Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [20]
The kitchen was a separate, bare-boned building, which could be reached via a brick path from the bedroom. It was a simple affair, three half walls along the front and sides and a whole wall along the back holding up an asbestos-sheet roof. A shelf along the back wall held a kettle, a pot, a pan, a few plates and cups. A gas stove and a sink took up most of the front wall. A washing line hung over the woodstove, bright with K’s shirts and shorts. Three dogs and a cat were splayed out on the floor. The dogs were named Sheba, Mischief, and Dispatch.
“Dispatch?”
K said, “The gondies call him Dizzy-patch.” K tickled the dozing dog with his toe and the dog flipped onto his feet with a soft growl and then, seeing K, began to wag his tail and grin. “He’s a good dog,” said K, patting the dog’s head, “incredible watchdog.”
I said, “Hello Dizzy-patch.”
Dispatch backed into K’s legs, flattened his ears, and bared his teeth at me. He was a low, squat dog, the kind that steals up to you from behind—a ground-scraping shadow—and sinks his teeth into your leg before you’ve seen or heard him coming.
K prepared the tea himself. “I don’t like to have gondies around the house,” he said. “I have someone in the morning to clean and do laundry and the gardener comes in the morning to water and weed and then”—K indicated the gate with his head—“if anyone wants me they must hit the gong by the gate.”
I slid along the kitchen wall, keeping a wary eye on Dispatch, and followed K down to a picnic table overlooking the river, where we sat with cups balanced on our laps. The cat crouched over a saucer of milk and the dogs lined up for their biscuits (sugary Zimbabwean tea biscuits sold at the Sole market by Michael’s aunt). K had fried battered okra, which we ate with salt, licking our fingers against the grease.
On the other side of the Chabija, I could see a village perched on the riverbank. It was a series of huts facing toward K’s camp, their doors like yawning mouths into the gloomy interiors that lay anonymously within. Sitting around the outside of the huts, the curved shape of men, seated on low stools, focused on playing a game. Beyond that, two men in ragged shorts were laboriously mending a fishing net spread out on the ground between them. A woman was kneeling in a clearing near a small cooking hut, pounding maize, her body falling and rising from the hips, her arms outstretched and gripping the pestle. Children and goats and chickens fell in and out of shadows.
“That village has sprung up since I’ve been here,” said K. “Before I came, there was nothing here at all. No road, no village. Nothing. Now I have about twelve families living over there and about two thirds of their economy is stealing from this farm—just petty stuff, but that leads to bigger stuff. The really dangerous tsotsis come from Sole and Chabija townships. They come prepared for a proper dustup—sawn-off shotguns and machetes.”
I shielded my eyes from the sun. “Those villagers look as if they have quite a well-established setup,” I said.
“What?! They’re pissing about with half an acre of millet and then whatever they can catch in the river. Anyway, why work when you can steal from me and then sit on your arse for the rest of the day? Just wait, though. Now, now I’ll get my electric fence wired up and then hokoyo! Zap! One time, fried gondie.”
K rubbed Dispatch’s belly with his toe. “I can’t turn away their kids, though. Their laaities come to my little school on the farm and I end up treating all of them at the clinic when they’re sick. Mind you, the clinic is just for the ordinary things like malaria and coughs. If someone gets really sick, then I take them to the mission. Or if they get in a messy accident . . .” K licked his lower lip. “There was a woman here just the other day—when was it?” He frowned. “October, November time. It was before the rains, you know, when everything is so dry. Anyway this nanny was down there doing her washing and she got grabbed by a flattie. Just