The White Shadow Read online

Page 2


  ‘Good boy.’

  The moon was full and red; the stars angry. No one remembered that I had not eaten, and I did not remind them. I found pride in that. I was a man, after all, sitting out on the stoep with my father, while inside the women attended to mysterious women’s business.

  Baba pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket.

  ‘Can I have one?’ I asked.

  Baba laughed, but slid one of the slim sticks out of the packet and lit it for me. ‘That’s right.’ He tilted the end of the cigarette up. ‘Do not chew it.’

  The cigarette tasted like fire, and my tongue curled up to the roof of my mouth in protest. I held my cough inside, and blew a plume of smoke. My father and I did not speak. We sat in silence, looking at the stars in the sky and the stars of street lamps spread out below us on the road from the kopje to the town.

  ‘How much longer, Baba?’

  ‘Not long, I hope,’ he said. ‘I want my dinner.’

  I heard a far-off wail that made my heart jump and raised the hairs on my arms. ‘Baba!’

  ‘It is done,’ he said, and stood up.

  I scrambled to my feet and followed him, my heart still beating hard. ‘That was the baby?’

  ‘Of course. Have you not heard a baby crying before, Tinashe?’

  I had. But that cry had not sounded like a baby to me.

  An auntie opened the door for us. ‘Namachena!’ she said to Baba, as if it were he who had come safely through a dangerous time. ‘You can come inside now.’

  Amai sat up in bed. She was shining with sweat, and looked like she had seen horrors. ‘Here.’ She held the baby out to my father – an offering. It had long arms and legs, and was stretched to its full length.

  ‘It looks like someone has sneezed on it,’ I whispered to one of the aunties, seeing the pale film of mucus on its skin.

  ‘Shush!’

  The baby lengthened its wrinkly neck to peer at us with bold eyes. It did not cry. My father took it and held it at arms’ length, letting its legs dangle.

  ‘A girl,’ said Baba. He looked at the pale pink cleft between her legs. My hand went to my mboro, feeling its comforting bulge in my shorts, confirming that I was a son of the house and a hunter who would one day eat the heart of a leopard.

  ‘A girl,’ chorused the aunties, shaking their heads.

  ‘It is a girl,’ said my mother. Seeing the worn edges of her mouth pull up into a smile made me feel suddenly and fiercely protective.

  ‘Amai,’ I said, and climbed up on the bed. I gave her a hug, but I could feel her straining past me to the new baby. I touched a bead of sweat on her forehead.

  ‘Tinashe! Stop bothering your mother,’ said an auntie, and pulled me off.

  My father said nothing more. He held the baby apart from his body, as if she did not belong to him.

  ‘I am sorry, Garikai,’ said Amai.

  The baby coughed with her little cat-mouth, then closed it and stared at Baba.

  ‘Hazvinei,’ said my father after a pause. A word meaning ‘It does not matter.’ He held her bloody body close, cradled her in his big arms and cupped her small skull in his palm.

  ‘Now life has been divided, and each will die alone,’ said one of the aunties. This is what was said when a girl, a little stranger, was born. If it had been a boy, my auntie would have said congratulations, the home has grown.

  Secretly, I was not sorry. Now I was the only son of the house. There would be no competition for my position; no younger brother to tag along when Baba took me hunting or bought me my first beer at the shebeen. But I felt sad for that lost brother, too. The ghost of Simba hovered like a moth above the bed, above the smells of sweat and toilet odours. I looked up into his insect eyes and said that I was sorry, and I watched him float to the window and disappear.

  It is all right, I thought. I will not mind having a sister. I will be in charge.

  Chapter Three

  I DID NOT understand Hazvinei’s power – not then.

  As soon as my sister arrived, I forgot what life had been like without her. I sat with Amai all day, waiting to be allowed to take Hazvinei in my arms and smell her sharp, herbal scent. I held my hand against hers and marvelled at the honey of her skin.

  Hazvinei was an unnatural baby from the start, and did not behave or look as babies were meant to. She had a neat row of little, pointed teeth, and liked to bite. Amai bought her cheap plastic teething rings, and Hazvinei chewed right through them in two weeks. She liked to bite people too, and was not an affectionate baby with anyone but Baba. Those scars on my arms from the first year of her life still shine pale on my skin; little threads of light. Amai was not spared either. When feeding, she yelped and drew her breast away from Hazvinei’s mouth.

  ‘Aiii, this one!’

  A ring of toothmarks around the nipple, joining all the other scrapes and nips.

  ‘She is too much,’ said Amai, shaking her head. ‘You were not as naughty as this one, Tinashe.’

  Hazvinei was not interested in the usual baby games. When I tried to play peek-a-boo with her, she stared at me as if wondering why I found this silly game so amusing. Sometimes, though, she smiled and reached her hand to touch me, fanning out her little fingers. Enchanted, I clutched them; and then her face turned stormy, and she howled.

  I could not win.

  ‘Tinashe, stop bothering your sister!’ Or, ‘Tinashe, play with your sister!’

  Baba was besotted with her from the first moment he held her bloody body. When he came home he went straight to Hazvinei, to pick her up and talk to her. My little lioness, he called her, as he ordered me to look at her little curled nails and the fine whorls of black hair that grew on her head. ‘Isn’t she beautiful, Tinashe?’ he said.

  I always agreed. Yes, she was beautiful. Yes, she was a little lioness. She never bit Baba. She crooned and flirted with him, waving her hands in his face – smiling, giggling. I watched Baba as he played with Hazvinei. He was in love with her, I knew, but I was his son and would bring strength to the family one day. That was something that even Hazvinei could not take away from me.

  ‘You must look after your sister,’ Baba told me.

  I joined in for a while to see if that would help, and if Baba would then be proud of me as well. As Hazvinei grew from a beautiful baby into a beautiful toddler, I took careful note of all her achievements.

  ‘Baba, she is walking, come and see.’

  ‘Baba, she has eaten her first carrot.’

  I brought these things to my father and dropped them at his feet.

  ‘Good boy, Tinashe,’ he said. And that was all.

  Even the strange whites that came into the kopje from time to time remarked on Hazvinei during those first two years. They were skinny men – boys, really – with brown canvas uniforms and too-short hair.

  ‘Pretty baby,’ they said to Amai when she passed. Hazvinei glared at them from her cloth sling on Amai’s back. Amai gave the white men a slow, loose-lipped smile, pretending not to understand, and I clasped her hand tightly. I felt her bones beneath my fingers, brittle as a bundle of sticks.

  ‘Watch that one, hey,’ said the whites. ‘She will break hearts.’

  Hazvinei bared her teeth, and they laughed. We moved out of earshot.

  ‘More and more of them come,’ said Amai. ‘Like white ants on jam.’

  ‘Why, Amai?’

  ‘No reason, Tinashe.’ And she patted my head. ‘Do not worry yourself about it.’

  I knew that something called UDI had been declared just after Hazvinei’s second birthday, and that it was a very important thing that made the men of the kopje worried when they listened to the news on the radio, but I did not know what it meant. Baba had tried to explain it to me, but I was left with the confused idea that we had killed the Queen of England. Nothing seemed to change; we still lived in Rhodesia, Ian Smith was still the Prime Minister and, apart from the new whites who appeared more and more frequently, the kopje seemed as sleepy and
content as ever. The men in the dare grumbled as they sipped their beer, and eyed the white men with flat, suspicious stares, but the older men were always stern and mysterious. I did not see anything strange about this. I was more concerned with my sister’s biting, and I told my friends about it as we played together in the shallow part of the river. Our mothers washed our clothes nearby, keeping an eye on us.

  ‘Perhaps she is not a human at all,’ said Little Tendai. He was not one to talk. He had one deformed foot that scraped along the ground when he walked, and he looked like a little rat with his pointed nose and teeth that stuck out. People in the kopje whispered that his father had tried to leave him outside for the animals when he was born, but that his mother had stormed and cried and persuaded him to let the baby live.

  ‘Perhaps she is a tsoko.’ Little Tendai grinned.

  ‘Nyarara, Tendai.’

  ‘Monkeys like to bite.’

  ‘My sister is not a monkey.’

  ‘How do I know you are telling the truth? I have not seen her.’

  ‘You have seen her.’

  ‘Only on your Amai’s back. She is in a blanket. How do I know she does not have fur under that blanket?’

  ‘Tendai, you are crazy,’ said Chipo, my other good friend. She smoothed her blue dress with both hands. Chipo was always neat and tidy, no matter what games we played, and she had a pleasant voice that reminded me of the Cape turtledoves that woke me in the mornings.

  ‘I will show her to you,’ I said to Tendai.

  ‘All of her? Even the fur?’

  I moved to pinch him, but he darted out of reach. ‘You will see that she has no fur.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow. When my Babamukuru is here.’

  ‘Your Babamukuru is coming?’ Little Tendai was impressed, despite himself. My Babamukuru was a mighty figure on the kopje; a man who owned a big white house and had an important job, to which he wore trousers and polished shoes with proper laces. Few of us kopje kids had been to the town, but we knew that it was a place full of wonders. Having a relative there made me special. Tendai was jealous, I knew.

  Babamukuru did not come home often, but when he did, he brought enough food for everyone, and the family came together for a big party. Tomorrow night he was to bring my cousin Abel, whom I had not seen since Hazvinei’s birth.

  ‘Yes. And he will bring a whole mombe with him for us to eat.’

  Little Tendai scoffed. ‘You lie.’

  ‘No. You wait and see.’

  ‘Fine. And I will wait to see this monkey sister of yours, as well.’ He put two fingers in the corners of his mouth and drew them back to make a gaping, ugly face.

  Babamukuru telephoned that afternoon to tell us that he and Abel were still coming to the kopje, but that Tete Nyasha could not, because she was caring for a sick auntie.

  ‘That is just what I expected,’ said Amai, who did not like Tete Nyasha. Tete and Babamukuru had been married for a long time before she had given birth to Abel, and Amai thought that she had waited too long. Amai and the aunties talked about this often: not just Tete Nyasha (although she was a favourite source of gossip), but any woman who had not borne children, or who was married for many years before having a child.

  ‘The wife of VaMakoni still is not pregnant.’

  ‘But she smiled at me when I asked her at church!’

  ‘Well, her mother has told me that she is not.’

  ‘Eh-eh. Four years now, and no child.’

  ‘And she looks healthy.’

  ‘Perhaps she is …’ and here the conversation dropped to a whisper, and I could not hear it.

  ‘She would not dare to do such a thing.’

  ‘But these young girls, they do not want to lose their figures. They are more interested in shaving their legs and buying dresses like the ones the white women wear.’

  ‘Mukadzi wako haana mbereko wana mumwe.’

  ‘But where would he find another one in this village?’ An auntie shook with fat chuckles. ‘All the women here are skinny like my broom. If you want children, you need a woman who is ripe.’ She cupped one breast in each hand, and the other aunties cackled and clucked like our chickens.

  ‘Iwe!’ Amai held her hands over my ears as if I should be offended, but I could feel the rumble of her laugh through her bones.

  On the morning of Babamukuru’s visit, there were many chores to be done. First, we cleaned ourselves, heating water in the pot until there was enough for washing. Amai combed my hair, dragging at the curls until I yelped like a whipped dog, and rubbed Vaseline all over my skin before applying it to her own and Hazvinei’s as well. I did not like the soft, greasy feeling of the Vaseline but, when it had soaked into my skin, I shone brown and bright as a nut. Next, Amai cleaned the house. She rubbed red polish into the floors and swept the dust in the yard until it was a smooth swathe of burned powder. The house and yard gleamed red, and the chickens pecked at the new grubs turned up by the sweeping. The house was always clean, but when Babamukuru came to stay it was the smartest and shiniest house on the kopje.

  ‘Why does Babamukuru only come to see us once a year?’ I asked Baba that morning. ‘Why have we never been to visit him?’

  ‘Because he is a very busy and important man.’

  ‘You are very busy and important too, Baba.’

  Baba smiled. ‘Ah, but I do not have to wear my church clothes every day. When you grow up and get a job, Tinashe, make sure it is one where you have to wear your very best clothes. If it is a job where you do not get dirty, then it is a good job.’

  I liked the dirt, and could think of nothing worse than wearing my hot, scratchy church suit every day. ‘I want to be like you, Baba.’

  He laid a hand on my head. I could feel the hard patches on his palm from where he held his badza and his spade. ‘You will change your mind when you are older, Tinashe.’

  Amai set me to work as well. I washed down our outside latrine with water and Lifebuoy soap.

  ‘Is it true that Babamukuru has a toilet indoors?’ I asked her as I scrubbed.

  ‘Yes, Tinashe. It is true.’

  I knew that a toilet indoors was considered to be the height of wealth, but I did not see why. Our latrine smelled, even when it had just been cleaned, and there was always a fly buzzing around it. I did not know why you would want that smell and that fly to be indoors, where you slept and ate. Babamukuru had grown up with a latrine just like ours, I knew, and he must have dropped his trousers in the bush now and then, as I did. To go from that to a big white house where water came out of a tap when you turned it! It was like a mosquito flying to the moon.

  Hazvinei watched me with slanted, curious eyes as I worked. She was two years old now, but had not started to speak as normal children did, in babbling sounds and sudden words. Instead, she was silent well beyond the point at which she should talk, and women in the village had started to mutter about her. She was strange, they said. Perhaps something was wrong with her. Superstitious nonsense, Baba said, but Amai kept Hazvinei close to her side when they walked. Hazvinei stayed beside her obediently enough – her thumb firmly wedged in her mouth, and her eyes bright and knowing.

  After Little Tendai called her stupid, though, no one muttered about Hazvinei in front of me.

  ‘Your sister is not right in the head,’ he had said one day. ‘Amai says so. She says that Hazvinei must have been cursed.’

  Little Tendai’s mother and her curses! Amai told me that she only believed in them so strongly because of Tendai’s foot, and that she should pay more attention to her drunken husband than to her magic and talismans.

  ‘That is not true,’ I said. ‘She will speak. She is just slower than some babies.’

  ‘She is not a baby any longer,’ said Little Tendai. ‘She is a monkey. Just like I said. She is going to grow a tail and run away into the trees.’

  ‘Nyarara, Tendai.’

  Tendai danced around me on his twisted foot. ‘Your sister is a tsoko!’ He made
monkey noises and scratched under his arms. He was so busy being a monkey that he did not notice I had punched him until two lines of snot and blood ran from his nose. He did not cry, because men did not cry, but his eyes became wet.

  ‘Do not ever say such things about my sister again,’ I had said, and left him sitting in the dust.

  Perhaps remembering my recent bad behaviour, Amai said, ‘You will be very polite to your Babamukuru, Tinashe.’

  ‘Yes, Amai.’

  ‘He is the head of the family and we must be very grateful to him for his kindness to us.’

  I watched sweat collect in the crook of her elbow and slide onto the floor, where it quickly evaporated.

  ‘Yes, Amai.’

  ‘Good boy.’

  I went with Amai and Hazvinei to fetch water from the river for cooking. On the way, we stopped to tell our neighbours about Babamukuru’s visit. They knew already, because of the gossip, but when we told them they clicked their tongues and exclaimed. I felt very proud to be part of such an important family. Even the murmurings about trouble on the borders were overtaken by shouts of excitement about the coming party.

  Something pale at the corner of my eye caught my attention and distracted me from Amai and the relatives. A flicker of white, like a ghost. Two white men in brown uniforms stood outside the tiny clinic where I got my injections and cough syrup; two pairs of tanned legs rose from shoes made of hide. They were rough-voiced, loud-laughing, with God-like beards and patchwork skin – red, brown, orange, pink, white – with empty eyes like clean water. They stared at my mother.

  ‘Where are you off to, Mai?’ one of them called.

  Amai made her face flat and stupid-looking, so that she did not look like Amai anymore, and ignored them. We did not speak to the white men in the kopje, even when they bought us cans of Coke and bars of chocolate. We could clap our hands and say ‘Mazvita tatenda’ and smile and smile, but that was all.

  ‘What are they doing here, Amai?’

  ‘They are asking questions, Tinashe. Now be quiet.’