Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness - Alexandra Fuller [86]
Mum has taught herself everything she can about farm-raised tilapia—even flying with Chad Mbewe, her fish-section manager, to Malaysia for conferences on the latest techniques. “We both nearly died of cold in the icy air-conditioning,” Mum says. “You need a serious down jacket and a scarf. I came home with bronchitis.” In ten years, she has become the premier producer of fingerlings in the country, perhaps even the region. Her fish are famous for their quality, their ability to gain weight and their remarkably unstressed conditions. “Everyone has to be very calm and nicely turned out around Mum’s fish,” Dad warns. “You know what she’s like.” And it’s true; it’s not enough for Mum’s ponds to be efficient, they must also be pleasant for the fish and artistically pleasing, as if she is substituting her farmwork for something that in another time and place she might have painted (sheep and geese grazing mostly peacefully along the ponds’ edges; reeds picturesquely clumped at the corners; baobab trees, serene and ancient as a backdrop).
By midmorning, farmwork has been ongoing for five hours. Mum and Dad come in for breakfast, a meal consisting of pots and pots of tea, a slice of toast and a modest bowl of corn porridge. Then Dad puts his hat back on his head and Mum grabs her walking stick and her binoculars and out they go again. “Details, details, details,” Mum says. “The devil lives in the details.” But by early afternoon, the heat drives everyone indoors or toward shade and we retire to our frog-infested rooms for a siesta.
After our siesta and more tea, my parents are back out on the farm, Dad trailing a fragrant pulse of smoke from his pipe, Mum’s walking stick thumping the ground with every stride. The soil under the bananas is being sampled for effective microorganisms; the fingerlings in several of the ponds are being counted; the shepherds are beginning to bring the sheep in for the night. Then the air takes on a heavy golden quality and we walk along the boundary with the dogs to Breezers, the pub at the bottom of the farm, in time to watch the egrets come in from the Zambezi to roost.
Before it is quite dark—“You don’t want to bump into a bloody hippo,” Dad says—we meander back up to the Tree of Forgetfulness, agreeably drunk. Mr. Zulu, a couple of his wives and several of his children are sitting on their veranda as we pass. Mr. Zulu nods a greeting and we exchange brief pleasantries. “Good evening, Mr. Zulu.” “Yes, Mr. Fuller.” His dogs mock-charge our dogs, which provokes Isabelle and Attatruk (Mum’s turkeys) into hysterical gobbling, and then Lightning begins to bray (Flash died of sleeping sickness a few years ago). “It’s quite like the musicians of Bremen,” Mum says happily.
BEFORE SUPPER—my parents take the last meal of the day late, like Europeans—Mum makes for her bath with a glass of wine. Dad and I pour ourselves a drink under the Tree of Forgetfulness and play a languid game of twos and eights. “It’s not nearly as much fun without Van here to cheat,” I say. The dogs split themselves among laps, beds and chairs across the camp and begin to lick themselves. From the bathroom we can hear Mum drowning out Luciano Pavarotti. “Ah! Il mio sol pensier sei tu, Tosca, sei tu!” There is the occasional plop of an inattentive gecko falling from the rafters in the kitchen, where Big H has made a dish of turmeric rice to go with Mum’s fish curry bubbling gently in one of the Le Creuset pots. All is as domestically blissful as it can get.
Suddenly the three dogs in the guest cottage start a loud, hysterical chorus of barking. It’s been years since I’ve heard that particular bark, but I recognize it instantly. I put my cards