Monkeys in My Garden

by Valerie Pixley

  “Murray Dawson!” Murray told us, and held out his hand.

  Although we were pleased to see Murray again, the reason for his visit wasn’t a good one.

  He sat down in our sitting room and while he drank a cold can of Castle and smoked a harsh Madison cigarette, he told us what had brought him across the border, into Mozambique. “She came with her War Vets to take my farm,” Murray said, in his dry, rough voice. “Sabina, that old sister of Mugabe’s. Naturally, I decided to resist her … with some force! I got all my farmworkers together and we attacked them …” he paused to swig down some more beer.

  “And then?” I asked.

  “They attacked us back … with some force!” Murray said, and with a dry laugh, added. “They gave us a real thrashing … and we had to run away.”

  “So Mugabe’s sister took your farm,” I said.

  “She did, indeed,” Murray drawled. “And then they trashed my house. Terry’s living in town now.”

  The farm, just outside Harare, had been in Murray’s family since the 1930’s and after Murray had taken charge of it, he had made a tremendous success of growing vegetables for export to the U.K. A bachelor, he looked after his sister, who was divorced and his brother, Terry, who was wheelchair bound. Now, with his livelihood suddenly wrenched away from him, like many other Zimbabwean farmers he’d been forced to look across Zimbabwe’s borders for a new start in life.

  Although Murray had only been in Mozambique for a few days, some locals had already given him the traditional welcome Mozambicans give visitors to their country.

  This event had taken place one afternoon when he had noticed he was driving his khaki-coloured Toyota Landcruiser on ‘empty’ and had innocently driven into a petrol station to fill up. When the petrol attendant had tried to charge him for more diesel than the Toyota’s fuel tank was capable of taking, Murray had balked. An argument had broken out. Murray had called for buckets, and in the presence of a stray policeman, the Toyota’s fuel tank had been emptied out into the buckets in order to measure the fuel.

  When these measurements proved that some trickery had, indeed, been afoot, the owner of the petrol station had suddenly appeared and had tried to hit Murray with a baseball bat! Then, the man had run off, only to reappear some minutes later with a policeman of a higher rank than the one Murray had found.

  This policeman had hauled Murray off to the local police station and there had told him that he had two choices. “You either pay the petrol station owner the money you owe him,” he had told Murray grimly, “or you go to jail!”

  Murray had paid up.

  “I’m living at the Chibuku factory outside Chimoio until I get sorted out.” Murray told us. “I’m looking for a suitable piece of land to farm, and perhaps somewhere to start up a butchery.”

  Murray’s presence cheered us up a bit. By now, almost all of our friends and family had fled Zimbabwe and this had left us feeling a little lonely. There was no longer any reason to make the drive to Harare and even Mutare was beginning to look a little bare of people we knew.

  A few days after Murray’s visit, one of our workers in Maringue brought a message from Fernand, who was once again driving for us. The blue Gaz had a problem and had broken down.

  The news put O’D in a bit of a quandary. He was going to have to rush off on a 200 kilometre trip to fix the lorry and he was going to have to leave me alone in the Nhamacoa - without a night guard. This lack of a night guard had occurred when Lovad had decided to give up work for a while and O’D hadn’t been able to find anyone to replace him. As a result, he was forced to use some rather unlikely characters to keep me safe.

  “I’ve told Samsone Joao to spend the night in the guardhouse to guard the timber,” O’D told me, “and Biasse can sleep in the room under the house. You’ll have Bandit, as well, so you should be alright.”

  “Yes, I’m sure I’ll be alright,” I agreed, although it was doubtful whether a small, skinny and elderly cook of sixty six would be of much help if I should find myself in a desperate situation. And as for Bandit … well, despite being a Rhodesian ridgeback and a breed famed for its courage and lion-hunting abilities, so far she hadn’t lived up to this reputation. She was ludicrously scared of people who wore hats and when a car jolted down the forest track towards our house, she usually made a mad dash for the bedroom, scrambling wildly under the bed and hiding until she thought all danger was passed and it was safe to come out! With protectors like these, I knew I was on my own - not that I had any of my usual feelings of foreboding that ‘something bad’ was going to happen.

  In fact, I’d become rather blasé where my safety was concerned. After all, I’d now spent seven years living in an African forest and in a house with flimsy sleeping mat blinds over the windows and nothing had happened to me. Except, of course, for the theft of my shortwave radio! Now, however, I was much more secure than I’d been in those days. Shortly before the floods of 2000, we had discarded the sleeping mats and installed glass windows in all but one room in the house. The exception was the spare bedroom. The window in this room still had its blind but it was too high to get into, unless you used a ladder.

  O’D set off early on Saturday, the 12th January. He and Caetano were meeting up with Murray in Chimoio because they were going to drive to Maringue with Murray in his Landcruiser. There was a lot of mud around and O’D didn’t think our Toyota Hilux would be up to it.

  “I might be able to make it back home tonight,” O’D told me, starting up the red Toyota. “It depends on how quickly I can fix the Gaz.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you when I see you.”

  O’D had only been gone for a couple of hours when something quite out of the ordinary occurred.

  I was sitting at the table, breakfasting on toast and marmalade when Biasse came into the sitting room. “Customer, Madam!” he told me.

  I looked up in surprise. Customers on a Saturday had always been rare, even during the years when our sawmill had been at its busiest. “Who is it, Biasse?”

  “It is Mr. Bonjasse, Madam,” he told me, and added proudly with a broad smile. “Family of mine!”

  Mr. Bonjasse was a very pleasant and softly spoken man. He needed Umbila, he told me, and rather a lot of it.

  Biasse called Samsone Joao and together Mr. Bonjasse and our new cubicador walked over to the timber and spent some time picking through the piles of planks, choosing some and discarding others.

  When they were finally finished, they stood outside my sitting room window and Samsone Joao handed me his measurements. Mr. Bonjasse had certainly bought a good quantity of timber - eight million meticais worth - and a windfall to us at this time, broke as we were!

  Mr. Bonjasse now began the laborious task of counting out the grubby, tattered meticais notes to pay me and while he was busy, I just happened to glance up and noticed a peculiar expression on Samsone Joao’s face. He just couldn’t tear his eyes away from the money. He was mesmerised by it …

  A tiny warning light flashed briefly on in my mind - what did we really know about our new cubicador? - but I dismissed it. We all had our eyes glued on the notes, because it was easy to miscount and make a mistake.

  When the transaction was over, I gathered up the money – oh, what a lucky day this was turning out to be! - and took it off to the bedroom. The best place to stash it, of course, was in O’D’s cupboard.

  I opened the door. His clothes were in a mess, so I rummaged around until I found four of his socks and stuffed the meticais inside them. It would take a thief a long time to find it in this shambles!

  The rest of the day passed peacefully. With nothing to do except please myself, I spent my time reading “Hill Towns” by Anne Rivers Siddons. This was a wonderfully amusing read about five Americans who were travelling around Italy in the company of Sam, a famous American artist and his wife, Ada, who lived in Rome. The story was so engrossing that I lost myself completely in it and for a few delightful hours I was far, far away from th
e Nhamacoa.

  In the evening, I lit some paraffin lamps and went early to bed. Just in case O’D was able to make it home in the night after all, I left one paraffin lamp alight in the sitting room and another in the bathroom. It would save him from stumbling around in the dark.

  I was propped up against my pillows reading “Hill Towns” again when some rather weird and disturbing things began to happen.

  I had just got to a very satisfactory part of the book where Cat’s obnoxious husband American Joe had been clowning around and showing off in front of some English aristocrats and had fallen into the fetid and foul waters of a Venetian canal, when out of the corner of my eye, I caught a movement at the end of my bed.

  I looked up from my book and what I saw set an icy chill tingling along my spine.

  The corner of the mosquito net at the end of the bed … on my side of the bed … appeared to be raising itself up off the floor … into the air … and then dropping softly down onto the edge of the bed!

  For a moment, time seemed to stand still. Hardly daring to breathe and hardly able to believe what I had seen, I froze. Was someone UNDER my BED!

  Slowly, I put my book down next to me on the sheet. Slowly, I took off my glasses and put them down next to my book. I was going to have to get out of bed and have a look … my heart cringed at the thought … oh no, oh no, oh no … yes, I was going to HAVE to do it … couldn’t just ignore it …

  I steeled myself … perhaps it was only one of the cats, with a rat … and leapt out of bed … threw myself onto my knees on the floor … looked under the bed …

  Nothing! Just a couple of dust balls Biasse had missed with his broom.

  I stood up slowly and looked around the room, wondering what had caused the mosquito net to move. It couldn’t have been the wind. The bedroom door was closed and so were the windows. Puzzled, I pulled the net off the edge of the bed and back down to the floor.

  “What could it have been? What?” I asked myself aloud. It had looked almost as if someone had raised the net up to get inside …

  An unwelcome explanation to my question suddenly popped into my head. Could it be that another of O’D and Caetano’s enemies had gone to a witch doctor? Could it be that he had sent another evil spirit or two to torment me in my sleep?

  I glared irritably around the room at the thought. “Why, oh why do things always happen to me when O’D’s away?” I asked, still speaking out aloud to myself.

  Getting no reply, I got back into bed, put my glasses on again and picked up ‘Hill Towns.’ I would read for a little longer.

  When my eyes grew tired, I turned off the light. For a few minutes, I lay on my back and looked at the starry sky through the window and then, despite the suspicion that I was now sharing my room with some vile Mozambican evil spirit, I turned over onto my side and immediately fell asleep, until about three o’clock in the morning …

  I don’t know what woke me up, then. Perhaps it was the creak of the door, or perhaps it was a … touch. But one moment I was soundly, deeply asleep and the next moment, just as if someone had given me a hard push in the middle of my back, I found myself sitting straight up in bed in one swift, smooth, movement.

  The bedroom door was open. A man stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the orange glow of the paraffin lamp I had left burning in the bathroom.

  For an instant we stared at each other through the folds of the mosquito net hanging around my bed.

  I felt a sense of déjà vu and it confused me. This had happened before … in a dream. Was this a recurrence of the frightening dream I had had two years ago?

  No …

  Ice filled my veins and I felt a hideous downward spiraling of dread …

  No … this wasn’t a repeat of my dream. This was the dream come true … this was the man I had dreamed was going to kill me. My dream killer had finally turned into terrifying reality!

  Before I could make a move to try and save myself, the man was at my bedside. One hand shot through the mosquito net and grabbed me violently around my neck. The other hand clamped itself over my mouth. I sat frozen, while jangled thoughts roiled through my mind all at the same time as fast as the speed of light and I shuddered inwardly with the horror, the terror of it all. No one to help me. There was no one to help me. I was alone … completely alone … and I was going to die. Die horribly, I knew. Die! MURDERED! Oh, my …

  And then, something strange happened, something very strange. Every vestige of the fear that was enveloping me suddenly melted away and I was filled with a peace so deep that my rioting, panicking, terror-stricken mind was completely stilled. And into this peace, this calm, I heard a voice speak to me.

  “Although there is no one here to hear you,” the voice said, “you must scream.”

  I drew in a deep breath and because the man’s hand was over my mouth, I screamed from the back of my throat. The sound was guttural, ugly, horrible. I screamed over and over again, without taking in any more breaths.

  Something clattered down onto the concrete floor next to my bed. The choking grip on my neck disappeared. The man turned away from me and fled across the room towards the door.

  Astonished by his flight and hardly able to believe my miraculous escape from certain death, I took full advantage of my now unfettered throat and abandoned myself to a series of bloodcurdling screams, in my mind’s eye seeing the killer running down the corridor … out of the house … and down the forest track …

  When I thought that the man was safely gone, I stopped screaming and got out of bed. I turned on the torch and shone its beam on the floor, looking for the thing he had dropped with a clattering sound.

  Aah … a knife. The handle was wooden, old and weathered. The blade was rusty except for the end, which had been sharpened into a hook and glinted silver in the torchlight. It looked more like a ripping knife than a stabbing knife. It looked as if it had been especially sharpened … just for me.

  I picked up the knife and walked out of the bedroom, into the corridor. The front door was half open and as I approached it, it flew wide open and banged against the wall as another man burst into the corridor. He was small and skinny and was dressed only in a pair of old navy blue shorts. In his right hand he held a panga, a machete.

  Biasse … too late to take part in the action.

  Through the now wide-open doorway, I caught sight of Bandit. Confused and a little groggy, she was standing staring down the forest track and barking little barks with question marks after them. Woof? Woof? Woof?

  “Madam! Madam! What happened? Why were you screaming?” Biasse asked, echoing Bandit’s thoughts.

  “Someone’s just tried to kill me, Biasse,” I told him, with a sense of incredulity, disbelief, at what had almost happened to me. “Someone’s just tried to KILL me … with this knife!”

  Biassse looked at the knife and then looked wildly up and down the corridor. “But where is Samsone Joao?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Biasse,” I said. Who cared where Samsone Joao was.

  “But he should be here! He should have come when you screamed!”

  A fiery and agonizing pain bit into my face, under my left eye, on my right cheek and on my lips. My fingers flew up to my face. What was this, now?

  “Biasse,” I asked, growing cold with fear all over again, “is there some Mozambican poison that burns like … fire?”

  “I dunno, Madam. But where is Samsone Joao?”

  Panicking, I ran into the bathroom and examined my face in the mirror. My skin was covered with large blisters. Welts. My tongue felt strange and there was a peculiar metallic taste in my mouth. I opened my mouth and stuck my tongue out, and felt a jolt of shock. The left half of my tongue had turned completely black!

  With trembling fingers, I soaped my face and rinsed it over and over again with cold water. What on earth was this stuff on my face? Eventually, when I thought I had done my best to wash off whatever it was, I patted myself dry with a towel and walked slowly back down the cor
ridor and into the sitting room.

  Wearily, I sank down onto a chair at the table. It seemed I hadn’t escaped death after all. Not content with trying to kill me with a knife, the cowardly wretch who had come to attack me while I was asleep had poisoned me as well!

  A blue and white carton of Ultra Mel on the table caught my eye. Milk … Some poisons were supposed to be neutralized by milk … weren’t they? I stood up, walked over to a small cupboard and took out a glass. Our First Aid box lay on a nearby shelf and I opened the lid and pulled out a large wad of cotton wool. I sat down at the table again, filled the glass with milk and drank it all down in one go. I filled the glass a second time and drank some more. I poured milk onto the cotton wool and dabbed it all over the welts and blisters on my face.

  “Is anything missing, Madam? Has anything been stolen?”

  I glanced around the room, lit only by the paraffin lamp. Since our arrival in the Nhamacoa, O’D and I had become minimalists. We didn’t have anything of value that would have caused someone to go to such lengths as murder in order to steal. The clock was still on the wall, its hands ticking towards ten past three. Our old battered shortwave radio was still in the place it had occupied on top of the bookcase for the last seven years. The large coffee tin, though, which was full of coins, had vanished.

  “The tin of change is gone, Biasse.”

  “So,” Biasse said grimly, satisfied that he had found the motive for the attack. “I go look for Samsone Joao, now.”

  The memory of my dream came back to me. Although only one man had tried to kill me tonight, in my dream there had been two men.

  “No. No, Biasse. There might be others out there in the dark, and if you go outside, they might attack you, too.”

  Biasse laughed derisively. “There is no one outside now, Madam. You frightened them away with your screaming.”

  “We’ll wait,” I told him firmly. “We’ll wait until it gets lighter and then we’ll both go and look for Samsone Joao.”

  Reluctantly, Biassse hunched down on the floor in front of the open door, his panga across his knees. I sat on at the table, alternately drinking milk and dabbing more milk on my face. Wrapped up in our thoughts, we waited in silence for the stars to grow dim and the black sky to lighten.