African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [138]
THE FARMERS IN THE MOUNTAINS
And now, again, the road from Harare to Mutare. Again we sped through rolling open country past all that magnificence, and those other slow journeys when we watched how a clump of boulders appeared far ahead, grew large, dispersed itself at a turn in the road and came together, rose up, seemed to topple, then fell behind as another clump approached–the slow unfolding of the landscape, like a well-known tale or reminiscence told with pauses for effect, was part of the past, and even the journeys of six years before were in another time. The place of the accident? Conversation in the car was so entertaining I forgot to look for it. In 1982 every stretch of bush, each hill or mountain was a memory in the topography of war. That war had gone, together with all the other wars, into the memories of people growing old; a new lot of young people are already looking at each other with humorous grimaces as their elders intone, Do you remember how the government troops came that night and…? Can’t they leave it alone? We don’t want to hear about that. The car carried a load of optimism: the rains, the good rains, were here, the end of the drought; a green countryside, fat beasts, well-fed people. All of us in the world are dependent on the rains coming as they ought, but in Zimbabwe you remember it in every other conversation. ‘If we have another three years of decent rains then Mugabe will be safe. Another drought like the last one and we will be in trouble.’ We? I am listening to whites who so recently meant we, the whites, when they said we, but now they mean Zimbabwe.
The road is almost empty. Is the standard of driving better? Yes, much. Have the unlicenced rattle-traps been cleared off the roads? Yes, but there are still plenty of licenced ones. Do you remember there was no petrol in the pumps, because the South Africans–well, all right, Renamo–kept cutting the pipeline?
‘Yes, you’re right, they did–but now our troops guard the pipelines.’
‘If you live in a country you hardly notice changes.’
‘What changes? Are things really so different?’
In London I wait for visitors, and then ask, ‘What changes have you seen since you were here last?’ They tell me, and I say, ‘Really, are you sure?’
In Mutare we stop to shop, and then off we go into the mountains. I am watching for baboons.
‘Do you still have a man out with a gun shooting wild pig and baboons?’
The Coffee Farmer replies, with that small smile that goes with the pleasure of deflating sentimentalists, ‘No, I don’t need one. Luckily the leopards are back in the hills and they keep the baboons down for us.’
And now the hillside in the mountains, and from the verandahs we look down on mountains and hills, the lakes, the rivers–water, water, because of the rains. And so close you’d think you could throw a stone at it, the mountain that is in Mozambique.
‘Do the Mozambique rebels come through here?’
‘They were around a few months ago, we think. But all during the War the ‘terrs’ were coming back and forth across our farms and we never knew it. Now they tell us and we have a good laugh.’
‘Do the Mozambique peasants still come across the border to get food?’
‘Poor bastards, yes they do, they’re starving down there, don’t forget they are coming to get food from their own brothers.’
The ghosts of the two young white native commissioners dicing over a map, one Rhodesian, one Portuguese, almost appear, but decide not to.
‘And the battalion that was here, driving you all mad?’ ‘They’ve gone, thank God.’
‘What other changes?’
‘Let’s see.’
The servant, a new one, brings out tea, brings out drinks, sets it all on the table, we are introduced, and off he goes to cook dinner.
We sit and watch while the evening light models the landscape.
‘Let’s see.’
There are a couple of newcomers–whites.
‘Any blacks?’
A quick look. A laugh. ‘Didn’t you know? Tekere got rid of all the Squatters. It was Edgar Tekere