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By Root 1499 0

head, smiling, in disbelief. Have you ever visited New York? Do you know the White Plaza Hotel? Do you like the food from Thailand? Have you seen Les Misérables? That was so sad it made me cry. Had I been to Paris? He was going to Paris soon for a conference. I asked him, if he could have his heart’s desire, what he would choose for Zimbabwe. ‘How can you ask me such a question! Of course, it would be prosperity.’ ‘Suppose a fairy godmother offered him on behalf of all Zimbabwe…’ ‘Who is this fairy godmother? Is it the World Bank?’ Fairy stories, I said, often are about good or evil spirits who grant wishes or put curses on people. I began with Snow White. He was enchanted, that is the word, never has there been such a listener. He pressed his hands together, he clapped them, he laughed, he sighed, he listened with his whole self. And that is how I spent that night, until he slept, telling fairy stories to a Chef.

At Immigration a sarcastic and unpleasant official gave me a hard time–thus proving how thoroughly Zimbabwe has entered the modern world. Zimbabwe does not like journalists. It is not unknown for journalists and writers to get themselves special passports that do not have these dangerous words on them. Later I argued with a Chef who said if he had his way no journalists would be allowed in. I asked if by chance he admired The Chronicle in Bulawayo? He had to admit that yes, he did. Did he ever read newspapers from Britain and America? Yes, but we are a new country and we can’t afford criticism. I said, Why can’t you? It’s a sign of weakness to be so touchy. Did he really admire those articles in The Herald which usually go something like this: ‘Our great leader Comrade Mugabe inspires Zimbabwe with his example as he leads us forward into…’ At the first few syllables he brightened, but then he was angry at my levity.

THE HOUSE IN THE RICH SUBURB

Ayrton R. and I are again standing in his garden, looking up at his house, and then at the airy screen that hides the servants’ quarters, the two rooms and the courtyard where food is cooked, and from where come the sounds of voices, laughter, and, often, music.

Until a couple of weeks ago there were also the sounds made by the gardener’s eleven children.

This is what Ayrton R. began to talk about as soon as I arrived: he is infinitely distressed.

Every afternoon at five o’clock there were screams and tears, as the mother lined them up and washed them in a tub in the courtyard. The neighbours complained.

‘But, George, why does your wife have to wash the children just when everyone has come home from the offices and want some peace and quiet?’

‘Because they should be washed before they go to bed.’

‘But why does she have to wash them so hard they cry?’

‘Children hate being washed, everyone knows that.’

Eleven children make a lot of noise. They need a lot of space. They often spilled out of the little courtyard into Ayrton R.’s garden and he pretended not to notice. The neighbours complained again. They were invited to come over and meet the criminals, the gardener and his wife, two abashed but stubborn people, whose defence was, children make a lot of noise. Tense conversation over the teacups: these negotiations were going on in Ayrton R.’s living-room. ‘I insisted on them all sitting down in my living-room so it wouldn’t be a white boss–black servant confrontation.’

‘And it wasn’t?’

‘Of course it was. The point is, the children ought to be with both parents. George ought to have his whole family with him. On the other hand, you can’t really have eleven children in one room. And two parents.’

‘A bit of an impasse, then.’

‘But George has a house in his village and there’s a school nearby. The children don’t go to school when they are here.’

The eleven children and their parents, thirteen people. Dorothy and her man and her three children, who are intermittently here. Eighteen people in two rooms. Impossible.

‘I am terribly sorry, George, but you simply cannot have all your children here. Perhaps two…well, three or four then. But not all eleven.’

‘This is