The Old Drift

by Namwali Serpell

  ‘No, not your father.’ Agnes tilted her head. ‘I asked you to tell me about you.’

  Thandi paused, then laughed. ‘You know, no one has ever asked me to do that.’

  ‘Really?’ Agnes smiled, her bottom lip catching on a big tooth. ‘How perfectly strange!’ She was pouring tea into a cup, a finger hooked on the rim to check the level.

  ‘These teacups are very pretty,’ Thandi said, then hesitated. ‘I mean, nice.’

  ‘Are they? Won’t you describe them for me?’ asked Agnes. ‘As you see them.’

  ‘Oh. Um, they have these ridges going up. Like something pouring up, like shooting up…’

  Agnes traced her cup with her fingers and nodded. ‘Like a fountain?’

  ‘A fountain, yes!’ said Thandi. ‘Like in Trafalgar Square.’

  ‘Trafalgar Square? In London?’ Agnes sounded surprised.

  ‘Yes, my sister lives there,’ Thandi explained. ‘I pass through on stopovers. I love Trafalgar Square!’ She found herself babbling about the little white pigeons and the big black lions and the strangeness of a place like that in the middle of London – at once so regal and so public.

  ‘Did you go to the National Gallery?’

  ‘Yes! I love the paintings by Mr Turner—’ Thandi hesitated again, then went on. ‘The sky and the sea and the light. The light especially. It looks like a body and…’

  ‘How remarkable. Like a body, you say?’

  ‘Yes, you know how they say “a body of light”. An angel maybe?’ Thandi tried to tame the thought. But Agnes pressed Thandi about how exactly light was like a body. Thandi obliged. Their words fell in together. The conversation between them grew rich and warm and delicious, like a stew they were both stirring, their laughter scattered here and there like spice.

  * * *

  Lee was amused when Thandi told him how much she had enjoyed meeting his mother.

  ‘Did she ask you why you think you’re good enough for me?’

  ‘Um, no.’ Thandi rolled onto her back. ‘We talked about fountains.’

  ‘Fountains?’ He snapped her bra strap. She always kept her bra on when they had sex, shy of the white bumps that studded her nipples. He had told her that this was normal – the bumps secreted oil to lubricate them for breastfeeding. But that just reminded her of how many breasts he must see as a med student.

  ‘Ya, fountains,’ she said. ‘You know. Like Trafalgar Square.’

  ‘With the big tuma lions?’ He lit a cigarette.

  ‘Mmhm.’ She closed one eye then the other to make the ceiling switch perspectives.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I used to have dreams about giant animals. Like those lions.’

  ‘Really? Lee Banda’s icy brain can have dreams?’

  ‘Ya,’ he said, shy and indignant. ‘It started with that bird totem at Great Zimbabwe.’

  ‘I’ve never been to the ruins.’

  ‘You youthies, you have no patriotism. That is the problem with this kahntree,’ he said, adopting the complaining tone of an old man.

  ‘Ach, shattap, men. Just because you went to school here doesn’t make you Zimbabwean.’

  ‘We are bluther nations! We were once the Fedallayshun!’ He blew smoke from both nostrils like a cartoon bull. ‘Didn’t my dad tell you that? He’s usually full of the good old days.’

  ‘I didn’t really talk to your dad.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The truth was, she had found Ronald curt and condescending. And she had hated how Lee acted around him when he came to pick her up from the house, like an abused puppy ducking for the inevitable blow. That kind of weakness repulsed her. But she didn’t say this.

  ‘I just like your mum. She’s interested in my ideas.’

  ‘What ideas?’

  ‘Hm. Yes. What ideas?’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Teach me about Great Zimbabwe, bwana.’

  ‘I don’t remember much. It was a long time ago,’ he said, curling his fingers into a cone around his cigarette. ‘But you know what? I found this weird tape on that trip.’

  ‘A tape?’

  ‘Ya,’ he chuckled with a frown. ‘We were staying at this motel in Bulawayo. And I saw this little red book in my mum’s suitcase, so I picked it up…’

  ‘Hallo! Invasion of privacy!’ Thandi smacked his arm.

  ‘Whatever, man, listen. There was a tape inside the book. The pages were cut out to make a space, and the tape was, like, hidden inside. And, get this – it was labelled “Lionel”.’

  ‘Mmmm, very Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘So I listened to it on my sister’s Walkman. And it was like – a play.’ He shook his head. ‘Or a performance? They were re-enacting a conversation between Kaunda and Mao.’

  ‘KK and the Mau Mau?’

  ‘Just one Mao, like China. Chairman Mao. I looked it up later and it turns out they met in 1974.’

  ‘Huh,’ she said. ‘Who knew?’

  ‘Anyway, on the inside cover, there was this poem. About the lion and the egg?’

  ‘The lion and the mouse,’ she corrected. ‘That’s a children’s story, babe. Like kalulu.’

  ‘Ya, maybe.’ He shook his head. ‘It was a bit…off, though. The poem was addressed to my mum: “Dearest Agnes”, it said. And it was signed: “With love, Lionel”.’

  ‘Whoah, who is this Lionel?’ Her eyes widened. ‘I mean, who is this other Lionel?’

  ‘That’s the question.’ Smoke wreathed his smile.

  ‘You don’t think…’

  ‘Who knows?’ He leaned over and crushed his cigarette in an ashtray. Then he grabbed her playfully by the shoulders. ‘But don’t let me catch you with some dude’s poem in your diary, Thunder!’ He flipped her onto her belly, pressed his chest to her back, and whispered in her ear, ‘You. Are. Mine.’

  Lee wasn’t really a possessive man. But he often used the spectre of jealousy this way as an excuse to prove himself. Now, as ever, he proceeded to fuck Thandi with great precision.

  * * *

  Brenda broke the news in the middle of their next airborne shift: Zambia Airways was about to declare bankruptcy. Thandi let out an uncharacteristic stream of curses. Brenda snickered.

  ‘Should have seen it coming, my deeya. At least you have a fancy coloured doctor to marry.’

  Some of the stewardesses would try to trap pilots or businessmen into an arrangement. Others might catch shifts on other airlines. Many would be left hanging in Zim or Zam, with their non-transferable skills. Would Thandi, in fact, have to marry her fancy coloured doctor? It had been a year and she was pretty sure she was in love with Lee Banda. She’d met his parents. But they were both still so young. The thought of marrying him made Thandi feel like there was something empty and frenzied in her chest, a bee in a tin cup.

  The LUN–HRE flight that day felt apocalyptic. The lavatory was awash in disintegrating tissue. Passengers dropped ice in the aisle and snorfled their food and snotted through napkins. A newborn issued a piercing wail that made Thandi brim with self-pity. Brenda had shrewdly crammed a closet with passengers’ extra baggage and pocketed the fee. The closet door wouldn’t shut, but Brenda ignored its thin racket, flipping calmly through her magazine, cleaning behind her manicure with a toothpick, cooing over the intercom. Somehow, this glib consistency, Brenda’s same-old-same-old reaction to the fact that they would all soon be fired, bothered Thandi the most.

  When she let herself into Lee’s flat in Harare that night, she dropped her bag on the trashy floor, took off her standard-issue green pumps, went to the bedroom and lay on the unmade bed. She fell asleep fully clothed. She woke in the dark. She knew Lee was still on his rounds, but she felt annoyed. He needed to come home so that she could refuse his comforting words, then let him seduce her. She padded around the flat, judging its blatant maleness. A stiff leather sofa, a scratched glass table, c
lashing electronic equipment. No light, no warmth, no round bodies or upward movement. In the fridge, she found two Tuskers and a can of rust-coloured tomato paste spotted with fuzzy white mould. She sneered at Lee’s boxers on the floor. She spitefully reset his alarm clock. It didn’t take long to find the book.

  It was A4 size with a flimsy blue cover, like an exercise book from primary school. Inside was a list of names, all women’s names, and dates both old and new. Thandi scanned mechanically, pausing only once, when she saw a name she recognised. It was her own, starting last year and appearing with more frequency amidst the others as the months went on. Her heart bobbing at the base of her throat, she put the notebook back and sat on the sofa, waiting.

  Lee came in a couple of hours later, wearing scrubs, holding his keys and a file that said CONFIDENTIAL. Thandi began to accuse him, the volume and pitch of her voice rising steadily. Her jealousy, like his, was not real. It was an idea of jealousy, a tic picked up from films and friends. What she really felt was humiliation, like when he’d kissed her in front of everyone on the plane. How could he have exposed them like this? The stakes felt even higher now that she had lost her job. She didn’t breathe a word of that, though.

  When she was done shouting, she slid on her green pumps, picked up her bag and strode to the front door.

  ‘Thandi, wait,’ Lee called out. ‘I need to talk to you about this.’

  She turned to look at him. His eyes were on the file in his lap. His brow was crumpled, his lips curved down. This was the cringing face he wore around his father, as if his greedy entitlement had been replaced by fear. Disgusted, Thandi turned back around and walked out the door.

  1996

  ‘I can’t believe you’ve never partied in the bush, man,’ Scholie said in his mongrel accent, a voice like flipping through satellite TV stations. ‘How long have you been in Livingstone? Six months?’

  He touched the small of Thandiwe’s back as he helped her onto the first bench of the Land Rover. He tucked a blanket around her like she was a child and she thought he might kiss her forehead with those plump lips of his. Instead he patted her knee, jumped in the driver’s seat up front and started the engine. It thrumped like a dying animal, then accelerated to a screechy hum. They jerked forward.

  ‘Oops,’ Scholie said in his own voice and smiled back at her.

  Thandi shivered and off they went. He drove out of the lodge and onto the smooth new tarmac, then along an older road pocked with potholes. After a few minutes, he turned the Land Rover onto the dirt road of the game park and the rumble of the tyres gave way to an uneven crunching, pebbles raucously raining up against the undercarriage. They paused at the gatehouse, where Scholie and the guard exchanged a laugh in lieu of cash. The Land Rover surged on, the guard leering through the dark at her as they passed.

  The Land Rover was open on the sides and it was soon submerged in the sounds of the park: spiralling calls and burps and gurgles. The breeze grew satiny. An ongoing buzz sometimes whined louder and then thin wings would flick Thandi’s cheeks. She held her blanket up over her mouth and stared out into the night. There would be animals out there. But she saw no signs of life, and if the headlamps now and again caught beady flashes on the horizon, she could not distinguish them from the stars. Her eyes were beginning to get tired when the Land Rover stopped, so abruptly she almost careened off the back bench. Scholie held his hand up and said, ‘Shhh.’

  Thandi reached for his shoulder but before she made contact, she was flung back in her seat as the vehicle leapt ahead at top speed, bumping up and down, the canvas roof scraped by low branches. Insects catapulted off her body. Her hair weave, carefully pressed that morning, tangled in the wind. But she was exhilarated by the momentum, the blast of speed and air. She felt a sting in her right eye and rubbed at it. It only grew worse, coming in progressive stabs. Her blinking became like a seizure. Tears looped over her cheek, buffeted into odd paths by the wind.

  Thandi screamed with frustration, and the wobble in her voice made her realise that she was shaking. Scholie glanced back, slowed the Land Rover to a halt and turned off the engine. He climbed swiftly over the division between them and turned on a small torch hanging from his key ring. He shone it in her face.

  ‘Stop blinking!’ he said.

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘I can’t see what’s wrong unless you stop blinking.’ Torch in one hand, he used the fingers of the other to stretch her eyelids open, exposing the pinpricks of pain.

  ‘There’s an insect in your eye.’

  ‘Oh God,’ she stuttered, ‘it’s biting me from the inside!’

  ‘Keep it cool, he’s the one that’s gonna die.’

  He stretched her eyelids wider, pursed his plump lips, and blew against her eye with quick force. She blinked uncontrollably. Again, he tugged her eye open and his breath rushed against the tender cornea. The moment grew still and wide, so wide she could almost feel the individual beads of his saliva spray. She shuddered, tears welling from her eye socket.

  ‘Why were you going so fast?’ she snapped. Her eye was sore but the stinging was gone.

  ‘I heard something,’ he grinned. ‘Can’t be too careful in the bush.’

  * * *

  When they got to the camp, Scholie helped her off the Land Rover in a showy way that annoyed her – as if she were not herself in the hospitality business. She stepped away huffily and promptly stumbled. He raised an eyebrow at her high heels and left her, striding towards the bonfire. She stood there, wishing she hadn’t dressed up, eyeing Scholie as he slapped palms in greeting, his teeth glinting in the firelight. By the time she had navigated the ruts in the ground, he was sitting next to a white girl, an open beer bottle between his legs. Thandi paused, taking in the canvas tents that circled the circle of people, and the darkness that circled them all.

  There were a dozen or so tourists, and scattered among them, three other Zambian game guides apart from Scholie. Thandi waved hi to them over the fire. They all knew her from JollyBoys, the new backpackers lodge where she’d been working this year – part of her job was to ring the guides to arrange drives or hikes for the guests. There were two local girls here, too, whinnying and tossing their plaits. Thandi was grateful for their presence – her outfit was tame by comparison – but she went to sit by Scholie nevertheless. She didn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression.

  Scholie didn’t look up as Thandi levered herself down, negotiating her tight jeans. He was already in conversation with the white girl, whose laugh was surprisingly deep and throaty – a grandfatherly laugh. Thandi leaned forward to catch Scholie’s eye. He smiled and winked, except the wink fluttered, teasing her. She shook her head but her pulse raced with the memory of his breath on her.

  ‘Little TandyCandy,’ he said. ‘You were so cute. Shaking like a chicken in the rain.’

  Scholie sounded more Zambian when he spoke to her, his accent shorn of the twangs and twirls he’d accumulated over years of trying to make his meaning clear to foreigners. Thandi smiled. He would like it that she had been so helpless in front of him. Their ongoing joke was that she was Kariba Dam and he was the water and, if he persevered, she would one day open her floodgates.

  The white girl was looking at Thandi. Or through her: the girl’s gaze was thick with drink and she scratched absently at the tattered bracelets strung on her wrist like scraps on a clothes line. Her hair was ragged as the flames and almost the same colour. Thandi reached across Scholie’s legs to introduce herself. The girl gave her forgettable name in an American accent and as she clasped her hand, Thandi caught a whiff of her: tea biscuits on a tin plate in the midday sun.

  The wind lifted, making the bonfire holler and the tents sound like clapping hands. Scholie and the girl resumed chatting. There was nothing for Thandi to do but stare at the fire’s gradual, unruly death, and eavesdrop. Among the tourists, it seemed, nobody knew anybody but everybody kne
w everybody: recognisable knots in the informal net of backpackers draped over southern Africa. There was a group of Nordic creatures gleaming under the crisp of their sunburn; a gaggle of British girls who had already taken over the drinking, dictating its pace and quantity; a South African couple with limbs entwined; and the American girl next to Scholie, wobbly and giggly and all on her own.

  She had apparently started drinking early – not at her hotel, but at a bar frequented by locals. Scholie asked how she’d heard of the place.

  ‘My bungee instructor,’ she smirked.

  ‘He’s Zambian? And who was that?’ he asked, testing her.

  ‘His name is something like Chungo?’

  ‘Chongo! I love that guy, he’s mal,’ Scholie laughed. ‘His name means shuttup.’

  Thandi rolled her eyes at this translation-as-flirtation.

  ‘So.’ Scholie sipped his beer. ‘When did you jump?’

  ‘I bungee…jamp?’ the girl giggled. ‘I mean, jumped, yesterday.’

  ‘They only started doing it last year, this jumping off the bridge thing. It’s madness!’

  ‘Oh-my-god. Spiritual experience. It was like…I was truly alive for the first time in my life.’

  ‘Radical,’ Scholie murmured. ‘Have you seen any of the other waterfalls?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she exclaimed. ‘We went to that really tall one, Kalambo Falls? In Impala?’

  Mbala, Thandi thought irritably, it’s a town, not an animal. She got up and moved over to the other side of the fire, a few feet away from one of the Nordic tourists, who lifted a hand in greeting. Thandi smiled and smoothed her hair, subtly slapping the seam of her weave. She wished she had rescheduled her plaiting appointment for sooner. She would have to withstand this needling itch for at least two more days.

  The Nordic tourist stood and walked over, handing her an open beer. She thanked him. He sat. They sipped in unison and conducted a pro forma interview: their names, where they were from, what they had studied at uni. His cool, keen curiosity reminded her of Lee’s mother. She told him that she had gone straight from uni to Zambia Airways, then taken a job at JollyBoys after the airline went bankrupt and she was let go the following year. She had just asked whether his job suited his degree any better than hers did when she heard Scholie pitching his voice high – ‘It’s biting me from the inside!’ – followed by his baritone laugh.