Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [78]
“And before that?”
Andrew propped the iron up on its end and stared out at the garden, where the lion was now tossing a crocodile leg into the air and catching it again. “Before that,” he said, picking up the iron again and slamming it down hard onto the shirt, “I was fighting.”
“For Frelimo?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Oh.”
Both of us were quiet for some time. Then I said, “Were you fighting in this area?”
“Yes, madam.”
I took a deep breath. “Do you know that Mapenga was fighting for the Rhodesians?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Perhaps you were fighting each other.”
Andrew sighed and stared down at the shirt that he was now folding neatly. “But, of course.” He picked a pair of shorts out of the laundry basket and laid them on the table in place of the shirt. “Yes, there was war for a long time.” He took a swipe at the shorts with the iron. “So many, many of us. Everyone who lives here has been fighting. War is no good.” The iron hissed and gasped a cloud of steam into Andrew’s face. “It’s a no-good thing.”
“Do you hate them?”
“Who?”
“The people you were fighting.”
Andrew frowned. “Why?” he asked. “The war is over. No fighting now.” He turned the shorts over and ran the iron over them. “All that fighting for so many years . . .” He shrugged. “Sometime I am there in the shateen and I have even forgotten what is this thing I am fighting for. And then there is somebody who says, ‘You are fighting for freedom.’ But what does that mean? I fight for freedom.” Andrew plucked at the beginning of a hole in the seat of the shorts. “Look at this,” he said, showing me the threadbare patch in the offending shorts.
Or showing me the irony of his life, maybe.
The lion suddenly gave a furious roar, abandoned his meal, and threw himself against the cage.
“He wants to play,” Andrew said, looking up and laughing. “Go, Mambo! Play with your crocodile.”
The lion snarled and scooped his paw under the cage.
Andrew said, “He wants to play with you,” and started to laugh again. He folded the shorts, wiped his face with the palm of his hand, and picked up another shirt.
“I know,” I said, not laughing.
“Go sit inside,” said Andrew kindly. “I’ll bring you some tea when I am finished here.”
By evening, when K and Mapenga returned from fishing, a strong breeze had picked up off the lake and we were able to sit down at the pavilion overlooking the water. The mosquitoes, we hoped, were being gusted off the lakeside and farther inland. The lion lay placidly on the rocks in front of us, tearing away at his gnawed slab of crocodile. A motorboat chugged into view over the pink-lit water and started to head past Mapenga’s island.
“Shit!” yelled Mapenga, leaping to his feet and running toward the cliff, waving his arms above his head. “It’s St. Medard. St. Medard! You have to meet this man,” he said to K and me. “Jesus, if you think you’re fucking crazy, you should see this bastard. I’d forgotten about him when I called you the craziest bastard I knew. This man is the craziest bastard you’ll ever meet.”
Mapenga danced around on the rocks like a man possessed. “St. Medard, you crazy bastard! Come and have a drink! Come and have a drink!”
St. Medard pulled up on shore and joined us at the pavilion. St. Medard shouted, rather than talked, in a way that required the use of his entire body, so that he jerked and thrashed about and there seemed a very real danger that he would easily set himself, or anyone else, on fire with the end of his convulsing cigarette. “I don’t want to see you,” he said. “I need to get home.” The lion trotted up to greet the visitor, rubbing himself fondly on St. Medard’s legs. “Hello, you miserable cat.”
“Dop?” asked Mapenga.
“Dop?” replied St. Medard. “Long dop. It’s been a shit couple of days.”
Mapenga and the lion went up to the house and left K and me alone with St. Medard, who punctuated his ordinary speech with microbursts of hoarse laughter and shouts of, “Mapenga, stop playing with that cat and bring me dop.” Hidden under the bluster