Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [101]
The farm has been without proper management for years. Even before the Germans acquired it, a series of alcoholic, occasionally insane mazungus (mostly burnt-out Rhodesians, fleeing the war) have run the place into the ground. The house and garden have been allowed to fall into tropical collapse. The carpet tiles in the hall are floating up, peeling and green-gray, from where they have been soaked during the rainy season. There are pots and pans all over the house, set out to catch rainwater from the leaking roof. Mosquitoes breed happily in the stagnation.
That night, the first night on our new farm, while I am sitting on the edge of my bed contemplating my new bedroom, a rat the size of a small cat runs over my foot.
Mum
BALM IN THE
WOUNDS
We whitewash the walls, clean the carpets, curtains, furniture. Mum hangs pictures, puts out her books and ornaments, and cuts wild plants which she dries on the veranda and then sets about the house in vases and jars where they quickly become places for spiders’ webs. Adamson is issued new uniforms and a pair of shoes. Mum instructs him not to smoke marijuana in the house. The vegetable garden is dug up and replanted with tomatoes, rape, pumpkins, green peppers, carrots, potatoes, green beans, strawberries, and onions. The flower garden is watered, and spread over with tobacco scraps, and the roses are pruned into spikes. The bougainvillea creeper, which had become massive and unruly and threatened to drop out of its tree and onto the house (bringing the tree with it), is trimmed and thinned. The honeysuckle on the garage wall is coaxed back into life where its sweet, orange flowers hang like clusters of tiny trumpets over the entrance.
The dairy, which had been surrounded by a deep moat of cow shit, is cleaned up and the skinny, overmilked cows fed and pampered until their coats are glossy and their milk thick, sweet, and prolific. We adopt and buy enough dogs to clutter the space at our heels, we are given a white kitten whom we name Percy, and the Germans (as promised) purchase for us two mares, one of whom is in foal.
The farm succumbs to the gentle discipline of careful farming. Exhausted pastures are fertilized and then allowed to lie fallow. The cattle are dipped, dehorned, counted, branded, and inoculated, and the barren cows culled from the herd. The tobacco barns are patched and made watertight, airtight, and windproof. The roads are graded and, in places, crushed bricks fill in holes and sandy patches, so that tractors and trailers are not stranded on far reaches of the farm. The silt is dug out of the dams and their shores are lined with sandbags. Gordon finds work elsewhere and the farm’s vehicles run again.
We’ve been riding all morning, out across the vlei, where Dad has organized the planting of rows of young, thin-necked, gray-blue-skinned gums. It’s been a hot, high morning, the sun pale and intense, sucking the color out of the sky. Mum has found that the trailer, which is holding the rows of wilting gum seedlings, has broken down. When we get back from our ride, she drives up to the workshop to organize a mechanic. I am sitting on the veranda in my jodhpurs, horse sweat stinging my hands, my eyes burning with the heat. Adamson shuffles through from the kitchen with a tray of tea for me. A thick joint hangs from his lower lip and drips ash and fragrant flakes of weed onto the tea. I light a cigarette. “Thanks, Adamson.”
I watch the horses saunter out into the paddock. They find sandy patches and throw up clouds of dust, rolling the morning of hot riding off their backs, legs paddling the air. There is a singing chorus of insects and birds; yellow-feathered weavers crash out from the bougainvillea where their nests hang like tiny, intricate baskets. The dogs lie belly flat on the veranda, pooling saliva under dripping tongues. I push Percy off