adminNathaniel Z Mpofu
It was raining inside again, but that wasn’t unusual. Buckets and tin cans stood like chess pieces on the memory of a black and white tiled kitchen floor. Giving off a disorganized concert as water collected from matching bullet holes on the roof. Needless to say, rain was the only thing you could still get for free in this sad excuse for a country. Only that, and polluted air.
A son of the so called owner of the farm had ‘mistakenly’ put those holes there while ‘trying to shoot down a bird’ from a small helicopter a year ago. Wendy Cranswick, now in her late nineties, never really got to be sure if those bullets hadn’t initially had her family’s name written on them. Sure as death though, she knew they hadn’t been meant for no pigeon either.
Maneuvering her way through generations of family belongings cramped in her lounge, Wendy found her reading sofa and nursed herself down. She hadn’t slept in her bed for the past twelve years owing to a condition of water retention in her legs. Never the less, it no longer bothered her that there was probably no chance she had enough breaths and days left in her to see or feel her legs normal again. Wendy had seen enough magic in the land to safely say she had lived. She sighed at the fleeting thought of the adage before her eyes, nothing stays the same forever.
Indeed, Rhodesia had used to be different from this god forsaken Zimbabwe. This shit creek she was drowning in without a paddle. It had been paradise in every right and sense compared to this.
On the corrugated iron roof above, the sound of rain falling in disciplined staccato was doing a good job at relaxing her. She could feel this panacea immediately wage a holy war on her fatigue from head to toenails. The perfect and conducive opportunity for a nostalgic thought that had been dripping sporadically from the melting pot of her memories lately to finally eke out.
The thought of her beloved father, James Wrigley. He had been a railway engineer back in the day and Wendy had had the best of times in her teenager days by virtue of that. She sighed as she reached for an old hand sized photo album on her bookshelf and put on the reading glasses hanging around her neck. A dreamy smile found its way along her lips when she opened it. “Come and see your grandfather, Spongebob,” she called out to her yellow feline sweetheart and only company, her tabby cat.
Spongebob had to be somewhere in the building. Probably in pursuit of some dingy rat or busy daring the poor thing to come out of its hole in a wall. On her lap, in memorial black and white, Wendy was looking at four men standing in front of a plane crash site. Smoking pipes and detached from another crowd in the background. They were wearing what looked like scouts’ uniforms that must have been the same color as the tall dry grass around them. On the back of the photo, in pale faded ink, was written: 1920 – The Silver Queen. Her father had been one those men on the other side. She sighed in cherished pride and swept her eyes simultaneously with her hands through a few more pages of the plane tragedy.
The string of broken wings and an on looking multitude’s photographs suddenly got replaced by rails, concrete reinforcements, heaps of sands, construction men, their tools, tents, and gradually a train engine. More crowds then appeared in that series of photos. The sequence of which led to a myriad of festivities in what seemed like a whole year of celebrations: the grand opening of 1897. She knew 2the story quite well. Why, every moment born of that time was still as fresh as yesterday in the dusty cobwebs of her mind.
Wendy had been as old as her shoe size then but those days had been etched forever in the bone marrow of her soul. Senility had a snow ball’s chance in hell on her elephantine memory. She paused and smiled at random, especially at ball dances, collar dances, and picnics. “Aww,” she said at a particular one where a little girl was covered in cake and abruptly then, Spongebob hopped onto her lap from absolutely nowhere. “Where have you been, dear?” she said.
Wendy had a small voice that made you think that she had stolen it ages ago but still did not want to use out loud in case the owner was lurking around and overheard it.
Spongebob purred loudly as the woman’s fingers ran up and down his fur. Tickling and massaging his long day away too. His tail coiled and his whiskers stood at attention. A response to the pleasing sensation that often left him within a whisker of a feline orgasm. It was just the soothing he needed after the hideous horrors he had heard from Fluffy and Fifi. The twin Manx cats from across the road. Apparently a famished but mischievous cat had sustained second degree burns on most of her left side somewhere in Harare. The incident had occurred after the cat had snuck itself into a pot on a stove at night. After a feast that probably spanned the whole night, the poor thing ran out of luck when it overslept in that same pot. Drunk off gluttony.
It was awoken by the noxious fumes of burning hair and soup and what felt like burning coals underneath it. Someone had switched on the stove without checking the pot’s contents and was shocked when it suddenly erupted and the lid fell to the floor. The craziest thing happened when a cat that looked like the joker sprang out of the pot and leapt off the stove. It disappeared behind the door and was out the house before they could catch it and beat all nine lives out of it. “Times are hard,” Spongebob and the twins had agreed. “All three of us haven’t seen a single rat in weeks,” he had said. “This country is going to the dogs,”
“Did you have a good day today?” breathed Mrs. Cranswick. She continued to soak in the gregarious purring as she viewed more of the album. Soon she was looking at pictures of her younger self with friends at the Matopos national park. The predilection they had all shared just at the mention of the place shot through her in a pang. They had loved the Matopos. It was all they had ever talked about. All they looked forward to. She remembered the bonfire nights: adventure and incessant excitement. Riddled with roasted marshmallows and storytelling. Swimming under the moonlight, gazing at the stars and making wishes after those that shot across the pitch black quilt of the firmament.
Without a care in the world. Only she had been too young to do abseiling, but very keen. Oh how she wished Rhodesia could see herself now. Most of those shooting star wishes had come true even. One certainly had for her as the album unfolded. In August, 1912, at the Plumtree border between Rhodesia and the British Bechuanaland protectorate, Mrs. Cranswick had met her future husband, Colleen Cranswick. He had been training to be an immigration officer.
At one time he got scolded by his superiors for taking a walk with her on ‘no man’s land.’ A considerably small strip of bare land between the two countries that belonged to neither. He had planned that romantic walk down to the ‘T’ and orchestrated it just well. So Rhodesia had even given her the love of her life and that was reason enough for her to mourn a land that still existed but was no longer as gifted. 3
Mrs Cranswick’s weak smile began to shrink and her eyes got heavier. She could feel a close brother of the Grim Reaper’s sneak up on her temperament. The brief trip down memory lane had been a good lullaby and Spongebob must have counted a hundred sheep by now. So she reached for her blanket on a chair at arm’s reach and unfolded it to cover her legs and arms. Enveloping Spongebob inside. She placed the photo album on the shelf and detached the bridge of her glasses from her nose. Mrs. Cranswick then let out a heavy breath as her eyes became like solid stone and a few revolutions of the clock’s second hand later, she was dead to the world.
“Wendy. Wendy, wake up, darling,” Mrs. Cranswick suddenly blinked. Twice. Thrice. “Wendy!” A tender, familiar voice sounded next to her. “Father?” Mrs. Cranswick opened her eyes. Mr. Wrigley was beaming at her. “Yes, my darling. Rise and shine now,” “Father…. where are we?” Mrs. Cranswick had woken up to a place so white she felt the slight pain and strain on her adapting eyes. It wasn’t bright. Just pure, and peaceful. Only she and her father stood there. His blue loving eyes smiled at hers and she ran into him with open arms. She only managed to hug his knees for surprisingly he was much taller now. Too tall. Dressed in a train driver’s uniform. Navy blue and crisp . He had a fine gentleman’s moustache and a slight quiff in his creamy hair. There was a tired but kind hospitality about him. “Hello, my girl,” he said.
That was exactly how he had used to call her. The tone, filled with love, flooded her like a loose tap. Mr. Wrigley wasn’t taller. Instead, she herself had gone shorter, and her body felt newer. Mrs. Cranswick was a little girl again. She began to sob. “Now, now, dear. We do not have much time. I need you to help me find something I lost. Alright?” he confided excitingly. The paternal execution of the assurance in his voice knocked Mrs. Cranswick rabbit alert. “Alright. What is it?” she grinned slightly. “You’ll see. It’s a surprise,” hinted Mr. Wrigley. He spun her by the shoulders to reveal what was behind them. “Wow…” she said in awe.
It was an unfinished railway line under construction and the natural features surrounding it suddenly developed in the picture like an unraveling sunflower in the morning light. They now stood under a vast clear blue sky which the sun had just climbed nearly halfway. Miles upon miles of open grassland spread in all corners of the compass. A great clearance had been made in the bush. Boulders were rolled away at a few instances, trees uprooted and a lot of digging had been done. There were piles of rails, hoards of concrete beams, chopped firewood and a tent beside the railway tracks. The laid tracks diminished into infinity on the horizon and seemed headed for a similar distance upfront. “Father, where are we?” “Ahh. It’s when we are that matters, my girl,” Mr. Wrigley pointed out.
“This is 1895, July. We were still constructing the line from Vryburg to Bulawayo here. A lot of men worked on this fine pioneering mission. Good men that no one remembers now. We laid these tracks one mile a day. By hand,” 4
“One mile everyday, father?” Mrs. Cranswick little voice squeaked. “Yes, my girl. There weren’t any of those gigantic heavy trucks that you have now. We had to use what we had,” “They are called bulldozers, father,” Mrs. Cranswick giggled knowingly. “Are they now? You’re very clever, Wendy,” “And monster trucks,” she glowed. As a kid who was bringing an impressive report card home would. “Still, they can’t possibly do the kind of work that was done here again. We took over four hundred days on this project, and George Pauling and Company paid pretty well.”
At last Mr. Wrigley broke into a walk and motioned for them to head for the tent. Mrs. Cranswick was impressed to see that his gait was just perfect. He was not limping as his apparent age would entail. He had a bit of a rhythm in his footsteps. Like a captain on a smooth sailing boat with a breeze lifting his hair slightly at random. The tent was an old, military brown remnant of an age so past, history itself would surely forget ever writing it down sooner than later. A triangular prism of canvas that looked as though a dangerous poltergeist from World War 1 lived inside.
Mrs. Cranswick felt a slight unease as Mr. Wrigley parted the opening. She hesitated when he slid inside and he must have sensed it for he did not invite her to follow. “What are you looking for, father?” she asked again. “You’ll see, my girl,” he sang from inside. A couple of moments later, he emerged with disappointment smothered in die-hard persistence written all over his face. “It’s not here,” he told her. “What’s not there?” The unrelenting suspense had now given birth to a curiosity strong enough to resurrect even a most recently killed cat. “You’ll see soon enough, dear,” “Please tell me. What would it change if I knew?” whined Mrs. Cranswick. She wanted to wail like a baby.
Annoyed by how her father seemed adamant not to yield to her whims. “Come now. Take my hand,” Mr. Wrigley pretended indifference as he stretched out a pale, polka dotted pink hand with blue veins showing beneath the skin. Before Mrs. Cranswick could decide whether to protest or not, the mechanisms of a dream as they behave forced her to hastily oblige and hold on tight.
A swooshing slideshow of images swept rapidly in front of their eyes in the fashion of the view on a spinning merry-go-round. A pictorial sonnet lumiere in which the bone dry tone and silence of the savanna gradually became a myriad of colors and noises at a distance. Drawing clearer and louder with every throbbing heart beat. A circus? Or was it a carnival? … It was a FESTIVAL!
“Wooo!” Mrs. Cranswick gasped. “Father, when is this now?” They had stuck their feet back in a civilization of a kind.
In a town with impressive buildings scattered generously on either side of a railway line. A shining train engine perched majestically on that line and in between all that, cheering and jeering congregations of all ages. “This, my girl,” Mr. Wrigley began proudly. “Was the grand opening of the Vryburg to Bluwayo railway line.”
There had to be at least six thousand people there. Old women in Victorian clothes, pearl necklaces and lacey umbrellas. They mingled in tea parties, fancy dress parades and dances on the 5 streets. Conspicuous in the crowds too, were important looking men in ballad hats and fishtail suits. Most of them holding complimentary pipes in one hand while the other gripped their waistlines. They exchanged very firm handshakes and grins that screamed success from a mile away. The men promulgated mostly around the bars and the merry dances with the women folk for the romantics. “They cannot see us, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Wrigley as he led Mrs. Cranswick through the throngs of people.
“This is just a memory. It is hardly any realer than you and I to them.”
There were children running around happily too. Like a bunch of headless chickens really. A group of boys flying a kite in an open space. Some girls imitating their mothers and sisters at the dances. Meanwhile some of the older girls appeared in secluded picnic spots away from their parents. Telling each other those age old promises immortalized by writers, poets, painters and sonneteers. Promises of eternal love and heartaches worse than death when apart. One boy must have been very good with his words for Mrs. Cranswick noticed the poor girl wiping tears next to him.
Or perhaps he had just brought down a blanket of cold water on her. Who knew?
“This was the happiest day of our lifetime. The 4th of November 1897. A beautiful day as you can see. Lovely. Happy folk. Four passenger trains had rolled into the city. We came in on train 105. The mail train. Strong, wood-burning steam engines. Did you see those piles of firewood at the construction site?” “Yes, I did,” “Yes, there were several of those stationed along the line. In case the wood already inside the train ran out. Powerful trains.” Mr. Wrigley undulated his verbal ululations of admiration with the pride of a peacock. “We made history on this day, my girl,” he proclaimed through his whiskers.
“Was all of this your company’s doing, father?” “Well, technically, this all belonged to the Cape government Railways Company. Then the South African railways and eventually the Rhodesian Railways. More trains came in as time went by. Train 14 from Bluwayo to the Victoria Falls. Train 111 from the Victoria Falls back to Bluwayo. The numbers were always different. Even for the same route,” “Why?” “It was easier to identify and communicate with the drivers that way. Unlike having two trains going in different directions with the same number. That would have been confusing. Disastrous even,” “Yes, it would,” Mrs. Cranswick concurred. “There was another one from Bluwayo to the Matopos too,” “OOOOOH, The Matopos!” Mrs. Cranswick half screamed. To Mr. Wrigley’s warm smile. “Oh you remember the Matopos, don’t you? You used to love it there,” “I still do. Oh we had the best of times there,” Mrs. Cranswick purred sadly. “Cheer up. It’s still there isn’t it?” “Yes, but it’s no longer the same….Everything is no longer the same,” “Nothing stays the same forever, my girl,” Mr. Wrigley assured her. “I know, father. I just miss it terribly,” she whimpered. “I’m sorry to hear that. Aha, here we are,” suddenly Mr. Wrigley declared triumphantly. They had finally reached a large building named, ‘Palace Hotel.’
“Let’s go inside. We used to have a room here. And you might remember the fountain,” “What fountain?”
Mrs. Cranswick followed him through the door. And this time it was good that she did. It wasn’t very busy as compared to the outside. Everyone must have been at the festivities. Of course. Only a plump pretty woman with nothing but a plate of cake and a glass of milk for company was there. Mrs. Cranswick had forgotten all about the spacious hallway and reception adorned with eccentric vases, flowers, paintings and portraits. ‘The portrait of Henri Michel-Levy’ greeted her at the door, and right next to it, an exquisite painting of Katharine Parre. And many others across the cream walls. They were such marvelous works of Art that Mrs. Cranswick stood at a gaze and Mr. Wrigley decided to leave her to them. “I’ll be back shortly, my girl,” he hollered as he stepped onto a staircase in the foyer.
Mrs. Cranswick caught his words a few seconds later as the memories embedded within the hotel walls suddenly came back to her in a flood. She could hear all the voices, the laughter, see all the faces and smell all the perfumes in one bout of flashback. They would run up and down those stairs like monkeys with her two friends, Bessie Claire and Delilah Gauguin. Being a nuisance in the large hallway on rainy days and enjoying it. At the far end of the hallway was a pair of garden doors that led to a courtyard where they would spend their sunny afternoons. Playing around the pond and fountain. The pinnacles of their play here. The fountain was almost as tall as her father. Splashing gracefully and enchanting their young minds. Its water collected in a circular, dwarf stone wall that also held the pond. Mrs. Cranswick followed her memories there.
“I found it!” Mr. Wrigley suddenly came bursting through the courtyard doors. Grinning incredulously. “I found it, my girl,” He marched through the yard and reached Mrs. Cranswick sitting by the pond in a few strides. Had he been human he surely would have been sweating and panting for breath. “What is it, father?” Mrs. Cranswick’s curiosity was at last close to satisfaction. He opened his palm to reveal a thin gold necklace with a locket on it. “Wow. Father it’s beautiful,” she blushed. Trying exceptionally hard to be furtive but knew her face had already reddened. “It’s yours, my girl,” he coaxed. “Mine?” A smile appeared along her face that, at that moment and oblivious to her, made Mr. Wrigley the happiest man long dead. The smile of a daughter completely surprised by her father. “It belonged to your mother. I wanted you to have it,” “Why didn’t you give me then, father?” she took it in her hands. Savoring its smoothness. It felt so good to her touch. Like silk. Or chocolate on the tongue. “You ran away,” Mr. Wrigley chuckled. Amused at the shock in his little Wendy’s eyes. “I ran away?” she asked innocently. “Yes. Just a few moments from now. Right here in this courtyard. I had come down after looking for you everywhere. I couldn’t find you at the dances, at the picnics. I knew you definitely weren’t at the church service because you didn’t like church very much. You said you couldn’t sing well like the others,” Mrs. Cranswick felt her heart melt with guilt and wonder at what had been her behavior. “You absolutely couldn’t have been at the shooting competitions or the horse races either.
I myself had been held up at the iNdebele indaba meeting at the city hall so I lost track of you. Then I met the Claires,” “Bessie?” “Yes. Her mother told me she may had seen you here. With that Cranswick boy,” Mr. Wrigley let out a ridiculously loud laugh as Mrs. Cranswick cupped her mouth. Embarrassed. And surprised by the bluntness with which she was being told all this. “You were hiding behind that tree,” he pointed at a stupidly small cluster mangoes a stone’s throw from them. “I ran upstairs and finally saw you from a window. Snogging,” He roared some more. A feeling he must have been waiting an eternity to let out.
Just then, two youth jumped from behind the mango trees. A boy and a girl hand in hand. They were scampering for the garden doors. “There you go,” Mr. Wrigley announced. “That’s me?” Mrs. Cranswick blurted in disbelief. “Yes, my girl, that is you…. And there I come,” Mr. Wrigley pointed at the staircase in the hallway. A man was just descending there. “You noticed me first and quickly pulled the Cranswick boy’s hand away from sight,” The words had barely left his tongue when Mrs. Cranswick saw her younger, naive self turn around suddenly at the door- “Don’t look her in the eye!” Mr. Wrigley yelped cautiously.
Alas he had said it too late. The cogwheels of Father Time’s Grandfather clock slowed to a lifeless halt in an instant. Mrs. Cranswick’s eyes were trained on the little vestige of herself across the courtyard. Immature Wendy did not move a hair. Next to her, Mr. Wrigley too had frozen like the memory he had once again imprinted in Mrs. Cranswick who now felt she was falling backwards into the pond. She winked. Twice. Thrice, and her eyes became heavy again. It pained her that she couldn’t move a single muscle to see her father again and say goodbye. Those blue, ageless eyes.
They weren’t there anymore. Only darkness filled her sight. So thick that you could cut it with a blunt knife. All she knew did a horrible spin. Spinning…spinning……Silence.
Mrs. Cranswick swallowed spit. Her throat was dry as dust. With an effort, she opened her eyes to a dark room. Only the almost feather weight of something on her lap, assured her she was so called home again. ‘Spongebob,’ she thought. But why was it dark? The power had gone again. In the middle of the night even. Really, what was the point of taking the power at this time? She begged to wonder. And it had just left. The next sound told her that: a roaring engine shattered through the air like broken clay. Hammering through her ears. It was enough to drive her insane.
There wasn’t a trace of doubt in her mind now that she was back to 2008, Zimbabwe. Back to where the very farm she stayed in, once produced so much maize that farming annually had become partly a luxury. Now it had to be exported from Zambia or elsewhere. She was back where the city was all cramped up with unemployed people and she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d heard of a train. Sadly her avid reality, Mrs. Cranswick had returned to a soul destroying country bleeding from scars made by the hands of its own birth. A country on its death bed, with no one to tell its last wishes to, and no knowledge of where it had come from.
The light went back on, blinding her momentarily. She could feel her heart break down to smithereens when the realization that really the blissful dream had ended sunk in. There was nothing she could do. She was just an old woman in a land where people with power wore suit and tie and farted disgusting English through their nostrils all day. Yet they couldn’t even put a packet of coarse salt on a single store shelf in town combined. Tears began to stream down her cheeks. If she had one wish, she would take herself and Spongebob right back where she had been a minute ago. And if anyone would expect to hear from them ever again, they’d have a rat’s chance in Zimbabwe of getting as much a thought from them, from Rhodesia with no love whatsoever.
derick.khumalo