The Sweetest Dream

  ‘He is alive only to see you. And he is quite mad now. You must be prepared for that.’

  Before giving her a candle to take to her room, he held his high to look into her face, and said, ‘Sylvia, I know you very well, my child. I know you are blaming yourself for everything.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is a long time since you have asked me to confess you, but I do not need to hear what you have to say. In the state of mind you are in, when you are low from the illness, you must not trust what you are thinking about yourself.’

  ‘The devil lurks in the absence of red corpuscles.’

  ‘The devil lurks where there is bad health–I hope you are taking your iron pills.’

  ‘And I am trusting you to take yours.’

  They embraced, both needing to weep, and turned away to go to their rooms. He was leaving early, and said he probably wouldn’t see her, meaning he didn’t want to go through another parting. He was not going to say, like Sister Molly: See you around.

  Next morning he was gone: Aaron had taken him to the turn-off where he would be picked up by the Old Mission’s car.

  Zebedee and Clever were waiting for Sylvia on the path to the village. Half the huts were empty. A starving dog was nosing about in the dust. The hut where Tenderai had looked after the books stood open, and the books had gone.

  ‘We tried to look after them, we tried.’

  ‘Never mind.’

  The village before she had left had been afflicted, it had been threatened, but it had been alive: now its spirit had gone. It was Rebecca who had gone. In institutions and villages, in hospitals and in schools, often it is one person who is the soul of the place, though he or she may be the janitor, a chairman, or a priest’s servant. When Rebecca died, the village died.

  The three went up through the bush to where the graves were, getting on for fifty of them now, Rebecca’s and her son Tenderai’s among the newest, two oblongs of red dust under a big tree. Sylvia stood, looking, and the lads, seeing her face, came to her and she held them close and now she did weep, their faces on her head: they were taller than she was.

  ‘And now you must see our father.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Please do not be cross with us. The police came and took away the medicines and the bandages. We told them you paid for them, with your money.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘We told them it was stealing, they were your medicines.’

  ‘Really, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘And the grandmothers are using the hospital for the sick children.’

  Everywhere in Zimlia old women and sometimes old men whose grown-up children had died were left trying to feed and keep young children.

  ‘How are they feeding them?’

  ‘The new headmaster said he will give them food.’

  ‘But they are too many, how can he feed them all?’

  They stood on a small rise, opposite the one where the priest’s house stood, looking down into Sylvia’s hospital. Three old women sat in the shade under the grass roofs, with about twenty small children. Old, that is, by third world standards: in luckier countries these fifty-year-old women would be dieting and finding lovers.

  Under Joshua’s big tree lay a heap of rags, or something like a big python, mottled with shadow. Sylvia knelt beside him and said, ‘Joshua.’ He did not move. There are people who, before they die, look as they will after they are dead: the skeleton is so close under the skin. Joshua’s face was all bone, with dry skin sunk into the hollows. He opened his eyes and licked scummy lips with a cracked tongue. ‘Is there water?’ asked Sylvia, and Zebedee ran to the old women, who seemed to be protesting, why waste water on the nearly dead? But Zebedee scooped a plastic cup through water that stood in a plastic pail open to dust and any blown leaves, and brought it to his father, knelt, and held the cup to the cracked lips. Suddenly the ancient man (in late middle age by other standards) came alive and drank desperately, the cords of his throat working. Then he shot out a hand like a skeleton’s and grasped Sylvia’s wrist. It was like being held in a circlet of bone. He could not sit up, but he raised his head and began mumbling what she knew must be curses, imprecations, his deep-sunk eyes burning with hatred.

  ‘He doesn’t mean it,’ said Clever. ‘No, he doesn’t,’ pleaded Zebedee.

  Then Joshua mumbled, ‘You take my children. You must take them to England.’

  Her wrist was aching because of the tight bone bracelet. ‘Joshua, let me go, you’re hurting me.’

  His grip tightened, ‘You must promise me, now-now, you must promise.’ His head was lifted up off his nearly-dead body as a snake lifts its head when its back is broken.

  ‘Joshua, let my wrist go.’

  ‘You will promise me. You will . . .’ And he mumbled his curses, his eyes hard on hers, and his head fell back. But his eyes did not close, nor did he stop his mumbled hatred.

  ‘Very well, I promise, Joshua. Now let me go.’ His grip did not relax: she was wildly thinking that he would die and she would be handcuffed to a skeleton.

  ‘Don’t believe what he says, Doctor Sylvia,’ whispered Zebedee. ‘He doesn’t mean what he says,’ said Clever.

  ‘Perhaps it is just as well I don’t know what he’s saying.’

  The bone handcuff fell off her wrist. Her hand was numb. She squatted beside the near-corpse, shaking her hand.

  ‘Who is going to look after him?’

  ‘The old women are looking after him.’

  Sylvia went to the women and gave them money, nearly all she had, leaving enough to get back to Senga. It would keep these children fed for a month, perhaps.

  ‘And now get your things, we’re leaving.’

  ‘Now?’ They fell back from her, with the shock of it; what they had longed for was here, was close–and it was a separation from everything they knew.

  ‘I’ll get you clothes, in Senga.’

  They went running down to the village, and she walked up the hill between the oleanders and the plumbago to the house, where everything she was going to take was already in her little hold-all. To Rebecca’s niece she said that if she wanted her books, she could take them. She could take anything she wanted. But what the girl asked for was the picture of the women on the wall. She liked those faces, she said.

  The lads appeared, each with a carrier bag–their possessions.

  ‘Have you had anything to eat?’ No, clearly they had not. She sat them at the table, and cut bread and set the jam-jar between them. She and Rebecca’s niece stood watching them fumble with the knives, spreading the jam. All that had to be learned. Sylvia’s heart was as heavy with dismay as it was going to be: these two–orphans, for it was what they were–were going to have to take on London, learn everything, from how to use knives and forks, to how to be doctors.

  Sylvia rang Edna Pyne, who said that Cedric was sick, she couldn’t leave him–she thought bilharzia.

  ‘Never mind, we’ll take the bus into Senga.’

  ‘You can’t go on those native buses, they’re lethal.’

  ‘People do.’

  ‘Rather you than me.’

  ‘I’m saying goodbye, Edna.’

  ‘Okay. Don’t fret. In this continent our deeds are writ in water. Oh dear, what am I saying, in sand then. That’s what Cedric is saying, he’s got the blues, he’s got my black dog. “Our deeds are writ in water,” he says. He’s getting religion. Well, that’s all it needed. Goodbye, then. See you around.’

  The three were where the road to the Pynes and the Mission joined one of the main roads north. It was a single belt of tarmac, much potholed, and as eaten away at the edges as the poster Rebecca’s niece had taken off the wall that morning. The bus was due, but would be late: it always was. They stood waiting and then sat waiting, on stones placed there for that purpose under a tree.

  Not much of a thing, you’d think, this road, curving away into the bush, its grey shine dimmed where sand had blown over it, but
along it, a host of the smartest cars in the country had sped not long ago to the Comrade Leader’s wedding to his new wife–the Mother of the Country having died. All the leaders of the world had been invited, comrades or not, and they had been conveyed on this bush road or by helicopter to a Growth Point not far from the birthplace of the Comrade Leader. Near it, among trees, two great marquees had been erected. Inside one trestle tables offered buns and Fanta to the local citizens, while the other had a feast laid out on white cloths, for the elite. But the church service where the marriage was being solemnized went on too long. The povos, or plebs, having consumed their buns, surged into the tent for their betters, and consumed all the food, while waiters futilely protested. Then they vanished back into the bush to their homes. More food had to be flown by helicopter from Senga. This event, so aptly illustrating . . . but one that is so like a fairy tale does not have to be annotated.

  Along this road, in not much more than ten years, the bullyboys and thugs of the Leader’s Party would run with machetes and knives and clubs to beat up farm workers who wanted to vote for the Leader’s opponents. Among them were the young men–former young men–to whom Father McGuire had given medicine in the war. Part of this army had turned off from this road on to the minor road to the Pynes’ farm, which they did not appear to know had already been forcibly acquired by Mr Phiri, though the Pynes had not yet left. About two hundred drunks arrived on the lawn in front of the house and demanded that Cedric Pyne should kill a beast for them. He killed a fat ox–the drought having relaxed its grip–and on the front lawn a great fire was built and the ox was roasted. The Pynes were dragged down from the verandah and told to chant slogans praising the Leader. Edna refused. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to tell lies just to please you,’ she said, and so they hit her until she repeated after them, ‘Viva Comrade Matthew.’ When Mr Phiri arrived to take possession of the two farms, the garden of the house was black and fouled and the house well was full of rubbish.

  Along this road eight years ago Sylvia had been driven, dazed and dazzled by the strangeness of the bush, the alien magnificence, listening to Sister Molly warn her against the intransigence of the male world: ‘That Kevin now, he hasn’t caught on that the world has changed around him.’

  By this road, not far from here, in a hilly area full of caves and rocky clefts and baobabs, is a place where the Comrade Leader was summoned at intervals by spirit healers (n’gangas, witch-doctors, shamans) to night sessions where men (and a woman or two), who may be working in a kitchen or a factory, painted, wearing animal skins and monkey hair, danced themselves into a trance and informed him that he must kill or throw out the whites or he will displease the ancestors. He grovelled, wept, promised to do better–then was driven back to town to take up his residence again in his fortress house, to plan for his next trip to meet the world’s leaders, or a conference with the World Bank.

  The bus came. It was old, and it rattled and shook and emitted clouds of black greasy smoke that trailed for miles behind it, marking the road. It was full, yet a space appeared and admitted Sylvia and her two–what were they, servants?–but the people on the bus, prepared to be critical of this white woman travelling with them–she was the only white among them–saw her put her arms around the lads, who pressed up close to her, like children. They were doleful, trying not to cry, afraid of what they were facing. As for Sylvia, she was in a panic. What was she doing? What else could she have done? Under the rattling of the bus she asked them, low, ‘What would you have done if I hadn’t come back?’ And Clever said, ‘I don’t know. We have nowhere to go.’ Zebedee said, ‘Thank you for coming to fetch us. We were too-too afraid you wouldn’t come for us.’

  From the bus station they walked to the old hotel that had been so thoroughly diminished by Butler’s, and she took a room for the three of them, expecting comments, but there were none: in the hotels of Zimlia a room may have half a dozen beds in it to accommodate a whole family.

  She went with them to the lift, knowing that they had never seen one, nor, probably, heard of them, explained how they worked, walked along a corridor where a dusty sun was laying patterns, and in the room showed them the bathroom, the lavatory: how to turn taps and cistern handles, open and shut windows. Then she took them to the restaurant and ordered sadza for them, saying they must not use their fingers to eat it, and then a pudding, and with the aid of a kindly waiter, they managed that too.

  Then it was two o’clock and she took them back upstairs, and telephoned the airport, booking seats for the following evening. She said she was going to get them passports, explained passports, and said they could sleep if they wanted. But they were too excited, and were bouncing on the beds when she left, letting out cries that could have been joy, or a lament.

  She walked to the government offices and as she stood on the steps wondering what next, Franklin stepped out of his Mercedes. She grabbed his arm and said, ‘I’m coming in with you and don’t you dare say you have a meeting.’ He tried to shake her off, and was about to shout for help when he saw it was Sylvia. He was so astonished he stood still, not resisting, so she let him go. When he had seen her weeks ago she had been an imposter who called herself Sylvia, but here was what he remembered, a slight creature, whose whiteness seemed to gleam, with soft golden hair and enormous blue eyes. She was wearing a white blouse, not that horrible white madam’s green suit. She seemed positively transparent, like a spirit, or a gold-haired Madonna from his long-ago schooldays.

  Disarmed and helpless, he said, ‘Come in.’ And up they went along the corridors of power, up stairs, and into his office where he sat, sighing, but smiling, and waved her to a chair.

  ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘I have with me two boys from Kwadere. They are eleven and thirteen. They have no family. Everyone has died of AIDS. I am taking them back to London and I want you to arrange passports for them.’

  He laughed. ‘But I am the wrong Minister. It is not my department.’

  ‘Please arrange it. You can.’

  ‘And why should you steal away our children?’

  ‘Steal! They have no family. They have no future. They learned nothing in your so-called school where there aren’t any books. I’ve been teaching them. They are very bright children. With me they’ll be educated. And they want to be doctors.’

  ‘And why should you do this?’

  ‘I promised their father. He is dying of AIDS. I think he must be dead by now. I promised I would educate his sons.’

  ‘It is ridiculous. It is out of the question. In our culture someone will look after them.’

  ‘You never go out of Senga, so you don’t know how things are. The village is dying. There are more people up in the cemetery than in the village now.’

  ‘And is it my fault their father has AIDS? And is this terrible thing our fault?’

  ‘Well, it’s not ours, as you keep saying. And I think you should know that in the country districts people are saying that AIDS is the fault of the government because you’ve turned out to be such a bunch of crooks.’

  His eyes wandered. He took a gulp of water. He wiped his face. ‘I’m surprised you listen to such gossip. They are rumours spread by South African agents.’

  ‘This is wasting time. Franklin, I’ve booked seats for tomorrow night’s flight to London.’ She pushed across a piece of paper with the boys’ names on it, their father’s name, their birthplace. ‘Here you are. All I need is a document to get them out of the country. And I’ll arrange for them to have British passports when we get to London.’

  He sat looking at the paper. Then he cautiously lifted his eyes and they were full of tears. ‘Sylvia, you said a very terrible thing.’

  ‘You ought to know what the people are saying.’

  ‘To say such a thing, to an old friend.’

  ‘Yesterday I was listening to . . . the old man cursed me, to make me take his sons to London. He cursed me . . . I am so full of curses that they must be spilling out of me.’ br />
  And now he was really uneasy. ‘Sylvia, what are you saying? Are you cursing me too?’

  ‘Did I say that?’ But between her eyes was the deep tension furrow that made her look like a little witch. ‘Franklin, have you ever sat beside an old man dying of AIDS while he curses you up hill and down dale?–it was so terrible his sons won’t tell me what he was saying.’ She held out her wrist, that had around it a black bruise, like a bracelet.

  ‘What’s that?’

  She leaned across the desk and gripped his wrist, in as tight a hold as she had felt yesterday. She held it, while he tried to shake her away, then released it.

  He sat, head bowed, from time to time giving her panicky glances.

  ‘If your son wanted to go tomorrow night to London and needed a passport, don’t tell me you couldn’t fix it.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said at last.

  ‘I shall wait for the boys’ documents at the Selous Hotel.’

  ‘Have you been ill?’

  ‘Yes. Malaria. Not AIDS.’

  ‘Is that meant to be a joke?’

  ‘Sorry. Thank you, Franklin.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  • • •

  When Sylvia rang home from the airport before boarding she said she was arriving tomorrow morning with two boys, yes black ones, and she had promised to educate them, they were very clever–one was called Clever, she hoped it wasn’t going to be too cold because of course the boys wouldn’t be used to that, and she went on until Frances said that the call must be costing a fortune and Sylvia said, ‘Yes, sorry, oh, I’m so sorry,’ and at last rang off saying she would tell them everything tomorrow.

  Colin heard this news and said that evidently Sylvia intended the boys to live here. ‘Don’t be silly, how can they? Besides, she is going to Somalia, she said.’

  ‘Well, there you are.’

  Rupert after some thought, as was his way, remarked that he hoped William would not be upset. Which meant that he too thought the boys would be left with them.

  Neither Frances nor Rupert could be there to welcome Sylvia, they would be at work, but Frances suggested a family supper. This family conference was handicapped by lack of information. ‘She sounded demented,’ said Frances.