Lettah's Gift Read online

  ‘I’d hate to impose on you, Milton.’

  ‘It’s not imposing. The car just sits idle at the office all day.’

  Ruby gives a wave of her hand. ‘Oh, don’t even think about it. Milton’s just buttering you up in case we pitch up on your doorstep in Australia one day.’

  Precious waves goodbye from the gate as we drive off. I’m crammed in the back with Vernon, Rosie and Geldof, all very proper in their school uniforms. Rosie gives me a big smile, as radiant as her mother’s. A solemn hello from Geldof before he returns his attention to Vernon beside him. It’s soon clear that they worship Vernon and compete for his favour. In no time he exhorts them to a round of songs including, for my benefit, the first verse and chorus of ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Geldof demonstrates a fine, sweet voice, quite unlike that of his famous namesake.

  We bounce and rattle along. The Cortina has obviously seen better days. A virulent eczema of rust covers the roof and bonnet; an old pair of roof racks seems permanently corroded into place. Wonky suspension. Not that I’m fussy about cars; I’m just intrigued that Milton still spurns the trappings of wealth. For amid the shabby mass of exhaust-belching rattletraps that constitutes the bulk of Bulawayo’s traffic, there are a surprising number of brand-new luxury cars. Mercedes Benzes, BMWs, top-of-the-range four-wheel-drives. When I point them out, Milton just shrugs and says, ‘There’re always those who make fortunes out of chaos.’

  We drop the kids off at their school in Burnside and proceed into the city. Ruby gets out at Tredgold House; Milton and I drive on to his office in Jason Moyo Street. We climb the stairs to the fifth floor of an eight-storey block. Milton tells me, panting heavily, that after being stuck twice during power failures he never uses the lifts. We enter the office suite of Braithwaite, Ogilvy & Hall. I’m introduced to Milton’s remaining partner, Barry Braithwaite, a short, jovial man with a white moustache, a dead ringer for Alf Garnett. The other partner, Hall, has recently migrated to New Zealand. The walls of the suite are covered with large abstract expressionist paintings which Milton explains were done by Barry’s brother who lived in New York in the fifties. The less-than-swanky suite also seems from that decade. When Barry hears I’m from Australia he jibes, ‘Not another Afro-Australian! They should change Perth’s name to Zimbabwe-by-the-Sea. Half the bloody country lives there these days. I’ll probably wind up there too, the way things are going.’

  ‘Come, come, Barry,’ Milton says. ‘How could you leave all of this?’ He waves an arm around the suite.

  Milton introduces me to his secretary, Mrs Mkize, who occupies a small reception area next to his office. He shows me into his office, a neat, sparsely furnished space with photographs of tourist spots on the walls – a vast Matobo vista, the Victoria Falls in full flow, a sunset over Kariba. Smaller photographs of Ruby and Vernon stand on his desk next to a computer. He rummages in a cabinet and extracts some files. ‘I’ve got a meeting in five minutes. Make yourself at home. Ask Mrs Mkize to do the newspaper ad. She knows the ropes – just give her the details.’ He opens one of the desk drawers and takes out a roll of masking tape and puts it on the desk. ‘You’ll need this to stick your posters up. What else? Oh, feel free to use the phone. Just dial zero for an outside line.’ He hands me the car keys. ‘Remember to pick up Rosie and Geldof from school. Don’t worry about Vernon – he’s got a lift with friends. Ruby and I’ll cadge a lift home with Barry.’

  ‘Thanks, Milton.’

  Milton pats me on the shoulder and says in a stilted Australian accent, ‘No worries, mate.’

  I phone the car hire company and speak to a woman whose voice becomes wearily philosophical – no doubt, my little problem is a familiar one. She is abrupt and pragmatic: officially the company would need to collect the car, assess the problem and determine responsibility, which could take a while – and there are no spare vehicles available for at least a week; unofficially I could get it fixed myself – if it’s dirty petrol it wouldn’t be too expensive – and it would be as though this telephone conversation never took place.

  I try the mechanic Jervis’s number. It rings and rings; I’m about to hang up when Jervis answers. In a long, expletive-ridden diatribe, Jervis promises to fetch the car from Milton’s address but says it will probably take a few days to fix – he has quite a backlog since the last ‘dipshit’ mechanic who worked for him quit and ‘gapped it’ to South Africa. He now has only a couple of ‘munt appies’ there to assist him to whom ‘pulling cars apart is as fucking natural as nature itself, but when it comes to putting them back together again – non fucking comprendo!’ According to Jervis, anyone with any skill and half a brain has already left the country – an astute, though personally unflattering observation. I tell him the keys to my car have been left with Precious.

  Not feeling especially confident of the Nissan’s speedy restoration after Jervis’s tirade, but resigned to circumstance, I set about designing a poster on Milton’s computer. I scan a close-up of Lettah’s face and set out the necessary information underneath: her name, the offer of a reward for reliable information and Milton’s home phone number. I print off a copy and take it through to Mrs Mkize. I ask her to run off thirty copies on the photocopier and arrange the newspaper notices. Mrs Mkize eyes the poster critically. ‘Leave it with me,’ she says.

  I return to Milton’s office and with sudden trepidation dial Brak’s number. Would I even recognise him after all this time? No reply. On impulse, I try my father’s number, not expecting to get through. I’m startled when he answers almost immediately: ‘Hello, Errol Cole.’

  ‘Hello, Dad. It’s Frank.’

  ‘Good Lord! I was just wondering how you were getting on.’

  I provide a summary of events so far. He gives his customary ‘mmph’ as he digests each fact. He agrees that the prospects of finding Lettah don’t appear good. His voice becomes animated when I tell him about Hazel and Vic. He asks for their phone number and promises to give them a call.

  ‘Look after yourself, son.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say.

  I leave some money for the overseas call in an envelope on Milton’s desk, collect the posters from the secretary and go downstairs, the reassuring timbre of my father’s voice still ringing in my ears.

  There was never much cause for us to venture into Bulawayo’s townships in the time of Rhodesia. Lettah was a live-in maid, as were the others that appeared after she had gone. My parents would sometimes drop Lettah off at her friends’ places in the old townships of Makokoba or Thorngrove on the weekends; my mother also liked to occasionally browse through the textiles and pottery at the Mzilikazi Craft Centre. These visits had the nature of air strikes – in and out, no hanging about. The townships were another world; my parents imagined dangers lurking there for unsuspecting whites. As Rhodesia’s political situation deteriorated those dangers became increasingly real, ultimately making the townships a no-go zone. In this, my parents were no different from other white Rhodesians: hiding a subliminal fear of the real face of Africa by averting their eyes from it, by living separate to it.

  From the few occasions that I accompanied them I vaguely remember endless rows of small box-like dwellings, identified by numbers stencilled on the façades. Crammed together along narrow streets; all the same, poor and shabby. Scraggly hedges or low fences sectioned off tiny front yards, no more than a few metres deep. A few trees provided meagre screening and shade, little gardens offered splashes of green. Always chock-a-block with people. Endless processions of pedestrians and cyclists. Barefoot children in ragged clothes running along next to the car, laughing and waving. Thin dogs barking. Carts harnessed to donkeys dozing in the sun.

  Poverty was never a stranger to Bulawayo’s townships back then, but now it is a virulent fungus, clinging to everything. People stare as I drive slowly along the crumbling streets. Abject, empty stares. I pass the same shabby brick boxes with their ste
ncilled numbers. The brave little gardens. Thin dogs bark and ragged children play in the streets. The same streets, the same dwellings. Just poorer . . . much poorer.

  Mrs Mkize has applied her deft hand to the layout of my poster. Among other embellishments, she has added an ornate border around Lettah’s photograph, giving it a bizarre Baroque touch. I stick posters up near taxi ranks and bus terminals, outside community halls. I tape them to trees and telephone poles in the residential areas. I do so perfunctorily, working on the vague assumption that Lettah or someone who knew her may have ended up here. Wherever I go, people gather around, watching me, talking among themselves. Pointing at the photograph of Lettah, they ask: who is this person? Why are you looking for her? And then, always, the other questions: have you got work for me? Please, Sir, I am strong – I can work hard. Can you give me money, Sir? Please, I am hungry, my children are sick . . .

  I feel my foreignness. I’ve no idea of what lurks beneath the surface of things here. Like a wretched miser I ignore the pleas.

  Outside the old Stanley Hall, where Joshua Nkomo and his followers once gathered to plot revolution, I’m approached by a policeman. He takes a poster from me, saying nothing. He scrutinises it. I explain my purpose with a forced air of breezy good cheer. He just looks at me, hands the poster back and walks off.

  On an outer fringe of the townships, I drive along a road that I think will take me back into the city; instead, it leads in the opposite direction, around some small granite outcrops and over a stony ridge. A wasteland suddenly opens up before me. I stop the car and stare out at the desolate scene, acre upon acre of what must have been a shantytown. A ghost place. The homes of an entire community razed, reduced to rubble and charred debris, disappearing into the ground beneath encroaching bush and grass. I walk down into this wasteland, following the still-visible tracks of bulldozers until I stand amid the wreckage. Twisted sheets of corrugated iron, collapsed mud walls, smashed bits of furniture. Everywhere the glint of broken glass. A crushed felt hat with weeds growing through the crown. A piece of a woman’s shoe with a plastic flower buckle. A flattened wire cage full of chicken skeletons. The faint stench of rot. A thin dog noses around a short distance away. The only sounds are of distant traffic and the eerie squawking of scavenging ibises that I don’t remember seeing around Bulawayo in the old days.

  A packet of stale salt and vinegar chips and a bottle of too-sweet orange juice suffice for lunch. Then on with the job: a brief and fruitless chat with an official from the Department of Social Welfare before pinning posters to church noticeboards around the city. At a Catholic church I obtain a list of missions in Matabeleland.

  As I head towards the school in Burnside to pick up Rosie and Geldof, I’m buoyed by a sense of progress. That my elation may stem from simply going through the motions and not from any tangible outcomes, does not concern me unduly. Adverts, notices . . . I have my doubts if any of it will bear fruit.

  I arrive at the school five minutes late. Rosie is waiting at the gate. When she sees the car she turns and calls Geldof, who is playing soccer with friends on the nearby playground. He comes galloping across to the car, horse and rider both, one hand gripping imaginary reins, the other whacking his rump. His mates laugh and yell after him. Rosie prattles on all the way to Kumalo about the animals the school accommodates – rabbits, guinea pigs, three sheep. A concerned soul, she launches into a small tirade against whale hunting. Geldof, now less nervous in my presence, listens with a puzzled frown.

  ‘Do you have cane toads in your house, Mr Cole?’ Rosie asks. ‘My teacher says Australia has lots of cane toads.’

  ‘Your teacher is right. But I don’t have any in my house.’

  ‘My teacher,’ Geldof interjects, ‘has no toenail.’

  ‘No toenail?’ I say.

  ‘Yes, it was cut off by the doctor. It was ingrowed.’

  Rosie gives an exasperated sigh and stares out the window.

  Back at the house, I see the Nissan has been taken away. Precious tells me that Jervis had problems getting the winch of his tow truck to work. She laughs and whistles. ‘That man, Mr Jervis – aibo! God will not allow him to talk like that in heaven!’ She hands me a telephone number on a piece of scrap paper.

  ‘It is urgent,’ she says. ‘A policeman – Chombo.’

  I try the number three times before getting through. Chombo greets me with a barrage of droll Australianisms. He tells me he has people right around the country searching for ‘the Ndlovu woman’; he himself has made extensive enquiries around the district, as far afield as Gweru. There are a few leads he wishes to follow up on. He needs more detail about Lettah’s background. For half an hour I tell him what I know of Lettah’s origins, her family, and the period of her life that she spent with my family – much of it a repeat of yesterday’s discussion. I provide more detail about my family, the names of my parents, my father’s occupation, even the vehicles we owned. The more information, the better, Chombo says – that way we will know for sure if we find this woman.

  ‘These leads,’ I say. ‘Do you have anything solid?’

  ‘I can’t say, Mr Cole. I don’t wish to give you false hope. I’ve spoken to people from the district. I’ve been to Whitestone myself. There’s nothing definite. Just a few possibilities.’

  ‘You went to the farm? Who did you talk to?’

  Chombo laughs. ‘Please, Mr Cole, don’t get excited. You must be patient. Let me do my job.’

  ‘Let me know immediately if there are any developments, Inspector.’

  ‘Of course, Mr Cole. I’ll leave no stone unturned. But please remember one thing: this is my case. My case alone. You are lucky that I’m willing to help you. I can assure you no other policeman will waste his time looking for one lost old woman from the bush. If this woman is to be found, I will find her. So you must keep me informed about everything you know. Any small detail may help.’

  ‘Thank you, Inspector. I appreciate your efforts.’

  Encouraged by this exchange, I spend an hour or so phoning the missions on the list I got from the Catholic church. None has any record of Lettah.

  I try Brak’s number again. A woman answers and I ask for Brak.

  ‘Is that Frank?’ the woman asks.

  ‘Yes, a blast from Brak’s very distant past.’

  ‘I know. I’ve heard nothing else from Brak since Vic told him you were here. I’m Regina, by the way – Reggie. Brak’s wife. He’s not in right now.’

  ‘When’s the best time to reach him?’

  ‘Evenings, mostly. But, look, why don’t you drop by this evening? Give him a surprise. We live out on the Matopos road. Not far. He’s dying to see you. I won’t tell him you called.’

  ‘My car’s getting fixed, but give me the directions. I’ll see what I can do.’

  I write the directions down in my diary.

  ‘Your car’s getting fixed?’ Reggie says. ‘Ag, Frank, man! Brak would’ve done it for nothing. That’s what he mostly does these days – fixes cars for nothing.’

  She giggles wearily.

  ‘Wish I’d known, Reggie.’

  ‘See if you can make it this evening. We can do a braai.’

  Brak was an only child. Despite this, his parents were never over-protective; in fact, his father, Piet Malan, a coarse but kindly Afrikaner, liked to stoke the fire of adventure in his son’s heart, equipping him with air rifles, crossbows and hunting knives, among many other indulgences my parents disapproved of. Brak loved hunting and boasted a huge collection of bird wings pinned to a board in his bedroom, all carefully labelled, the trophies of his exceptional marksmanship. A skill not shared by me. My reputation for marksmanship was set in stone the day I shot him in the ankle when he foolishly straddled a tin can we were using for target practice. The pellet had to be surgically removed. The doctor and Brak’s parents were not amused
; Brak was more contemptuous than angry.

  Brak’s other great boyhood love was cars. If you went over to the Malans’ place in Que Que the chances were you would find him lying underneath some jalopy alongside his father. I’d crawl underneath and watch the two of them fiddling around, not that anything other than grease ever rubbed off on me. Brak’s father did a lot of grunting and cursing in Afrikaans and seemed amused when Brak grunted and cursed too. Jou moer! Jou lelike fokken moer!

  Piet would do just about anything to see a smile on Brak’s face. He even built him a little racing car, modelled on the kind that Stirling Moss used to drive. They called it the Silver Bullet. Piet graded a racetrack in the bush behind their house, a bumpy circuit about a kilometre in length. He yelled encouragement as Brak sped around the track, the Silver Bullet’s engine belching clouds of exhaust smoke. Piet used to time him with a stopwatch and noted down the times in a little black book. They let me drive too, but I was never brave enough to hit the speeds Brak reached. I was just honoured to be part of the team.

  Brak seemed to have everything a boy could dream of – guns, knives, even a proper racing car. I was exasperated by my own parents who frowned on such largesse. My father thought Brak’s racing car was a dangerous and unprincipled extravagance. When he heard that I’d been driving it, he fretted that I would come to grief. But he never forbade it, derring-do being the often hazardous prerequisite of a Rhodesian boyhood. Lydia also disapproved, though her disapproval was mostly based on a snobbish (and, as it turned out, unfounded) fear that I might develop a love for engines and turn into a mechanic. Her boys would earn a living with their heads, not their hands.

  She and Errol need not have feared. My brief affair with engines and speed was cut short one day when Brak lost control of the Silver Bullet and ploughed through a row of sisal plants into a cactus tree, which spurted a sticky white sap all over him. Everyone was amazed that a cactus tree could do so much damage. The Silver Bullet was mangled beyond repair. As for Brak, there was a brief panic about the cactus tree sap that had gummed up one eye – rumour abounded that it caused blindness – but he suffered no ill effects after he was hosed down with water. He also had to get the sharp black points of the sisal plants dug out of his back and shoulder by the same doctor who’d removed the pellet from his ankle when I shot him; the doctor by this stage had come to accept that Brak Malan led a harebrained and perilous existence.