Monkeys in My Garden

by Valerie Pixley

  “Steven …” I said again. “I thought he’d gone back to Zimbabwe … to die.”

  A grim smile flitted across O’D’s face. “No,” he told me. “It seems that Steven’s very much alive and kicking and living not far from us.”

  Later that afternoon, when Caetano arrived at the sawmill, he and O’D drove off into the forest in the blue Gaz. They returned an hour later, with huge grins … and my radio!

  “We gave the young fellow his reward,” O’D told me while I examined the radio. To my dismay, it had deteriorated in the short time it had been away and looked a bit battered. One aerial was bent and the other had been broken off at the base. “We also had to pay his uncle some money, to reimburse him for the thirty two chickens,” he went on. “It was Steven. He never did go back to Zimbabwe. We drove over to his machamba to speak to him and the moment he saw us, he ran away and disappeared into the bush.”

  “They broke it,” I said. “They broke my radio and now it will never work again.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I can fix it,” O’D said. “It’s only the aerials.” And while I looked on anxiously, he sat down and repaired the radio and by that afternoon, I had my unseen friends back again, to keep me company in the Nhamacoa.

  The ease with which Steven had been able to climb through our unprotected sitting room windows and to escape again, undetected, with my radio made us renew our efforts to find a reliable and relatively honest night guard.

  For a month or so, we tried out two guards sent to us from the Chimoio police. However, when Frank discovered they were helping the locals at the Lica turnoff to steal our planks in the dark of night, we fired them and the search for guards went on.

  Finally, we found someone. This was a tall, thin man called Lovad who seemed a fairly sensible and responsible person.

  One evening, some months after we had employed Lovad, he came to work and told us he was feeling ill with malaria. As we always had a supply of choroquine and paracetamol at hand in the house (chloroquine worked well at this time), O’D gave Lovad a course of these pills, taking great care to explain the dosage to him and even writing this down on the outside of the little brown packets he put them into:

  Day one 4 chloroquine pills + 2 Paracetamol pills

  Day two 4 chloroquine pills + 2 Paracetamol pills

  Day three 2 chloroquine pills + 2 Paracetamol pills

  Assuring O’D that he understood his instructions completely, Lovad went home to take his pills and to lie sweating and freezing on his sleeping mat in his hut. He would not be back for work, we knew, for several days.

  Lovad surprised us, however, by appearing for duty the very next evening and by looking quite fit and strong.

  “Lovad,” O’D asked, “are you sure you’re ready to start work again?”

  “Yes, Patrao,” Lovad replied cheerfully, “I’m completely cured.”

  “Well, even though you may feel better after one day, Lovad,” O’D warned, “you must still finish all the pills I gave you.”

  Lovad’s reply startled and alarmed both of us.

  “I have finished all the pills, Patrao,” he told O’D, and pulling three little crumpled brown envelopes out of the top pocket of his green guard’s uniform, showed us that they were completely empty.

  Our mouths fell open. Lovad had swallowed down all sixteen pills in one go!

  For the next few days we watched Lovad closely, wondering if he was going to drop dead. The large dosage of chloroquine he had taken had certainly been effective in killing off all the malaria bubbling away in his bloodstream - would it do the same to him?

  Time passed and as Lovad remained hale and hearty, we turned our attention to another problem, that of finding a suitable driver to replace Tacarinduwya, who, we had discovered, was also a drinking driver like Fernand.

  As driving licences meant nothing in Mozambique and the only way we could test a driver’s abilities was to put them into one of our lorries, O’D used the green Gaz for testing purposes. When driver after driver failed to reach O’D’s standard, our assistant tractor driver Zerouso piped up.

  “I know how to drive a lorry, Patrao.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before, then?” O’D asked, and prepared both himself and Zerouso for a test drive in the green Gaz.

  Inside the cab, he went through the various gears and pedals with Zerouso to refresh his memory and then, when Zerouso assured O’D that he understood everything, he climbed out and clambered up into the open back of the lorry, not wanting to be trapped in the cab if Zerouso did anything stupid.

  Zerouso turned on the ignition, pulled away with a succession of fearsome jerks and then, ignoring the track, drove flat out through the bush, lurching and bouncing straight over rocks and bushes and even flattening small trees!

  Certain that the drive was going to end in disaster, I realised O’D had come to the same conclusion when I saw him fling himself off the back of the lorry to save himself just like a stuntman in a film. When he landed on the ground and rolled in the dirt, I cried “WOW!” and clapped my hands over my eyes. Was he hurt? Had he broken some bones?

  Through the spaces in between my fingers, I saw O’D rise to his feet, red with dust. “ZEROUSO!” he screamed. “BRAKE! PUT YOUR FOOT ON THE BRAKE, YOU BLOODY FOOL!”

  Almost invisible in the cloud of dust Zerouso had stirred up, the green Gaz came to a screeching, shuddering halt and stalled. O’D ran up to it. Remarkably, it was undamaged despite all the large and unusual obstacles Zerouso had driven it over.

  “Get out, Zerouso,” O’D said grimly, wrenching the driver’s door open. “Why did you pretend you could drive when you obviously know NOTHING ABOUT DRIVING AT ALL!”

  Zerouso was unrepentant. “It wasn’t my fault, Patrao!” His voice rose up in an accusing whine. “This lorry’s dangerous. Very dangerous! It’s got something wrong with it. It almost killed me!”

  Our next would-be driver arrived early one morning from Chimoio. He was a small fat man and although he looked as if his feet would barely reach the pedals of a lorry, he possessed a driver’s licence stating that he was, indeed, a bona fide lorry driver.

  This time, O’D sent him off in the green Gaz with Naison, our workforce supervisor in the forest.

  While the man started up the green Gaz, O’D and I stood in front of the house and watched. We watched, wincing, as the Gaz laboured down the track, gears grating horribly as the driver forced them into position. We were still watching when our green lorry rounded the bend in the track and disappeared from sight. A disappearance that coincided with a sound - an almighty BANGING sound - that reverberated all over the forest causing the Vervet monkeys to chuck chuck chuck! in alarm and O’D and I to exchange a look.

  We said nothing until we saw Naison walking back down the track towards us, alone.

  “Well,” I said, “at least HE isn’t dead.”

  O’D looked grim. “If the driver isn’t dead, he soon will be if he’s smashed up my lorry.”

  Naison stopped in front of us. His face was expressionless. “Patrao,” he said, “the driver lost control of the Gaz when we went around the bend … and drove it straight into a tree.”

  “Is he hurt?” I asked.

  “No,” Naison told us. “He’s gone.”

  Anticipating O’D’s reaction to the destruction of the green Gaz, the man had fled.

  We walked down the track with Naison and rounded the bend towards the scene of the crime. The green Gaz was a sorry sight, its front embedded into the trunk of a large eucalyptus tree. Water was still spurting out of the mangled radiator and the cab was crumpled beyond repair. On the ground, shards of glass glittered in the sunlight from the smashed windscreen.

  “Well, that’s the end of the green Gaz,” I said.

  “Perhaps not,” O’D, who could repair almost anything, muttered.

  Towing his wrecked lorry back to the workshop with the blue Gaz, he examined it. Luckily, the engine had come through the accident unscathed and as
he just happened to have a spare cab among all the spare parts he was always buying, it wasn’t long before he had the green Gaz on the road again. The only part that was missing was the windscreen.

  “I’m not going to bother buying another windscreen,” O’D told me grimly. “The quality of Mozambican drivers is so low, it’ll probably only be a matter of days before they shatter it. Whoever drives the green Gaz will just have to put up with it as it is.”

  Now Naison stepped into the breach. “I know how to drive, Patrao,” he said. “I don’t have a driving licence but I learned to drive in Zimbabwe.”

  O’D examined him thoughtfully. Naison could only see clearly with his left eye, the right eye being covered with cloudy white cataracts.

  “Alright,” O’D came to a decision. “Let’s give you a test and see how you get on.”

  The test drive satisfied O’D and the next morning, he set off into the forest in the blue Gaz with the workers, while Naison and Madeira followed in the green Gaz. Using a one-eyed driver who didn’t have a driving licence meant nothing to us anymore. We had tried out so many Mozambican drivers who did have driving licences and who had damaged our lorry and been a danger to our workers that Naison was a relief to us all. Reliable, slow and careful, the only thing he wouldn’t be able to do would be to drive anywhere out of the forest.

  Naison had been driving for some weeks without any problems whatsoever when something quite worrying happened.

  Our workers usually returned from the forest just before sundown but one night they didn’t return at all. O’D and I waited and waited for them until the moon rose high in the starry night sky and it grew very late. What on earth could have happened? Had there been a breakdown? If so, why had no one run back through the forest as they normally did, to tell us about it? Or had there been an accident … with Naison, our one-eyed, unlicenced driver at the steering wheel?

  Early the next morning, just as O’D was about to go and look for our missing workers, we heard a familiar rumbling sound. And there, around the bend in the track, came Naison in the green Gaz loaded down with logs, followed closely by Fo’pence on the tractor with the trailer full of workers. Looking even more dishevelled than usual, they all slumped with exhaustion.

  As Fo’pence drove slowly past the house, Madeira jumped off the trailer and came over to us.

  “Bom dia, Patrao,” he greeted O’D tiredly.

  “Bom dia, Madeira,” O’D said. “Well? Why are you so late?”

  Madeira gave a shudder. “Something terrible happened to us last night, Patrao. Something very terrible. And it was all the fault of the scouts! They forgot to tell us there were graves near the panga pangas they had found … and we cut the panga pangas down without making an offering to the Spirits!”

  This oversight had angered the spirits and there had been breakdowns, tyres puncturing and a big black mamba slithering in and out of the Gaz cab! Forced to spend the night in the forest, our workers had huddled supperless around a small fire, hearing eerie sounds and seeing strange and frightening things. These things had included all the tractor tyres deflating and inflating themselves - all at the same time - and all night long!

  In the morning, our forest crew had hastily made amends to the spirits. Kneeling down near the graves and with a few words of apology, they had placed a small offering of tobacco down on the ground.

  Not long after our workers’ scary experience in the panga panga grove, we found a driver for the blue Gaz. This was a man called Sabao who had worked for a Zimbabwean Construction Company until they had fired him for driving down a road he shouldn’t have been driving down.

  Sabao turned out to be a surprisingly good driver. With a penchant for the colour pink, he turned up for work every day in his driver’s outfit which consisted of a pale rose-pink track suit, pale pink flip flops and a pale pink floppy cloth hat.

  Nora Swete made her re-appearance in our lives early one morning when Sabao was driving down the forest track in the blue Gaz with a load of wood for our customers in Chimoio. Afonso, our chainsaw operator was with him that day, together with the little son of another of our workers.

  Sabao and Afonso were chatting away happily without a care in the world when they turned a corner and saw a sight so terrible that it froze their blood and cut their words off in mid-stream. There, in the middle of the track and blocking their way stood a woman, a large, heavy-boned woman with a sack by her side and an enxada (hoe) in her hands. Nora Swete!

  Unerringly sensing trouble, Sabao screeched to a halt and as Nora advanced menacingly towards them, Afonso pushed the little boy down to the floor of the cab to hide him and then, to save himself, jumped out of the Gaz and fled into the long grass, leaving Sabao to fend for himself.

  Nora Swete stopped in front of the Gaz and raising her enxada high up in the air, smashed the big metal blade right through the middle of the windscreen! Shaking with terror, Sabao somehow managed to put the Gaz into reverse and roared backwards down the track to get away from her.

  Mr. Alberto, the local Frelimo Party secretary, was all dressed up and on his way to town when he heard the tinkling sound of glass being smashed and the roaring sound of an engine being strained. Allowing his curiosity to get the better of him, he went to investigate and instantly regretted it.

  Catching sight of Mr. Alberto in his bright yellow-gold shirt and smart maroon trousers, Nora Swete’s eyes lit up with a pleasure that was enough to make any man’s heart quake. He turned to flee … too late! … and found himself captive when a big strong hand shot out and grabbed his arm, jerking him up short.

  “Kneel down!” Nora Swete ordered and pointed a large finger at a spot on the ground in front of her bare feet.

  Trembling with fear and not knowing how to get himself out of the bad situation he had so suddenly found himself in, Mr. Alberto obediently knelt down on the dusty ground.

  Nora Swete opened her sack and dug inside it with her hands. “Purification!” she boomed brassily at Mr. Alberto, “you need to be purified!” and to his consternation, she began to pour handfuls of salt all over him, rubbing it into his shaven head, all over his face, his neck, his arms, his yellow-gold shirt, his maroon trousers and his shoes. She went on and on … until the salt stuck to his sweating brown skin in a thick coating and turned it white from head to toe and he looked just like Lot’s wife, who had turned into a pillar of salt when she had been unable to resist looking back at Sodom.

  Escape came for Mr. Alberto when another unsuspecting traveller stepped out of the long grass and onto the forest track.

  “Kneel!” Nora Swete’s voice boomed out and in that second when she turned away from him and grabbed hold of her new victim, Mr. Alberto took the opportunity to dart off into the grass and vanish from sight.

  Mr. Alberto didn’t go to town that day. Apart from having to do something about his changed appearance, he had had quite a shock and needed to get over it. He walked back the way he had come, up the steep path through the trees and past his gaping wife. Inside his hut, he took off his salty clothes and then, wrapping a capulana around himself, he walked down a gentle slope towards a spot where his banana trees grew and where there was a little stream.

  Throwing off his capulana, Mr. Alberto stepped into the stream. He lay down in it and let the water run over him, washing and washing away the salt that covered his body.

  Nora Swete would have to do another stint in Chissui. She was obviously quite out of control … again!

  And as for the blue Gaz and the large hole Nora Swete had smashed into its windscreen …

  Well, O’D’s reaction was predictable. “Another windscreen gone,” he grumped. “Well, that’s too bad. Sabao will just have to put up with driving it around as it is.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  BLACK KITTY

  It was about ten o’clock in the morning when Black Kitty came across the puff-adder or the mvumbi, as the Mozambicans call it.

  The snake, so ugly and so poisonous, was lying h
alf hidden amongst the piles of dry, coppery brown leaves under the mango trees not far from the back stairs.

  The fight was short and vicious.

  Attacking from behind, Black Kitty lunged at the snake’s neck and the snake reared up, opening its mouth wide and making a hideous roaring hissing sound.

  Again Black Kitty struck, so fast the action was just a blur and again the puff-adder reared up and hissed.

  Nearby, O’D, Seven and I stood tensely watching, not daring to make a sound in case we distracted Black Kitty and the snake’s fangs found its mark in our young cat.

  And then it was all over. Black Kitty struck one last time and the puff- adder lay dead. Disdainfully turning his back on the reptile, Black Kitty padded off through the leaves. Another one bites the dust. He hated snakes.

  Seven bent down to scoop up the lifeless body of the puff-adder with a stick. According to African tradition, the snake must be thrown into the fire to prevent its mate from coming to look for it.

  “E um bom cacador!” Seven grinned admiringly. “He’s a good hunter!” Like most of our workers, he was proud of Black Kitty’s hunting prowess.

  I had met Black Kitty for the first time when I had gone down to the cook hut to speak to Biasse one morning and had seen a tiny kitten sitting just inside the cook hut door. What a little beauty it was! Pure black and velvety as a moonless African night, with eyes the deep green of emeralds.

  “Is this your kitten, Biasse?” I had asked, bending down to stroke the kitten on its head. It had purred loudly, obviously used to humans.

  “No, Madam. It’s a kits from the bush.”

  “Then I’ll have him,” I had said, and picking up Black Kitty, had taken him upstairs to his new home.

  For a bush cat, it hadn’t taken Black Kitty long to feel at ease with us and to luxuriate in his new surroundings. In no time at all, he was sporting with the mosquito net on our bed, trying to force his face and body through the fine transparent material and then, when he failed, climbing its high folds right up to the top and then joyfully swinging and sliding and bouncing around on it. Although Black Kitty’s claws ripped holes in the mosquito net, his antics were so hilarious we made no effort to stop his games. In any case, we had several other nets.