Chioniso and Other Stories

Infidel

Martha's Hero

‘Did anyone see you come?’ he whispered.

Earnestly she shook her head.

A bat skimmed away from the darkening trees on the ridge and over his head. Feeling the thermal, and never one to be caught off guard, he instinctively reached for the muzzle of his AK 47.

Then, he shuffled his hand inside the large plastic bag that she'd brought him containing his clothes - a pair of jeans, two T-shirts, socks, washed, freshly pressed and still reeking of village soap, matches and two twenty-packs of cigarettes.

‘Did you wash and iron the clothes yourself, as I told you?’

‘Yes, yes, Comrade.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes, Comrade Ponda.’

He was half a head taller than her and perhaps no more than three years older. Now, as he guided her youthful face into his opened shirt with recently acquired confidence, he could feel her breath rising and her body squirming in his grip.

‘Comrade, no,’ she pleaded, but he ignored her, stroking her raw-avocado-pear-firm breasts and clawing hungrily at her slender thighs. His hands were hardened like wood, after seasons of hauling crates of ammo, scraping the unyielding earth to lay landmines or burying dead comrades. He raised her face to his and as he began to feed at her mouth, she detected the tang of cigarettes mixed with the sweet odour of marijuana.

She whimpered.

‘How are fighters like us supposed to survive, lonely in the bush while you're all safely tucked away in schools?’ he muttered angrily.

‘Comrade, no!’

It was a cry not of pleasure but of fear and pain.

***

Later when he released her, a three-quarter yellow moon was struggling out of the sluggish horizon of huts in the east. He had instructed her to keep to the edge of the forest to avoid the Rhodesian forces, and the curfew, but now the dogs sensed her from the village and barked furiously. Would she be spotted and shot at? Would her sister Winnie and her daughter hear her arrive?

The pain between her legs was searing, as if she had been sliced with a new razor blade. She felt hollow, used, as if her insides would collapse. She sweated and shivered at the same time. Her dress was sticky. She feared she was leaving a thin trail, an almost invisible trickle of blood, all the way from the ridge: just like a wounded animal being stalked by a beast of prey, or perhaps some cursed unit of Rhodesian troops. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and dragged herself on. She stumbled into a thorn bush, and heard her dress rip.

What if she stepped on a snake or a booby trap nesting in the grass?

And he, what was he doing now at the ridge, at his post? Had he not said he could not leave the base, that it was too dangerous to accompany her back to the village? And had he not given her a necklace to stop her crying and promised to see her again the in three nights’ time, and commanded her to hurry? Was he now, satiated, enjoying a cigarette, this scarred son of the soil? Or sitting, with his back against a tree, simply waiting for morning to burst upon this war-torn village, the sky pregnant with bombs, the land gangrened with hate, so that he could boast to his fellow comrades about the terrible deed on the ridge?

***

At the gate of her older sister's compound, she struggled with the chains. Their dog Spark bounded up to her, squealing, thrashing his excited tail, intelligent to her pleas for silence, her hushed appeals for secrecy; licking her pleading, patting hands, aroused by the smell of her sex. Crossing the yard, she skirted the larger of the round thatched huts, the half-finished dwelling with its yawning windows – the house that would take decades to complete. Her sister's husband was a headmaster at a school a hundred kilometres away and because of the war could only visit on special weekends or during the school holidays. Martha went to the smaller hut – the girls’ hut – at the edge of the clearing.

‘Shupikai. Shupi. Can you hear me?’

After what felt like an eternity Shupikai opened her large, half-asleep, half-knowing, ten-year-old, I-won't-tell-on-you niece's eyes, which gleamed in the lamp light.

‘Mainini Martha, are you all right? You're late.’

‘Yes, yes. Shhhh. Quiet. Just hand me the bar of washing soap and the bathing pail.’

‘Are you all right, Mainini Martha?’

‘I'm all right. Just hand me the pail and soap and switch off the light. Did Sisi Winnie ask about me, Shupi?’

‘I told her you were in here reading. She went to bed early with the baby.’

‘All right. Switch off the light. I won't be long.’

***

‘Who is he?’

Sisi Winnie sat on the bed, the grumpy, bullfrog anger, which Martha had known throughout her childhood, contorting her face.

The younger woman squinted dully in the bright morning light flooding in from outside. The chickens were cackling foolishly in the yard and Spark was trying to scratch the fleas off his back and squabble with the cats at the same time. From a blaring radio somewhere the eight o'clock news was on the air and a clipped female Rhodesian voice could be heard, ‘Security Force Headquarters regret to announce the death of twelve more locals caught in crossfire in a contact between Security Forces and a group of terrorist insurgents near the Gokwe Office. In the same contact, fourteen terrorists were killed and over a dozen captured with a large cache of arms. The contact has been one of the most successful since the war intensified two years ago in 1975…’

Martha realised weakly that she had overslept. How blunt and inconsequential the news seemed. So remote and yet so near. Memories of the previous night assailed her. She tried to move herself: her crutch felt heavy as a mortar, her legs stiff as pestles.

Sisi Winnie gave her no respite. The older woman's presence gripped her like a vice. ‘Answer me and stop your tearful nonsense at once! It's one of the comrades, isn't it? Don't think I haven't been noticing your interest in them and your movements since you came here for your holidays. You came here to study for your ‘O's not to enjoy a romantic holiday. All you're expected to do is to go to the pungwes, take food to the comrades and wash their clothes with the other girls. Even my daughter Shupikai knows that. But you seem to think you came here to practice being married. Do you think this is how I behaved to Baba Shupikai before he married me, flaunting myself? Is this what you've been doing at boarding school – going out with men? At sixteen! Do you think the comrades are angels just because they carry guns on their backs? Can you guess how many girls they've each slept with before they arrived in this village? Do you know how many babies they've left behind? Totemless! What if he gives you an incurable disease and your womb rots? What if he makes you pregnant? Do you think he'll care? Or marry you? And what will my husband say? Do you want him to send me away, and destroy my marriage? What if the Rhodesians come and set my house on fire? What will father and mother say, and our brothers and relatives? What will they all think?’ She paused to draw breath, staring angrily at the tear-stained face of her young sister. ‘Who is he?’ Sisi Winnie demanded again, like an interrogator at a keep office, slapping the younger woman on both sides of the face so that the girl's ears rang.

Martha could not bear it. ‘It's Comrade Ponda,’ she sobbed. ‘I didn't want to. He forced me.’

‘Ts, ts, ts, vanaMartha,’ Sisi Winnie shook her head. What do you know about Ponda? What has he done in other operational areas? What have you heard about him? Do you think anybody would have the courage to tell you?’

‘What has he done?’ Her voice a muffled scream.

‘Now, my young sister, you'll do as I say. Pack your bags right now. I'm taking you straight to the bus stop.’

‘Where can I go?’

‘Go? Don't you have a home, and a father and mother? Isn't your father still a deacon at the mission school? I know that small house is always packed with visitors and that it's not easy to study there – if that's what you want to do – but you have to go, shamwari.’

‘You can't do this, Sisi Winnie, please,’ Martha whispered. ‘You know the comrades’ rules. Nobody can leave or enter the village without their permission. Comrade Ponda told me so himself.’

‘Listen to you. Three short weeks here and you're already the expert on the rules. Is your Comrade Ponda the only voice in this war? Did this war start with him alone? Will it end with him? Haven't I played my part? Don't the comrades know that? And aren't there enough excuses in this world? Illness? Death? Emergency? Who knows? Maybe you're pregnant already and need urgent attention. Just you wait. I'll talk back to them and we'll see if they kill me. Shupikai! Shupikai!’

‘Mha!’ Shupi returned her yell.

‘Is the baby asleep?’

‘Yes, Mhamha.’

‘Bring your Mainini's suitcase from my bedroom and help her pack.’

‘Where is Mainini Martha going, Mhamha?’

‘Just do as I say, Shupi, and if you care for us, you'll not say a word about this to anybody, okay? Not a word, you hear!’

Shupikai slowly nodded.

***

At the front of the crowded bus an old man and a woman were humming an ancient dirge, their wizened heads bowed in unison as if to help the bus along. The heavy vehicle swerved from side to side, to avoid the landmines, people said. Martha gripped the metal bar of the back of the seat in front of her and every so often broke into tears, till the young mother beside her, wearing a white Apostolic doek and nestling an infant, softly inquired, ‘Is everything okay where you're coming from, mwana waMai vangu? Have you lost someone, a relative, perhaps to the war?’

Martha blew her nose and shook her head. She might as well have nodded because she was thinking of Comrade Ponda all right; Comrade Ponda expecting her in two nights' time and what he would do when he heard that she'd left the village without permission and Sisi Winnie, cocky Sisi Winnie, having to explain. Hurriedly, she dried her face as a roadblock loomed in front of the bus.

‘Out, out, mabhoyi. Out, out, kaffirs. Out with your situpas and down with your luggage and line up along the side of the bus.’

‘Come on, madala. Come on, gogo. You're the ones with daughters cooking and washing for the terrs who're causing you this shit.’

‘And you conductor, leave your purse here. We don't want you handing over your takings to the terrs at the next stop. Your boss can drive back for it and help detonate a few landmines for us along the way.’

‘And you, ambuya, is that a terr baby you're holding? What have you got in that bag of flour? Grenades? Empty it on the ground.’

‘You there, young lady, hold your ID up nicely and stop messing it up with your snot. What's your name, anyway, young whore? Martha. Martha who? Listen. You'd better stop sniffling, or we'll take you to the back of the bus and teach you how to really holler, right guys? Going back to school, eh? Been cooking and washing up for the terrs and sleeping with them, eh? How many of them did you sleep with? Are you pregnant? Let's feel you.’

Black soldiers in their twenties and thirties in neat camouflage uniforms with shiny shaved faces, crisp military cuts and corned-beef sneers shamelessly abusing and ransacking their own people; and always, always a young white recruit, a raw school leaver, supervising, in the background, calmly smoking, as he pretended to be a man.

***

Back at school, cut off from her friends by her experience about which she could not speak, she withdrew into herself. After lights out, the dormitory often came alive with the young girls' dreams of their heroes, the vakomana, their bravery, their lithe strong bodies, the epitome of manhood, warriors who could rub secret lotions into their skin to enable them to evade bombs, or even disappear at will. Martha listened from afar. The bruising on her body had healed but her mind had yet to make sense of the night on the ridge, its fears and its consequences.

One night, her friend Jenet had teased her, ‘What's up Martha, so quiet now you're back from the rurals. You must have fallen in love,’ and she giggled. Martha heard her from faraway, a landscape of dream and romance that she had left behind.

He had taken her, partaken of her flesh, staked a claim on her soul and she could neither betray nor forget him. But the ideal that was marriage, the saccharine dreams of her friends, had left her feeling stripped, naked and there was no one to turn to for comfort or advice. To make matters worse she knew she was pregnant, and anxiety clothed her like an old dress that she daren't take off to mend or wash for fear of revealing her nudity. Around her she heard a hive of little tongues murmuring her secret to the world. Would she flunk her examinations? What would she do? What could she do? Shame, doubt, confusion, and anxiety competed for her attention.

There was no one to turn to, and fortunately no one really paid much attention, the war being a great distraction, and so her mind returned to Comrade Pondo, the man who was responsible for her condition, her desperation, and sometimes she found comfort in the idea that if only he knew that she carried his child, he would marry her. And then she would wonder who he really was? What was his name? Where did he come from? What school had he gone to? Would his family accept her? And reality would return with its harsh cold light: what would her family do if they knew she was pregnant?

Weeks dragged by and she sat for her final O-level exams. She knew she would not do as well as she'd hoped: she had not been able to concentrate to study. Failure, it seemed, fed upon itself. She saw sneers, questions, accusations on every face, even those of her best friends, and she prayed, ‘Oh god, let the baby die. Let me be myself again.’ But she knew that if God answered her prayers, she would feel like a murderer, and her mind twisted and turned like a trapped animal beneath her seemingly placid exterior.

When schools closed she went back to her parents' little house at the mission school. Her mother was pleased to have an extra pair of hands, noticing only that her daughter seemed much quieter and that she had put on a little weight, no bad thing in these lean war years.

Two days after she arrived home, a telegram arrived from her sister, Sisi Winnie. Come soon. Urgent. Martha was filled with trepidation but her parents did not ask too many questions, assuming her sister needed help with the baby or the housework. Her mother sighed, ‘We all need you, Martha. I was counting on your help with the Mother's Union, now I shall have to manage without you. Your sister needs you more than I do.’ Cautioning her at length to take care, they gave her the bus fare for the trip and the intervening twelve weeks seemed to vanish with the smell of exhaust fumes and dust.

***

‘Comrade Ponda sent for you,’ Sisi Winnie says again.

Ants raid the sugar in the cheap metal bowl on the creaking table and march in a steady trail to a nest somewhere in the cracked cement wall. Occasionally, Sisi Winnie takes a swipe at the table with her fat hand to clear it of bread crumbs, insects and drops of cheap red Sun jam; then she blows the remains off her fingers, wiping her plain wedding ring on the sleeve of her dress.

Martha sits opposite her sister, with her elbows on the table, her hands behind her head, studying the grain of the wood. Her suitcase stands unpacked at the side of her sister's huge Fantasy bed. Shupikai is outside pushing the baby in a pram, under a mango tree. The baby is giggling merrily – Shupi is perhaps tickling its ribs. In the yard, Spark barks forlornly and shakes the fleas off his back, wondering what to do next, too tired to pick a fight with the two black cats leaping in and out of the yawning windows of the still unfinished main house.

Sisi Winnie's husband, Babamukuru Baba Shupikai is expected tomorrow, after he has finished annotating and signing piles of smudged school reports and conducting the year-end meeting with the teachers and wondering if the school will reopen next year, and if there is any point in making children go to school, and locking up the classrooms and the staff room and reminding the caretaker to water the garden and keep out intruders and checking the oil, the spark plugs, the brake fluid and the tyre pressure of his tiny Mazda pick-up truck, which he won't drive in a tearing hurry because every twenty kilometres or so he will have to stop to find out from the mujhibhas or chimbwidos if the roads are clear of mines and it's safe to proceed. And besides, he has to buy the things he promised for the comrades: cigarettes, corned beef and several pairs of jeans. And he'll have to know how to explain these if he runs into the Rhodie troops.

‘Drink your tea, now, or it will get cold, Martha,’ says Sisi Winnie. ‘What did you eat on the bus? Did you have many roadblocks?’

Martha says little. She has almost lost her voice. She speaks with a slur that even her ears cannot pick up. She cannot speak for herself because she knows not what to think or say. Over the last three or four months she has had no control of things happening to her, or not. She