afrikaans)—ravine, canyon

  kom (Afrikaans)—come, let’s go

  kraal (Afrikaans)—livestock enclosure

  lekker (Afrikaans)—nice

  low veldt—lower elevations in southern Africa (hotter and drier and generally less fertile than high veldt)

  maiwe (Shona)—my goodness!

  miombo (Swahili)—see also msasa. Miombo refers to the woodland of brachystegia, a genus of tree comprising a large number of species. Typically, the bark of these trees is dark, their foliage is a feathery plume, shed during the dry season. New gold and red leaves are produced just before the onset of the rains. The tree is under threat as it is used extensively in the making of charcoal.

  mopane (Colophospermum mopane)—grows in hot, low-lying areas, usually in so-called mopane woodlands

  msasa (Brachystegia spiciformis)—see miombo

  muli bwanje. Dzina landa ndine Nicola Fuller of Central Africa (Chinyanja)—Hello. My name is Nicola Fuller of Central Africa

  munts—derogatory slang for black Zimbabweans (from muntu the Shona word meaning person)

  mzuri sana (Swahili)—very good

  nee dankie (Afrikaans)—no thank you ni

  le monitor (Varanus niloticus)—a large, highly-aquatic carnivorous lizard

  nshima (Chinyanja)—see sadza. The staple of Zambia; a thick porridge made from corn.

  nursing home—in the United States, a nursing home is predominantly for elderly residents but in England a nursing home is a maternity clinic or hospital

  nyoka (Shona)—snake

  op jou merke (Afrikaans)—on your marks

  op Violet (Afrikaans)—here’s to Violet

  pamodzi (Chinyanja)—together

  pole sana (Swahili)—very sorry

  (the
) Proms—formally known as the BBC Proms, or the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, the Proms is an eight-week summer season of daily classical music concerts held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London

  povo—poor or impoverished people p

  seudo ops—pseudo operations; black Rhodesian soldiers fighting for the Rhodesian government who infiltrated the ranks of guerilla (or freedom) fighters

  pukka (Hindi)—superior, first-class; proper authentic

  reedbuck—a species of antelope

  sadza (Shona)—see also nshima. The food staple of Zimbabwe; a thick porridge made out of corn.

  sahib/memsahib (Hindi)—master/mistress (used formerly as a respectful form of address for a European man/woman in India)

  salwar kameez—a unisex dress of pants and a tunic worn in South and Central Asia

  shamba (Swahili)—small plot or market garden. After independence in Kenya, shambas were cut from larger, commercial farms and distributed among landless indigenous Kenyans.

  shateen—bush, backcountry

  sorry cloth—strips of very cheap, black cotton in which poor southern and central Africans bury their dead

  syce (Hindi)—groom

  terrs—slang for terrorists

  trekboer (Afrikaans)—South African semi-nomadic pastoralists, primarily of Dutch descent

  trekker (Afrikaans)—South African, primarily Afrikaner. The name refers to those who moved, usually from real or perceived persecution, from one European-settled area into areas not yet settled by Europeans.