Owen Sheers - The Dust Diaries

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When he was very young Tendai’s father told him the rhino was his totem. He had whispered it to him, very quietly, as if it were a great secret, an important message to be remembered. He even gave him a totem name, Chipembere . Rhino. Tendai listened carefully, wide-eyed, to his father as he told him he must never kill or eat his totem animal. If he did, it would bring very bad luck.

The next day Tendai proudly told his mother that his totem was the rhino: the strong, brave, rhino with a hide like iron. She had picked him up, laughed and said, ‘So, little man, is that your father talking again?’ The next week the white men came and killed his father. Tendai was sure the telling of his secret had brought bad luck. That it had brought the white men and his father’s death.

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The rhino’s first charge smashed through the line ahead of him. No one had seen it behind the trees. The marching soldiers must have surprised it; perhaps it had been asleep. Tendai heard its pounding hooves, a scatter of screams from the askaris, and then it was through them, trampling the men like blades of grass. The line broke in every direction as the rhino slowed and heaved its body around to face the fleeing soldiers and carriers. Tendai stood, frozen. Perhaps he would have some power over the animal because it was his totem. He stared at it, watching its blinking short-sighted eyes, willing it to leave. But it lowered its head, pawed the ground and began a second charge, smashing through a Scotch cart, splintering the wood and throwing boxes and sacks of supplies into the air. Again it slowed in a cloud of dust on the other side of the line and turned. Gathering its shoulders underneath itself, it leant forward and began a third charge. But then the machine-gun fired. A cracking rattle of bullets from a juddering Vickers gun mounted on a rock. Tendai saw the shake and stutter of its ammunition belt, the vibrating arms of the askari firing it, the shouting face of the white officer behind him, screaming ‘Fire! Fire! Fire!’

The rhino was charging straight at the gun. The bullets splintered and shattered its horn, sprayed its face, exploded an eye, raked across its body, breaking its hide. But still it charged, straight into the rain of lead, slowing against the bullets as a person might slow against an oncoming wind. Its gallop faltered to a trot, then to a stumbling walk, then, as the gun kept up its relentless firing, finally it collapsed. The gun stopped, its last report ringing out over the veld, the panicked rattle of its firing replaced by silence, then by squawks and screams of frightened birds. The rhino lay before it, shattered and broken, bleeding into the dusty ground. Its armoured body shook with a last grunting breath and then was still. Everyone stared at its broken bulk while the officer behind the machine-gun walked forward and nudged at its neck with his foot. Satisfied it was dead, he took off his helmet and wiped his pale face with the back of his sleeve.

Slowly, the line re-formed. Men emerged from behind rocks and bushes, gathered their rifles, their baggage and arranged themselves into marching order. The wounded askaris were placed on stretchers. An officer blew a whistle, and they trekked on, back towards the camp. As he walked behind the marching soldiers Tendai was certain that now he would have bad luck. His totem had been killed before his eyes. He had not tried to save it and now it would have its revenge.

So Tendai was not surprised when disease swept through the carriers’ camp, leaving hundreds of porters dead in a month. And he was not even surprised when he was arrested and wrongly accused by the pay master of stealing a tin of ghee from the supply store. He attributed everything to the death of his totem animal. But the punishment for the theft of the ghee had been too much for him, and it was after this that he decided to leave the camp and return to Maronda Mashanu. Four askaris had held him down, one at each limb, with a fifth sitting astride his shoulders. His shirt was pulled up to his neck, and his shorts down over his buttocks, exposing the skin between. A sixth askari stood over him and Tendai could smell the scent of the coconut oil rubbed in the niboko as he flexed the whip in his hands.

After the fifteenth lash Tendai managed to escape the grip of the askaris and begged the officer in charge to stop. But Captain Mein-ertzhagen had insisted the full punishment be carried out, and they had pinned him down once more for the remaining five lashes.

He was in the hospital tent for a week after that, but as soon as he could move his back again he left, slipping out of the camp in the middle of the night. He knew if he stayed there he would die, and he knew he could not die yet. He had no children to prepare his burial, to perform the necessary rituals. His spirit would be lost, left to wander for ever. So he left. To save himself and to save his spirit. He would, somehow, make his way back to Maronda Mashanu. There, he would care for his mother and farm the land. He would grow maize and pumpkins and sell enough of his crops to buy cattle. With cattle he would be able to marry and then, when he had a wife and a farm, if Baba Cripps taught him to, perhaps he would teach the children in the school. He would never leave Maronda Mashanu and he would never carry or work for another man again.

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Tendai had his eyes shut, so he did not see the ruga-ruga part the long grass with the blade of his bayonet. He did not see the filed points of his sharpened teeth, the raising of his rifle, or the fine dark tattoos etched on the cheeks of his face. He just heard the grunt of effort as the man brought the bayonet down. Felt a sudden cold on the right side of his groin, a rasping scrape as the blade caught the edge of his pelvis, the tug on his body, as if he were a puppet, as it was pulled out again, the cold turn to heat, spreading up his stomach. Then the heat punctured with more cold, as the man stabbed and stabbed again. He did not see anything, but kept his eyes shut, and as the bayonet pierced his throat, he was already dreaming of rhinos charging through the veld, of his mother and his father, standing at the top of the kopje, welcoming him home.

Fortune is kneeling at his side, holding a tin bowl in front of him and guiding his hand into its contents. He feels the soft, warm sadza there. Like mashed potato, but thicker in the grain. Pinching a little between his finger and thumb, as if he were testing cotton, he brings it to his mouth. Her hand is resting on his knee and his is on her shoulder. This is how he eats now. Holding on. Slowly, like a child.

Outside he can hear children. The delicate peal of a goat’s bell. The rising of life in the veld. After he has eaten he will sit outside and wait for Noel Brettell to come and read to him. And as he waits, he will smoke his pipe. The doctor who visits him says he should not smoke his pipe. Fortune says he should not smoke his pipe. But he will still smoke his pipe. He will feel the heat of it linger in his mouth, the smoke work its way over his palate and smell its thick scent in his nostrils. He will live in sensation, in now and not in the past, where the memories crowd at the edge of his mind. The tobacco will help him forget, and it will help him remember; reminding him, in his dark, half-deaf, rise-and-fall world, that he is alive.

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Alive. He did not expect to return from the war alive. He preached a Christianity of witness and the war had been no exception. He went out on every patrol, on every attack, on every slow gunboat across the sheet-metal water. And every time he expected to die. He was not afraid, but he expected to die, the way he had seen so many others die. But he did not. St Michael kept the bullets flying past him, gave him shelter when the shells fell and jammed the rifles aimed at him. When he returned he built another mission church to celebrate his survival. It was another echo of Zimbabwe and he called it Zuwa Rabuda: Rising Sun.