The Boy Next Door (7 page)

At assembly, Mrs. Jameson asks us to please say special prayers for all those who have died out in Esigodini; those poor people
were only trying to do good in the world.

In
The Chronicle,
spread out across the two middle pages, are six coffins lying side by side in front of the altar inside the cathedral. Two
of them, one at each end, are very small.

In the evening news we hear the priest say that only love will heal the deep wounds in Zimbabwe.

“
What a right
cock-up,” he says.

If no one will take him on here, give him a job or an apprenticeship, something in mechanics, he’ll go back down south, try
his luck; there are opportunities there even for someone like him; he can pick up from where he left off.

We are at the park by the aviary.

“That’s a Cardinal Woodpecker,” he says pointing. “That one over there, and over there—yes, that frisky one—that’s a Hoopoe,
now take a look at that Hadeda. You know the best place to watch birds? Down by the sewage works, over at Aiselby Farm by
the Umguza Dam. When I was a lightie, my old man was the manager, and man, there were manigi birds: Cape Shoveler, Pink-backed
Pelican, Pochards, Teals, you name it. It was like you were in blimming paradise or something.”

He bursts out laughing. “Jeez, I’m full of bullshit. Big-time bullshit.”

“Look at these poor buggers,” he says. “Just like Khami.”

It’s the first time he’s mentioned the prison.

He goes to the fence, grabs it. “Yah, just like that blimming hellhole.”

He turns back to look at me. “Although, to tell the truth, I didn’t spend
that
much time in there. Three months, tops. Most of it I was over at Esigodini doing fricking farming. Eeesh, I even got promoted
for good behavior. By the time I got to Khami, I had put on some major muscle what with all that hoeing and shit. Check.”

He pushes the sleeves of his shirt up, bulges his arms. Then he cracks into a smile. “Jeez, man, my
This Is Your Life,
heh. So how about you, what’s happening?”

“I’m going to a party,” I say. “This Saturday.”

“A party, heh, birthday?”

“No, a girl is leaving. They’re going to England.”

“And another one bites the dust. So tell me about it on Monday, heh?”

Geraldine’s house
is right on top of a hill in Matsheumhlope, carved into stones.

Geraldine says that in the topmost room you can see most of Bulawayo.

Three fountains and two pools.

Fourteen rooms and balconies.

Fireplaces.

Spiraling stairs of stone and teak.

Game room with a pool table and a TV in the wall.

Geraldine has her own lounge next to her bedroom and Barbie dolls scattered everywhere; a huge dressing table with perfumes
and jewelry boxes.

Today, there is a braai and swimming and
Clem Tholet’s Greatest Hits
blaring on the stereo. The girls are all in their bikinis, in the water or sunbathing, smoothing on suntan lotion. The boys
are running around playing rugby; the girls giggle whenever a boy passes by. “He’s nice,” “he’s cute,” or “he’s a dof,” they
whisper to each other. The men are by the braai, looking after the sizzling boerewor sausages and T-bone steaks, and in the
gazebo where there is a fully stocked bar.

Bridgette and I are standing by the pool sipping Fantas. We didn’t bring any costumes.

One of the old men at the bar calls out: “hey, you two girls, good thing you’re not taking to the water, what with those amabeles
you’ll sink like anything. You black girls are overdeveloped; wait, by the time you’re twenty, they’ll be hanging to your
knees like the grannies at the Reserves. Boy, can they flap those things over their shoulders; give you a technical knockout
if you’re standing too close.

The men laugh. The girls laugh. And the boys shriek and hoot.

Bridgette and I go to the game room where the boys follow. Three of them.

“Hey, kaffir girls!” the fat one shouts. “Check this out!”

They pull down their shorts, shake their bums, and fart; they turn around and shake their things. They rush out of the door,
shrieking, their pants undone.

“Stupid idiots,” says Bridgette. “If I were them, I would be ashamed to show those things in public. Earthworms are bigger.
Now Joseph’s, that’s a real mamba.”

“Bridgette!”

Joseph is one of her boyfriends. He is a sixth-former at Milton. He is the only black boy on the rugby team.

“Oh, oh, Lins, don’t look at me like that!”

She bends over, collapsing with laughter. She claps her hands.

“You look like you’ve just had an electric shock. Oh, I wish I had a camera. Yes, I have indeed seen Joseph’s missile. Yes,
I have even touched it. I’m not a virgin, thank God.”

I open my mouth but only air comes out.

My heart is beating so fast because I am thinking of Ian and what I can tell him on Monday.

The Matobo Hills
have been declared a no-go area by the government. Dissidents are hiding out there and the government is going to send the
Fifth Brigade to flush them out.

Three weeks or so after Maphosa came to stay with us, we took him to Matopos. Maphosa stood on Rhodes’s grave, looked all
around at World’s View, and started singing a song from The Struggle. His singing voice was so different from his talking
voice it did not sound like Maphosa at all. He was singing about Lobengula and Mzilikazi, the forgotten chiefs, who would
rise up to reclaim their land. There were some whites at the statue of the Pioneer Column and they were looking at us. When
Maphosa stopped singing, they started.
“
For we are all Rhodesians and we’ll fight through thick and thin; Rhodesians never die and…”

Maphosa looked over at them. They were young boys and girls. The Children of Settlers. Daddy said, “We should be going now,
it’s getting late.” Maphosa was rubbing his eye. Whenever he is very angry, his eye itches and hurts him. We walked down the
hill. I could hear the whites laughing and shouting.

Later that year we went to the Trade Fair. Since independence many more countries had come to exhibit, even Britain. South
Africa was banned.

We all watched the parachute jumping, the police dogs, and the police motorcycles doing tricks by the showgrounds; Mummy,
Rosanna, and I went to the fashion show at the David Whitehead Hall while Daddy and Maphosa went to see the technical exhibits
in Hall 1.

In the newspaper there were stories about gangs of white youths wearing rhodesians never die and rhodesia is super T-shirts,
insulting and even beating up people.

Maphosa said enough is enough. “We will teach these people a lesson. They still think that this is Rhodesia.”

On the last day of the fair, there was a big fight near the animal showgrounds and Maphosa did not come home for three days.
Mummy said that she was sure he was in jail and it was time to let him go. Daddy said, “Let us wait and hear what he has to
say.” When Maphosa came back, he had nothing at all to say. We all noticed the cut on his forehead, but no one said anything.

Twenty-eight dissidents have been captured. They are lined up on the TV. Their hands tied to one long rope that a policeman
holds at either end so that it looks like they want to play tug of war. The dissidents look very skinny. They have bushy,
uncombed hair. They’re confessing. One by one. They have been working to destabilize the government. They have been killing
villagers. They are under the control of Nkomo.

Maphosa is very worried. There is trouble at his rural home in Gwayi. He wants to go, but Daddy has warned him that there
are roadblocks everywhere and the Fifth Brigade is on the lookout for former ZIPRA fighters. “If they catch you going there,
they will accuse you of going to join the dissidents,” Daddy tells him. Maphosa says that women and children are getting persecuted.
Daddy says that these are only rumors. Children and women are not dissidents.

Maphosa says that Mphiri has been behaving strangely of late. Yesterday when he passed him on the way to the shops and made
his greeting, the old man looked at him without any recognition. Maphosa repeated the greeting but the old man made no response
at all. “That mukhiwa boy has a lot to answer for,” says Maphosa. “It is time he packed his bags and took off to South Africa.”
Maphosa thinks that Mphiri is in the process of being bewitched and if action is not taken the old man will die in the hands
of evil spirits. This cannot be allowed to happen.

He picked me
up at the bus stop just at the entrance of the cemetery. He was almost forty minutes late, and I was about to cross the road
and take the next bus home.

“Mind the chips,” he said as I was about to sit down. “Help yourself.”

“So, the party, was it lekker?” he asked as he checked the mirror.

“It was okay.”

That’s all I said.

He turned and looked at me. I thought he would say something, ask me more about the party, why it was just okay, but he didn’t;
he concentrated on his driving.

It made me feel better to see that he’d chosen my favorite flavor, Salt and Vinegar. He didn’t say anything about being late
as he drove, and I concentrated on eating the chips without making too much noise. In the parking lot we drank the Cokes and
watched people strolling about at the station. Then he had the idea to go to the Railway Museum, for old-time’s sakes.

Walking up the footbridge from the railway station, he said that his best memory of school was his class visit when he was
in Standard One, when he was seven or so. The history teacher, Mr. Scolds, took them, and if there was ever a name to fit
anyone, Scolds was it.

“Boy, could that man let rip.”

Anyway, on that day, he remembers being allowed to go on his own in the yard, looking at the carriages and engines, making
drawings, notes, scrambling on the locomotives to check something out.

“It felt good to be out there; I reckon Mr. Scolds took off to the bar because when he finally pitched up he was way too happy.
Heck, he even brought the whole class ice-lollies.”

We are standing outside Cecil John Rhodes’s private carriage looking through the large windows. The teak table gleams in the
dining-room carriage. It is set with beautiful chinaware and silver, crystal decanters, and goblets, which make me think of
Mummy and her collection. Everything in there looks as though it is waiting for Mr. Rhodes to come in. I keep looking towards
the doorway; any moment the founder of Rhodesia might duck his head and enter his carriage. He will draw out a chair, sit
down. He has a hat, which he puts on his knee, his leg outstretched. A black steward will soon arrive and start preparing
the table for dinner, the dinner that is being cooked in Mr. Rhodes’s private kitchen. Maybe Mr. Rhodes will turn and look
out of the window, watch the countryside gently roll by. His country. Rhodesia. That must feel good. And then dinner, a cigar,
a bath (perhaps), bed.

“My old man signed me up with the Cubs—what was it now?—Fourteenth South Grove Troop, met every Tuesday over by the hall near
the fire brigade station; used to go camping at the Matopos. Come school holidays no schlepping round the place; the old man
thought he could toughen me up a bit. Hated every shit minute of it. Bloody Scout leader, Mr. Caldwell, Mr. Fuck-Well to me,
a New Zealand bloke, always had it in for me. Only joy I got out of it was when there was bugger all to do but take myself
off somewhere and just sit and scribble things in the notebook. Drove my old man penga that book.”

I think of Mr. Rhodes who used to stand so proudly on his pedestal in Main Street, his hands crossed behind his back, his
head leaning a little bit to one side; looking, in his wise and fatherly way at all of Bulawayo going about its business around
him. And now he stands all by himself behind the museum, forgotten, his only company weeds, insects, and the birds who don’t
know his greatness, pooing on him. His Bulawayo, now.

I think of Maphosa finding out about this train; how it brought Mr. Rhodes all the way from Cape Town in South Africa up to
Matopos, in Bulawayo. A journey of over two thousand kilometers, the plaque says. That Mr. Rhodes was dead, lying in his train,
waiting to be buried up there in World’s View.

I think of Mrs. Palmers, my history teacher in primary school, whose eyes became all wet when she told us Mr. Rhodes’s words
as he lay dying: “So little done, so much to do.”

“May that be an inspiration to you all,” she said, snapping shut her book.

The railway platform is full of soldiers disembarking. They are speaking in Shona.

Ian quickens his step.

“Come, let’s get a move on.”

Whenever I’m in the car with him, I can’t relax.

When we stop at robots or intersections, I keep thinking that some pedestrian will suddenly stop in the middle of the road
and look straight at me.

“Lindiwe!” they will shout out.

Their eyes will move from me to the driver and then back to me.

“What are you doing here, who is this…?”

So I sit quietly, my eyes on my lap and listen to him.

“It’s a pity about Matopos. I was thinking about making a trip there. Sit on the rocks and think fuck all like the good old
days. Man, I hope the dissidents teach the Shonas a lesson. They’re getting way too arrogant. Pride comes before a fall. They’re
flooding this place with Shonas to neutralize the Ndebeles. You can trust a Ndebele; the Shonas now, as slippery as hell.”

I think of the soldiers on the platform. They seemed very young and their uniforms looked as if they had just been taken out
from packages. Those soldiers didn’t look like killers. They looked like boys pretending to be soldiers. Even the street girls
who hang around by the station were not intimidated by them. They were calling out to the soldiers, “Come, boys, come; good
times here, come.” Maybe they were just beginning their training. Maybe when they went back to Harare, they would be real
soldiers. They would know all about killing. No one would call them boys. It’s funny but I don’t even remember if they had
guns.