The Cry of the Go-Away Bird Read online

  ‘I like it,’ said Mum. I was not sure. It scared me a little.

  ‘All the gardener’s work,’ said Mr Cooper. ‘He worked for my father, too – been here longer than I have. The man’s a genius when it comes to planting. He’s never had any proper teaching, it’s all instinct.’

  Mr Cooper had chickens in a pen at the end of the garden. They were fat, with dusty feathers and comfortable broad backs.

  ‘Can I pick them up?’ I asked. Mum gave me a look, but I ignored it.

  ‘If you can catch them.’

  I reached out for one of the chickens. It flounced away, but slowly, and I managed to catch hold of it. Once I had it firmly under one arm it did not struggle, but swivelled its old-lady neck to blink at me.

  ‘Now what are you planning to do with it?’ said Mr Cooper. He and Mum chuckled. I felt my face grow hot. I put the hen back down, and it fluffed itself out before rejoining its friends.

  ‘Help me collect the eggs,’ said Mr Cooper.

  There were beds of straw at the back of the hen house, and there was a special roof on hinges that lifted up. When Mr Cooper lifted it, I saw one egg in each bed, two in some. They were warm and round, with little bits of feather sticking to them. I held one on my palm, and it felt like a stone that had been warmed in the sun.

  The door to the chicken run creaked, and something moved to block the light. A tall black man with hollow cheeks and wide, staring eyes. He looked like a picture of a prophet from the Bible. I stepped back involuntarily.

  ‘Ah, Jonah.’ Mr Cooper continued, unhurriedly collecting the eggs. ‘This is my gardener, the one I was telling you about.’

  ‘Baas,’ he said and I saw he was carrying a bucket of chicken feed. It clonked against the gate frame as he moved through.

  ‘That’s Jonah,’ said Mr Cooper as we left carrying the eggs. ‘Married to Mercy. They live in the khaya.’

  I could see it, beyond the vegetable garden; a little, grubby building surrounded by a fence. We started back to the house.

  ‘Jonah has been with the family for years,’ said Mr Cooper. ‘Started work as a houseboy, and then when he grew up my father made him the gardener. Bluddy good guy, for an Aff.’

  I looked over my shoulder. Jonah was standing perfectly still, watching us. I turned back quickly.

  ‘Quiet,’ said Mr Cooper. ‘A good man, though. Very loyal.’

  I was looking around at the garden and so did not see what I was walking into until it was too late. There was a sickening crunch, and a feeling of softness under my foot. Something hard pierced the rubber of my flip-flops.

  ‘Damn.’ Mr Cooper leaned down to look at what I had stepped in. It was a crow – a very dead one. Under my foot, its chest caved in and leaked sluggish blood.

  Ants were already marching to its dusty eyeballs.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Mr Cooper asked. He examined my shoe. The bird’s beak had pierced the sole of the flip-flop. ‘Don’t worry – it doesn’t bite,’ he said, laughing at his own joke. He pulled out the beak and held the shoe at the ends of his fingers. ‘We’ll take this to Mercy and get it cleaned up. You’ll just have to hop to the kitchen. Think you can manage that?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Jonah!’

  The gardener came over.

  ‘Bird fell down again.’

  There was a rope attached to both the scaly feet of the crow. Jonah picked up the end of the rope and it revolved slowly, its toes curled and tangled together as if it were turning an upside-down pirouette.

  ‘Put it back up, will you?’ asked Mr Cooper. Jonah nodded and started towards the shed.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. I felt a bit sick.

  ‘Why what? Oh, the crow? Well, those things are a damned nuisance.’ Mr Cooper looked up into the branches of the pecan nut tree. Half a dozen crows had settled there, looking down with blank yellow eyes. ‘They punch a hole in the nut with their beaks . . . look, here’s one.’ Mr Cooper stooped and picked up a pecan nut. It had a neat round hole in its side. Some of the meat was missing, but there was still a great deal left.

  As I watched, an ant popped its head out of the hole and then disappeared again.

  ‘They don’t even eat the whole thing.’ Mr Cooper shook his head. ‘So, every so often, Jonah will shoot one and hang it in the tree.’

  Looking over my shoulder, I could see Jonah up a stepladder, reattaching the bird to the branches. It fixed me with a dead glare.

  ‘Kill one, and the others will go away,’ said Mr Cooper.

  Chapter Seven

  By the end of the week, I was very bored. No Hennie, no Beauty. Just me.

  ‘Jonah’s girls are back from school for the weekend,’ said Mr Cooper. ‘She might like to go and play with them.’

  Mum nodded, but Steve looked uncertain. ‘I’m not sure it would be appropriate . . .’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Mr Cooper was brisk.

  And so I met the two girls. Their names were Jane and Susan.

  ‘When Mercy first fell pregnant,’ said Mr Cooper, ‘Jonah was going to name the baby after me. Unfortunately, when it popped out, it turned out to be a girl. He asked me to suggest a name and I told him the most English name I could think of. Susan. Same thing happened with the second one.’

  When I found the girls, they were playing Tag around the vegetable garden. They were pretty, with long hands and feet, and small, neatly shaped heads with close-cropped hair.

  I felt colourless next to them.

  They stopped their game and waited for me to say something.

  ‘Hello.’

  We stood for a minute. I felt a fly land on my arm, then take off again.

  ‘Would you like to see our house?’ asked Susan.

  ‘Yes.’

  The khaya smelled like cooking fires. ‘Is this it?’

  ‘Ja.’

  I could stand at the front door and see the whole house. There was only one bedroom, with a big bed and a mattress on the floor. Some cut-out pictures from magazines were taped to the walls. Next to it was a small bathroom with a concrete floor, a toilet, and a showerhead sticking out of the wall. The only other room was a kitchen with a big stone sink, a stove, a table and some chairs.

  ‘It’s so small,’ I said.

  Susan was surprised. ‘This is a nice house. You should see some others.’

  ‘They are very bad,’ said Jane.

  ‘Oh.’ Nice houses to me had pools and big gardens.

  I could see a Barbie doll on the mattress. Its hair was fuzzy. ‘Do you all sleep in one room?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Susan looked a bit uncomfortable.

  ‘What about when you want to get dressed?’

  ‘We get dressed in the bedroom.’

  ‘But . . .’ I saw that Susan did not want to answer any more questions. ‘All right.’

  There was a small noise from behind me. Susan spun round, looking guilty.

  Jonah was in the doorway, his skin blue-black in the dim light. ‘She should not be here.’

  ‘But Baba . . .’

  ‘She should not be here.’

  He looked straight at me. ‘Go home.’

  Later, I realised I could have argued that, technically, he did not own his house. Mr Cooper did. And I was allowed to play anywhere I liked. But Jonah’s staring eyes scared me, and so I ran.

  ‘Will you come again?’ whispered Susan before I left.

  ‘I think so.’

  We started looking for new servants. Somehow the word got out before we officially announced it – ‘Jungle drums,’ said Steve – and applicants came to our door.

  We liked Saru at once. She was a round, cosy woman with a big smile and a wide repertoire of recipes. Our new gardener was a young man from the Eastern Highlands who had come to Harare to make his fortune. His name was Tatenda, and he was a goatherd.

  ‘You realise we don’t have any goats,’ said Steve.

  ‘Yes, Baas.’

  He was bright-eyed and smiling, and very new to city l
ife. He told us about the nice man he’d met who said he would get him a driver’s licence without the need to take the test. Tatenda gave the man money and his identification, and the man disappeared, ‘to get the licence’. Tatenda waited for hours, but the man did not return. ‘He must have got lost,’ he said.

  Steve and Mum exchanged glances.

  After we hired both Saru and Tatenda, Steve hung a sign on the gate: ‘Hapana Basa’. No work. Signs we saw all around town those days.

  I still had a couple of weeks of freedom before school started.

  ‘Mr Cooper asked if you wanted to do him a favour and earn a bit of pocket money,’ Mum said.

  I paused. ‘All right. What is it?’

  ‘He wants someone to walk the dogs during the day.’

  ‘How many dogs?’

  ‘Three. Five dollars per walk.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Ja? So you might as well start today. You know how to get to the Big House?

  Mr Cooper’s grass was thick-bladed and felt like plastic, clean and squeaky. I felt as if I would have to take off my shoes before I walked on it. There was a kidney-shaped pool in front of the verandah that shone blue, with glitterstone tiles that winked up through the water. A servant stood at the edge, dragging a net through the water to gather all the leaves, insects and scorpions. He was an old man with a beard and hooded eyes, and he stared beyond the pool into the far distance as he swept the water. I wondered what he was thinking about.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  I jumped. It was Jonah, standing behind me, leaning on a spade.

  ‘Medem,’ he said, touching an imaginary cap.

  ‘I’ve come to walk the dogs,’ I said. ‘Where are they?’

  Jonah said nothing, but turned and led me around the back of the house. The dogs were delighted to see me, leaping up so much that it was almost impossible to attach their leads to their collars.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said to Jonah when I left. He did not even turn around.

  The Coopers had three dogs – a big Labrador called Shumba, a schnauzer called Sergeant and a Rhodesian Ridgeback called Ian, after Ian Smith.

  Mum told me that Mr Cooper’s parents were Afrikaners who left after Independence. Mr Cooper stayed on to work in the new Zimbabwe. There were different kinds of whites: the Afrikaans, the British whites, and the Rhodies. Most Afrikaans lived in South Africa and spoke their own language, but some of them had moved to Zimbabwe, hoping that it might treat them better. We were British whites, originally. When I saw my first map of Zimbabwe, I realised that it was shaped like a teapot and I imagined it filling up with all the cups of tea the British whites drink every day. Rhodies were white people who lived in Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe and wanted to go back to the Old Days. They knew the words to ‘Rhodesians Never Die’ and they leaned back in chairs and talked about the Bluddy Banana Republic and drank big glasses of gin and tonic. Poor whites were something else again. They had straggly hair and strange clothes. It was strange seeing white people begging for money or offering to wash your car windscreen. We kept our eyes turned away from them.

  It was more fun than I imagined, walking the three dogs. They did not need to be on leashes, really – they knew the farm far better than I did.

  The farm kids kept their distance from me when I was with the dogs, but followed in a fascinated and giggling crowd. The soft slap of their soles on the dirt road and muffled, half-fearful laughter was always in the background of our walks.

  In the second week of my dog-walking duties, Jonah let me in the gates of the farmstead. I avoided his eye, as usual, and concentrated on patting the dogs.

  ‘They shuper me too much,’ he said.

  The dogs jumped all over me, more excited than usual. ‘What’s wrong with them?’ I asked.

  ‘The Small Baas is back from school,’ said Jonah.

  ‘Mr Cooper’s son?’

  ‘Hongu.’

  I was eager to get away. I did not want to bump into the farmer’s son.

  ‘Come on, boys.’

  Shumba dropped a ball at my feet. It was caked in grass clippings and old saliva – the traditional start to a never-ending game of fetch.

  We set off along the dirt roads. As usual, I collected a few followers at each worker compound I passed – black kids in shorts and bare feet, who clapped their hands at the dogs and grinned at me. By the time I reached Mum’s offices, I had a parade of about twenty kids following me, and an impromptu soccer game had started up on the dusty road.

  ‘Good grief,’ said Mum, looking past me. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Yes please, and for the dogs.’

  We poured cloudy tap water into bowls for the dogs, and they lapped it up with loose, lolling tongues.

  I was bending over, filling up the water bowls, when I heard the gulping roar of a motorbike behind me. Mr Cooper? I turned around and shaded my eyes.

  ‘Howzit,’ said a voice.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I’m Sean.’

  I squinted. Once he had taken off his helmet, I could see that he had brown skin and yellow-grass hair that flopped in front of his eyes. He seemed adult-sized, but I knew from Mum that he was only sixteen.

  ‘Mr Cooper’s son?’

  ‘Ja. Who are you?’

  ‘Elise. My mum works here.’

  ‘The new accountant?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Just a few weeks.’

  ‘I like to know what’s going on around here,’ said Sean, and grinned. He stepped off the bike and propped it up. It seems incongruous, a bright and plastic red against the lion-coloured bush. The dogs stopped their drinking and swarmed around him, a mass of wagging tails and happy panting. Shumba lifted up a corner of his black lip in a grin. Sean was offhand with them, giving them absent-minded pats and scrunching their ears, but paying little attention.

  ‘Want to come for a ride?’

  ‘On that thing?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  I eyed the machine. ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘Of course.’ Sean leaned a hand on it.

  ‘I’ll have to ask my mum,’ I said, and inwardly cringed for being so childish.

  ‘Well, go and ask.’

  I ran inside. ‘Mum, can I go on the back of Sean’s motorbike?’

  Mum looked dubious.

  ‘Please, Mum.’

  ‘Has he got a spare helmet?’

  I had no idea. ‘Ja.’

  ‘Well, okay. But you be careful, all right?’

  ‘I will!’

  Outside, Sean was facing away, as if any second he would jump back on the bike and disappear. When I appeared, he smiled. ‘Lekker. Hop on.’

  The seat was hot and smelled like melting plastic.

  ‘Hold on around my waist,’ he said, turning around. He was impatient. ‘Look.’

  He grabbed both my hands and pulled them around to his front. ‘Like this.’

  I felt the rough cotton of his shirt scratching the whorls and bumps on my fingers. He smelled of sweat and Persil. I could see the backs of his ears, curved and glowing from the sun, and the tiny yellow hairs that ran down the back of his neck.

  ‘You holding tight?’ he asked.

  I nodded. My cheek scraped his shoulder.

  ‘Okay.’ He started the bike. Mhudhudhudhu is the Shona word for motorbike, and that was exactly the noise that this one made. Mhu-dhu-dhu-dhu-dhu-dhu-dhu, shuddering and juddering. I felt that if I opened my mouth my teeth would fall right out of my head.

  Sean accelerated and we started to move. The world dissolved into stripes of colour. I could not look ahead because my eyes watered and insects zipped into my face with a puzzled buzz – where is this human coming from so fast? All I could do was lean my head against Sean’s back and concentrate on the weave of his shirt.

  He shouted something over the engine. I did not know what. I shouted something back and he seemed satisfied.


  The bike coughed to a halt. Sean had seen a group of farm workers walking back from the tobacco fields. They were young men, for the most part, anywhere from sixteen to thirty, and they threw laughing remarks at the Baas’s son.

  ‘Who’s your little girlfriend, hey?’ (This one made me hide my face.)

  ‘Playing with the toy bike again?’

  He answered them right back in fluent Shona with an impressive range of slang and swear words, to their delight. White teeth flashed in their faces as they replied, and as Sean kicked the bike back into life they waved us off.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I shouted in Sean’s ear.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Home!’

  ‘Your house?’

  ‘Ja!’

  ‘But I have to get back . . .’

  I had no idea where I was. Did he expect me to walk back? We were miles away from the offices. We had passed the tobacco fields, the greenhouses and the ostrich pens.

  It would take me over an hour to walk back to the offices and collect the dogs, and it would be dark by the time I brought them home. I felt like an idiot.

  We sped through the gate and into the lush garden, where we came to a halt. Jonah gave me a look, and winked. I looked away, my ears burning. Stupid.

  ‘Just going inside to grab something,’ said Sean, taking off his helmet. He swung his leg over the bike and got off. I stayed where I was.

  ‘Coming?’

  ‘No, I’ll wait here.’ I ignored the cramp in my legs.

  ‘Come on. I’ll get you a drink.’

  I climbed down. My legs felt like jelly, as if I had been running all this way instead of riding.

  ‘Come on.’

  I followed Sean into the Big House. He did not go in through the front door, as I had on my first visit, but opened French windows into a sun-room.

  I hung around on the verandah, looking at the buck heads displayed along the length of the house. It was cool there, with deep wells of shade and a clean, rich smell of expensive floor polish.