I had to stop myself from hitting the windshield when the pickup finally skidded to a halt, tires digging in.
The stench of burning grass and plastic hit us immediately. The village was in chaos. At first sight only a few buildings were actually on fire, but they made a lot of smoke, and the men scampered around with buckets of water while the women were wailing in the central area where Ivan and I had once played soccer. Mothers clung onto their children. Chickens and goats were running free.
“Mastah Ivan! They came!” I could just pick out the words from the excited jumble. “Those bad men came again.”
“They bring knives.”
“They bring fire.”
“Our homes! Those wicked Shona. Where is Baas Hascott, Mastah Ivan? You must help us.”
Before Ivan had a chance to speak his old man pulled up and they all went flocking to him. Ivan looked almost resentful.
“Where is Luckmore?” Mr. Hascott wanted us to tell him but, of course, we didn’t know so he turned to the crowd. “Where is my bossboy?”
They didn’t know, either.
“Those wicked people, they set our homes alight with fire.”
“I hear you, but where’s my head workman? Where’s Luckmore?”
The crying got louder.
Mrs. Hascott was helping a kid who’d cut her head and was bleeding all down her dusty dress.
“We have to call the police, Glen,” she told her husband.
Pa Hascott looked ready to hit someone. “I can’t.”
“We must.”
“What’s the bloody point? I recognized at least four of them up there that are the police.”
“You have to do something.”
While Mr. Hascott stood stuck, Ivan finally let out a huge cry and jumped back into the pickup, murdering the throttle; only his old man snapped out of it and stood in the way and Ivan had to slam on anchors.
“Where the bloody hell do you think you’re going, my boy?”
Ivan kicked the door open. The veins on his neck stood out. “Mum’s right.”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid. You’re staying here.”
“I’m getting the guns.”
“That’s not the answer.”
“They’re going to break into our house.”
“No, they won’t.”
“And where the hell is Luckmore?”
“Most of that lot are high on beer and grass and itching for an excuse. Let them be and they’ll go away. You know how they are.”
“No, Dad, I don’t.” Ivan’s frustration bubbled over. “They’ve never gone this far before. I’m getting the—”
Before he’d had a chance to react Mr. Hascott had gone up to his son, given him one around the face and whipped the keys from the ignition. The crowd hushed. Mrs. Hascott rocked on her crutches while the little girl darted back to her mother.
Ivan spat blood.
“You’re staying here, is what. We all are,” his old man ordered.
Ivan said, quietly and icily, “When are we going to turn it around again and fight for what is rightfully ours? We can’t let them keep pushing us around. We have to stand up for ourselves and shit back.”
“What are you talking about? We got through the war, we can get through this.”
“We lost the war. But we kept the farm. It’s all we have left, and now you’re going to let them take it.”
“My farm, boy. Not yours yet. If at all.”
Ivan turned slowly. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
But his old man didn’t say.
No one slept much.
The mob eventually drifted away and then hung about in one of the outer fields long into the night, singing gook war songs and drinking beer and burning anything they could get their hands on. When Mr. Hascott went out again at first light they’d gone. Vanished.
As had Luckmore.
I got my head down for a couple of hours and woke around ten, and I crept through the house and found the family sitting in front of an uneaten breakfast. Ivan had a bruise on his jaw. Mr. Hascott just kept his head in his hands. No one spoke. I’d wanted to ask Ivan to take me home, I shouldn’t have been there, but he indicated for me to sit so I held on to it.
About half an hour of nothing had passed when the dogs started going crazy again, fighting their chains. Ivan’s old man jumped to his feet.
It wasn’t the mob, but a large black Mercedes with tinted windows and no plates that had pulled up over by the gate. A black driver stood by the open door, cool as you like. Mr. Hascott was about to storm over when Ivan’s mum spotted two people down by the pool house. You couldn’t miss them. The woman had so much jewelry on, it almost hid the blackness of her skin, and she wore a flamboyant orange and yellow dress from which her big arse was pushing to escape. Her headdress looked like wrapping paper that had come unstuck. The man in the sharp suit was chuffing away on a cigar; each time he put it to his lips a fat, expensive-looking watch glinted in the sunlight, and every so often he would wave his arms about expansively over the pool.
“What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” Mr. Hascott demanded to know. The rest of us followed close behind.
If he’d surprised either of the intruders they didn’t show it.
The woman looked Mr. Hascott up and down and said something to the man in Shona. He nodded in serious agreement. Sweat glistened on his bald head like stars in the night.
“My wife says the pool is too small,” he said in punched English, as though the language irritated his mouth. “She is right. We will need to make it bigger.”
For a couple of seconds Ivan’s old man looked as though he’d been winded.
“What in God’s name are you talking about?” He met the man in the eye. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
The woman started screeching and her husband had to appease her. He sucked a mouthful of smoke and threw the rest of the cigar into the water.
“My wife is very unhappy because the pool is too small,” he explained again, sternly, as though it was all Mr. Hascott’s fault, “and she knows it will cost many dollars to make bigger. I tell her I will fix this. She must have a big pool. The house she likes. How many rooms does it have?”
A line rose and throbbed down Pa Hascott’s forehead.
“Get the hell off my land.”
The man gave a look somewhere near amusement.
“No, my friend. Not your land. Never your land.”
“I’m not your friend. I don’t know who you think you are but piss off back the way you came. I’ve had as much of your lot as I can take.”
The man released a short, derisive laugh without a smile.
“I do not care about the words of a thief. You stole this land. You murungus took it from our fathers so we have the right to steal it back. Of course, the law says I cannot have it unless you sell. But you will sell.” He spoke slowly and clearly, producing papers from his pocket. “And my government is kind and generous and is willing to buy what you took at a good price. Personally, I would pay you nothing, so whatever the price it is more than you deserve.”
Mr. Hascott was already walking away.
“You will sell,” the man called after him. “It would not be good for your family if you do not. And when you do, your workers will no longer be required. I prefer Shona workers I can trust, not these dirty Matabele. You must tell them this. It would seem you chose unwisely after the war, my friend, for now they must leave or their families will find the same hole in the ground as your head man . . . Luckmore, did you say his name was? I am told he wept like a baby before he died.”
The man chuckled, shoulders heaving.
Mr. Hascott’s feet were rooted to the ground, and I swear every muscle in his body started to tremble. Everything in the world was happening right here, where we stood, nowhere else.
His eyes slid toward Ivan. “Get the dogs.” He said it so quietly that Ivan almost didn’t hear him. “The dogs, boy. Untie them.”
Ivan sprinted around the side of the house. Moments later the Ridgebacks came ripping and barking across the lawn. The intruders were already back at their car by then. I’d watched them walk hurriedly away, and the driver had pulled the gate to so that the dogs could only snap and jump at the wire. They were all safe; the man and his wife were back in their car and the dogs couldn’t get them. There was absolutely no need for the driver to draw the gun from his jacket and turn it on the animals at point-blank range.
One shot each was all it took to bring back the silence.
The Mercedes spun away, kicking up stones and dust.
TWENTY-ONE
After the longest three weeks ever I couldn’t wait to get back to school. I got my old man to drop me off much earlier than I needed to be there. It was what I wanted and he seemed more than happy to get me out of the house again.
We barely exchanged a word the whole journey. After he cut the engine, the silence became awkward and he tried to give me a few more dollars than usual, but I left them on the dashboard and disappeared into Selous without looking around. When he’d gone I went back out. I was the first to arrive; the school was silent and empty. I liked it that way, with no one from the outside, both it and I waiting in anticipation.
The sun was strong for May. I sat in its glare at the edge of the parking lot and pushed sticks into the soft tarmac.
The more hours that went by the more convinced I became Ivan wasn’t coming back, that maybe his old man had already sold and moved the family down south. So, with only half an hour to spare, one of the last things I was expecting to see was him whistling down the corridor. What I expected even less was the response we got when Klompie and I crowded him in the dorm.
“How are you?” I wanted to know above anything else.
He checked the pair of us before his bemused, almost perplexed reply.
“I’m fine. Why, how are you?”
“We heard,” said Klompie, and just in case, he stabbed an accusatory thumb in my direction. “He told us.”
“Is your old man selling?” I asked.
“Are you leaving?” Klompie butted in.
“Did they really do that to Luckmore? Did you tell the police?”
Ivan showed his palms.
“Guys, ease up. Yes, my old man is selling—what choice does he have? And I’m here, aren’t I, so does it look like I’m leaving? And Luckmore . . . Surprise, surprise, the police aren’t interested about him. Give me space, my arse is getting worried you’ve turned gay over the holidays.”
It was like nothing had happened. Like the same old Ivan.
And yet not—I couldn’t say why.
Later that night, after a supper of definitely not speaking about it, I walked into the study room and saw the lamp on in his cubicle. I teased back the curtain to find him writing furiously, an open textbook lying to one side. Without looking at me he flicked over a couple of pages, with his brow knitted.
“What are you up to?”
“Got to get this finished,” he said, “and take it up to Mark . . . to Mr. van Hout.”
“You in trouble already?”
Ivan shook his head. “It’s extra.”
“Extra prep?”
“I asked for it.”
“Why?”
He thought about his answer carefully. “O levels are next term.”
I heard Greet’s voice for the first time in a long time. Start paying more attention in class because you’ll be getting nothing once Mugabe has finished with you lot.
“But you hate history.”
“It’s about how the Nazis managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the German people,” he cut me off. “Mr. van Hout chose it. Did you know they changed the names of streets and towns and buildings when they came to power, to make people forget about the past? It was a sort of brainwashing. Does that remind you of somewhere a lot closer to home? Hey? Does it?”
He scribbled a few more quick sentences. “I’ve got to go.”
“When did he give you this prep?” I asked.
“In the holidays, a couple of days after you left. After it happened.”
“You came to school in the holidays?”
“Course not. He came to see me. I phoned him and told him all about it because I knew he’d understand. A good job I did because he managed to persuade my folks to let me stay on and at least finish my exams. He said he’d look after me during the term if they want to head south.”
He stopped briefly by the door.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said to everyone. “Has anyone seen my calculator? I know I unpacked it but it’s gone.”
In the following days and weeks Ivan became conspicuously absent and the hours were suddenly hollow. Pitters still came over but it always ended up the same, with us not talking and Pitters spraying juniors with deodorant and lighting it, or making them lick condensed milk off the tuck shop floor or something. I was bored with his cruelty. Now and again I even lied just to be on my own, and I’d walk in the bush and daydream about things sixteen-year-olds daydream about. Invariably I found myself fantasizing about one girl in particular, even though Ivan would have killed me if he’d known.
“Where’ve you been, man?” We’d greet Ivan back each time like a pack of listless dogs.
But we knew he’d always been with Mr. van Hout, and pretty soon we stopped asking and just listened to his stories with the indifference of a jealous lover.
“You should check this knife he’s got from the war,” or, “He’s got all these medals,” or a marveling, “That guy knows his shit, I tell you.”
Except when he returned angry, of course. On those days we kept out of his way.
One morning after classes we spotted Ivan with Mr. van Hout way over by the amphitheater, talking with this guy we’d never seen before who had cool shades and a look that any chick would really go for.
“That’s Pete,” Ivan boasted later. We tried not to care but he had a feverish brow and he was acting really shakily. “He’s a friend of Mark’s, they fought together in the Selous Scouts.”
We buzzed. Fairford even stopped whining about the stuff that had gone missing from his cubicle at breakfast. So it was true! The Selous Scouts! The Rhodesian Army’s crack unit, the elite, the best . . . named after none other than the same Frederick Courteney Selous as our house had been.
“He’s a journo now,” Ivan went on. “Writes for one of those big overseas papers. They kicked him out of the country last year for stirring trouble with the government. If the police knew he was here they’d slam his arse into Chikurubi and leave him to rot.”
“How come?” I wanted to know. “What did he do?”
“He only found out what Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade have been up to, that’s all.” He reached into his pocket and produced a photograph that made us forget he was talking to us as though we were stupid.
“What is it?” Klompie’s eyebrows squirmed.
He was holding it the wrong way so I took it from him and turned it around.
“Jesus!” I said as it became clear that the mess of shapes was actually a pile of twisted and decaying bodies, all piled on top of each other. “Who is this? Is this from the war?”
I handed the photo back toward Klompie but he stepped away and shook his head. Pittman grabbed it instead.
“This is three months ago,” Ivan told us. “Pete took it secretly, and lots more besides. The government did this. In the south. The Fifth Brigade are down in Matabeleland killing Matabele and no one is doing anything about it or doesn’t know or both.”
When no one spoke: “This is our country, man, don’t you get it? He’s still fighting. Mugabe’s still killing people to make sure he stays in power.”
“So he’s killing blacks,” Pittman said indifferently. “So what? And what makes this Pete such a bloody expert? Anyone could have done it, might not have been the Fifth Brigade.”
“Duh! Who else? All the blacks on the other side of the country will tel
l you. They’re petrified of them. The Fifth Brigade does this sort of thing all the time; it’s what they’re there for. Jeez, Pitters, that day you climbed over the fence and messed with them . . . They would have slotted you for sure if that policeman hadn’t stepped in.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious. Don’t you see? The war had nothing to do with politics or color. That’s what Sir says. It was about power and money. This country’s rich and Mugabe wants it for himself. That’s why he lets these guys do whatever they like, so he can stay at the top. Just like with the Nazis. It’s all about power. He wants to scare people and wipe out anyone he thinks is against him. It’s the Matabele first, next it’ll be us whites.”
“He wouldn’t.” Although now Pittman didn’t look so certain.
“It’s true. He even said it . . . Ages ago he said he had to cull the whites.”
“Bullshit,” Pitters insisted.
“No,” Klompie said quietly, looking Pitters in the eye. His hands were shaking. “It’s true. Ivan’s not lying. They would have killed you.”
Someone walked past the study room and Ivan snatched and hid the photo. It was Nelson.
“Don’t look in here,” Ivan fired.
Nelson hadn’t been, but of course Ivan’s warning made him startle and glance in, and even though he scurried away it was too late, he was guilty of doing what he’d just been warned not to do.
Ivan slapped his hand against the wall.
“Right, that’s it, I’m going to teach that stupid Kaffir a lesson.”
“Wait,” I said. “What about Kasanka?”
Ivan was already halfway out into the corridor.
“You don’t understand, I have to.” And he was gone.
That evening, during prep, Kasanka marched straight to Ivan’s cubicle and started kicking and punching for a good couple of minutes. Ivan didn’t make a sound.
We thought he was being brave. As we found out later, it was all part of the plan.
As that winter term deepened, more and more of our stuff went missing: calculators, pens, watches . . . I thought Ivan must have suspected Nelson or maybe just wanted it to be him because he started to target him freely, regardless of the consequences. He’d hurl soap in the showers or push him in the corridor, or simply walk into the next-door study room and whack him. I never joined in, but what I did was far worse—I did nothing. I couldn’t get why Nelson never fought back—it wasn’t like he was a junior and couldn’t—so I told myself he was weak and ultimately to blame for what he got and probably deserved it. And sometimes Ivan did it right in front of Kasanka like he wanted the payback, so I reasoned there was some kind of balance.
Out of Shadows Page 13