Lettah's Gift Read online

  My disquiet, I know, stems from debt. I owe Milton. I owe him for the only time I ever truly felt a sense of purpose – the only time I ever felt engaged with the world. That halcyon time at university when the heavens seemed to smile down at me, when Lydia imagined future triumphs after my stories were published. How much of it would have happened had I not encountered Milton? I recall how he was then: the oddball law student with bad asthma, who loathed conformity and any form of physical exertion in equal measure – the only sport he appeared to enjoy was drinking and aimless discussion. A man after my own heart. At our favourite haunt in the Emmeline Pankhurst Bar at the Imperial Hotel in Pietermaritzburg we’d booze and bullshit the nights away with our small coterie. Milton had a sharp, provocative intellect. Exasperating, the way he vacillated, always the contrarian, as though divorced from belief or principle. A postmodern cynic ahead of his time. God, how he loved drinking! Many were the times that I was forced to heave his half-comatose bulk back to his digs after closing time.

  Yet he had one passion that remained curiously untouched by cynicism: a pure and idealistic yearning to be a writer – strange, in that it belonged more to a redundant romanticism than the fickle pessimism of his age. He believed in writing as a heroic quest for immaculate truth. Truth lay in the silences of solitary creative toil; allegiance to art was the only fidelity that mattered. His passion was infectious; it carried me in its wake. He foisted on me the authors that are still my favourites – Joyce, Beckett, Faulkner, Márquez. We wrote short stories, showing a preference for stream-of-consciousness prose and magic realism. We drove each other, eyes aflame. And when he read my stories I saw something else in his eyes that had never glowed at me before – envy. That look gave me more of a sense of worth than anything else. Before or since.

  Now he is different. What does he feel about writing now? It’s hard for me to come to terms with the new Milton. Perhaps I miss that special look of envy. But a light must be absent from my eyes too. Of the two alternatives Milton once proposed – allegiance to art or going with the flow – my choice, no matter how I might dress it up, brings me no honour.

  I wake from a dead sleep to the sound of a burglar alarm going off next door. The sun is casting a faint strip of yellow light across the bed through a gap in the curtains. I lie in bed, semi-conscious, listening to the commotion. After an interminable few minutes the alarm is switched off. There is a terse exchange in IsiNdebele between two people; the owner of the house admonishing the gardener, apparently. I vaguely follow the conversation. It seems the gardener has accidentally set off the alarm, not for the first time.

  Peace is restored at last. Birds begin their morning songs. Long-forgotten songs that awake in me an obscure longing. I sit up and begin writing in my diary, filling in the events of yesterday. One of the few writer’s habits I’ve kept up. I don’t know why. There is a gentle knock on the door.

  A maid with a tea tray.

  ‘Good morning, baas,’ she says cheerily. She is young with a big buck-toothed smile. ‘Missus says breakfast is ready.’

  ‘Thank you. What’s your name?’

  ‘My name is Precious.’

  ‘Thank you, Precious. I’ll be ready in a few minutes.’

  After the tea, I quickly shower and shave. I see my father in the mirror before I recognise myself. The same jut of the jaw, the same frown. Hair grey and receding, close-cropped. That same blue stare. Something of his distinguished though irascible air. Time has moulded us alike, my flattened nose and nascent beer gut notwithstanding. Then the noble visage implodes, as always; a sudden glimpse of the lurking reprobate hastens my ablutions. Sessions in front of mirrors are never lengthy. I dress in long trousers and a short-sleeved shirt and amble across the lawn to the house. A light dew on the patchy grass. Already it’s hot. The rising sun burns through the frilly leaves of a syringa tree near the swimming pool. I notice a tennis court at the far end of the yard has been converted into a flourishing vegetable garden. The city traffic grumbles in the distance.

  The family has finished breakfast. Ruby is fussing around getting Vernon ready for school. Milton is still seated at the dining table, going through some documents in a clip folder. All very formal: Milton and Ruby in their dark business suits, Vernon in a bright red school blazer and tie.

  Milton looks up as I come in and gestures at a seat next to him. ‘Take a pew. How did you sleep?’

  ‘Like a log. Until that racket started up next door.’

  He laughs. ‘Burglar alarms have become one of the definitive sounds of postcolonial Africa, unfortunately. Precious! Bring baas Frank’s porridge!’

  ‘Yebo, nkosi,’ Precious calls back from the kitchen.

  ‘While some definitive colonial sounds remain unchanged,’ I say.

  Milton gives me a wry look. ‘She’s got a job and a place to stay. That’s more than most Zimbabweans can claim these days.’

  I’m given a short lecture: Precious is a widow. Her husband was killed in a bus accident shortly before her home in Killarney, one of Bulawayo’s shantytowns, was destroyed by bulldozers in Operation Murambatsvina. She arrived at the house one day, destitute, with two small children in tow, asking for work. Milton houses them in the servants’ quarters next to the kitchen and also covers the cost of the children’s education at the same private school Vernon attends. ‘So don’t get too sanctimonious about servants, boyo,’ he says, tersely.

  I make light of it: ‘I was only kidding, Milton.’

  ‘Turned out to be a blessing in more ways than one. She teaches Vernon IsiNedebele. It always bothered me that adopting Vernon might separate him from his people – especially if he lost the language.’

  Precious comes in and places a steaming bowl of mielie meal porridge in front of me. I mix a lump of butter into the porridge and begin eating.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say between mouthfuls. ‘Does the name Brak Malan ring a bell?’

  ‘Can’t say that it does. Someone I should know?’

  ‘No, just an old acquaintance from the distant past. And Vic Baldwin? Ever heard of him?’

  ‘Everyone in Bulawayo knows Vic Baldwin. Farmer from Kwekwe. Booted off his land a while ago. My firm handled his case. Not me personally – one of my partners. You’d always know when Vic arrived to do business. Voice like a bloody foghorn. Why do you ask?’

  ‘He was a friend of my folks. I’m hoping he may shed some light on Brak’s whereabouts.’

  ‘He lives in Hillside, I think. Easy enough to look up his number.’

  Milton gets up and goes through to the adjoining hall. He returns with a telephone directory and flips through some pages.

  ‘Here it is. Under Kent.’

  He underlines the number in the directory and pushes it across.

  ‘I’ll need my glasses to read that. Did you say Kent?’

  ‘Ja, he lives with a woman called Kent.’

  ‘As in Hazel Kent?’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘If it’s the same Hazel Kent. Another one of my parents’ crowd. Are they married or what?’

  Milton shrugs. ‘Don’t ask me. I don’t fraternise with Vic. They strike me as a bit of an odd couple. Vic’s a tiresome bloody boor, Hazel’s an aging hippy. Runs what’s left of a craft centre in town. Slim pickings these days with no tourists around. How she puts up with a bigot like Vic, I don’t know.’ He gestures towards the hall. ‘Phone’s through there. Give them a ring. I should warn you, though: you’ll need to exercise patience – the landline system’s a bloody shambles. That’s why everyone’s got cell phones.’

  I finish the porridge. Ruby comes in and sits at the end of the table. ‘Sorry to get you up so early, Frank, but I didn’t want you to wake up and find everyone gone.’ She turns to the kitchen. ‘Precious! Bring baas Frank’s food!’

  ‘Okay, missus.’

 
I hold my stomach in protest. ‘That porridge was plenty for me, Ruby. I’m not used to big breakfasts.’

  Ruby waves her finger at me. ‘You can’t go the whole day on one plate of porridge.’ She eyes Milton. ‘He can’t, anyway.’

  Precious comes through with a plate of scrambled eggs on toast. With a deft flourish she places it in front of me and removes the porridge plate.

  ‘You really shouldn’t go to such trouble,’ I say.

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ Ruby replies. She turns and calls, ‘Vernon! Come on, it’s not holidays already!’

  Vernon enters the room. ‘Don’t shout, Mom – I’m not deaf!’

  ‘Precious! Are Rosie and Geldof ready?’

  ‘Yebo, missus, they are waiting.’

  Milton gets up. ‘Okay, we’re on our way, Franco. See you later. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.’

  ‘Don’t forget to come by my office,’ Ruby says.

  Through the window, I watch the family, now joined by Precious’s shy children, immaculate in their school uniforms, climb into Milton’s beige early model Ford Cortina and drive off. Precious waves and shuts the gate after them. She is waiting patiently next to the sink when I take my plate through to the kitchen. She frowns as I put the plate down next to the sink. ‘You must call me when you finish,’ she says.

  I fetch my glasses from the cottage and try Vic Baldwin’s number. A woman answers. After all these years, I recognise her voice.

  ‘Is that Hazel? It’s Frank Cole speaking. Errol and Lydia’s son.’

  An intake of breath.

  ‘Frank Cole? My goodness! What on earth are you doing in this God-forsaken place? Someone told me you were all in Australia.’

  ‘It’s a long story. I was hoping to speak to Vic.’

  A brief silence.

  ‘Vic’s still asleep. Why don’t you come for lunch. You can talk to him then.’

  ‘It’s just a couple of questions I need to ask. If he’s not well –’

  ‘Oh, he’s fine. He just stayed up a bit late last night. I’m sure he’d like to see you. We’d both like to see you.’

  ‘Okay, if it’s not too much trouble.’

  Hazel gives directions to her address in Hillside; I write them down and hang up.

  I make my way through the traffic up Leopold Takawira Drive into the city centre. Bulawayo was never a city to wax lyrical about, even in Rhodesia’s heyday. Its drab outward sprawl across the thorn-scrub plains of Matabeleland resembles a crude virus: a hiccup of office blocks against a grimy row of cooling towers; far suburbs floating on heat waves. Never a pretty face, but then don’t towns, like people, lack character when they rely only on looks to get by?

  As in Kwekwe, I’m led unerringly by memory. Only the signs of neglect suggest that time has not stood still. Verges and traffic circles are overgrown with grass and weeds, parks unkempt. Razor wire sprouts everywhere like vigorous creepers. Piles of rubbish lie rotting on the kerbs. Also new to my eye are the different street names. Gone the colonial stalwarts. In their place, and difficult to my tongue, the names of liberation heroes.

  It’s hot and windless, the air blue with exhaust fumes. Weaving through a slow tide of people that has spilled from the pavements into the street, I park near the High Court and walk around the block to Tredgold House, a three-storey government building with an ochre and red colonial façade. A security guard directs me upstairs along musty corridors to Ruby’s office. Her door is ajar; she sits at her desk with a pile of folders in front of her. She looks up and waves me in. Glancing at the pile of folders, she shrugs. ‘I was hoping to have the morning free,’ she says.

  ‘If it’s a problem –’

  ‘No, no. My work just seems to come in deluges. It’s the same with Milton. He wanted so much to take a week off while you’re here, but he’s also been inundated. By the way, I tried to get hold of Inspector Chombo at Fort Rixon but the lines are busy. I’ll keep trying. When can I tell him you’ll be coming?’

  ‘Tomorrow, if that’s possible.’

  Ruby gets up. ‘Okay. In the meantime let me introduce you to someone else who may be able to help you.’

  I follow her downstairs and along a labyrinth of corridors to the Births and Deaths Registry section of the Passport Office. We enter a room with high ceilings, barred windows facing the street outside and a long wooden counter. Two female officials are working at the counter, on the public side of which a queue zigzags out the door. A middle-aged man is seated at a desk in the corner, slowly typing at a computer. A spinning fan on the ceiling is reflected in Mugabe’s portrait on the wall, lending him a strangely energised appearance.

  Approaching the man at the computer, Ruby introduces me: ‘Good morning, Geoffrey. This is a friend from Australia, Frank Cole. Frank, this is Geoffrey Dlamini.’

  We shake hands. Dlamini has large black-rimmed glasses and a patient air. His old suit looks several sizes too big for his skeletal body. His handshake is gentle, his greeting polite; he gestures at two chairs next to the desk.

  ‘I can’t stay,’ Ruby says. ‘I’ve just had a dozen cases dumped on my desk. Frank’s trying to locate a missing person, Geoffrey. I thought you’d be the best person to talk to.’ She pats my shoulder. ‘See you later, Frank.’

  As I sit down there are two loud bangs from directly outside. A sudden hush in the office. All eyes turn nervously towards the door. More bangs further down the street – a car backfiring. Someone laughs, and the hubbub resumes. Dlamini grins and shakes his head; he swivels in his chair to face me. ‘How can I help you, Mr Cole?’

  I explain. Dlamini taps a pen on a notepad as he listens. He writes down Lettah’s name followed by a full stop. He writes nothing else, just twirls the pen around on the full stop until it grows to a big black dot. I show him the only clear photograph I have of her, plundered from the family albums: a close-up depicting a smiling Lettah in her servant’s uniform and headscarf, her head averted slightly. As he scrutinises it, I feel a vague sense of shame that I have so little to substantiate the existence of someone once so intimately enmeshed in our lives.

  When I finish, he asks: ‘You have no national ID number?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No date or place of birth? No employment record or official documents of any sort? No other details, other than her name and this photograph?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mmm . . . this is very difficult. Hopefully we will have her birth records. If she is alive this woman would be old. Excuse me for saying so, but you should accept the strong possibility that she has passed away. If she died in the Fort Rixon area we may have a record of it. But a lot of people die and go unreported, Mr Cole. Especially in the Fort Rixon area during Gukurahundi. Many just disappeared. It’s very difficult. We are short-staffed, as you can see.’

  ‘Gukurahundi? What do mean by that?’

  Dlamini gives me a level stare. He jerks his head towards Mugabe’s portrait on the wall. ‘In the eighties our president sent the army into Matabeleland to kill dissidents. The 5th Brigade. Let me just say, they killed more than just dissidents. Those worst affected were the ordinary people in the bush. People like the one you are looking for. This operation was called Gukurahundi, a Shona word for the cleansing wind that blows the chaff from the ground before the spring rains. The army was very active in the Fort Rixon area, from what I remember. Who knows if this has anything to do with this Ndlovu woman. In a normal country it’s a straightforward business finding out if a person is alive or dead. It’s a straightforward business finding out where a person lives. But this is not a normal country, Mr Cole. Documents are not up to date. Documents are missing. People are missing. The police take documents from this office as they please and never return them. You have just given me a name – Ndlovu is a very common name. You know only her English first name – mo
st of us have an African first name too. No ID number. You should prepare yourself for disappointment.’

  ‘I can only do what I can.’

  Dlamini smiles. ‘Eh-ja, it’s best that you remain positive, but realistic.’ He gets up. ‘Excuse me while I go through our records. It may take a few minutes. You can wait here.’

  In a rustle of loose clothes, Dlamini leaves the room. I sit and watch the slow movement of the queue as people are processed by the two officials. Most appear to be applying for passports. Some chat with each other, others stare into space with resigned expressions. Among them, a women with a baby on her back. For an instant, I feel Lettah’s rolling gait, and hear the strange clicks of her tongue as she sings. Nothing else to fill the world.

  After an hour the two officials break for tea. Everyone just stands waiting for them to return. Half an hour later, just one official returns. The queue grinds slowly forward again.

  At last, Dlamini comes back. He sits at his desk and shakes his head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Cole. We have no records of Lettah Ndlovu – not even a birth certificate. I’ve gone through everything. That’s not to say she has disappeared, or that she is dead – we can make no presumptions. We just have no records of the existence of this person. I think that you should look for her in the Fort Rixon area first. If that fails, my advice is to put an advertisement in the newspaper – The Chronicle. That is often a successful way of finding missing persons. It wouldn’t do any harm to put up some notices here in the townships. It’s common for poor country people to come to the towns and cities to find work. You can also check with the churches and missions. But as far as our records are concerned, she doesn’t exist. I’m very sorry.’