The Boy Next Door Read online

  The car is fixed.

  He is going on, setting off just now, off to Beitbridge.

  Without me.

  I stand by the car.

  Waiting.

  “So, Lindiwe,” he says, “you heard the guy, the road’s all clear now; they’ve moved on, you’ll be all right.”

  He doesn’t even look at me.

  “I’ll write, send you some cool postcards.”

  He is already so far away.

  “Lindiwe,” he says, and then he turns away.

  I wait for the car to stop somewhere near, far.

  I wait for the car to turn around, to come back to me, for me.

  I wait for him to get out of the car.

  To stand just right here.

  But the car moves on and on until it is nowhere, gone.

  * * *

  On the bus I think of his hair, his eyes, his ears, his nose, his arms, his hands.

  I think of my face in his hands.

  My head pressed tight against him.

  I think of never seeing him again.

  28.

  So you’re at varsity now, always thought you were a smart aleck. Good thing I caught you before you took off. Sociology, Social Anthr—what the… I see you’re going to be one of those fundies, make lots of dosh sorting out Third World Issues. Me, you know, I’m just hanging. I miss the shit out of Zimbo, would you believe.

  * * *

  So since you’re becoming a fundie and all, no more letters to us numbskulls, heh? No worries. Heard there’s rioting and shit at the varsity, hope you’re steering clear of it.

  * * *

  Lindiwe,

  At last I get something. So you got kwapulad. Well, not to be harsh, I hope you learnt your lesson. Just concentrate on being a fundie and leave the politics well alone.

  * * *

  Lindiwe,

  Thanks for the philosophizing. I got caught up in a demo downtown, some fricking whities sporting free mandela, anc T-shirts. Lots of heavy shit happening in Soweto and in the hostels.

  * * *

  So now you’re hanging around Frenchies and Italians; hope you don’t get Je taimed, and remember, the Frenchies, they eat frogs. Talking about Italians, you know that they got buried alive in the Kariba wall; the Tongas called their spirit to tshaya them good for driving them out of the land and the dam flooded and the workers got caught. Nice, heh?

  * * *

  I’m a Domestic Engineer. Would you believe, I’m fixing fricking fridges.

  * * *

  Lindiwe,

  I thought you were trying to pull a fast one. So, you’re going to the Tongas to do your, what do you call it, research… the effect of forced migration on the intra… and you’re saying I gave you the idea, yebo mama. Just wear a hat, a good thick bush hat, so that your brains don’t get scrambled. And don’t upset those Tongas; they might be thick but they have one powerful sekuru up there.

  * * *

  What, now you’re touring? I thought you were studying. With the Frenchies. Yah, I told you the Vic Falls was lekker. What? You camped? Can’t the Frenchies even afford a hotel? They’re rolling in forex, aren’t they? Me, I’m keeping a low profile. I hooked up with a bird last night, would you believe.

  * * *

  So, now you’re a feminist. Must be hanging out with all the expats that’s causing severe brain damage and Frenchies called Jean, for that matter. Jeez, man, a chick’s name. So, I’m racialistic and unfeministic…

  * * *

  Chauvinistic, yah, yah. I knew that was the word.

  * * *

  Don’t laugh. I’m sitting my O levels. Night classes over at the Polytech. May as well get educated.

  * * *

  Malaria, shit. Didn’t you take your pills, man? No wonder you were so quiet. I thought you were giving me the silent treatment. Shit, you’re lucky it didn’t go into your head, then your brains would be scrambled for sure.

  * * *

  You wouldn’t believe, but now I’m taking pictures. I was messing around with this old Kodak and I sent the pictures to The Star for a competition. Next thing I’ve won and I’m hanging around, doing apprenticeship, with a hard-core photo journo who’s seen it all. Never too late to teach an old dog new tricks, heh? Off to Soweto, tomorrow. Beats fridges in the burbs, that’s for sure. Get to be in the Great Outdoors and to see The Great African Wildlife, up close. Hope I don’t get clobbered; reckon I should get hold of one of those T-shirts.

  * * *

  February 11, 1990!

  I GUESS YOU’VE CHECKED OUT THE NEWS… THEY’VE FRICKING RELEASED MANDELA.

  * * *

  Sorry about the old man. Do you have a phone number? Here’s mine. I move around a bit. Anyways here it is… Word of warning, if the Rhodie picks up, put on your European accent or else he’ll hang up.

  * * *

  Shit, your voice brought back mahobo memories.

  * * *

  I’m taking a break. I’ll be in Zimbo Friday next.

  * * *

  PART TWO

  Early 1990s

  1.

  And there you are.

  There we are.

  Here.

  He skips up the stairs and gives me a hug, and I hear “Lindiwe” against my skin. It is a warm, gentle brush of air.

  It’s so unexpected to be like that, in his arms, against his body, that I feel myself stiffen, draw breath.

  “Asch, I’m too rough. It’s just that…”

  There’s a flurry of movement up ahead to the left: the afternoon cinema crowd getting out, stopping by for refreshments, or rushing across the car park to Scoop, the ice cream parlor, or next door to Nando’s.

  “The Italian Bakery, heh,” he says while drawing out a chair. “Your preferred hangout these days? Classy.”

  I can’t tell if he is being sincere or if he just finds the whole setup silly.

  “No ways like Haef’s Bakery over in Bullies. Hey, nothing washed down better than Haefeli’s Hot Cross Buns and Coke when we were lighties.”

  Inside, I smile at that word.

  I watch him take a look at the tables with their marble tops, their curlicued wrought iron legs, the tiny ornate chairs, and the well-heeled clientele sipping delicately at their cappuccinos.

  We’re sitting on the veranda, but when he pulls himself forward, he can see the glass cabinets filled with Italian pastries and paninis and the croissants stuffed with Nutella and vanilla cream and the long marble-topped counter, lined with six high stools, where the old regulars hang around conversing in Italian with the owners.

  If we’re still here at six, a queue will start forming that sometimes stretches down to the stairs for the different types of bread, straight out from the ovens. In the queue there are maids from Avondale and Mount Pleasant in their starched, checked uniforms, diplomats’ wives, gardeners in their patchy blue overalls, black businessmen in shiny polyester suits, and women in viscose outfits. It’s a democratic queue where everyone patiently waits their turn.

  “Come on, don’t start, Ian.”

  His eyes settle back on me. And for some moments we are both staring openly, taking each other in.

  How much I’ve forgotten. The length and breadth of him.

  “Jeez man, you’ve grown.”

  “And you too.”

  “How many years?”

  “Six, almost seven years.”

  “Jeez.”

  “I was wondering if I would ever hear that again.”

  “So, where’s the Frenchie?”

  “Don’t start. Be nice.”

  “Seriously, where is he?”

  “At work.”

  “Does he know you’re meeting me?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Tell me.”

  “What?”

  “Come on, tell me anything.”

  “It’s great to see you, Lindiwe. You’re sure your brains didn’t get cooked out there with the Tongas?”<
br />
  “I’m sure.”

  “Just checking I’m not talking to scrambled eggs.”

  “You’re a photojournalist.”

  “I’m just taking pictures. Asch man, what’s this?”

  “Cappuccino.”

  “Cappuccino, heh?”

  “Yes, what?”

  “Now, you drink Italian coffee. Are you sure you come from Bullies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shouldn’t it be Frenchie coffee?”

  “This isn’t The French Bakery. We could have gone to the Alliance, I suppose.”

  “Different strokes.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, Ian?”

  “Nothing. Man, it feels good to hear you say my name.”

  “Come on, show me your pictures.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ll take pictures of you.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Jeez man.”

  “Jeez man, to you too. You look tired.”

  “Yah, it’s a long drive. I stayed a couple of days in Bullies. Still as sleepy as ever.”

  It’s a shock to hear that he’s been back there. I wait to see something in his face, something that will tell me if he might know.

  “How is it like, down south?” I ask him.

  “Not looking good. The security forces, the Zulus, the right wing, the ANC, the Commies they’re butchering each other like… Asch, let’s get out of here, too hot. Let’s take a hike somewhere, you and me.”

  “A hike?”

  “Yah, out of Harare.”

  “I…”

  “Don’t tell me the Frenchie has you on a tight leash, won’t give his permission. I thought you were a feminist.”

  “Leave Jean out of this.”

  “Jean.”

  “That’s not how you say it. Jean. Where do you want to go?”

  “Anyplace. Just out. How about The Great Zimbabwe Ruins, heh?”

  And we both smile at that.

  He drives us to the Botanical Gardens, where we sit on a bench up at the savanna.

  I follow a soldier who is walking briskly down the path, a plastic carrier bag hooked on a finger, his eyes fixed solidly on the paved stone. There’ve been irate letters in the Independent from white Zimbabweans with pseudonyms like “Nature Lover,” and “Concerned Citizen” protesting how the army has appropriated chunks of the gardens, hacking down rare species of trees. There are all kinds of stories about what goes on in there behind the barbed wire, the military area—keep out signs.

  “Come on, Lindiwe, tshaya me with some stories.”

  What could I say?

  I could “hit” him with my first couple of months on campus; my frantic, heady dash into all that liberation, away from the oppressive atmosphere at home: Daddy’s sudden sickness, Mummy’s righteous forbearance of all things including my sins, the stains on my character.

  The friends I had been swept up with for a while.

  At the foreground, Cynthia, who I got to know because we shared a cabin in the train on that momentous journey from Bulawayo to Harare. I had sat on the top bunk bed, my back pressed against the wall, as she leaned out the window laughing, calling out, clasping hands, receiving yet one more package through the narrow window, and finally waving good-bye to the large group that was on the platform, two boys breaking off and running after the train calling out her name, just like in the movies. No one was there to see me off, and I thought of how I had taken the taxi to the station, holding the picture, smoothing his face with my finger, until finally I put it away in my purse. As soon as the train had gained full speed, Cynthia had slumped onto her bed and brought out a bottle of brandy from her handbag.

  The first time I ever tasted an alcoholic drink (and got spectacularly drunk). The occasion, my birthday: Cynthia and me at the cinema on a weekday afternoon while watching The Last Emperor. She used her stiletto heel to somehow dislodge the cork out of the Vat 10 wine bottle because we had no corkscrew and we spent the time huddled at the back in the empty cinema swigging and giggling at the movie.

  My tries at smoking up on the roof of the Student Union with Cynthia.

  There was also Vumisani, Cynthia’s cousin, and Edmond, Vumisani’s roommate and first-year law student, who once he had learnt a bit of legalese would amuse us by talking in jargon.

  Fridays and Saturday nights, after the government had paid out our grants and loans spent at Circus Nightclub, which we would walk to from campus, usually singing at the tops of our voices while taking nips from whatever alcoholic beverage someone had brought along (once from oranges that Cynthia and I had injected with vodka as there were rumors that police were patrolling the university neighborhood on the lookout for public drinking) so that by the time we arrived we were in very high spirits and ready for yet more. And sometimes we would pack into a rundown Emergency Taxi and head over to Playboy in town to catch Ilanga, the band of the moment, play live, our frenzied, drunken dash onto the crowded dance floor as soon as we heard the first few chords of “True Love,” or even more down market to Jobs, which at month end was teeming and reeling with prostitutes and soldiers, flush with their loot from Mozambique, fights breaking out sporadically on the dance floor to the beats of Oliver Mtukudzi, Thomas Mapfumo, the Bhundu Boys.

  Edmond’s good-humored attempts to bed me.

  The hangovers on Sundays, the habitual chilling-out trek to the university swimming pool, our bodies sprawled on the grass catching the sun while overhead the boys jeered and called out insults from the Student Union until we finally gave up and left. The undertone of violence always present.

  And then meeting Jean on the last day of the first term. A kind of growing up again. The big fight with Cynthia, my friend spouting out the same kinds of things as Maphosa. I was selling out.

  What more could I say?

  That Jean has asked me to marry him? Yesterday, on this bench. And the word yes was there on the tip of my tongue, but I said instead, “I have to finish university.” And his response, “bien sur,” and we left it at that.

  I don’t tell him anything about Jean Pierre Roulier. How they seem to be the very opposite of one another. That Jean, who was born in Algeria, is a doctor in a mission hospital and has lived most of his life in Africa, but wouldn’t call himself an African; that he would think that an act of great arrogance and pretentiousness.

  I imagine Ian looking down at his small, compact body, taking in the pensive, weary look in his eyes, and drawing his own hasty conclusions.

  “Still as tight-lipped as ever, heh?”

  “What exactly do you want to know?”

  “You’re serious aren’t you, about the Frenchie bloke?”

  “Is there no other subject?”

  “Just answer that, serious, yes or no?”

  “Yes.”

  I think of how I found out about his wife, a brilliant doctor who had been killed two years ago in Brazzaville by bandits, and how he was only now starting to recover.

  “Be gentle with him,” I was told on a veranda out in Rusape by Marie, the brittle wife of one of his oldest friends, Herbert Molyneux who was the project coordinator of a French nongovernmental organization, which had been trying for four years to set up a network of rural markets in Manicaland.

  “You should have seen him before. He was finished. A wreck.”

  Jean and Herbert had gone out to pick up some crisps and some beers.

  “He is a saint. Maybe you are too young to appreciate his love. But do not play with him, promise. No games. I will kill you if you do that, I promise.”

  She had laughed roughly, whirling smoke into the cool air.

  I had only known Jean for a few weeks, and I felt the weight of responsibility as I lay next to him that night. I couldn’t respond to him. I was afraid to touch him. To be touched.

  “What troubles you, Lindiwe?” he asked me at last.

  “I…”

  “Lindiwe!”

  Ian grabs
my hand, shakes it. And then he knocks gently on my forehead.

  From here we can see the pond. There’s a couple walking hand in hand. They stop and watch the ducks.

  I don’t tell Ian that I walk here from the university; when I’m feeling desperate, I come here and sit on this exact bench. That I watch the gay white men walking gingerly around the pond, making contact. That if we stay here a bit longer, they’ll be here and Ian will have something to say about their tight shorts, their snug vests, their limp wrists. Sometimes there are schoolboys making fun, wiggling behind the men, calling out, “Hey, pansy; hey, pooftah.”

  “Anyways, I hope you’re not thinking of doing anything stupid.”

  How stupid would it be to give yourself to someone who wants to take care of you? And everything that comes with you.

  “So, the old man?”

  “Dad? He’s paralyzed on the left side.”

  “Shit. Your mother?”

  “My mother has the Lord. Stop looking at me like that.”

  “It’s quiet here. It’s like coming to fricking paradise. Zimbo, I mean. Everybody calmly going about their business. Looks like things are looking up.”

  “Oh, don’t be fooled; we’ve had our dramas. The corruption scandal. Willowgate. You haven’t heard? The illegal selling of brand-new cars at exorbitant prices by members of government, not a very socialistic practice. A minister killed himself over it. And plus Mugabe is mad as hell at Mandela for stealing the limelight, for getting himself released.”

  “Tame stuff. When you think what’s happening down south. Shit, those guys really know how to…” He lifts his hand, touches my head. “I told you you’d look good with short hair.”