Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [91]
I declare my adolescent difference from my family as a passionate environmentalist, and if I had a choice I’d wear baggy, tie-dyed clothes like Barbara’ s. Except I don’t have a choice. I have to wear what clothes we can find at the secondhand market and castoffs from Vanessa (which I supplement with scarves and wooden beads). I consider taking up vegetarianism, briefly.
But mostly we are white and alone, an isolated island in a pressing, restless, relentless sea of Malawians whose lives continue on the periphery of ours in a seeming miracle of survival. At night, by the throb of the generator that gives us a few hours of electric light, we scramble for the tape recorder, on which we now play a recently extended collection of music (Bizet, Puccini, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, to augment our old standards Roger Whittaker and the 1812—Mum is trying to expose us to all the usual suspects in a glut of “Best of” tapes purchased from the budget bins at classical music stores in England). And we drink Carlsberg lager into the mosquito-humming night which is so dense with humidity we feel as if we might absorb water through our skins, as sheep are said to do.
We play fierce games of poker, Dad, Vanessa, and I. We have no money, so we use Dad’s matches as chips. We play for “If you lose you have to get the next round of beer,” which means asking Mum to hand a beer around to all of us. We play for “If you lose you have to light the next round of mosquito coils,” which burn fragrantly, like incense, at our ankles and are supposed to ward off mosquitoes although every morning our legs are polka-dotted with bites. We play for “If you lose you have to bring me a tray of tea whenever I ask for it for the next week,” which is an idle threat because we have a houseboy (who arrived one morning announcing he was here to help Doud in the kitchen) to fetch us tea.
The new houseboy scuffles idly at the door of the back kitchen, where Doud is making up the massive pot of nshima that will feed the dogs, cats, chickens. A pungent, oily soup of bones, fish heads, green cuttings, and leftovers bubbles on the woodstove.
Mum says, “Yes?” and glares.
“I have orders,” he announces.
“Orders for what?”
“I have orders to work here.”
“No, you don’t.” Mum turns her back on the man and shows Doud a recipe in her well-fingered, brown-spattered Good Housekeeping Cookbook.
“But I have orders.”
Mum heaves a deep, irritated sigh and turns back to the man on the doorstep. “From whom?”
The new houseboy looks sullen. He shrugs his shoulders impatiently under the new crisp cut of his khaki uniform (not issued by Mum).
“It is required that I am hired.”
“Well, I unrequire you,” declares Mum.
But the next day the new houseboy arrives again (late, after we have eaten breakfast) for work and skulks around the house until Mum screams at him.
“You can’t fire me,” he says.
“I didn’t hire you to begin with.”
The new servant lets this settle for a moment before declaring, “This is not Rhodesia.”
“I know it’s not bloody Rhodesia.”
But he stays. And at the end of the month he is paid along with Doud, the gardener, the watchman, and the driver who make up the household staff. And Mum says, “I suppose it’s just as well. We need someone for Fridays,” which is Doud’s day at the mosque.
The new houseboy is caught reading our mail, looking through our drawers, rifling in the suitcases under our beds, but whenever we threaten to fire him, he only bares his teeth and tells us, “You can’t.” And it gradually dawns on us that this little man with the hostile breath and furtive tackies (squeaking sneakily from room to room) is an official employee of the government, sent to spy on us. Thus employed, he is an indifferent houseboy.
When we ask him to fetch us a tray of tea it arrives lukewarm, tea leaves floating damply in the top of the pot, with unmatched cups, and we only glance at one another and obediently drink the inferior brew. He irons wrinkles and scorched, burnt-brown