When a Crocodile Eats the Sun (25 page)

“But you’ve only just gotten back,” she complains. Increasingly she sees Africa as a capricious mistress, something she must compete with, something dangerous and diverting.

Seventeen

November 2003

O
N THE WAY
to Zimbabwe I stop over in London. I find Georgina exhausted and demoralized. Every day she catches the Thameslink train across London to the Radio Africa studio in an office park on the city’s northern edge. (We jokingly refer to it as “an undisclosed location” because there are fears that, even in London, they are not beyond the reach of Mugabe’s goons, so none of the staff is permitted to reveal its address.) Here she spends hours on the phone with people in Zimbabwe, and broadcasts morale-raising programs back to them. She works straight through the weekends, and in the evenings she attends political functions, lobbies members of Parliament, gives evidence to the foreign-affairs select committees, and does TV and radio interviews. But she is starting to lose faith in the prospect of change. Like so many members of the opposition, she has set out on a sprint that has turned into a marathon, with no finish line in sight.

And now her marriage has collapsed. Jeremy, who has been unable to find a job, has been going through a crisis of his own. After protracted agonizing about it, he has decided that he is, after all, gay, and has moved out. Like so many young gay men from the infamously homophobic Zimbabwe, where the consequences of coming out can be so extreme, it has taken him all this time to come to terms with his own sexuality.

Auxillia, Xanthe’s Zimbabwean nanny, who came over with them from Harare and lives with them in North London, has also announced that she too is decamping. Since they arrived she has had her teeth fixed, smoothed out her Shona accent, and — largely through Georgina’s efforts — obtained a residence permit. Now she wants to go to Birmingham to join a friend who is a real estate agent of sorts, selling property in Harare to Zimbabwean exiles for pounds sterling.

I sleep that night under an Angelina Ballerina duvet, in Xanthe’s small, pink-walled room, surrounded by her Barbie dolls and the tiny plastic cups and saucers from their tea service. A fairy costume with white-sequined wings hangs on the back of her closet door.

In the morning Georgina makes coffee and we sit at the dining table. The room is furnished with Shona soapstone sculptures and oils of the African countryside. As I check my ticket to Harare, she bursts into tears. “It’s not bloody fair! I want to get on the plane with you and go home too,” she sobs. “And I can’t. I work all God’s hours and for what? I’ve no idea who listens to us, or whether we make
any
difference at all. We just broadcast into a vacuum. Nothing changes over there, and I’m stuck here. And now my whole damn life is collapsing around me. My marriage is over, even Auxillia’s deserting me. I so miss my life in Africa. I just want it back.”

She is crying hard now, taking in big gulps of air. I put my arm around her shoulders and try to comfort her, but it only seems to make it worse.

“Your sacrifice
is
worth it,” I say. “People
do
notice. They
do
listen. It helps them feel that they’re not alone to hear your broadcasts.”

But she doesn’t really hear me.

“Xanthe will never know Africa the way we did,” she weeps, and lowers her head into her hands. She is crying still when I leave for the airport.

A
S THE PILOT TELLS
the passengers to prepare for our descent into Harare, I begin patrolling the aisle to scrounge used flight socks from fellow passengers. My mother has asked me if I can collect them, as she finds stretchy airline socks to be ideal for holding Dad’s foot dressings in place, much better than bandages.

Several passengers hand theirs over wordlessly, but then a frequent-flying banker bridles. “Why do you want them?” he asks brusquely.

“They’re for the sick in Zimbabwe,” I say.

I have not told a lie.

At Harare, I line up to pay for my visitor’s visa, now US$55, hard currency that the government is gasping for. Then I join another line to clear immigration. This is always where it starts to get nerve-racking for me. Although I have been on the “banned” list for years, I have managed to get in and out under the protection of Dumiso Dabengwa, the cabinet minister I once helped defend from a high-treason charge. But all that has changed now. Dabengwa has lost his seat to the MDC. And my sister is broadcasting daily under our surname on Radio Africa, a station that so infuriates Mugabe that he has ordered the CIO to jam it. And now entering the country as a journalist without a special visa has become its own crime with a minimum two-year jail term.

The immigration officer wears a threadbare white shirt and a sad, patient face as he sits behind a counter in his booth. When I finally reach him, I proffer my passport with an affected world weariness. While he examines it, I focus on the top of his lowered head. His bald spot gleams like a burnished conker. I stand on tiptoes to examine his workstation.

“Still no computers,” I say, trying to conceal my relief. No computers means no searchable database.

“No,” he sighs, head still down. “We are so behind here now.” He glances up at me and down again at my passport.

Then he makes a little
hmpf
noise, half through his nose, half in his throat, a noise that, frankly, does not sound good.

“
G-o-d-win
,” he says, drawing out the first syllable. I concentrate on his gleaming conker, trying to beam thoughts into it. “I know who you are,” he says.

He pauses, as if inviting me to guess who he thinks I am, but I remain silent.

“You,” he announces quietly, looking up briefly, “are a
troublemaker
. And so is that sister of yours, Georgina, broadcasting on that rebel radio station.”

As he speaks, I think, at least I can tell her someone
is
aware of her programs. Then I am overcome by a hernia of panic. Great polyps of fear threaten to burst through the wall of my resolve. I am terrified that they will dump me in Chikurubi Prison, as an example. That they will dust off all the old spying allegations, put me in front of a pliant judge, and lock me up for years in a filthy, crowded, shit-fumed cell, where my teeth will fall out as I succumb to malnutrition or tuberculosis or cholera, and I will never see my kids again.

Getting caught like this suddenly feels so inevitable. I have become too complacent, too impatient to bother with the circuitous route through Victoria Falls that I used to take — attaching myself to tour groups and following the raised umbrella of their guides through the Falls Airport — and now I have to pay the price. I do not argue with the immigration officer. I just smile weakly and shrug, trying to stay calm, waiting to see what happens next. His head is still bowed, his eyes cast down. And, oddly, I hear the thumps of what sounds like stamping, coming from his desk.

“Tell her I liked last night’s program,” he murmurs, handing over my passport and grinning broadly. “Welcome back to Zimbabwe. Welcome home.”

I feel dizzy with the reprieve.

“Next,” he says.

I
COLLECT MY BAGGAGE
in something of a daze, and the customs officer waves me through the green channel. On the other side, the Watsons are waiting to meet me. They are accompanied by Ephraim, their cook of forty years, in his police reserve special officer’s uniform — bronze serge safari suit and cap, his shoes shined to mirrors. He sits up front so as to face down any militia roadblocks. Robin drives, and a great glowing shoulder of moon rising low in the east over Mukuvisi Woodlands follows our progress.

Robin’s daughter, Fiona, with whom I grew up in Chimanimani, is telling me about their recent burglary. She and Robin, and her mother, Sydney, had rushed to the local shops on rumors of salt — another commodity in short supply. They returned, triumphantly clutching a very small bag of salt, to find their house ransacked. Alasdair, Fiona’s younger brother, and Ephraim are missing — kidnapped, they assume. The Watsons are distraught, but after a frantic half hour Alasdair and Ephraim arrive, cut and bleeding, in a car with two policemen, driven by Mrs. Muguti, a black surgeon’s wife, who is a member of their local Catholic congregation. They tell them that robbers barged in, armed with pistols and knives, and one held a knife at Ephraim’s throat. Alasdair was out on the veranda so Ephraim, with the blade still at his jugular, shouted, “Run, Alasdair, run!” Alasdair sprinted out, dived through the three-foot-thick hedge and onto the road where Ephraim joined him (once the robbers took off), and there Mrs. Muguti spots them fleeing along Montgomery Road and offers them a lift.

The next Sunday, after the service at Rhodesville church, says Fiona, Sydney shakes hands with the professor’s wife, and as she draws her hand away she realizes that Mrs. Muguti has pressed a wad of notes into her palm. “Buy yourself some cheese,” she murmurs, “ . . . as a treat.”

Tonight we take a route past their house, where we stop briefly at the gate for Robin to give a cryptic sequence of honks in Morse code. Standing inside, silhouetted in the window, Sydney acknowledges us with a double-handed wave; now she will rush to the phone to warn Mum of our impending arrival, and Mum will set off for the gate, as Isaac, the gardener, will have knocked off for the night.

It is five months since her hip operation, but she is still on crutches.

“I don’t really need them,” she quickly insists. “I only lean on them when I’m tired. But they’re a good defensive weapon.” She lifts a crutch and makes sharp jabbing motions with it, nearly toppling over in her enthusiasm. Then she begins the painstaking and elaborate ritual of unchaining and unlocking the gate. Special Officer Ephraim stands a benign guard over her, gazing sternly out at the horizon.

M
Y FATHER
is noticeably more stooped and frail, though his head remains imposing and Rushmorish, his hair leonine and full. When the Watsons have gone, I lay out my bounty on the living room carpet. Dad’s eyes glitter as he surveys the hoard, and he absently squirts a Nicorette inhaler into his mouth.

“It has been four weeks since his last cigarette,” says Mum proudly.

This must be about the tenth time he’s tried to quit. His doctor has told him that giving up may boost the oxygen in his blood by up to 5 percent, which will improve the circulation in his feet.

My main haul consists of various medications he needs that are impossible to get here. They include an experimental transdermal foot cream called Healthibetic that I discovered online in an issue of
Diabetes Care.
According to a pilot test — on only eleven people, it’s true — it increased blood flow to the feet by an average of 10 percent. I contacted the doctor running the test and bought several jars of the stuff, enough for about six months.

“I hope it’s more rigorously administered than the last ‘wonder drug’ I cadged,” I say to Mum out of Dad’s earshot.

The rest of the loot includes single-malt scotch, a pair of nail clippers, a dozen books, and printer cartridges that my father has specifically requested. There are four of them sealed in their crinkly silver foil cocoons, and Dad fondles them, as valuable to him as Fabergé eggs.

“I won’t need any more,” he says. “These should be sufficient to see me through.” He is measuring out the remains of his life in printer cartridges.

I offer him a bag full of diabetic chocolate that Georgina has sent, and he seizes it with relish.

“When I was a child,” he says, “I had a ritual with my mother. Every evening, after dinner, I would approach her as she sat reading, and in silence she would break six squares of chocolate from the bar — never more, never less — and hand them to me.” He pauses to wince as his foot touches the table and shoots a bolt of pain through him. “Even to this day,” he goes on, “I eat chocolate in units of six squares. It’s somehow imprinted on me.”

I
PHONE
N
EW
Y
ORK
to tell my family that I’ve arrived safely.

Joanna tells me that Thomas came through to our bedroom this morning asking, “Where’s Daddy?”

“In Africa,” she replies.

“Oh,” he says, as though Africa was on the next block, and he trots through to the kitchen for breakfast.

Hugo, she says, is barreling around the apartment singing the first line of a song I have taught him in Shona, the old Zimbabwean national anthem: “
Ishe Komberera
Africa” — “God Bless Africa.” He puts manic emphasis on the first syllable of the continent:
Ishe Komberera Aaaaa-frica.

I
CARRY MY BAGS
into the guest room, which now doubles as a study. Over by the computer, where my father has sat for hours typing out e-mails to me about himself, there are piles of medical and engineering papers, which he recycles by printing on their backs. New paper now costs Z$100 a sheet.

Mum has cleared some space in the closet, and I hang my New York clothes next to a row of her white doctor’s coats.

My parents turn in early, but with the time difference, sleep eludes me. I lie on the single bed staring at the widening structural cracks that fracture the walls, the white ceiling panels discolored by repeated leaks, and I listen to the rats scurrying frenetically back and forth up there. I cannot go out onto the veranda, as I’d have to unlock the rape gate, which would wake my light-sleeping mother. So I get up and stand at the window and look out through the curlicued burglar bars, out across the swollen profusion of our garden, to the massive bowers of bougainvillea that mark the boundary of Fort Godwin. My parents have had Isaac plant sisal bushes along the inside border of the hedge and now their savagely serrated blades form an interlocking barrier. Still, through it all, I can make out the flickering of the fires of the street hawkers camped out along Hindhead Avenue. During the day, they sit at their pathetic rickety wooden stands and sell groundnuts in tiny bags, single mangos, bananas, tomatoes, and cigarettes, and they roast corn on small fires and sell half a cob at a time. Sometimes, they don’t even make enough for the bus fare home to the townships, so they sleep right there, under our bougainvillea hedge, like tonight. I can hear them murmuring to each other, gently scolding their children. I can hear their liquid coughing and spitting, and their babies mewling. They must be lying fifteen yards away from my bed, and the harsh smoke from their fires seeps though the hedge and in through my open windows and catches in my throat.