The Boy Next Door Read online

  Every evening, Daddy was glued to the TV rain forecast report and the graphs on the level of the dams. Hillside dam, which we had visited at school, was not even half-full. The drought wasn’t showing any signs of ending. The city council tightened its water rationing measures. The use of hosepipes was completely banned, even if you were using borehole water. Maphosa had to water the vegetables with a bucket.

  Sometimes he would drive out of his gate at the same time in the morning as us. Maybe he had found a job. It was funny to me that he would never overtake Daddy even though Daddy drove so slowly. It was like a mark of respect. Sometimes sitting in the back, I was tempted to turn my head but I never did.

  And then, it was a Saturday morning and I was standing at the bus stop, getting nervous because the bus was already thirty minutes late. I was going to be late for the netball match if I didn’t leave straightaway. It was an interschools quarter final, and we were taking on the Convent Girls who had beaten us badly last year. Everybody on the team wanted revenge.

  He took the corner, passing me, and then he reversed.

  He rolled down his window and called out, “Do you want a lift?”

  I got into the yellow Datsun Sunny.

  I put my bag on the floor on top of my feet.

  I put my hands under my mauve skirt, and then I placed them on my lap. I wished that I wasn’t wearing my tracksuit bottoms under my skirt. I looked like a country girl.

  He drove all the way down Jacaranda Road, up the bridge onto Acacia Drive, where all the acacia trees along the road were in bloom, their yellow flowers making me think of how when Daddy got called to fix a fault in Hwange National Park, he saw giraffes feeding on the flowers and said that they looked like very tall, elegant ladies ruminating about life. And then he annoyed Mummy by saying, “Not like you big Manyano ladies.”

  I looked straight through the front windscreen, and then my neck began to hurt so I turned and looked out my window.

  There wasn’t much to see because most of the houses were behind durawalls, except for the white double story, which was at the corner of Athlone Avenue and Moss Street. When I had first seen it, I thought that it must be full of children running up and down stairs, laughing and screaming, something like in The Sound of Music. But only an old white man lived there who was rumored to have shaken hands with Hitler.

  I had the strange feeling that my head was shaking, vibrating.

  “Don’t be nervous. Lindiwe, isn’t it?”

  I was shocked that he knew my name, that he had said it out aloud to me. I liked the way it sounded coming from him.

  “Yes, Mr. McKenzie,” I said.

  “Mr. McKenzie,” he almost shouted. “Now, you’re trying to be funny, heh. Ian. Just Ian. I’m not an old bally.”

  “Ian,” I said in my head.

  I didn’t know why I had blurted out “Mr. McKenzie” and why I kept thinking of him as that. Was it because he had been in jail and had experienced things that adults do? Or was it because he was so big and made me feel like a child who didn’t know much about life?

  I didn’t think it was because he was white, that I was a little frightened of him. Mummy was always telling anyone who would listen that when I was a baby I would wail if cotton wool or a white person happened to touch me.

  We drove in silence all along Main Street, all down Fourth Avenue, and then at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Borrow Street, I said, “You can drop me here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I opened the door and said thank you.

  He said, “Here, your bag, and good luck.”

  * * *

  The second time we passed each other along the escalators at Haddon and Sly. He was going up. I was going down. We looked at each other. That was all.

  The third time was at the Grasshut. It was dark inside, and I didn’t see him until he was out front at the till paying his bill. He was taking money out of his wallet, looking right at me. I was with Bridgette and she said, “Isn’t that…?”

  The fourth time was when it really began.

  I was at the National Museum in the Minerals Hall collecting information for my science project. He was sitting on one of the benches lining the glass wall. I saw him first because his face was turned away, looking down.

  Just as I was about to walk away, he turned and said, “You again.”

  I stood there in my school uniform not knowing what to do or say.

  He got up. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked. “I’m thinking of going down to the kiosk to get a Coke.”

  Without thinking, I said, “Yes, thank you.”

  This time I noticed things about him: how his hair was cut so short it looked as if he had meant to shave it and then changed his mind at the very last minute, how his hands were bruised.

  He saw me looking at his hands and said, “So did you win?”

  The netball match had been weeks ago, so I didn’t understand at first.

  “Your netball,” he said.

  “Oh, yes. Fifteen to three.”

  I had a Coke, too, and we sat there just sipping, drinking. After that we walked back down. We stopped a bit at the mammals’ exhibit where all the stuffed animals are. He made a funny noise, as if he was trying to let out a laugh but was choking on it.

  “My word, this brings back memories.”

  We were looking at two lions tearing apart a baby antelope. Its stomach was spilling out and blood was everywhere.

  “Bawled my eyes out when I saw that. My old man gave me a good clip around the ear, a kick in the backside plus. What an embarrassment I was, a damn prissy boy. And the old man, a fricking Selous Scout. What a git.”

  The words Selous Scout echoed in the chamber so full of blood and entrails. I was glad that there was no one else to hear them.

  “The Selousie,” Daddy says on one of the days when he remembers the war and something takes him back there, maybe a newspaper article or a TV program. “Those guys were something else, I tell you.”

  I can hear fear and wonder in his voice and also the way he stops a bit, his mouth moving silently as if he is arguing with himself: Should he go on? Should he just stop right there? He has said quite enough already, but then his mouth opens and the words come spilling out. He doesn’t look at anyone when he is talking like this. He looks at the war. He is talking with the war.

  “You don’t want to get on the wrong side of them. They are sharp. Sharp! And they know the bush. You put a Selous Scout in the bush with nothing. Nothing, no water, food, weapons, nothing, and I’m telling you that is how they are trained, dropped in the bush by helicopter and not city, town bush. Bush, bush with nothing. Seven days they must survive, just like that. Anyone who survives that, you can become a recruit. Just to be a recruit. We ordinary soldiers, you meet a Scout with his FN submachine gun, you don’t even look. Forget it. Those guys disciplined, sure, but anything can trigger them. Anything. And mind you, they don’t hesitate. Trained machines. Afraid of nothing. Nothing! Even the boys respect them. One Selousie can take out thirty, forty, I’m telling you, in no time at all. And the African ones, the worst or should I say, best. Masters in disguise, infiltration. How many went right into guerrilla camps and took those boys out like that. And when…”

  Daddy had stopped talking when he saw Maphosa opening the gate.

  Outside, we walked through the park, all the way up to the main entrance.

  “I’ll give you a ride,” he said.

  He dropped me in South Grove by the cemetery; as he was pulling away he stopped the car and shouted through the window—“Hey, Lindiwe, meet you here tomorrow round about this time”—and then he drove away before waiting for my answer.

  I took the bus the rest of the way home.

  It was only later, lying on my bed, that it came to me—not once sitting there with him did I think of him as the boy who might have done that terrible thing. Not once.

  11.

  Thirteen miss
ionaries have been killed in Esigodini by dissidents. The dissidents went into the farmhouse with pangas and hoes. One boy and two other people, who pretended to be dead after they had been hacked by pangas, escaped. The boy hid in the bathroom and crawled out of the window and ran all the way in the dark. The dissidents even killed the babies. The mothers said the Our Father as their babies were held high and dropped onto the floor. Just like the terrorists used to do.

  Maphosa says that it is all lies. He says that this is a setup. Mugabe is trying to create trouble in Matabeleland so that he can launch a full-out attack. He is impatient to have his one-party state. He wants to crush all opposition. Look how Tongogara was eliminated; if he was still alive, he would be in charge, not that little man. Maphosa says these killings are the work of Shonas posing as dissidents. True ZIPRA fighters would only attack military targets. When I ask him how he knows this, he looks at me as though I have accused him of lying. “You can believe what you want,” he says. “The truth is the truth.”

  Geraldine Ainsley is immigrating to England. Her father says that there is no future for whites here. “They will hunt us all down,” he says. “This is only the beginning. All this so-called reconciliation and working yourself to the bone adds up to a baby smashed by munts onto a concrete floor. No ways, man, are we staying here.”

  “We’re reclaiming our British citizenship,” says Geraldine, tossing her hair. “We have brand-new passports. Thank goodness for that.”

  During break time she hands out the invitations to her farewell party. Everyone is invited, even me. And Bridgette, of course. On the cover there is a picture of her family: Mum, Dad, Geraldine all waving and smiling brightly and the two poodles leaping up trying to catch the speech bubble that exclaims “Cheers.”

  “Just wait,” says Bridgette. “They’ll come back running when they get a dose of reality. No servants, no gardens, just some horrible poky little flat in east London, where they will have to rub shoulders with so many Indians they will think they are in India, and the cold brrrrr! They think that the royal family will be waiting at the airport to receive them with open arms, they’ve got a big shock coming. I give them two months, mmmm, not even that. Look at her, do you think she has the slightest idea of how to make her own bed?”

  At assembly, Mrs. Jameson asks us to please say special prayers for all those who have died out in Esigodini; those poor people were only trying to do good in the world.

  In The Chronicle, spread out across the two middle pages, are six coffins lying side by side in front of the altar inside the cathedral. Two of them, one at each end, are very small.

  In the evening news we hear the priest say that only love will heal the deep wounds in Zimbabwe.

  12.

  “What a right cock-up,” he says.

  If no one will take him on here, give him a job or an apprenticeship, something in mechanics, he’ll go back down south, try his luck; there are opportunities there even for someone like him; he can pick up from where he left off.

  We are at the park by the aviary.

  “That’s a Cardinal Woodpecker,” he says pointing. “That one over there, and over there—yes, that frisky one—that’s a Hoopoe, now take a look at that Hadeda. You know the best place to watch birds? Down by the sewage works, over at Aiselby Farm by the Umguza Dam. When I was a lightie, my old man was the manager, and man, there were manigi birds: Cape Shoveler, Pink-backed Pelican, Pochards, Teals, you name it. It was like you were in blimming paradise or something.”

  He bursts out laughing. “Jeez, I’m full of bullshit. Big-time bullshit.”

  “Look at these poor buggers,” he says. “Just like Khami.”

  It’s the first time he’s mentioned the prison.

  He goes to the fence, grabs it. “Yah, just like that blimming hellhole.”

  He turns back to look at me. “Although, to tell the truth, I didn’t spend that much time in there. Three months, tops. Most of it I was over at Esigodini doing fricking farming. Eeesh, I even got promoted for good behavior. By the time I got to Khami, I had put on some major muscle what with all that hoeing and shit. Check.”

  He pushes the sleeves of his shirt up, bulges his arms. Then he cracks into a smile. “Jeez, man, my This Is Your Life, heh. So how about you, what’s happening?”

  “I’m going to a party,” I say. “This Saturday.”

  “A party, heh, birthday?”

  “No, a girl is leaving. They’re going to England.”

  “And another one bites the dust. So tell me about it on Monday, heh?”

  13.

  Geraldine’s house is right on top of a hill in Matsheumhlope, carved into stones.

  Geraldine says that in the topmost room you can see most of Bulawayo.

  Three fountains and two pools.

  Fourteen rooms and balconies.

  Fireplaces.

  Spiraling stairs of stone and teak.

  Game room with a pool table and a TV in the wall.

  Geraldine has her own lounge next to her bedroom and Barbie dolls scattered everywhere; a huge dressing table with perfumes and jewelry boxes.

  Today, there is a braai and swimming and Clem Tholet’s Greatest Hits blaring on the stereo. The girls are all in their bikinis, in the water or sunbathing, smoothing on suntan lotion. The boys are running around playing rugby; the girls giggle whenever a boy passes by. “He’s nice,” “he’s cute,” or “he’s a dof,” they whisper to each other. The men are by the braai, looking after the sizzling boerewor sausages and T-bone steaks, and in the gazebo where there is a fully stocked bar.

  Bridgette and I are standing by the pool sipping Fantas. We didn’t bring any costumes.

  One of the old men at the bar calls out: “hey, you two girls, good thing you’re not taking to the water, what with those amabeles you’ll sink like anything. You black girls are overdeveloped; wait, by the time you’re twenty, they’ll be hanging to your knees like the grannies at the Reserves. Boy, can they flap those things over their shoulders; give you a technical knockout if you’re standing too close.

  The men laugh. The girls laugh. And the boys shriek and hoot.

  Bridgette and I go to the game room where the boys follow. Three of them.

  “Hey, kaffir girls!” the fat one shouts. “Check this out!”

  They pull down their shorts, shake their bums, and fart; they turn around and shake their things. They rush out of the door, shrieking, their pants undone.

  “Stupid idiots,” says Bridgette. “If I were them, I would be ashamed to show those things in public. Earthworms are bigger. Now Joseph’s, that’s a real mamba.”

  “Bridgette!”

  Joseph is one of her boyfriends. He is a sixth-former at Milton. He is the only black boy on the rugby team.

  “Oh, oh, Lins, don’t look at me like that!”

  She bends over, collapsing with laughter. She claps her hands.

  “You look like you’ve just had an electric shock. Oh, I wish I had a camera. Yes, I have indeed seen Joseph’s missile. Yes, I have even touched it. I’m not a virgin, thank God.”

  I open my mouth but only air comes out.

  My heart is beating so fast because I am thinking of Ian and what I can tell him on Monday.

  14.

  The Matobo Hills have been declared a no-go area by the government. Dissidents are hiding out there and the government is going to send the Fifth Brigade to flush them out.

  Three weeks or so after Maphosa came to stay with us, we took him to Matopos. Maphosa stood on Rhodes’s grave, looked all around at World’s View, and started singing a song from The Struggle. His singing voice was so different from his talking voice it did not sound like Maphosa at all. He was singing about Lobengula and Mzilikazi, the forgotten chiefs, who would rise up to reclaim their land. There were some whites at the statue of the Pioneer Column and they were looking at us. When Maphosa stopped singing, they started. “For we are all Rhodesians and we’ll fight through thick and thin; Rhodesians never
die and…”

  Maphosa looked over at them. They were young boys and girls. The Children of Settlers. Daddy said, “We should be going now, it’s getting late.” Maphosa was rubbing his eye. Whenever he is very angry, his eye itches and hurts him. We walked down the hill. I could hear the whites laughing and shouting.

  Later that year we went to the Trade Fair. Since independence many more countries had come to exhibit, even Britain. South Africa was banned.

  We all watched the parachute jumping, the police dogs, and the police motorcycles doing tricks by the showgrounds; Mummy, Rosanna, and I went to the fashion show at the David Whitehead Hall while Daddy and Maphosa went to see the technical exhibits in Hall 1.

  In the newspaper there were stories about gangs of white youths wearing rhodesians never die and rhodesia is super T-shirts, insulting and even beating up people.

  Maphosa said enough is enough. “We will teach these people a lesson. They still think that this is Rhodesia.”

  On the last day of the fair, there was a big fight near the animal showgrounds and Maphosa did not come home for three days. Mummy said that she was sure he was in jail and it was time to let him go. Daddy said, “Let us wait and hear what he has to say.” When Maphosa came back, he had nothing at all to say. We all noticed the cut on his forehead, but no one said anything.

  Twenty-eight dissidents have been captured. They are lined up on the TV. Their hands tied to one long rope that a policeman holds at either end so that it looks like they want to play tug of war. The dissidents look very skinny. They have bushy, uncombed hair. They’re confessing. One by one. They have been working to destabilize the government. They have been killing villagers. They are under the control of Nkomo.

  Maphosa is very worried. There is trouble at his rural home in Gwayi. He wants to go, but Daddy has warned him that there are roadblocks everywhere and the Fifth Brigade is on the lookout for former ZIPRA fighters. “If they catch you going there, they will accuse you of going to join the dissidents,” Daddy tells him. Maphosa says that women and children are getting persecuted. Daddy says that these are only rumors. Children and women are not dissidents.