her husband’s friend the Minister, her security guard, and her garden boy, has ever seen her without her trusty air-cushioned Reeboks.
When the Very High Ranking Soldier’s wife received her money from the now defunct War Victims Compensation Fund – for injuries sustained during the Second Chimurenga (loss of appetite I believe it was) – she spent it wisely. She bought a bottle store from a Greek patriot (as long as he didn’t have to live in Greece) in one of Harare’s suburban shopping centres. She employed one of her impoverished relatives to run the store, and she sat back and raked in the profits – nothing on the scale of her husband’s diamond dealings in the D.R.C. – but pretty substantial, if you ask me. Between them the Very High Ranking Soldier and his wife could live quite comfortably in the ‘late Rhodesian’ style.
They bought a palatial home in Harare’s exclusive Mt Pleasant suburb. The previous occupants, a patriotic Scottish couple (as long as they didn’t have to live in Scotland), had gone ethnic in a big way, and the first task of the Very High Ranking Soldier’s wife was to get rid of the tasteless basket work, animal carvings, soapstone statues, weld art, gourds, skins, and beads that cluttered the place, stank of poverty, and gathered dust. In came the copper fire screen painted with flame lilies; the pot plants ranging from African violets to aspidistras; the porcelain ducks; the chiming clock; Tretchikof’s ‘Weeping Rose’; and tartan antimacassars for the mustardy-gold Dralon lounge suite.
The garden was even more of a challenge for the Very High Ranking Soldier’s wife. What kind of a property owner are you that you allow your lawn to grow right up to the jacarandas? Her garden boy’s second task was to dig beds around the trees and plant them with marigolds and mother-in-law’s tongue. The beds must then be lined with half-bricks, which have been thoroughly whitewashed. Have you no concept of the ‘late Rhodesian’ style, for goodness’ sake? She reluctantly kept the hibiscus hedge since it was, after all, slightly more ‘late Rhodesian’ than Instarect walls.
Where she differed with anything Rhodesian, early or late, was in her choice of domestic pets. No overweight, spayed labradors for the Very High Ranking Soldier’s wife; no overweight, castrated ginger toms. She acquired five vicious guard dogs from a bankrupt security firm, chained them up all day, and let them loose all night. Within weeks they had killed and half eaten her garden boy’s little sister. Serves her right for trespassing!
The happiest day of her life came when the Very High Ranking Soldier’s wife was given one of the most productive commercial farms in Zimbabwe. The racist white occupiers had the effrontery to protest. I mean! Fucksake! Chave! Chave Chimurenga! When will these people realise that the land is ours, and that they stole it from us? The racist white couple were in their late seventies, so it wasn’t too difficult to chase them away, what with the help of the police, the local governor, the war vets, and the ‘green bombers’. The two old land grabbers were given such a hiding that they had to be hospitalised for a fortnight. Mrs Wordsworth still hasn’t recovered the use of her sphincter, and Mr Wordsworth is permanently deaf in one ear. As for their pets: they were soaked in paraffin and set alight. Talk about fireworks!
The three hundred or so farm workers and their families, most of whom had been born on the farm, took to their heels after their huts were burnt down, and squatted on the verges of public roads, and in the caves of leopard-infested koppies, until they were set-upon by ZANU PF youths and driven even further afield. As far as I know, those who haven’t died of exposure are still on the run.
What really incensed the Very High Ranking Soldier’s wife was that a number of items from the farmhouse were stolen by the racist whites. Apparently they sneaked back to the farm in the company of their son, who had come all the way from New Zealand to console them, and stole, among other things, a silver tea set, which had belonged to Mrs Wordsworth’s great grandmother, a set of World War II service medals, and three photograph albums, one of them leather bound!
She hired two teenage war veterans, a fifty-year old ZANU PF youth, and half a dozen pre-adolescent Border Gezi graduates wearing academic gowns over their green boiler suits. They all piled into one of her Pajeros and made a bee-line for the ‘safe house’ where the not-so-safe Wordsworths were waiting in the vacant servant’s quarters for death or senility to relieve them of their misery.
The Very High Ranking Soldier’s wife and her entourage stormed into the one-room shack, dragged the old folk from their makeshift bed, and forced them to toyi toyi in the yard, shouting ZANU PF slogans, singing liberation songs from the 70s, until they collapsed in a heap on top of each other. One of the teenage war veterans ordered them to make sex, but the magnanimous Very High Ranking Soldier’s wife said that was not necessary. Instead she ordered them to get up and to stand to attention in front of her. She verbally abused them for a few minutes, calling them thieves, homosexuals and racists. Then she demanded that they return her property: the silver tea set, the World War II service medals, and the photograph albums.
The erstwhile land grabbers handed over the loot. The Very High Ranking Soldier’s wife was particularly taken with the silver tea set, and she promised the Wordsworths that, as soon as she had settled at the farmhouse, she would invite them to tea.
I watch you watching the winter rain
of gold-tipped jacaranda leaves.
You wonder: will they clog the drain,
block the conduit pipe again?
Picking leaf-drops from my sleeves.
Your face is turned aslant from mine,
I cannot read your moving lips
but trace the enigmatic line
that demarcates your features fine
with my mind’s fingertips.
You will not, now, return my stare,
(too late, too late, the barbet cries)
flicking leaflets from my hair,
each flick a gesture of despair.
The rain of winter in my eyes.
Michelle heard that expression of Zimbabwean authority, the car hooter, going long before the hazardous crossing at Apricot Avenue. Come to think of it, all crossings in Bulawayo are hazardous: you might encounter a commuter minibus driven by a teenager with an armed tout in lieu of a driver’s licence; an army lorry driven by a soldier with no immune system; a Santana (Spanish equivalent of the Land Rover) driven by a policeman bulging out of his uniform, loaded with hind quarters, fatalistic chickens, and Castle lagers - with assorted ladies taking up the slack; a leaking water bowser on wheels going slower than a tractor; worse, an octogenarian with blue rinsed hair and a flame-lily brooch, her spectacles, thanks to osteoporosis, just clear of the dashboard of her 1950 Morris Minor; worst of all, you might encounter a Mercedes Benz, and Mercedes Benz drivers – don’t they know it – are above the law of the road.
Invoking her St Christopher (she wore it on a silver chain around her neck), and readying her hands to pull the brakes on both wheels of her Raleigh Bomber, Michelle crossed Apricot Avenue without so much as a bent spoke, and sighed with relief. It was lunch hour in suburbia. Little clusters of domestic workers could be seen on the verges next to the driveways of the houses where they worked. She knew each of them and gave each cluster a self-conscious wave as she pedalled by. They waved back with friendly stares.
Yes, it was Mrs Bangle, hooting away for the ‘boy’ to open the gate, her Mazda 626 station wagon loaded with groceries from Haddon & Sly, her dog, Nuisance, sitting on the passenger seat and staring straight ahead. Michelle had seen Misheck, barefoot in his blue overalls enjoying his lunch break with fellow domestic workers, in the partial shade of a late flowering Jacaranda, outside number 23 where the Van Deventers lived, which was more or less over the road from where Mrs Bangle lived. Misheck