Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [36]
Just before the boat nosed into the cutting, K suddenly shouted to me, “Okay.”
“What?” I shouted back.
“I’ll go.”
The nose of the boat caught an eddy and was spat back into the current so that I had to lean to one side to avoid getting tipped off the end of the boat.
“I’ll go to Mozzy with you.”
Oh God, Pandora, I thought. What have you done?
K cut the engine and we thumped into the damp bank. I jumped to shore with the rope and tied the boat.
“Just don’t blame me if we get scribbled.”
“What?”
“I think I used up all the luck I’m ever going to have against land mines. I’ve gone over three and I’m not dead yet. Four might be the unlucky number.”
PART TWO
Mozambique
Munashe’s blissful time with Chenai in Chimanda did not last because instead of the scars of the war littered around the area bringing him relief and some measure of reconciliation with that brutal time as he had anticipated, he felt his suspicions crawl back and he began to be afraid that something might leap out of the nearest bush and pounce on him and Chenai saw it and asked him what the problem was.
“I think I need to go further,” he replied, looking at the range of blue mountains across the border inside Mozambique.
“I don’t understand.”
“I think I was terribly mistaken,” he said as if he was talking to himself. “There is no way I can reconcile myself with the ghosts of war without beginning in Mozambique.”
➛ From Echoing Silences by Alexander Kanengoni
Accident Hill
Innocent in the kitchen on K’s farm
FOUR MONTHS LATER, in early February, I flew from the States to Lusaka. K was there to meet me at the airport. As I pushed past the crush that had congregated around the customs officials, I could see him standing head and shoulders above everyone else, his breadth creating a vacuum of space around him. He looked even healthier and more powerful than I remembered, as if he had grown younger somehow since I had been here last.
“You look well,” I said.
“I’m fasting.”
“You’re not eating?”
“No, I’m eating. Just no meat, tea, coffee, soft drinks, flour, sweets.”
“Ah,” I said. It showed in his face—he radiated vigor and a kind of purity, like an athletic monk.
“Thanks for meeting me.”
“Hazeku ndaba.” K seized my bags and strode ahead of me out into the humid swell of the African air, which I swallowed in hungry, happy gulps.
“Is it good to be home?” he asked.
“Always.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Nope.”
“I saw your mum and dad last week.”
“Oh good. Are they okay?”
“Ja. Looking forward to seeing you when we get back from Moz.” K swung my bags into the back of the truck and tied them down with rope.
I climbed into the car and K handed me a carton of cigarettes. “Gwai,” he said.
“Oh man, I just quit again,” I said, lighting one. I let the smoke curl around my tongue before exhaling. “Toasted tobacco, no additives,” I said. “Yum. Tastes like childhood.” We were racing past the cattle ranches that line the road from the airport and onto the Great East Road, which headed to Malawi on the one hand and into Lusaka on the other. YOUR FAMILY NEED YOU, a sign at the intersection reminded travelers, WEAR A SEAT BELT. USE A CONDOM.
Lusaka was at its most beautiful, extravagant with the end of the rainy season. The sky stretched above the city clear and fresh. Green pushed up on every available patch of earth. Even the shanties managed to look picturesque, hiding their poverty behind stubby hedges of bougainvillea and tins containing elephant-ear plants. A large white poster flapped at the pedestrian crossing: PREVENT CHOLERA, it instructed next to cartoon pictures of a pair of disembodied hands performing various ablutions.
We cleared the overpass that avoids a tangle of railway lines and the congestion of the bus and train stations and circled past the Family Planning Building and made our way down Cairo Road, where