Photo by Kitch Bain
The Last Rhino in Mutare
Delia watched Ronald push his heavy head into the lucerne, and she wondered, like so many times before, what his real name might be. Like so many things in Zimbabwe, he got the name Ronald from the white women who ran the park and never gave a thought to the true name of things. As with all of the loud people, who were the only ones heard nowadays, the names they chose rang through the trembling-hot, African air, and the true names of everything hovered in dark corners waiting for a bit of space to pass.
Ronald was named by the nervous white ladies who ran the Mutare Municipal Game Park. The ones who made decisions at tea parties, pinkies floating out from their bone china cups, parties where air conditioners cleaned out the hot, red-dusted Africanism from the air. Parties where, for a few moments, they convinced themselves they were in the home country where they had never had a home. When the tiny rhino staggered to his feet next to the massive body of his mother, Mama Cass, the nervous tea drinkers congregated in their sanitized room and christened him Ronald, despite what Mama Cass might call him or his stubborn father, Boss, or even Ichabod, his last surviving friend, a balding vervet monkey, who now, as Delia watched, perched on Ronald’s wide back searching for ticks.
Delia imagined that Ronald’s real name was spoken in an ancient rhinoceros language, passed down from the age of the dinosaurs. An echoing, hollow-sounding language. A language impossible to put down on paper using such common things as the letters of the alphabet. Even to pronounce it, Delia thought, she’d likely have to get her tongue to do things it was not at all used to.
As she thought of what the sound of Ronald’s name might be like, she didn’t notice an older black man, wearing coveralls with “Property of Mutare Municipal Game Park” stencilled in black paint on the back, walk up next to her. “Good Morning, Delia.”
“Good morning, Gift. How’s everything today?” She shifted over on the bench so that Gift could sit down.
“Everything’s fine. Ronald seems a bit nervous this morning, not sure why,” the man said, sitting on the bench next to the young, white girl.
“You think those boys were troubling him again last night?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
Gift had lived at the Game Park ever since his wife died the year before from a disease that could have been cured by medicines, if the medicines would have been found in the bare cupboards of the hospital’s pharmacy. Their only son swam across the crocodile-infested Limpopo two years before that and, as far as Gift knew, though he’d heard nothing from him since, his son was living in South Africa. When he was in an accommodating mood, he told Delia all about how he thought his son was living in that prosperous country where he likely had a big job, maybe even a wife and some children. One of these days, Gift was sure, he would come crossing over the border to fetch him.
On other days, the stories didn’t run so smoothly. And on the worst days, his son was dead too, just like his wife, his bones swirling at the bottom of the murky river, never to be buried properly, which would allow the ancestors to rest at ease. When Gift thought like that, he let the tears run freely from his wrinkled eyes and let his long arms dangle useless at his sides. On those days, Delia did her best to pull Gift away from such thoughts and back to the mind pictures that ended with his son coming to rescue him and taking him back to his cosy home in South Africa, where Gift would spend his last days bouncing his grandchildren on his knee under the shade of a wide jacaranda in his son’s garden. On most days, Delia’s efforts worked.
Since Gift was alone now, he didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t sleep at the Game Park and keep an eye on the few remaining animals—Ronald, Ichabod, a handful of guinea fowl, and the white swan the nervous ladies brought from the UK. The rest of the animals had—one by one, day by day—been killed. Some for meat, and some, like Mama Cass and Boss, for the trophy of their horns. It was down to survival for most people now, and if it meant killing the animals that before all of the trouble they used to spend a Sunday afternoon admiring with their children, so be it.
“That Ichabod hardly comes off Ronald’s back nowadays. Anybody give them trouble he makes a screeching that would wake the dead—and even me.” They both laughed at that and then sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. “What are you doing here this morning, Delia? I thought you were supposed to be in school now.”
Delia and Gift were friends, but he was still an adult, and still had to follow all of the adult rules. He would likely send her back to school if she told him the truth, so she lied, “We got let out early. There was a ZANU-PF meeting. The teachers were all forced to go.”
Gift just shook his head while looking down at the dusty ground. There was no need to say anything. Everyone was tired of talking. Now it was mostly just a waiting game. Who could last the other one out? Would the people all starve to death, or would President Mugabe finally die from the old age that seemed to have no effect on him, or would he finally relinquish his iron grip on power? Would the people with loud voices ever keep quiet long enough so that they could hear that they were strangling the last breaths out of such a beautiful country? In the meanwhile, they could only wait, wait in silence, to see how it all shaped up.
Besides, Delia thought, it would just hurt Gift if she told him why she had not managed to finish her walk to school that morning.
She had dressed like always, in her uniform for the private secondary school she attended. The one where they taught French and English and beat the black students if they heard them speaking Ndebele or Shona. For the last month, her two cousins, Pierre and André, had been going to school with her. Everyone knew it was just temporary; they were waiting for their paperwork to come through so that they could move to Australia—where “the only hope was.”
Pierre and André had lived on a big farm in the Highlands with their parents, amidst rolling hills covered by fields of the big, wide leaves of their tobacco crop. Their house stood high up on a hill, three stories up with a massive thatch roof and a pool cut into the green, grass-covered garden.
One night the war veterans arrived from Harare and organized the workers, cramped in their iron and mud hostels at the bottom of the hill, to take back what was rightfully theirs. The veterans’ loud voices left no space for any workers’ points of view. There was only one way, their way. In time, the workers would all see it was for the best. Pierre and André and their parents were marched out the gate and went to live with Delia and her parents in the city.
For a month now, Delia had sat through dinners where Uncle Johanne’s face grew red with fury as he spat out his anger at the “bloody kaffirs” that “stole” his farm. “Ought to be shot dead, all of them, and Mugabe too,” he’d say through mouthfuls of Brussel sprouts and bites of boerwors while the “kaffirs” he spoke of experimented, in their desperation, at eating grass. Aunt Marike, Delia’s mother’s sister, clicked her fork along the edge of her plate and crossed and uncrossed her legs under the table. She took tablets since they moved in and mostly kept quiet.
When they first arrived, Delia’s father had tried to counter Uncle Johanne’s comments. He tried to show him how land redistribution was important and that it was the delay that had caused the lawlessness. Uncle Johanne shot him down with his vehemence. Now Delia and her parents were in a waiting game within a waiting game. They waited for the Australian papers to come through and for the aeroplane to carry the cousins and their parents and all of their loud talking far, far away.
That morning, the cousins had left before Delia, after whispered conversations the night before. Delia thought they were likely up to something as they had become very different since they moved from the farm into the city. The bitter black anger that poured from their father’s mouth flowed over them and took root. It sprouted new, more violent outshoots, fed from their fertile, fresh, boyish bodies.
Delia’s walk to school took her through the city’s centre park. When she had time, she would sometimes sit quietly by the fountain and watch the birds that came to take a drink or have a quick bath. But that morning she was late and no bird watching would be in the cards.
As she passed the fountain, she heard a strange mewing sound, like a cat in distress. She was late but she knew she couldn’t just leave the animal to suffer, so she followed the sound to behind the ablution block. When she got there, she found no cat to be rescued.
What she found was Pierre and André with an Ndebele boy from school. He was in the same grade as André and Delia. He was a clever, well-behaved boy, who was recently chosen as a prefect. The cousins had tied his hands behind his back and stuck a wad of newspaper in his mouth.
“What are you doing to Njabulo?” Delia asked firmly, hoping her presence alone would be enough for them to let the boy free. Njabulo’s eyes flashed at her in fear.
“You want to see?” asked Pierre, who was one year older and many times more awful then his brother. He took out a knife and ran it across Njabulo’s cheek where immediately, a line of blood emerged.
A fierce power took over Delia. “Stop it! Let him loose!” she shouted as she came forward. Pierre stepped between her and the tied boy, brandishing the knife in her face.
“What you gonna do, Kaffir Lover?”
Delia, not sure where her bravery came from, pushed the knife away and walked to where Njabulo lay. She took the paper out of his mouth and began to untie his hands.
“Thanks,” he whispered through dry lips when he was free. Then he ran off towards school, glancing behind only once to be sure the two white boys were not after him.
Pierre came up behind Delia’s back and pushed her hard. She fell to the ground. He stepped on her ponytail to keep her from moving and then held the knife at her throat. “Kaffir Lover, better keep your eyes open when you sleep.” Then he turned to his brother, who stood quietly some distance away. “Let’s go.”
Delia lay on the hard pavement for several moments, watching her cousins run off toward school. She knew Pierre’s threats would likely amount to nothing, but the whole thing made her stomach queasy and her head ache. More than anything, she felt tired and bone-weary sad.
Delia got up from the bench and climbed through the wooden poles that made up the fence of the Park. She stood next to Ronald, running her hand along the top of his big head, while the monkey, Ichabod, sat on Ronald’s rear hissing at her. “What do you think is going to happen, Gift?”
“Nothing’s gonna happen, Delia. Ronald’s going to be just fine; he’s got me and Ichabod looking out for him.”
“No, I mean here. I mean us. Everything is so awful. Everybody hates everybody. Nobody wants to find out what the other person’s problem might be. Nobody wants to try and understand. How can that just continue?”
Gift got up, climbed through the wooden poles, and stood next to Delia. “It’s not so bad, Delia. You and I get along just fine; there’s a start.”
She looked at him and thought about all the times they had stood and talked like this in the last five or so years she had been coming to the Game Park. Delia thought about what Gift said. She didn’t believe it was as simple as that. If it was, then why was it not happening? “Ronald doesn’t look too well today. Maybe he’s lonely. ”
Gift bent down, scratched the rhino between his ears. Then he pulled a cut-up apple out of his pocket and dropped it on top of the lucerne the rhino was eating. Ronald quickly pulled his huge, square lips over the apple and it disappeared.
Ichabod barked at Gift from the end of Ronald’s back. “Just be patient you ugly old thing. I didn’t forget about you.” Gift held out his hand with half an apple on it. The monkey rushed forward and grabbed it. He quickly sat back on the rhino’s rump, biting bits off the apple held in his tiny, nimble hands, his greedy eyes flashing left and right to keep watch for anyone bent on stealing from him.
“Ronald’s going to be fine, Delia. You shouldn’t worry about that. Nobody wants Ronald since he doesn’t have a horn, and even a hungry Zimbabwean won’t eat rhino meat. Ronald’s gonna do just fine until all of this mess is finished. We’re all going to do just fine. Afterwards, we’re going to get a whole lot of new animals. It’s all going to be just like before.”
Delia looked up at Gift whose eyes had wandered to the beautiful pictures in his head, and she wondered who Gift was trying to convince.
Ronald, by a fluke of genetic miscommunication, never grew a horn. When the nervous white ladies first discovered his problem they wanted to sell him off to a game park in South Africa. Who wanted a hornless rhino? But regular visitors had become attached to the rhino they had visited since he was born. So the nervous white ladies decided to keep him. Now he was all that was left for the handful of monthly visitors to see. In the end, the freak turned out to be the saviour.
Delia watched Ichabod eat the last of his apple. They never got along, Ichabod and Delia, both vying for Ronald’s affection. Nevertheless, Delia felt sorry for him; he had no monkeys of his own kind to be with, just like Ronald had no other rhinos. No rhinos that spoke his language and knew his real name. Rhinos that could roll his name off their rhino tongues without effort, producing a perfect, exact sound. A sound that could flow smoothly through the folds of Ronald’s ears, ticking boxes in his brain that let him move to a place of perfect contentment. A place where his thoughts were understood without complicated explanations and defences. The simple, solid home where mental shoes could be taken off and belts loosened.
Delia ran her hand over Ronald’s tough, leathery skin wondering if she was any different. The white children at school with their affected British accents held no interest for her. The black children looked at her through eyes filtered with distrust that pinpointed her as an outsider. She couldn’t say that Pierre and André and their angry parents were akin to her. Even her own parents, always frightened that things would turn against them, offered little similarity. Who knew how to pronounce her name correctly? Who spoke a language that calmed her painful ears and soothed her battered heart? It was only with Gift, Ronald, and Ichabod that she found anything that felt familiar.
Delia looked across the field at the mountains, over which was Mozambique, and then, further still, the ocean that could take her to places far away. She wondered if somewhere there were people who spoke her language and could pronounce her true name without having to twist their tongue. Or were the people she was looking for not in a different place but right here, waiting to speak out clearly when there was no threat of punishment for doing so? If that time somewhere in the future came, she knew she would be able to recognise them, and the waiting game would have passed. By then, all of the impatient ones, full of anger, those with no interest in anything except their names for things, would have given up and seen rightly or gone off to their own Australias—leaving the searchers of truth the work of reassembling everything that had been knocked askew. Was that what was going to happen? She hoped that was the case.
In the meanwhile, she had Ronald and Ichabod and Gift, and though they might not pronounce her name exactly right, at least they tried to find the pronunciation among the sounds they were familiar with. They tried to find her real name, and she tried to do the same for them. And while they waited, waited for all of the bad to pass, it wasn’t too hard for them to work at sifting through the soft intricate layers of the African breeze, to pull out the fragile sound-threads of truth in what they heard, to clear away the loud voices of those who knew nothing, and to work at twisting their tongues in unfamiliar ways so that the others might hear the echo of what was truly them ringing in their ears once again.
Copyright © 2008 by Lauri Kubuitsile
