Lettah's Gift Page 8

  I introduce myself and Hazel; we shake hands. Chombo’s gleaming jowls bunch around a jovial smile. ‘Ah! Ah! Magistrate Ruby’s Australian friend – g’day, mate! How’ya goin’, mate?’

  Nonplussed by this jolly welcome, I grin stupidly in response.

  Chombo laughs. ‘You must tell Ruby that I miss her chocolate cake.’ His eyes gleam wistfully at the thought. ‘Tell her she must come and have a picnic with me at the dam. The dam is empty, but no matter.’

  We follow him back to the charge office. He instructs a young female constable behind the counter (whose moniker, I gather, is ‘Fashion’) to make tea. He ushers us along a corridor to his office. We sit facing each other across a desk strewn with folders, the working parts of a rifle laid out on an oily newspaper, and a silent computer. On the walls there are maps and aerial pictures of the region along with the obligatory presidential portrait. One of the maps still has the Rhodesian names of towns. A few framed photographs of Chombo among colleagues and one of him saluting the Police Commissioner, Augustine Chihuri, at a passing-out parade.

  As we wait for the tea, I explain my mission. I place the old photograph of Lettah on the desk. Chombo listens without interrupting. He writes a few notes on a pad. Constable Fashion enters and places a tea tray on Chombo’s desk and departs. With a curious dainty efficiency, Chombo pours the tea. We drink.

  Chombo gets down to business. He screws up one side of his mouth and taps the photograph with a stubby finger. ‘When was this taken? Thirty? Forty years ago?’

  ‘It’s the only picture I have. Maybe someone from that time will recognise her.’

  Chombo blows his cheeks out and shakes his head slowly. ‘If she is alive then she would be, what? Seventy? Eighty?’

  I nod. ‘In that vicinity.’

  He asks more questions: How long did she work for my family? Where did we live during her employment? What year did she return to the farm? Small details. I answer as best I can. As Chombo notes down my answers, I begin to suspect he is merely going through the motions. His questions seem perfunctory, sceptical. If it were not for his past association with Ruby would he even bother with this?

  The questions cease. Chombo stares at the photograph on the desk, then at me. ‘Who knows? You may be lucky, Mr Cole. This Lettah Ndlovu might still be alive. She might still live in this area. But I don’t think so. I’ve worked in this district for sixteen years and I’ve never heard of this woman. I know this district. It’s my job to know everyone here. I’m sorry to say this, but I think you are wasting your time. She has probably died or moved away.’ He holds up his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘You mustn’t hope too much. The world has changed since this photograph was taken. It’s anyone’s guess what has happened to her.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Hazel says. ‘She might well have moved away. Or fallen ill and died. And there’s always the possibility that she was a victim of the army. It’s common knowledge that the 5th Brigade cut a swathe through this area back in the eighties during Gukurahundi. The police would surely have knowledge of what farms were affected by that campaign.’

  Her blunt comments bring a blunt expression to Chombo’s face. He stares at her, then smiles. ‘I wasn’t in command here in the eighties, madam. But as far as I understand, the soldiers only came to Matabeleland to restore order. Their job was to find the bandits who were killing people. Killing white farmers, too, as you may recall. They were not here to harm innocent people, especially women. If any innocents died it was at the hands of the dissidents.’

  Hazel laughs dryly. ‘Inspector Chombo, forgive me, but we all know what went on when Gukurahundi came to Matabeleland. Atrocities were committed. Thousands were slaughtered. You can’t deny this.’

  An amused, half-plaintive expression appears on Chombo’s face. ‘That is only your opinion, madam. If you check the facts I know you will change your mind.’

  I hold up my hand. ‘Look, I’m not interested in what went on in this country twenty years ago. I just want to find Lettah. Or find out what happened to her, so I can resolve the matter of the will.’

  Chombo leans forward on his elbows, his fingers interlocked. ‘Will? You mean this woman has received an inheritance?’

  I nod.

  ‘This inheritance – what figure are we talking about?’

  I hesitate. ‘Fifty thousand dollars. Australian.’

  Chombo’s eyes assume the glazed expression common to Zimbabweans engaged in mammoth tasks of currency conversion. A figure is computed: Chombo raises his eyebrows and blinks. I can almost hear the ring of a cash register. ‘Hmm . . . a lot of money for one poor old woman.’

  Hazel and I look at each other. Hazel smiles.

  With a look of firm resolution, Chombo slaps his hands on his desk. ‘Well, then, we must do our utmost to find this woman. Perhaps I can receive a commission for my efforts, if we do find her?’

  I don’t answer.

  Chombo laughs. ‘Only joking, my friend. You Australians! What’s happened to your sense of humour, hey?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Hazel says, winking at me. ‘If all goes well perhaps there will be a little bonsella.’

  Chombo gives her a warm smile. ‘Rest assured, I will leave no stone unturned. I’d start right now this minute, if I could. However, I’m very busy today. I must attend the magistrate’s court this afternoon. But you can still visit the farm where this woman was last seen.’

  ‘Is it safe for us to visit?’ I ask.

  ‘Don’t worry, you will be safe. I know the farm. Whitestone. I know all the farms in this area. You can go with my constable. I know the man who is in charge at Whitestone. Dlomo – a good man, committed to the objectives of the government. If he sees the constable he won’t make trouble for you.’

  ‘Yes, but will he mind us asking questions?’

  ‘People respect the law in Zimbabwe, Mr Cole. I’m the law in this district. If I send my constable with you there will be no trouble.’

  Chombo is in a generous mood. He offers the use of a police van. We go outside, collecting Constable Fashion along the way (I had in mind a slightly more robust-looking police escort, but there you go). The monotonous tink-tink calls of barbets are loud in the trees. The convicts are down on their haunches in the gardens. Constable Fashion minces along in a tight-fitting regulation green skirt and new pair of shoes. Chombo discovers the van has no petrol. Apologetically, he rescinds his offer of transport.

  We climb into my car. Constable Fashion up front next to me, Hazel in the back. Before leaving, I say to Hazel: ‘Are you sure you want to come along? I told Vic I was going to give the war vets a wide birth. I don’t know what to expect at Whitestone.’

  Hazel dismisses my concern with a wave of her hand. ‘What? And leave me here to be entertained by the good folk of Fort Rixon? Oh, come, come, Frank! You’re as bad as your mother. You worry too much.’

  We drive east along the Shangani road. Hazel puffs away in the back, IsiNdebele spouting from her mouth like smoke signals as she tries to engage Constable Fashion in conversation. From my rudimentary grasp of the language I deduce that Hazel’s questions are mostly related to the occupants of Whitestone. But Constable Fashion is a woman of few words. She sits stiffly in her seat, staring sullenly ahead, her monosyllabic replies terse and evasive – it’s clear that this jaunt is not her preferred option. Eventually Hazel desists, concentrating instead on a running commentary of the scenery around us.

  We enter the hilly country of the eastern Insiza River Valley; a profusion of exfoliating granite kopjes bursting from dense msasa-gondi woodlands and open grass plains. Hazel likens the kopjes to the tops of bald heads rising from a tawny sea. Constable Fashion’s attention is aroused at last. She turns to Hazel. ‘It’s interesting that you make this observation,’ she says in English. ‘The old Ndebeles used to call this land Amakhandeni.’

 
Hazel laughs. ‘Well I never! The Place of Heads. Isn’t that poetic!’

  This seems to break the ice between them. It appears at least some of Constable Fashion’s earlier hostility stemmed from an aversion to being spoken to in IsiNdebele by a white person, as though it marked her as an uneducated country bumpkin. She explains how many of the settlements in the area originated from Matabele garrisons set up by the old chief Mzilikazi way back in the nineteenth century. I suspect Hazel is au fait with this history; the way she murmurs in wonder is, in my book, mildly patronising. Not that Constable Fashion seems to notice. The conversation moves to more mundane things. On the subject of women’s fashion, the constable proves aptly named. We listen to a passionate denunciation of skinny models like Kate Moss and Posh Beckham. ‘Girls like boys,’ she concludes succinctly.

  Pale brown dust billows out behind the car as we head towards a distant rampart of hills. The encroaching bush has reduced the road to a single-vehicle track. The land is tinder dry; parts are blackened by recent fires. The last time I traversed these roads was with my parents almost forty years ago. The sour-dry smell of elephant grass wafts in through my open window, evoking memories of the thatched home of my grandparents. Of holidays spent on Whitestone. Cyril and Betty sitting together in the evenings playing Solitaire with worn-out cards, slowly sipping their brandy, chirping away like old roosting birds. The hiss of hurricane lamps and the distant thump of drums from the headman’s kraal, a mile away. Cyril used to say that if you couldn’t hear the drums, there was trouble afoot.

  Cyril was a fine storyteller. He had lived what Betty called ‘a colourful life’ before settling down with her to eke a difficult living from the unforgiving Insiza Valley soil. After a few brandies, Cyril used to tell Max and me stories about the early days in Rhodesia. Amusing stories, often repeated with slurred embellishments that contradicted earlier versions, but no less entertaining. And after a bit more brandy, he acquired a gleam in his eye and referred to Betty as his little ‘dumpling’. Betty would get coy and pat his hand. A scamp, old Cyril. Happy with his lot in life.

  Betty also had her ways. Once Max and I were left alone with her while Cyril was away at a cattle sale in Gwelo. Some workers spotted a mamba in the tractor shed and ran to the house to call the nkosi. Finding only Betty, their expressions grew sceptical – they knew Cyril was handy with his shotgun, but Betty? Standing imperiously on the veranda, arms akimbo, Betty listened to them calmly. Then she went inside and a few minutes later, to everyone’s astonishment, emerged clad head to toe in her husband’s attire – khaki shirt and long trousers with braces, his big boots and worn-out hat with the stained zebra skin band. Shotgun at port, she descended the veranda steps and marched grimly towards the shed. Sighting the snake coiled around a rafter, she blasted away at it, succeeding only in perforating the corrugated iron roof and destroying a paraffin lamp hanging from a beam. The snake slithered down and made a leisurely escape into the nearby bush. Betty returned to the house, ignoring the laughter of the workers, her job as Nkosi done.

  Small, lost histories . . .

  The road skirting the Dhlo Dhlo Ruins is in such poor condition we are at times forced to inch across rock-strewn patches and dongas. We cross the range of hills that separates the Insiza River Valley from the Shangani River catchment and head south. The track is now strewn with sandy patches; I worry that we may get stuck but Constable Fashion assures me she has traversed these roads in police vehicles with no problem.

  We pass forgotten landmarks of countless childhood visits to Whitestone. Farms of my grandparents’ neighbours. The hulk of an old Ford truck abandoned in a field. The small dams, now dry, built to catch the run-off from the hills. Roadside ramps where cattle and sheep were loaded onto trucks that took them to the abattoir in Gwelo. Familiar, yet changed. Ominous. The lands are haunted by absence, by emptiness. Devoid of livestock or crops. Devoid of old trees – the avenues of eucalypts that graced farm entrances, gone. Abandoned buildings, derelict shells. The squatter camps themselves are empty, but for a few women listlessly carrying out chores with babies on their backs or with toddlers in tow.

  ‘Constable, where are the people?’ I ask. ‘Where are the men? I see just a few women and children.’

  ‘The men are looking for work.’

  ‘In Gweru? Bulawayo?’

  Constable Fashion nods.

  ‘Why are they not working on the farms?’

  ‘There is no rain.’

  ‘In our time,’ Hazel says, ‘you put a little aside to see you through.’

  Constable Fashion stares ahead, sullen again.

  Reaching the Whitestone turn-off, we enter over a cattle grid and drive across a flat stretch of woodlands, the grass between the wheel tracks scraping underneath the car. As we round the kopje my grandfather called Betty’s Bluff, the farmhouse and outbuildings come into view. Just as they used to be, almost: the crude, simple house built of stone and cement blocks, the grey thatched roof; smoke wafting from a makeshift boiler adjacent to the kitchen – a forty-four gallon drum perched above an open fire. The place seems bare, strangely naked, and I remember it used to be surrounded by trees. My grandparents had a particular fondness for flamboyant trees. There were at least a dozen of them around the house, along with cypresses and fruit trees, native msasas and the beautiful mountain acacia. All gone. Cyril and Betty were fastidious about keeping the house and gardens spick and span. They employed gardeners to tend the orchards and the flower and vegetable beds; every leap year the house and sheds were whitewashed. Back then, the homestead was an oasis of green amid the vast brown swathes of bush. Now it’s a barren sore on the land, the gardens bare and dusty – all that grows is a dense stand of cactus trees behind the house. Just the poles and rusted gates remain of the security fence that was built in the war years. There are a number of square mud adobes next to the sheds; the only new buildings visible. A rusted Datsun van with one wheel missing stands up on a jack in front of the house. A Zanu-PF flag hangs like a rag from a pole in the centre of the bare ground that was once the front lawn.

  I stop the car. Constable Fashion sighs impatiently as I reach into the glove box for my camera and take a couple of shots of the old place through the window. We drive on. As we approach the house, a pack of starving dogs scrambles towards the car, barking incessantly. People emerge from the buildings. Compared to the other farms we have passed, Whitestone appears to accommodate a fair-sized community. Constable Fashion informs us that it had been the ‘centre of operations’ for the local war vets, and is now a ‘re-education centre’.

  About twenty people, most of them men, gather as I stop in front of the house. A man in tattered blue overalls carrying an axe hurls a stone at the milling dogs, hitting one which starts yelping; the rest quieten and slink off. The other men make threatening gestures at the yelping dog; it cowers and limps off. The man with the axe circles the vehicle, peering at Hazel and me with a perplexed look. When he sees Constable Fashion he straightens up and shouts something to a young woman on the veranda who calls inside. After a while, a tall man wearing baggy cargo shorts and a soiled AC/DC t-shirt emerges. Gingerly, he limps down the stairs, yawning and indignant, muttering to himself. He has the irritable morning-after expression of a binge drinker, something I’ve occasionally seen gazing back at me in the mirror. But the man’s face softens when he spies Constable Fashion climbing out. He smiles slyly while they exchange pleasantries in IsiNdebele, mostly, I gather, of a lurid sort.

  ‘Fashion, my darling!’ he calls in a heavy rasping voice. ‘Your bottom grows in size and beauty.’

  ‘Aibo, Dlomo – wena!’ Constable Fashion giggles coyly.

  ‘Who have you brought here to visit us, sweetie pie?’

  Hazel and I are introduced. Constable Fashion explains my intentions, mentioning Chombo’s name.

  The sly smile is still there. Speaking in English, he asks: ‘You
r family owned this farm?’

  I nod. ‘My grandparents owned it long ago.’

  ‘Oh, so it must be like coming home, not so?’

  I’m uncomfortable beneath Dlomo’s red-eyed stare. I notice his legs are covered with white scars. ‘My home is in Australia, not here. I’m just interested in finding a woman who once lived here. Lettah Ndlovu – she would be an old woman now.’

  The smile fades. ‘There are no Ndlovus here.’

  ‘Yes, but perhaps someone knows where she is. If she is still alive.’

  ‘There’s no one left on this farm from that time.’

  ‘I’d still like to ask some questions.’

  ‘What is your business with this Ndlovu?’

  ‘She once worked for my family.’

  Without turning Dlomo reaches out and clicks his fingers. He barks an instruction. The young woman on the veranda runs down the steps and, almost grovelling, hands him a pack of cigarettes.

  ‘Why are you looking for this woman, after all this time?’

  ‘It’s a family matter.’

  ‘That does not answer my question, Mr Cole.’

  ‘So I can give her an inheritance.’

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ Hazel mutters.

  Dlomo looks askance at her, then returns his gaze to me. He lights a cigarette, takes a drag and coughs. ‘Inheritance? You mean money? How much?’

  ‘A sizeable sum.’