African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [56]
A writer exiled from Kenya has just arrived in Zimbabwe. He has the restless aggressive humour so useful for his situation and is being funny about the anomalies and injustices in Kenya.
Present, too, is a man of about thirty, ex-freedom fighter, who, it is rumoured, will be the Minister for Arts. He is also being funny, joking with the host that if Zimbabwe goes along like Kenya, it will not be long before he as Minister will be ordering his arrest, because a certain new periodical he works for shows signs of seditious thoughts.
‘Seditious thoughts,’ says he, ‘we can’t have that, boy. Better watch those seditious thoughts or we’ll have to take steps.’
Two white journalists have just been arrested, no explanation given: they work for The Herald. This is not the first time journalists have been in trouble. We joke at intervals all evening about the journalists and the degree of their seditious thoughts.
When the meal is served by the hostess, who is tired, and–it is easy to see–pretty angry, she waits on us all.
‘It is our African custom,’ says the poet, when I comment.
‘Then I don’t think much of it,’ I say.
‘Seditious thoughts,’ says he, and we all laugh again.
It was not good laughter.
Again I was thinking how much everyone was in shock, the post-war shock which, not long afterwards, I was to experience in Peshawar among the Mujahideen, among the refugees. And where else? Yes, it was long ago, and I was on a railway platform in Berlin, at night, with a friend. Suddenly we realized that all the people waiting for the train were men, and all were cripples from the War. (That is, the Second World War.) All were drunk, black drunk, sick drunk, and they were full of anger, but like a volcano that has grown a crust of cold ash. My friend and I had been laughing, talking–and then heard how uncomfortably our voices echoed here, along the bitter wintry platform. We saw these angry men, and one said, in English, ‘All right, laugh. If you’ve nothing better to do. You’ll learn better.’
Quite late arrived two Freedom Fighters–guerillas–Boys from the Bush–‘terrs’–Terrorists–heroes. They were related to one of the guests, and had been put in a rehabilitation camp outside Harare. They wore new civilian clothes, suitable for work in offices, which is what they were being trained for. They were drunk. Soon everyone was unhappily drunk.
THE ACCIDENT
Again we were on the road Harare to Mutare, and the car was crammed with people and with suitcases. After we had stopped at a roadside delicatessen stall, the car was even fuller, with hams, smoked meats, sausages, bacon. To get food of anywhere near this quality in London, you would have to go to specialist food shops. The Coffee Farmer was doing the driving. We went on safely until ahead of us on the almost empty road appeared a bus, or coach, so crowded with young black men it seemed they would start falling out of the windows. They were the police off to a football match. There is a rule, not in any rulebook, known by every driver in Zimbabwe, which is that one does not overtake if there is a turning off to the right, because drivers so often forget to use mirrors, and do not signal–but it is hard always to remember it. We rapidly caught up with this rollicking-along bus, and ahead was a turn to the right, with a culvert beyond that. We accelerated to pass as the bus, which had not signalled, turned to enter the right-hand road. Our driver tried to swerve, but the culvert was in the way. The bus, having seen us, ought to have turned sharp in a U-turn behind us, but it straightened and hit us to the rear, pretty hard. Our car fell on its right side, was pushed along by the bus a few yards, then turned over on its back. Inside the car everything went into slow motion. I was aware of how I slid, carefully, as if my intelligence was directing it, into the well of the car, bumping my head. The doors burst open in showers of glass. I crawled out, wondering how many of our bones had been broken, asking, ‘Is