The Leopard Hunts in Darkness (11 page)

‘I did not mean it that way.’

‘Your people took the land at rifle-point, and at the point of a rifle they surrendered it. Do not speak to me of your land.’

‘You hate almost as well as you fought,’ Craig told him, feeling his own anger begin to prickle at the back of his eyes, ‘but I did not come back to hate. I came back because
my heart drew me back. I came back because I felt I could help to rebuild what was destroyed.’

Tungata sat down behind his desk and placed his hands upon the white blotter. They were very dark and powerful. He stared at them in a silence that stretched out for many seconds.

‘You were at King’s Lynn,’ Tungata broke the silence at last, and Craig started. ‘Then you went north to the Chizarira.’

‘Your eyes are bright,’ Craig nodded. ‘They see all.’

‘You have asked for copies of the titles to those lands.’ Again Craig was startled, but he remained silent. ‘But even you must know that you must have government approval to
purchase land in Zimbabwe. You must state the use to which you intend to put that land and the capital available to work it.’

‘Yes, even I know that,’ Craig agreed.

‘So you come to me to assure me of your friendship.’ Tungata looked up at him. ‘Then, as an old friend, you will ask another favour, is that not so?’

Craig spread his hands, palms upward in gesture of resignation.

‘One white rancher on land that could support fifty Matabele families. One white rancher growing fat and rich while his servants wear rags and eat the scraps he throws them,’ Tungata
sneered, and Craig shot back at him.

‘One white rancher bringing millions of capital into a country starving for it, one white rancher employing dozens of Matabele and feeding and clothing them and educating their children,
one white rancher raising enough food to feed ten thousand Matabele, not a mere fifty. One white rancher cherishing the land, guarding it against goats and drought, so it will produce for five
hundred years, not five—’ Craig let his anger boil over, and returned Tungata’s glare, standing stiff-legged over the desk.

‘You are finished here,’ Tungata growled at him. ‘The kraal is closed against you. Go back to your boat, your fame and your fawning women, be content that we took only one of
your legs – go before you lose your head as well.’

Tungata rolled his hand over and glanced at the gold wrist-watch.

‘I have nothing more for you,’ he said, and stood up. Yet, behind his flat, hostile stare, Craig sensed that the undefinable thing was still there. He tried to fathom it – not
fear, he was certain, not guile. A hopelessness, a deep regret, perhaps, even a sense of guilt – or perhaps a blend of many of these things.

‘Then, before I go, I have something else for you.’ Craig stepped closer to the desk, and lowered his voice. ‘You know I was on the Chizarira. I met three men there. Their
names were Lookout, Peking and Dollar and they asked me to bring you a message—’

Craig got no further, for Tungata’s anger turned to red fury. He was shaking with it, it clouded his gaze and knotted the muscles at the points of his heavy lantern jaw.

‘Be silent,’ he hissed, his voice held low by an iron effort of control. ‘You meddle in matters that you do not understand, and that do not concern you. Leave this land before
they overwhelm you.’

‘I will go,’ Craig returned his gaze defiantly, ‘but only after my application to purchase land has been officially denied.’

‘Then you will leave soon,’ Tungata replied. ‘That is my promise to you.’

In the parliamentary parking lot the Volkswagen was baking in the morning sun. Craig opened the doors and while he waited for the interior to cool, he found he was trembling with the
after-effects of his confrontation with Tungata Zebiwe. He held up one hand before his eyes and watched the tremor of his fingertips. In the game department after having hunted down a man-eating
lion or a crop-raiding bull elephant, he would have the same adrenalin come-down.

He slipped into the driver’s seat, and while he waited to regain control of himself, he tried to arrange his impressions of the meeting and to review what he had learned from it.

Clearly Craig had been under surveillance by one of the state intelligence agencies from the moment of his arrival in Matabeleland. Perhaps he had been singled out for attention as a prominent
writer – he would probably never know – but his every move had been reported to Tungata.

Yet he could not fathom the true reasons for Tungata’s violent opposition to his plans. The reasons he had given were petty and spiteful, and Samson Kumalo had never been either petty or
spiteful. Craig was sure that he had sensed correctly that strange mitigating counter-emotion beneath the forbidding reception, there were currents and undercurrents in the deep waters upon which
Craig had set sail.

He thought back to Tungata’s reaction to his mention of the three dissidents he had met in the wilderness of Chizarira. Obviously Tungata had recognized their names, and his rebuke had
been too vicious to have come from a clear conscience. There was much that Craig still wanted to know, and much that Henry Pickering would find interesting.

Craig started the VW and drove slowly back to the Monomatapa down the avenues that had been originally laid out wide enough to enable a thirty-six-ox span to make a U-turn across them.

It was almost noon when he got back to the hotel room. He opened the liquor cabinet and reached for the gin bottle. Then he put it back unopened and rang room service for coffee instead. His
daylight drinking habits had followed him from New York, and he knew they had contributed to his lack of purpose. They would change, he decided.

He sat down at the desk at the picture window and gazed down on the billowing blue jacaranda trees in the park while he assembled his thoughts, and then picked up his pen and brought his report
to Henry Pickering up to date – including his impressions of Tungata’s involvement with the Matabeleland dissidents and his almost guilty opposition to Craig’s land-purchase
application.

This led logically to his request for financing, and he set out his figures, his assessment of Rholands’ potential, and his plans for King’s Lynn and Chizarira as favourably as he
could. Trading on Henry Pickering’s avowed interest in Zimbabwe tourism, he dwelt at length on the development of ‘Zambezi Waters’ as a tourist attraction.

He placed the two sets of papers in separate manila envelopes, sealed them and drove down to the American Embassy. He survived the scrutiny of the marine guard in his armoured cubicle, and
waited while Morgan Oxford came through to identify him.

The cultural attaché was a surprise to Craig. He was in his early thirties, as Craig was, but he was built like a college athlete, his hair was cropped short, his eyes were a penetrating
blue and his handshake firm, suggesting a great deal more strength than he exerted in his grip.

He led Craig through to a small back office and accepted the two unaddressed manila envelopes without comment.

‘I’ve been asked to introduce you around,’ he said. ‘There is a reception and cocktail hour at the French ambassador’s residence this evening. A good place to
begin. Six to seven – does that sound okay?’

‘Fine.’

‘You staying at the Mono or Meikles?’

‘Monomatapa.’

‘I’ll pick you up at 17.45 hours.’

Craig noted the military expression of time, and thought wryly, ‘Cultural attaché?’

E
ven under the socialist Mitterrand regime, the French managed a characteristic display of
elan.
The reception was on the lawns of the
ambassador’s residence, with the tricolour undulating gaily on the light evening breeze and the perfume of frangipani blossom creating an illusion of coolness after the crackling heat of the
day. The servants were in white ankle-length
kanza
with crimson fez and sash, the champagne, although non-vintage, was Bollinger, and the
foie gras
on the biscuits was from the
Périgord. The police band under the spathodea trees at the end of the lawn played light Italian operetta with an exuberant African beat, and only the motley selection of guests distinguished
the gathering from a Rhodesian governor-general’s garden party that Craig had attended six years previously.

The Chinese and the Koreans were the most numerous and noticeable, basking in their position of special favour with the government. It was they who had been most constant in aid and material
support to the Shona forces during the long bush war, while the Soviets had made a rare error of judgement by courting the Matabele faction, for which the Mugabe government was now making them
atone in full measure.

Every group on the lawn seemed to include the squat figures in the rumpled pyjama suits, grinning and bobbing their long lank locks like mandarin dolls, while the Russians formed a small group
on their own, and those in uniform were junior officers – there was not even a colonel amongst them, Craig noted. The Russians could only move upstream from where they were now.

Morgan Oxford introduced Craig to the host and hostess. The ambassadress was at least thirty years younger than her husband. She wore a bright Pucci print with Parisian chic. Craig said,
‘
Enchanté, madame,’
and touched the back of her hand with his lips; when he straightened, she gave him a slow speculative appraisal before turning to the next guest in the
reception line.

‘Pickering warned me you were some kind of cocks-man,’ Morgan chided him gently, ‘but let’s not have a diplomatic incident.’

‘All right, I’ll settle for a glass of bubbly.’

Each of them armed with a champagne flute, they surveyed the lawn. The ladies from the central African republics were in national dress, a marvellous cacophony of colour like a hatching of
forest butterflies, and their men carried elaborately carved walking-sticks or fly-whisks made from animal tails, and the Muslims amongst them wore embroidered pill-box fezes with the tassels
denoting that they were
hadji
who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca.

‘Sleep well, Bawu,’ Craig thought of his grandfather, the arch-colonist. ‘It is best that you never lived to see this.’

‘We had better make your number with the Brits, seeing that’s your home base,’ Morgan suggested, and introduced him to the British High Commissioner’s wife, an iron-jawed
lady with a lacquered hair style modelled on Margaret Thatcher’s.

‘I can’t say I enjoyed all that detailed violence in your book,’ she told him severely. ‘Do you think it was really necessary?’

Craig kept any trace of irony out of his voice. ‘Africa is a violent land. He who would hide that fact from you is no true story-teller.’ He wasn’t really in the mood for
amateur literary critics, and he let his eye slide past her and rove the lawn, seeking distraction.

What he found made his heart jump against his ribs like a caged animal. From across the lawn she was watching him with green eyes from under an unbroken line of dark thick brows. She wore a
cotton skirt with patch pockets that left her calves bare, open sandals that laced around her ankles and a simple T-shirt. Her thick dark hair was tied with a leather thong at the back of her neck,
it was freshly washed and shiny. Although she wore no make-up, her tanned skin had the lustre of abounding health and her lips were rouged with the bright young blood beneath. Over one shoulder was
slung a Nikon FM with motor drive and both her hands were thrust into the pockets of her skirt.

She had been watching him, but the moment Craig looked directly at her, she lifted her chin in a gesture of mild disdain, held his eye for just long enough and then turned her head unhurriedly
to the man who stood beside her, listening intently to what he was saying and then showing white teeth in a small controlled laugh. The man was an African, almost certainly Mashona, for he wore the
crisply starched uniform of the regular Zimbabwean army and the red staff tabs and stars of a Brigadier-General. He was as handsome as the young Harry Belafonte.

‘Some have a good eye for horse flesh,’ Morgan said softly, mocking again. ‘Come along, then, I’ll introduce you.’

Before Craig could protest, he had started across the lawn and Craig had to follow.

‘General Peter Fungabera, may I introduce Mr Craig Mellow. Mr Mellow is the celebrated novelist.’

‘How do you do, Mr Mellow. I apologize for not having read your books. I have so little time for pleasure.’ His English was excellent, his choice of words precise, but strongly
accented.

‘General Fungabera is Minister of Internal Security, Craig,’ Morgan explained.

‘A difficult portfolio, General.’ Craig shook his hand, and saw that though his eyes were penetrating and cruel as a falcon’s, there was a humorous twist to his smile, and
Craig was instantly attracted to him. A hard man, but a good one, he judged.

The general nodded. ‘But then nothing worth doing is ever easy, not even writing books. Don’t you agree, Mr Mellow?’

He was quick and Craig liked him more, but his heart was still pumping and his mouth was dry so he could concentrate only a small part of his attention on the general.

‘And this,’ said Morgan, ‘is Miss Sally-Anne Jay.’ Craig turned to face her. How long ago since he had last done so, a month perhaps? But he found that he remembered
clearly every golden fleck in her eyes and every freckle on her cheeks.

‘Mr Mellow and I have met – though I doubt he would remember.’ She turned back to Morgan and took his arm in a friendly, familiar gesture. ‘I am so sorry I haven’t
seen you since I got back from the States, Morgan. Can’t thank you enough for arranging the exhibition for me. I have received so many letters—’

‘Oh, we’ve had feed-back also,’ Morgan told her. ‘All of it excellent. Can we have lunch next week? I’ll show you.’ He turned to explain. ‘We sent an
exhibition of Sally-Anne’s photographs on a tour of all our African consular offices. Marvellous stuff, Craig, you really must see her work.’

‘Oh, he has.’ Sally-Anne smiled without warmth. ‘But unfortunately Mr Mellow does not have your enthusiasm for my humble efforts.’ And then without giving Craig a chance
to protest, she turned back to Morgan. ‘It’s wonderful, General Fungabera has promised to accompany me on a visit to one of the rehabilitation centres, and he will allow me to do a
photographic series—’ With a subtle inclination of her body she effectively excluded Craig from the conversation, and left him feeling gawky and wordless on the fringe.