African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [121]
Inside the coach I see it is identical with those of then: solid, respectable, shining with brown wood and yellow and green paint. Yes, I am told, it probably is the same: they haven’t renewed the coaches yet. Here is the fold-away metal basin, here the exactly placed hooks for keys, or belts, or to pull yourself up to the higher bunks. I run through the sequence of thoughts appropriate for the occasion: can this be the same coupé where in ’48, in ’38, 1–etc., and so forth. Meanwhile the bedding official has appeared. You buy your bedding tickets when you buy your ticket. This official used to be white, now he is black: a fatherly manner goes with the job, and he is full of advice about not leaving belongings near windows where station thieves can reach in. Sometimes they employ long sticks with hooks. And remember that it can get cold, with so much rain, so keep yourselves warm. While he makes up the beds, appears the inevitable clash of cultures. Talent wants the windows tight shut. In her village she would have slept in windowless huts, the door fastened against thieves and prowling dogs, even wild animals. Cathie and I are convinced we cannot sleep without fresh air. A compromise is reached, while the bedding official listens. He would adjudicate if we let him. He departs to the next compartment, leaving us feeling tucked up. We stretch ourselves out, one above the other, I on the bottom shelf, Talent in the middle, Cathie on the top. We plan to sleep the moment the train moves, but the train does not move. On the platform the people who have come to say goodbye stand in groups, talking, laughing. Bottles of soft drinks are passed in and out of windows. The scene could be Italian in its vivacity, its enjoyment of the moment. What I am remembering is a hundred farewell scenes during the War, poignant scenes, full of that reckless elation which is war’s secret and dangerous accompaniment. But now such scenes take place at the airport, so the atmosphere of the platform has lost an ingredient. How many times had I watched the train pull out, listening to the long shrieking note of the whistle, a sound that monitored our emotional lives through all the years of the War, heard from one end of Salisbury to the other. But this engine has a new voice, it makes brief hectoring hoots–not to signal departure. Not at nine, nor at ten; not at eleven, or twelve o’clock.
Jealous for the honour of Zimbabwe Cathie and Talent keep assuring me that they often make this overnight trip to Bulawayo, work the day there, returning the next night. Never has this happened before.
At two-thirty the engine emitted its fussing hoot, moved a couple of hundred yards, and stopped. We slept.
At six the same attendant arrived with coffee and biscuits. His glance at the window–humorous, tactful–directed my and Cathie’s attention: it had got itself closed in the night. Had we slept well? he wanted to know. Cathie at once went into the exchange in Shona, I have slept well if you have slept well. We were stationary somewhere half way between Harare and Bulawayo, where we ought to be arriving about now. Cathie and Talent were anxious, knowing that groups of women were travelling long distances to meet us: the first would be in the office at nine-thirty. The train went on standing, fretting a little. Hours passed. We had not brought food. ‘My mother always said, never travel without food and coffee,’ said Cathie. ‘Imagine, I used to laugh at her.’ Trips along the corridor showed, through doors left open for sociability’s sake, people enjoying fruit and chicken. Some grumbled: the steady low-key complaint used to relieve anxiety. Talent lay calmly on her bunk. She told us she learned how to wait in the War. Sometimes they were hiding in the bush waiting for a safe time to move for days, without food or water. They ate fruit from the bush, when there was any. Once, after rain, the whole company of a hundred or so stood around a tree and each sucked the water from