African Dawn (7 page)

On the drive he slowed to let a herd of buffalo cross the road. On the shores of the lake below, a trio of bull elephant were slaking their thirst in the middle of the hot, sticky day. George thought of the time he and Winston had spent on the lake as boys. He still rated it as one of the best times of his life.

This part of the Zambezi Valley might be under water, but Kariba was still a wild, fun place. The lake had filled many years earlier, but much of the wildlife that had walked to high ground or been rescued during Operation Noah still lived around the shores. The town of Kariba had grown from a construction workers' camp to a small but bustling holiday resort. The Rhodesian Riviera boasted hotels and a casino, and a harbour crammed with houseboats. There was even a yacht club. The Zambezi Valley downriver from the dam was a hot spot for terrorist incursions, but for many people, especially those crewing the catamarans out racing on the glittering water below, the war was something that happened to other people.

George parked the Land Rover outside the entrance to the hospital and took off his beret as he walked in and found the right ward. A transistor radio at the nurse's station played a soft, tinny version of a Glen Campbell song about a lonely soldier in Vietnam.

George coughed. ‘I'm here to see the men who were admitted early this morning,’ he said to a nursing sister in a starched pinafore.

She looked up from the chart she was filling in and raised her eyebrows. ‘All right, but not for long, please, the corporal needs some rest.’

George's rubber-soled boots squeaked on the polished linoleum as he walked past the gatekeeper.

The wounded officer was sedated, having been operated on for four hours, but Winston was sitting up in bed, with a white captain and warrant officer dressed in camouflage fatigues standing by his bedside.

The captain turned and nodded a greeting to George. ‘Jonty's still unconscious from the operation. Are you a friend?’

‘Actually, I've come to see how Corporal Ngwenya's doing,’ George said.

The warrant officer, a nuggety man with steel-grey hair, shook his head. ‘Ngwenya? Don't you mean Ndlovu, sir?’

George glanced at Winston and saw the moment of panic flash in his eyes. ‘Of course, of course. You know these bloody African names, eh? Ngwenya, Ndlovu, they all sound the same to me.’

The captain looked at George like he was a fool, which was probably how he regarded all blue jobs in air force uniform. His eyes dropped to the pilot's wings on his fatigue shirt. ‘You're the helicopter pilot?’

George nodded.

To George's surprise the captain extended a hand. ‘Thank you. You've changed my opinion of the air force. I always thought you
okes
were more interested in your bloody machines than in human lives. Ndlovu here pulled Jonty out of the fire, but he probably would have died if they'd waited for the road party to get to them. Come back to the camp with us – the beers are on us.’

The captain and his sergeant major said their goodbyes to Ngwenya and stood by the bed waiting for George to follow.

‘I might come along later, if that's all right. Still got some paperwork to do back at the airfield. You know how it is …’

There was an awkward moment's silence as the captain registered that George wanted to stay awhile and talk to the black corporal. He eventually shrugged and said, ‘Suit yourself. Bar'll be open from lunchtime.’

When the army guys left, George sat on the side of Winston's bed and shook his friend's hand again. ‘I hope I haven't caused trouble for you.’

Winston shook his head. ‘I don't think so,
sir
.’

George laughed. ‘I see you got your wish and ended up in the army.’

‘You too,’ Winston smiled, ‘but I thought you wanted to fly Vampires?’

George shrugged. ‘Someone's got to do the dirty work, you know … picking up you grubby soldiers. I enjoy it, though.’

‘I don't enjoy getting shot.’ Winston tried to sit up straighter and winced in pain.

‘Let me help.’ George put his hands under Winston's arms and lifted him a little. ‘Better?’

Winston nodded.

‘You've changed your name?’

‘If I used my real name I'd be dead within a week. If the other men in the battalion knew I was the son of the gaoled
terrorist leader
Kenneth Ngwenya I'd get a bayonet in the belly, and if the comrades from ZIPRA knew I was working for the
kanka
they'd try even harder to kill me when I was next on leave.’

George knew that the terrorists regarded black Rhodesians who worked for the security forces as jackals –
kanka
– and off-duty policemen and soldiers were in danger of being killed in uniform and out of it.

They swapped stories of what they'd been doing these past ten years. George found that after the first few minutes of chatting it seemed as though they'd last been together only yesterday. Winston had left Bulawayo for the capital, Salisbury, and sought out his father's older brother, an old rogue called Joseph. Winston's uncle lived on the edge of the law, running girls and two shebeens in one of the townships on the outskirts of the city. Winston had known that Joseph and Kenneth never spoke, so he had been sure his uncle would take him under his wing until he was old enough to join the army. His uncle had put him to work mopping out blood, beer, vomit and God knew what else from his bars and had rewarded him with a buxom working girl on his sixteenth birthday. Joseph had taken great delight shielding Winston from his hard-working, God-fearing schoolteacher father, and had even invited him to stay on with him in Salisbury instead of joining the army. Despite the good times, however, Winston hadn't been able to see himself spending the rest of his life as a pimp or a pickpocket. He had stayed true to his plan and enlisted in the Rhodesian African Rifles.

‘Training at Methuen was hard, but I liked it. The instructors treated us like rubbish, but by the end of it we were men,’ he told George, who nodded. Recruit training seemed to be based on the same principles no matter what colour you were or what branch of the services you joined.

They swapped a few tales of good and bad times in the services before Winston finally got around to asking the questions George had expected. ‘How is my family … How is little Emmerson?’

George could have predicted Winston's main concern would have been his brother. His mother had always been harsh on him, and his father was an imprisoned political enemy of the country Winston served. Thandi was just a girl. George decided not to lie or be evasive. ‘He's headed for trouble, Winston. He's ZAPU to the core, and he's been involved in a few street fights with ZANU thugs.’

ZANU, the Zimbabwe African National Union, was the other main black nationalist party in Rhodesia. Its membership was drawn from the Shona, the larger of the two main tribes in the country. Fights between the Ndebele-backed ZAPU and the ZANU cadres were regular and bloody as the two factions battled for supremacy in disputed black areas, while their military wings took on the security forces.

‘Your mother doesn't know whether to keep Emmerson locked up at home or to get him a bigger stick. She fills him full of hate for ZANU and Ian Smith and then fusses over him when he comes home with a split head or broken ribs.’

Winston closed his eyes. George knew what he was thinking. If his brother had fallen in with the nationalists – it didn't matter which party – there was a good chance he would end up in one of the military wings. ZAPU's armed force was ZIPRA – who were mostly Ndebeles like Winston and his family – but ZANU had set up its own army, ZANLA – the Zimbabwean African National Liberation Army. The two tribes, the Ndebele and the Shona, and their political and military wings, hated each other almost as much as they hated the whites.

‘Good for Emmerson,’ Winston said, opening his eyes again and grinning. ‘At least he's sticking with ZAPU and isn't an
mtengisi
.’

George laughed at the self-deprecating joke – Winston had just used the Shona word for ‘sell-out’, the name given to Africans like him who sided with the government. George didn't tell Winston, but he was scared of Emmerson. Physically, George was still more than a match for the fifteen-year-old, but Emmerson was growing up fast. Thandi had shuddered when she'd told him how she'd seen her little brother almost kick a ZANU cadre to death in a street brawl in Mzilikazi. The way Emmerson looked at George when he visited reminded him of a cobra, its head swaying and its dark eyes entranced with the thought of the coming kill.

‘How do you know all this, George?’

‘When I'm home on leave my mom gives me mealie meal, milk, eggs,
nyama
and other things to take to your family. Your mom still hates all white people, especially since your father's been in prison so long, but she tolerates me. Sometimes we talk.’ The lie, like all good ones, was based on truth. ‘My dad put a new roof on Patricia's house last year.’

Winston's eye's narrowed. ‘And Thandi?’

‘She's in Mozambique, studying.’

The sister walked over, clipboard in hand, and told Winston to open his mouth. The conversation stopped while they waited for Winston's temperature to be read. George gazed out the window. Thandi.

*

The last time he'd seen her was six months ago, when he was on leave. The time before that had been going on for a year, but every time he saw her it was the same.

George and a few guys from his squadron had piled into two cars and driven nonstop from Salisbury, through the border crossing at Umtali, and then down to the coast at Vilanculos. The first night they'd got drunk in the bar at the Dona Ana and slept on the beach. The next day the rest of the boys hit the bullfights. George had begged off, saying he had to go visit a friend of his parents. He'd hailed a
chapa
and told the driver of the minibus taxi the address. As he rode he mused about how different things were in Mozambique, how much freer and easier than in Rhodesia. He wouldn't have been caught dead in a kaffir taxi in his homeland.

He'd written to her, but he had no idea if she would be there. Vilanculos was a long way north of Lorenzo Marques, where Thandi was teaching English. She was already fluent in Portuguese.

The beachside bungalows were down-market enough to be affordable and up-market enough, hopefully, to be free of bedbugs. George walked along a crushed coral footpath flanked by manicured grass. A light breeze stirred the fronds of the tall palm trees that gave the complex its name, Palmeiros. A bell tinkled when he opened the screen door to the reception bungalow.

‘
Bom dia
,’ he said to the coloured woman behind the counter.

She smiled at him, ‘
Ola
.’

He'd exhausted his Portuguese, but managed to ask her if a Miss Ngwenya was staying in one of the bungalows. No, the woman told him.

George was disappointed, although a part of him also felt relieved. It was odd, he thought, to want something so badly and at the same time to pray it didn't happen. He stood there a moment, weighing his options. He could get a taxi back to the bullfight and quite possibly end up spending the night in gaol, along with some or all of his squadron mates, or he could still check into a bungalow and get a good night's sleep.

What's wrong with me, he asked himself as he dithered in front of the receptionist.

‘
Senõr?
’

George looked at the woman, then pulled out his wallet and asked for a bungalow. She smiled as she counted his money. He took his key and went to his room. It was neat, if a little tired, but it would do him just fine. He kicked off his shoes and shorts and changed into his swimming costume. He left his rucksack in the room and walked outside. The beach was just on the other side of the gravel road that ran in front of the bungalows. The white sand squeaked under his bare feet.

The tide was in and the water an inviting azure blue, but he was cool enough for now with the gentle breeze. He lay down on his back and closed his eyes.

George felt something cold drip on his bare chest beneath his unbuttoned shirt. He lifted his head and opened his eyes. She eclipsed the sun.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I thought you'd never get here.’

He raised a hand to his eyes to shield them from the glare, and her features came into focus beneath the black halo of her Afro hairdo. She held two bottles of Dois M beer that dripped condensation onto him. He blinked, then smiled. ‘The woman said you hadn't checked in.’

‘I hadn't. I've been sitting in the bar down the beach, watching, wondering.’

‘If I'd come?’

‘Yes.’

‘I invited you to come here, didn't I?’ he asked. She wore a red bikini top that was visible under a billowy white cheesecloth top. Around her waist was a wrap patterned with some African motif he couldn't make out. It ended at her knees, above her slender legs. Her brothers used to tease her about being too skinny and her mother had told her she'd never get a husband if she didn't eat up.

‘I thought you might have had second thoughts,’ she said.

He stared up at her and felt the joyous pain seize him. ‘I did.’

‘But here you are.’

‘Here I am.’

She held out one of the bottles. ‘Would you like a beer?’

‘Afterwards.’

*

Thandi lay on one of the beds they'd pushed together, face down, naked, her chin propped in her palm as she rested on one elbow. George trailed the wet beer bottle down the ridge of her spine and she shivered and giggled. He lifted the neck of the bottle to her full lips and she tilted her head and sucked greedily.

As she rolled over she spilled some down her chin and onto her breasts. George set the bottle down and kissed the droplets all the way back to her soft, full lips. ‘We need some more cold
chibulis
just now. You're making the beer hot.’

She took his head in her hands and kissed him again. George let the bottle slip from his fingers, not caring about the beer that frothed and spilled from the neck, pooling on the floor. For some reason an image of blood in the back of the helicopter came unbidden to his mind. He forced it away – she burned it away with the heat of her mouth, and the one hand that snaked down between their bodies, feeling for him. Again.