The sound of a car engine in the village has always been a noise that makes people, both adults and children alike, stop whatever they’re doing and watch the road, as if a good spirit is about to appear. It’s a sound filled with the nostalgic reminder that we’re a people filled with hope, and that we are not alone in the world.
But today the sound of the approaching vehicle elicited a different response. Mother grabbed my hand and we fled into the bedroom, where she quickly closed the door and locked it. I sensed the old determination of a woman who is firm on decisions and reassuring to have around.
‘Quick, let’s push the wardrobe against the door, Rudo!’ she cried.
This item, which stood at the far wall, was heavy, but we managed to push it across the small room and lodge it against the door.
Still breathing heavily from the effort, mother said we must hide under the bed, and we crawled underneath it. Then she pulled the blanket over the gap between the bed and the floor. Darkness enfolded us. The sound of the truck had increased to a steady frightening roar, as if it was right outside. Mother’s hands were tight around me. We were not talking, but just listening intently. Finally, the sound receded, and died away. Silence descended on the hut again.
Outside I could hear chickens cluck-clucking, and their chicks chirping. The sound of birdsong seemed to have increased in intensity, suggesting that the sun was setting.
We seemed to have been under the bed for a very long time. Then I fell asleep. I had a dream. A soldier was carrying a long spliced stick, and in the splice were cut-off hands and the fingers were wriggling like worms, making all kinds of shapes; then the biggest hand, which carried a silver ring on its ring finger, beckoned me nearer; all the hands were now crooked at me, all beckoning me to come, and suddenly the hands were mice and they jumped off the stick and clambered over a soldier; he tried to beat them off as one would beat off flies, and then the mice became Sithabile and the other girls who had disappeared all those weeks ago after I’d left them with the soldiers; and now they were all screaming in one long-drawn-out scream.
I woke up with a start. My heart was beating fast. Mother’s hands were still tight around me. It was pitch dark under the bed, but I could smell mother’s comforting scent, that of wood smoke overlaid with sweat.
The scream that had been in my dream was still there, and now it had become a wail, long and drawn out, like a person grieving. It was a woman. Mother’s hands grew tighter around me, but it was not she who was wailing. Then, faint and far off, we heard more wailing, which almost sounded like echoes of the first. And then there was this one wail that seemed right outside our hut.
‘It’s Auntie!’ mother said her voice cracking. ‘Mwari wangu! What is happening to us?’ Mother speaks fluent Ndebele, but when she is tormented she reverts to the Shona she learned as a child.
The wail outside had become continuous, whilst the other far-off wails were still there as if accompanying it.
Suddenly mother released me from her embrace, her movement sharp. ‘No,’ she said, ‘this can’t go on, or we’re all going to become mad.’
She inched herself out from under the bed, and I followed her. The room was now as dark as it had been under the bed, save for a beam of moonlight stretching through the small window by the door, and lending the room a little light. Mother, in a crouch, moved to the window, and I could see the shape of her head outlined against the moonbeam as she peeped outside.
My parent’s bedroom has a sharp smell of mothballs, which are put in the wardrobe to protect our clothes from termites. Maybe it was the lack of light, or the sense of gloom that pervaded the room, but the aroma of mothballs seemed very intense at that moment, as if they had been ground with a stone to release their scent.
Suddenly, mother began pushing at the wardrobe with her back. I moved to help her and we pushed together. The wail outside was maddening. The wardrobe screeched as we managed to heave it aside to expose the entrance again. Mother unlocked and opened the door and cautiously we went outside.
A full moon sat in the sky, like a thoughtful eye. The yard was revealed clearly and sharply in the moonlight. The wails still hung around the village, like a choir of witches. There was no one in our yard. Then mother headed for the front gate, and I followed close behind her.
There is a small hillock in front of my home that hides our hut from the road. Tonight it seemed like an upraised warning finger and we walked around it, following a path. On the other side of the hillock are the homes of Uncle Genesis and Uncle Francis. I walked with trepidation because mother had told me that my two uncles and their families were all now dead. But I couldn’t imagine them dead.
I had never seen a dead person though I had been to homes where wakes for the dead were being held, and have never liked the gloomy atmosphere. Uncle Genesis’s home is on our side of the big road, and Uncle Francis’s home is on the other side. When you get off at our bus stop, which is called Dlodlo Bus Stop after our family name, you get off directly in front of Uncle Genesis’s home, and then if you walk around it you pass the hillock and get to my home.
As we rounded the hillock, we heard the wailing voice, which I had thought was in our yard when we had been in the bedroom. It was now louder. Other wails still filled the air from around the village. Then we came to the gate of Uncle Genesis’s homestead. Beyond the gate was nothing but five round shadows indicating where the huts had once stood.
A figure, lit by the moonlight, was kneeling before one of the dark shadows and what remained of the foundation of a hut in the yard. The wailing was coming from this figure. I felt a cold shiver run through my body.
Mother walked into the yard, and I followed close behind her. A strange scent of roasted meat caught my nose, but I didn’t turn my mind to it as I was concentrating on the wailing figure. Before we reached it, we had to skirt the bodies of three dead dogs, Skelemu, Danger, and Basop, which had belonged to Uncle Genesis. One couldn’t approach his home without them barking, even if they knew you, and Skelemu had been the most dangerous of them all, just like our dog, Gadi. Now, we would hear their familiar barking no more.
We reached the kneeling figure, and mother stopped behind it. Then the wail became a voice: ‘Oh Genesis my brother, Oh Genesis my brother!’ The voice kept repeating itself. The smell of roasting meat had become stronger. It was Auntie. And as my eyes adjusted to the scene I noticed that the foundation of the hut Auntie was kneeling before had once been the bedroom of Uncle Genesis. In the middle of the floor stood a dark mound, like burned sacks piled on top of each other.
‘They’re all dead, Mamvura,’ I heard Auntie’s anguished cry. ‘Even Francis and his family. What did they do to anybody? Why are they dead now and so painfully like this? Oh they’re all gone, Nkulunkulu wami.’ Mother gently put her hand on Auntie’s shoulder.
‘There’s nothing we can do now Auntie,’ I heard her say. ‘They have gone to join our ancestors.’
‘Genesis and Francis never did anything to anybody, Mamvura.’
Auntie was still wailing, but the sound had diminished. ‘They were not dissidents, but just simple parents who were looking after their families and their livestock.’
Still kneeling, she turned and pressed her face into mother’s skirt. Mother placed both her hands on Auntie’s shoulders. Auntie sniffled wetly, before breaking into a fresh outburst of sobs. Mother did not say anything, but her hands lay still and warm on Auntie’s shoulders. The more distant wailing from the village still echoed around us. I felt a hot lump stick in my throat.
About the Author
Christopher Mlalazi, is currently Writer in Residence in Hanover city, Germany. In 2012 he was a participant of the Iowa Writing Program, in 2011 he was Guest Writer at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala Sweden, and in 2010 he was the Guest Writer at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles, USA. Prolific as a prose writer and playwright, in 2008 he was the co-winner of the Oxfam Novib PEN Freedom of Expression Award at the Hague for theatre, and in 2009 was awarded a NAMA award for his short story collection, Dancing With Life: Tales From The Township. He was nominated for another NAMA for his novel 2009 novel, Many Rivers. In 2010 he won a NAMA for his play Election Day. His latest play Colors of Dreams, also opened to a full house at HIFA 2011. His latest novel is Running with Mother (2012).
Post published in: Arts