Elizabeth wears a long light blue t-shirt to bed. She likes to rub my tummy, which is embarrassing. It’s grown too large. At least she also has a little baby fat.
Her kisses taste of mint. She seems more at ease than I am, even after two more shots of j&b. I’m not sure she’s satisfied in the end, but I’ve never figured out how to ask that question.
The roots of her hair still have a trace of the coconut smell.
In the morning we shower together, but the hot water runs out before we get past playfully washing each other’s backs. Afterwards, she makes Jamaican blend coffee by draining it through paper filters. Georgia brings fresh bread from the Italian bakery.
I leave before noon. We promise to meet again and share more ideas about research. The night with Elizabeth was so comfortable – buttery green beans, fried mint kisses. It’s been many months since a woman’s head rested on my shoulder.
On my way home, I buy the Sunday paper. It details how some ‘agents of apartheid’ blew up four planes belonging to the Zimbabwean air force the previous day. The planes were parked at an airfield in Gweru.
Though the news is disturbing, my mind quickly shifts elsewhere. I can’t stop thinking about Florence tending to the wounds on Geoff Gilbert’s forehead. That’s genuine reconciliation.
Chapter 11
For a couple of months Elizabeth and I become inseparable. We drive to the archives in her blue Mazda, drink Mr Murehwa’s tea, return to her house for dinner, conversation and cosy lovemaking in the four-poster bed. I’m not sure if we have a future and I don’t ask. The relationship meets our needs in this exciting, decidedly slow-paced and foreign country.
I still don’t mention my research about Tichasara. The day I go to inform Dlamini I’ll take up his offer, I tell Elizabeth I have a doctor’s appointment. I am an infrequent visitor to my granny flat. Mrs van Zyl may be lonely but I must be the least troublesome tenant she’s ever had.
Elizabeth is more than a lover; she’s my connection to the world of researchers. She knows them all: historians, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists. Nearly all are, in the local parlance, expatriate, ‘expats’ for short, meaning they come from outside Zimbabwe. This country has become a fashionable venue for British academics, in particular, to do fieldwork.
Elizabeth Routledge’s sprawling house has earned the status of compulsory stop on the expat’s tour of duty. The dinner table overflows with inquisitive visitors who feast on her sumptuous roasts, butter-drenched gem squash and nutmeg-laced milk tart. Many in this social circle have been studying Zimbabwe for years. They rattle off titles of books they have read or written, conferences they have attended and dignitaries they’ve interviewed. I feel like I’ve lived my life in a living room fish tank while they’ve been swimming in the seas of knowledge and experience. Milwaukee does not rate as a citadel of intellectual activity.
The most frequent dinner table guests are Professor Albert Runnels and his wife Rose. Elizabeth describes them as ‘old Africa hands’. They’ve lived in several African countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, as well as Rose’s native Uganda. Rose doesn’t talk much. Her children are grown and living in the uk. Despite being in her mid-forties, she radiates the glamour of a much younger woman.
Runnels compensates for his wife’s reticence. He has a well-grounded opinion on every topic of conversation and counts himself one of a half-dozen ‘genuine experts’ on African birdlife. He’s authored four books on African politics, including a biography of Idi Amin entitled Just Another African Despot.
‘I hate to see young researchers being deceived by the public pronouncements of African politicians,’ he tells me one evening while the four of us finish a bottle of Courvoisier. ‘Mugabe is an authoritarian wolf in the sheep’s clothing of a quasidemocrat.’
Runnels avoids our gaze, preferring to address a space somewhere near the ceiling where an imaginary crowd hangs on his every syllable.
Rose smiles and reaches for her husband’s hand. ‘Perhaps you need to keep Albert’s concerns in mind,’ she tells me, ‘but your work sounds interesting.’
Unlike most African women I’ve met, Rose prefers casual clothes – t-shirts, shorts, running shoes. She used to run marathons. Her legs look like they could still last the 26 miles or 42 kilometres, the unit they use here.
‘I won’t be swept away by rhetoric that doesn’t coincide with reality,’ I tell them.
‘Don’t be naïve,’ Runnels replies. ‘Reconciliation is a public relations ploy. African politics goes one way, down the drain of corruption and repression. Only a fool would think otherwise.’
He adds, ‘I’d hate to see you writing drivel like those intellectual puppets of Zanu, David Martin and Phyllis Johnson.’
Martin and Johnson authored The Struggle for Zimbabwe. After Dlamini’s work, it’s my favourite book on Zimbabwean history. No one else has portrayed the liberation war in such detail.
I’m weighing up the consequences of confrontation. These are long-time friends of Elizabeth’s. They even visited her in the uk. But the man is insulting me.
‘I don’t think it’s foolish to be optimistic or hopeful,’ I reply. ‘The Zimbabweans have achieved a lot already, building schools, clinics, houses.’
‘It means nothing, my young man,’ he responds. ‘It will all go up in a cloud of African smoke.’
I give Elizabeth a pleading look. I want her to intervene before I say what I’m thinking. She and Rose get up and go to the kitchen, leaving the bulls to lock horns.
‘I suggest you change your direction or you’ll end up being a source of jokes within the African academe – the Mugabephile.’
He looks proud at his creation of a new term of deprecation. Without replying, I excuse myself to go and find Elizabeth. She’s slicing a block of Gouda cheese in the kitchen.
‘Let me do that,’ I say. ‘You go and talk to that asshole before I grab him by the throat.’
‘Albert means well,’ says Rose.
I hadn’t noticed she was in the pantry.
‘He sometimes has an unfortunate manner,’ she adds, not coming out to face me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
Elizabeth is trembling, but she is still slicing the cheese. Finally, she puts down the knife and rushes down the hallway. I follow.
She is lying on the bed, her head buried in a pillow.
‘I told you I hate conflict,’ she says in a wavering voice. ‘I love my father, but he’d get drunk and brawl with the Tory neighbour. I need peace in my house.’
She’s sitting up now. The tears have stopped. ‘Albert and Rose are my friends,’ she says.
‘The man is an arrogant bastard,’ I tell her. ‘He talks to me like I’m three years old.’
‘Count to ten,’ she says. ‘You’ll find a way.’
Elizabeth shows no sympathy for my outrage. Maybe Runnels was once the butt of sarcastic comments at African Studies conferences. Whatever his problem, his goal now is to curdle the passion of all around him. What kind of history declares that every African country must travel exactly the same depressing path? Dogma is destructive, be it my parents’ brand of Christianity or Runnels’ cynicism.
Since Elizabeth doesn’t want to discuss this any further, I go back to the living room with no idea how to mend the fences. Albert and Rose are gone. A note on the coffee table informs Elizabeth that Rose will come by and see her tomorrow.
I don’t feel like dealing with this.