The Old Drift

by Namwali Serpell

  ‘Ha!’ Phil wheezed. ‘That was not politics. It was scare tactics. Swing those knockers, as the Yanks say, and knock the man out!’

  ‘Sonny Use-Your-Left Tit!’ Ronald joked redundantly. ‘They made that poor man cry.’

  Macleod had indeed wept to see the native women naked. The scene had struck Agnes at the time as utterly lacking in dignity and grace, the absolute opposite of Althea Gibson kissing the Queen’s hand at Wimbledon.

  The conversation had moved on to the nation’s new name.

  ‘I do not know why we do not just call it “Zambezi”,’ said Phil.

  ‘Kapwepwe has chosen a nice name,’ said Masuzio. ‘Zam-bia! It rolls off the tongue.’

  ‘Yes. Now there is a freedom fighter with a genuine sense of African grandeur.’

  ‘They should have just been calling it Zambezia,’ Mercy complained. Her accent was much heavier than the others. ‘Just think about it. ZAMBEZIA! The extra singable is much better!’

  ‘You mean syllable?’ asked Masuzio.

  ‘You know what I am talking about!’ said Mercy. ‘Always scrutinising others for mistakes. Your muzungu husband has given you this correcting-correcting habit. The British have broken our backs. Me, I am just breaking a few words, eh—’

  Agnes smelled cigarette smoke and heard ice – Ronald was refilling drinks. As the group continued to banter and hoot, a low voice came from beside her.

  ‘So, Agnes.’ This was Rick. ‘What do you think of this election, this great transition?’

  ‘I don’t know enough about it,’ she admitted. ‘But as Macmillan says, the wind of hope is sweeping—’

  ‘Wind of change,’ Rick murmured. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes, of course, change. Erm, either way, it seems to me that self-government for the African people is inevitable.’

  ‘You do realise that you and I will be among them,’ he laughed.

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Everyone who is here on Independence Day will become a Zambian, even us Brits.’

  ‘Oh that!’ Agnes laughed as if she already knew this. ‘I mean, it is only proper,’ she reflected. ‘A sign of courtesy and grace. Do you know the tennis player Althea—’

  ‘Naturally one wishes to stay in good graces,’ said Rick. ‘But on this side, of course, the demand is for freedom, not courtesy. The foot on the neck doesn’t feel the cramp.’

  Agnes felt flustered. What did he mean by this side? A foot on the neck? What a horrid image! She tried to think of a reply but by the time she had come up with one – something about turning the other cheek – and rejected it as too stupid, Rick had been reabsorbed into the conversation.

  They were now discussing the details of the coming Independence Day celebrations. Brass bands and jazz bands were coming from abroad, and so was Princess Royal Mary, who was due to arrive two days before the big day: 24 October 1964. A golden dress and coat had been designed for Mrs Betty Kaunda. She and the new President Kaunda would arrive in a Chrysler Copper Car, on loan from America to celebrate Zambia’s lucrative mining industry.

  Out of context, it all sounded to Agnes like superficial minutiae, as if this were just an unusually lively meeting of a planning committee for a bridge party. Bored and a little angry, she sat back and waited for the guests to leave. She had been worried that Ronald’s hip, elite friends wouldn’t like her, but now she faced an even worse proposition. What if she didn’t like them?

  * * *

  Independence was upon the nation. Kwacha! Ngwee…The sun has risen! Light falls across the plains…Every morning now, Grace used polishing the floors as an excuse to sneak into Madam’s bedroom and listen to the radio chatter about ‘Z Day’. The final touches were being made to a giant copper pedestal where the Independence Flame would burn. Grass-green Independence flags had sprouted across town. Workmen were chipping away at the fabulist British crest over the high court – a lion and a unicorn – which would be replaced by a realist Zambian one: a man and a woman on either side of a shield with wavy white lines on a black field, a pickaxe and a hoe crossed above it. Mr Kapwepwe, the Foreign Minister, had been sighted in his toga, practising with traditional dancers for the celebration.

  Grace was not naturally given to joy. But she had never felt so proud to be African – no, Zambian, that word on everyone’s lips. Tiyende pamodzi ndim’tima umo, she sang under her breath as she mopped the floors. The bwana insisted that she wear a blue frock and a silly white hat but as Z Day approached, she started tying her patriotic chitenge wrapper around her waist too, the one with a pattern of Kenneth Kaunda’s face. That perfect brown oval with its widow’s peak, grinning cheeks, twinkling eyes and teeth, was everywhere these days: on posters and on flags and even – Grace rotated her hips in subtle circles – on her own two buttocks.

  She hadn’t had the chance to vote for Kaunda. Only married women could vote, and the law had only just been changed to allow Africans to marry at all. But Grace had jealously examined her Aunt Beatrice’s red-stained thumb – those who could not write their names had voted by dipping their thumbs in ink and rubbing them on the roster. Grace had exhorted Ba Agnes to vote, too, believing Madam’s choice of a black husband would surely lead her to the correct decision. But Madam had begged off, saying she did not feel that she had the right. In the end, it did not matter. Kaunda’s United National Independence Party, UNIP for short, had swept the African vote.

  On Z Day, Lusaka was overflowing with bodies and vehicles – coaches and trains had been secured to bring people in from the provinces – and Grace was among them. Fallen jacaranda blooms carpeted the roads in purple, flame trees lined them in red, and the whole city flickered with little green flags. It was a joyous fete of dust and ululation, Independence Stadium at its centre. The crowds swarmed towards it down Great North Road, passing word along as the ceremonial events unfolded. Someone listening to the radio would tell someone else who would shout it out to the others, who would recount it to those behind them. Waves of news – ‘The president has arrived!’ ‘The dancing has started!’ – cascaded this way across town, fading to simpler language and softer cheers as they went along.

  By midnight, Grace found herself huddled with a group of students around a saucepan radio. They hushed as the announcer intoned: ‘We see the British flag coming down. We see the Zambian flag going up!’ A thunk, a whistle, a bang – an umbrella of fire opened in the sky. Everyone looked up, gasping as one. The bright spots of light dilated into teary hexagons in Grace’s eyes. Zambia was born.

  Spent with emotion, she threaded her way through the partying crowd towards home. A parked bus ahead was visibly bouncing up and down. Grace shook her head and shifted her path to avoid it. She was not against happiness per se, but she disdained any excessive display of it. Then something pale caught her eye – a hand gripping the sill of an open window of the shaking bus. Grace stared at it, trying to work out why it looked so familiar. Then she saw the ring on the fourth finger. Copper with a green stone.

  ‘Madam?’ she murmured. ‘But it cannot be.’ She squeezed through the crowd towards the bus window and reached up to tap the pale hand. It vanished like a startled spider.

  ‘Madam! Ba Agnes!’ she shouted. Madam’s face came into view, framed by the jolting window. It looked like a puddle of Maheu malt drink, shivering and yellowish.

  ‘Grace?’ Madam squeaked.

  The bus hiccupped to life, then growled.

  ‘Madam, but you do not belong here! Where is bwana?’

  ‘Oh, Grace.’ Madam reached her hand out of the window and Grace grabbed it. ‘I’m so glad you found me. I had absolutely no idea how on earth I was going to get home and—’

  The bus belched and rolled forward. They both cried out and Grace started jogging alongside, their grasped hands tethering her to the bus. As it picked up speed, she banged at the side of it with her free hand, shouting for it
to stop. She heard Madam shouting too. Their wrists were sliding painfully on the edge of the sill. The bus finally lurched to a stop, engine still running. Grace bent over, one hand on her knee, the other raised to clutch Madam’s hand.

  ‘You can let go now, Grace,’ Madam said breathlessly. ‘They’re letting me off.’

  As they walked along under the orange street lights, catching their breath, Madam explained that she and bwana had received invitations to Z Day from Sir Stewart Gore-Browne, who was there in an official capacity as a former leader of the first African political party. Madam had decided to come to the celebrations alone – the workers had the day off and Ronald had abruptly left for the village without her.

  ‘He has been worried about his parents ever since they joined the Lumpa Church.’

  Grace was so gripped by this – the bwana’s family followed that madwoman? – that she forgot herself and started asking questions. Agnes and Grace had been listening to the news of this rebellion on the radio for the last few months, but they had never discussed it. A woman named Alice Lenshina had started a religious cult. Her followers, thousands of them, had built their own settlements and refused to pay taxes, showing allegiance to neither the colonial government nor Kaunda’s party. As soon as he had won the elections, Kaunda had sent in troops to quash the Lumpa Church rebellion. Last July, the confrontation had turned deadly – reports said that at least 1,000 of Lenshina’s people had been gunned down.

  ‘Mm, but I think it is good,’ Grace opined. ‘You must show the mighty of the lion. Kaunda is a proper leader! These Lumpa-Lumpa are just causing mischiffs!’

  ‘Yes, I suppose. But it does seem frightful to bring in guns so soon.’

  ‘Oh, was the bwana’s family hurt in these shootings?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Agnes, rubbing her sore wrist. ‘Ronald has kept it very private.’ She couldn’t answer Grace’s personal questions, so she offered some vague opinions about the political situation. Grace responded in kind. Fireworks stunned the sky smoky behind the two new Zambians as they walked, chatting back and forth, working at about the same level of ignorance, but with a near equal measure of interest. They had walked almost two miles before they remembered to flag down a car.

  * * *

  This was the start of a new relationship between Agnes and Grace. It was more like family than friendship, forged through proximity and dependence rather than affinity. It coincided with the opening of a chasm in Agnes’s marriage. Ronald had become the Incredible Invisible Husband. At first he was away for weeks at a time, travelling north to tend to his mother, who refused to leave the Lumpa even after losing two children and a husband to the massacre in ’64. Then he took a staff development fellowship to become a lecturer at the newly minted University of Zambia. This meant three years in Scotland to finish his degree. Ronald insisted Agnes stay behind in Lusaka. No need to uproot her life again – besides, it wasn’t like they could stay with her family.

  When Ronald declared that he was staying for two more years in Edinburgh to finish his PhD, Agnes was bewildered. Her husband had drifted into some realm that she could no longer access. On his infrequent trips home to Lusaka, they still made love – Agnes sniffing fervently, hunting the scent of other women and desperate for his own – but they barely spoke. And after a week, he’d be off again, to collect samples in the field or to dig in the archives or to present his findings to his dissertation committee in Edinburgh.

  Grace tended to Agnes in his absence. Assuming her Madam would want to be around people like her, Grace carted her off to the places where all the expats congregated in Lusaka: the Ridgeway Hotel, the Polo Club, the Tennis Club. The colour bar had been banned but pockets of white life remained, places where money made the difference that the law no longer did. Agnes didn’t question Grace’s choices. She thought this was just what one did in Lusaka. As long as her aide was with her, she was fine. Grace was a wet blanket, but she was a blanket nonetheless.

  There was near-constant physical contact between the two women, especially after Agnes got pregnant during one of Ronald’s brief visits home. She had dire morning sickness and Grace spent weeks guiding her Madam from bedroom to bathroom and back, wiping up the splatter when she missed the bowl.

  ‘I’m too old for this,’ Agnes moaned between gushes. She was not quite thirty.

  ‘No, no,’ Grace clucked. ‘My aunty, she even had a baby when she was forty-sickisty!’

  Agnes spat miserably. ‘That is a lie, Grace.’

  ‘Bwana, he will come back soon.’

  But Ronald did not come back to Lusaka when Agnes went into labour. And so in May of 1972, Agnes gave birth in the maternity ward at the University Teaching Hospital with only Grace there to wait patiently as she shrieked and pushed and wept and finally, held a nine-pound baby girl in her arms. In a fit of hormonal sentimentality, Agnes named her daughter Carolyn after her mother. She wrote to Surrey with the news but never received a reply.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said to Grace. ‘I suppose we are family enough.’

  ‘Yes, Ba Agnes. She is so brown, I can even call this one my daughter!’ said Grace.

  * * *

  Agnes couldn’t picture her daughter’s skin but she could feel her hair, which spiralled gloriously into itself, curls thick as thieves. Sitting by the pool at the tennis club or in front of the telly, Agnes would place Carol on her lap and work her fingers into that warm, springy halo for hours on end. Agnes loved this; Carol loved this; this was how they loved. But when the time came for the girl to start nursery school, Ronald, who had returned from the UK, said enough was enough. It was not acceptable for a child of Carol’s status to run around Lusaka with that matted mess on her head. So one day, Grace took her to get her hair done and left Agnes by herself at the club. And that was how Agnes met Lionel Heath.

  She was sitting alone at the junior courts, listening intently to the thuds and pocks of an ongoing match. Too embarrassed to play by feel in public, this was the only way for Agnes to revisit her lost vocation. She had learned how to discern the speed and direction of the ball by the sound of the rebound from the rackets and the echoing steps of the players. This was far more enjoyable than the other games of observation that expats played at the Lusaka Tennis Club: who was slighting whom, who was shagging whom, who was destined for a divorce or an abortion.

  Today, the tennis players she was observing had just achieved a satisfying volley, a percussive chanty of grunts and thwaps, when someone sat next to her on the bench.

  ‘I’ve never understood tennis,’ came a man’s low voice.

  Agnes smiled blandly in his direction and turned back to the game. Why sit here then?

  ‘So many…moving parts.’

  She frowned. ‘It can seem complicated,’ she conceded. ‘But it’s really rather elegant.’

  ‘Elegant? Elegant in what way?’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘It works in threes.’

  ‘Threes. Fascinating. Go on.’ His voice, the deep vibrato of a tall man, sounded sincere.

  Agnes explained – three points to take a lead, six to end a set, three sets to make a match – and then, carried away by pedagogy, she said: ‘Do you know why they call a zero point love?’

  ‘Is it not sheer British condescension to the loser? “You poor love,” et cetera?’

  ‘Oh dear, no!’ she laughed. ‘It’s from the French word for egg – the shape of a zero. L’oeuf.’

  ‘Loaf. Like a loaf of bread?’

  ‘No, no. Oeuf.’

  ‘Oaf? As in a fool?’

  ‘Errrf,’ she dragged the word out.

  ‘Oooooof,’ he echoed and she finally heard the tease in his voice. This was no Ronald – of course he knew the French word for egg, and the origin of love. He just delighted in wordplay – when she told him her name, he tossed it around a bit and ended up with another jeu de mots.


  ‘Pleasure to meet you, Eggnest.’ He took her hand off her knee to shake it. ‘I’m Lionel.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I shall call you the Lion then!’ she said, a flush rising up her neck.

  ‘Touché,’ he said and she could hear the smile in his voice.

  By the time Grace returned with a sore and sulky Carol in tow, Agnes felt that Lionel knew everything about her – except, apparently, that she had a child. She was mortified by the omission, but Lionel didn’t seem surprised by Carol’s existence, nor by her skin colour. He greeted the girl seriously and cheered her up with jokes and compliments about her hairdo – thin French braids with softly clicking beads on the ends. Grace repacked the bags as Agnes stood there, listening to her daughter’s shrill trill and Lionel’s bass rumble. Why was it so easy to talk to this man? Maybe because he wasn’t like the other expats at the club, with their casual contempt and vestigial racism – calling the staff ‘boys’ and snapping their fingers. But he wasn’t like Ronald’s apamwamba friends either, with their intellectual insults and inside jokes. He certainly wasn’t like Ronald. For one thing, he was tall.

  * * *

  When they met again several months later, Agnes was seated at an outdoor table at the club bar, waiting for Carol to finish her swim lessons. To pass the time, she was chatting with an Austrian couple. Hans was here to conduct research on birds in Eastern Province, and Greta was here to accompany him. They were new to Lusaka, which made them somewhat tolerable, though they didn’t speak English well. Agnes was trying to describe Ronald’s research in simple terms.

  ‘It’s about testing the Kariba Dam. It’s important to have a sort of switch to turn it…off—’

  ‘Eggnest! Are you boring these people with your little l’oeuf story?’

  Agnes sputtered happily. She couldn’t believe he’d remembered. Lionel explained the l’oeuf/love joke to the couple, who laughed in a puzzled, half-understanding way.