Yesterday's Dog by Masimba Musodza

as albums? And the air-conditioning wasn't working, leaving him at the mercy-or the lack-of the October heat. He would have gladly stopped somewhere, but the need to get to Chitungwiza was urgent. Already, the sky to the west was tinged with mauve.

Stanley had shut his mind from the outside scenery. So, when the man appeared on the road, he seemed to have materialised from another dimension of his consciousness, an apparition from a half-remembered and not very comforting dream. Stanley recognised him at once, and this is why he slammed on the brakes pedal. The tyres seemed to scream forever as the car slowed to a halt.

In the rear-view mirror, Stanley saw the man trot with a pathetic, hobbling gait after the stationary vehicle, one stretched arm flapping wildly. He heard the door open. There was a waft of body odour, sweat, tobacco and something else Stanley could not put his finger on.

'Are you going to Harare, Sir?'

That same voice! After so many years, it was the same voice!

'You're the Sir,' Stanley countered, smiling affably. 'And, yes, I'm going to the big city. Jump in.'

The man jumped in, slamming the door shut. His manner suggested that he was not accustomed to riding cars, the demeanour of a man made conscious of his own social inferiority by the grandeur of his surroundings. Stanley marvelled at this; God, how much he had changed! He found himself wondering if he had made a mistake, if this perhaps was someone else.

As the man settled in, placing his stained, torn travel-bag on his lap, Stanley saw the scar on his wrist. It was he, all-right. That confirmation was the key that opened the door to a simmering hatred and a compelling desire to smash that wizened face in to a pulp, rip those sinewy, thin limbs from that bony, pot-bellied torso. To wreak a terrible revenge on this former Rhodesian security forces man who had tortured him so long ago.

Stanley had been the brightest student in the Chiweshe area of central Mashonaland, the envy of many families, and the pride of his own. He had recently won a scholarship to study in the United Kingdom. The village girls, always quick to recognise a man with a future beyond the local shopping centre, were throwing themselves at his feet. Even his brothers and cousins suddenly found their love lives immensely rewarding; who would sneeze at the prospect of being at least the sister-in-law of the village's star?

This was the source of the problem, there wasn't enough of Stanley and his kinsmen to go around, even within the institution of polygamy. Supply could not meet demand.

And when Stanley quashed rumours of a match with the storekeeper Mhunga's daughter by marrying Netai, the daughter of the desperately poor widow Mufakose, the aggrieved storekeeper went to the police station and reported that Stanley was in with the magandanga, the nationalist guerrillas.

They came at the crack of dawn. Stanley was in bed. Netai, his bride, was sweeping the yard. When the door to his hut creaked open, he thought she had come back. Sometimes she did, for one more moment of passion before everybody else woke up to place the 101 demands an extended family regards as the natural burden of the eldest son. But, instead, a giant Idi Amin of a man in combat fatigues stood in the doorway. Stanley snapped out of that state between asleep and awake with a start. Sounds of commotion could be heard behind the intruder. Screams of protests and terror countered by rough accusations and threats.

'Stanley Chipatiso?' the soldier barked. It was more a confirmation than a desire for information. Another soldier appeared behind him. 'Nyamhanza, don't waste time, man! Grab the terrorist bastard!'

Stanley felt rough hands grip him, haul him out of bed as he had once hauled a rabbit out of a cage by its ears. Linen ripped, furniture smashed. He must have been resisting, because he saw a huge, bony paw arc the air, and there was a loud slap. Stars danced before him and his face felt numb. Like that time, thinking the irascible old man was way visiting his son in the city, Stanley had allowed the cattle to wander in to Nyati's maize field and had been generously recompensed with what is commonly known as a thorough beating.

He was being dragged across the just-swept yard, held face-up by the arms by two soldiers, while his heels ploughed the earth. The sun smashed in to his eyes like a hammer. There was a sharp pain in his ribs. As if to answer the question forming in his mind, another soldier appeared and kicked him there.

Stanley howled like a wild animal with its paw in a trap.

'Shut up, gandanga!' someone snarled. Stanley could not see the speaker; the sun was in his eyes, a brilliant glare. But he was sure this was the voice of a white man, the English had a heavy, guttural Dutch accent. 'We are going to teach you a bladdy lesson, my boy!'

As he was hauled up on to the back of the truck, he saw Netai, writhing in the dust, screaming hysterically, her agony arising out of emotion rather than physical injury. These soldiers had come to get him, not beat up villagers. Well, not today.

His mother, emboldened by the apparent departure of the soldiers, emerged from a hut to console Netai. Other members of the family, all looking battered and tattered, were appearing. They watched him with the helplessness of livestock on the day of a feast as one of their own was taken away, with the same lack of knowledge of what was actually going to happen to him and the same apprehension.

Stanley contemplated the analogy, involuntarily shutting out the searing pain in his abdomen as the truck jiggled about over the rough dirt road. Was this why the Europeans called Native homesteads kraals, the same name given to cattle-pens? The people, his people, were like animals; they had lost their humanity to another people. A people whose right to so dehumanise them was that they had guns, and they had a whole ideology apparatus that said that they were right to do so because they were white and Stanley's people were not. They were to be herded, rounded up, confined to certain places and sustained only for whatever use they had been designated.

The truck had stopped. He was seized again, he felt broken ribs dig in to his flesh. Then, his feet touched the ground.

'Let the bobjaan walk by himself!' the white man barked. Stanley turned to get a good look at him. He was too young to be in that uniform; slim, almost elfin, blond and crew cut. More like a Boy Scout. But here he was, in charge of all these men, many of them old enough to be his father. And they were literally falling over each other to do his bidding.

Stanley found himself feeling disappointed to see the white officer move in the opposite direction. Even though he knew that the problems Rhodesia was facing boiled down to the European Settlers' refusal to recognise the Natives as human beings, he had this natural (?) belief that he could reason with them. After all, were not the Europeans were going to send him to further his studies in their own land, something few Blacks could even dream of, attesting to his elevation to a higher status closer to them than to the rest of the Native Population? Why, he was one of those very few Natives the Europeans could, no should, trust. He could speak better English than these baboons who were at this moment kicking and punching him towards a windowless bungalow at the end of the police camp.

What was that word his headmaster had coined to designate those Africans who were yet to grasp even the rudiments of European civilisation, piscanemities? A crude play on the Shona word for the act of wiping your bum after a dump, and Dog Latin. Those who, having yet to adopt the use of toilet paper or any other trappings of civilisation, wiped their bottoms with sticks after a shit.

Baas, please Baas, you are my father! He had seen his own father grovel and gush such obsequious drivel in gratitude to his master, Baas Koos de Vos, who had just given him three whole pairs of used underwear. Save me from the piscanemities, Baas!

But the little Baas had jumped in to a jeep, shouting at one of his baboons to clamber in behind him.

'It's you educated ones that give us the problems!' one of the soldiers was saying. 'You think we like to do this to you, we look on you as our little brother. But we have to, it's our job.'

'Hopefully, when your mother sees what will be left of you, she's not going to let you cause trouble!' the other said, ominously.

And so, like one of Dr Moreau's grotesque creations, Stanley was taken to the House of Pain. There, he felt the hand of he whose it was that wounded, and was chastised.

They broke three of his teeth, three of his ribs, a leg, and several fingers. They fried his genitals with electricity, and tested the water retention of his lungs by pouring the liquid down his throat with a teapot. Then, they took him to hospital. When his mother saw the ruins of his face, she fell to the floor, and uttered a soft moan, and had a stroke.

When he recovered, Stanley had run away to join the Comrades in the bush. He had never got the chance to fire a gun; the Lancaster talks happened and the Republic of Zimbabwe was born.

And now here he was, with one of the men who had tortured him sitting next to him in his own car! Stanley cast him a sidelong glance. How the mighty had fallen! Clearly, this guy had only distant memories now to remind him that life could have meaning and purpose, memories of a life that ended when the last Rhodie had crossed the Limpopo to prop up the last bastion of the Master Race in South Africa. Memories of discarded underwear, tins of beef; scraps from the Master's table.

As that analogy entered his mind, Stanley reflected on the realisation that he was now the new dog, slobbering eagerly under the table of the new Master, and savagely mauling anyone who smelt wrong. Was he too to end up like this dried-up wasteland of a man?

The dried-up wasteland of a man was talking, in a provincial accent, about continued drought, the ever-increasing cost of living, the decimation of the population in his village by AIDS, the laziness of the youth.

Stanley wasn't listening. He was watching a tide of pure hatred rise in his heart. Hatred for this man, who had participated in that torture, so many years ago. Hatred, and desire for revenge.

How would he do it? The answer hit him immediately. Just around the bend was an out of the way hotel. It was called a hotel only because the word 'brothel' was not known to Zimbabwean Law. You were unlikely to get a room there, but you could get the girl that occupied that room, and the room sort of came with her.

It was not an entirely illegal set-up, inasmuch as the Law was in lacunae regarding much of the business that was transacted there, but it was indisputably wicked and depraved. However no one minded too much, because establishments like this hotel kept the swelling numbers of prostitutes and their clients off the streets and out of public view. That way, Zimbabwe maintained its self-righteous mantle, preserving its 'culture'.

Meanwhile the hospitals were overcrowded, and the cemeteries sprawled.

Between the main road and the hotel lay a long stretch of bush. Any thing could happen therein, and no one who wasn't there need know about it. The bastard could squeal like a pig, and there'd be no one to hear him. Stanley could smash that gaunt, melancholic face to a pulp. Cut off those thin lips, transform that long face in to a grinning death's head. He could simply break both his legs, which was as good as a death sentence to someone who lived in the rural areas.

The possibilities were countless.

Up ahead, the detour sign appeared. Stanley turned the car in. A look of surprise flitted across the other man's face. 'I thought you were going in to the city, my brother,' he said, anxiously. His voice had a soft innocence to it, the voice of Abel as Cain led him in to that wilderness that is now under the Red Sea.

But this was different, Stanley told himself. This was no Abel, this man was a monster. He had done things to him because he had the power then. That power, the power to hurt others, was now with Stanley. It was a chance to get even.

'I just thought you might want to cool your throat,' Stanley said, marvelling at the placidity of his own voice. 'Get a taste of the city before we actually get there, you know!'

'You buying?' the man asked, eagerly.

'Of course!' Stanley grinned back. 'Otherwise, I would not speak of such things to my big brother!'

The man chuckled. 'Ah, verily you are Jesus of Nazareth!' he declared. 'If Fate appreciated that these are the waters that sustain us,' He left the statement of sheer longing hang. 'How our circumstances often deny us our deepest joys! Tonight, however, my brother, you have made me happy!'

Stanley resisted the urge to smash his fist in to that thin, creased face. Bush, dark hulking shapes like the backdrop from the Blair Witch Project poster, rolled away on either side. All Stanley had to do was park, take this Rhodesian chimbwasungata for his last walk. Anyone passing would think nothing of a vehicle parked in the middle of the bush; many couples preferred the novelty of the bush to the claustrophobic seediness of the hotel.

Stanley pulled over. He looked at the man. 'Best make room in the proverbial tank, eh? Thought I could hold till we go to the hotel, but my bladder's about to burst!'

He stepped out of the vehicle. What if the man did not follow? Of course he would. Leaving the vehicle for a leak was like how it was for women with their periods, when one started, it set off the others. What if he started the vehicle and drove off? Stanley dismissed the possibility. The Rhodesian Army had been highly mechanised, but they had never taught their black troops anything above essential skills.

Stanley marched towards the bush. He heard the other man come up behind him. As he stopped beside him, and opened his fly, Stanley realised that he was not going to do it. He wasn't even going to beat him up. Killing him would not even the score. Nothing would.

He knew what he was going to do though.

He took him to the hotel bar and bought him a drink. The man grinned at the golden liquid topped by a thick layer of froth and clapped his hands loudly as Stanley set the glass flagon in front of him, and asked him his totem.

Stanley watched him swallow, nauseated at the way his Adam's apple bobbed. Part of him was full of hate, but the other part harboured utter contempt. This man was not worthy of his retribution. But, he could not let the matter end just like that.

After he bought him his third drink, he told him. As he wove that tapestry of torture, sometimes quoting verbatim, the man listened as King David must have the words of the Prophet who came to see him about Bathsheba. What little colour he had drained from him, and he began to tremble.

By the time Stanley had finished, the man was crying.

'My brother, how can I even begin to ask for forgiveness? We had to do it, it was the war! Please, look at me, I am a mere grave! Do you see a man who has been favourably rewarded for his deeds? My life has been hard, and when I sleep, those things that I did haunt me. I have been to all the churches, I have conducted appeasement sacrifices at the shrine of every tribe in this land, but there is no remission.'

He bawled in between these lines, and the tears streamed. Some of the other patrons looked in their direction. 'Please, my brother, if you want to kill me, go ahead. I am yours. But even you can see that there is nothing to kill here. Perhaps this is why the Ancestors let our paths cross again, so that you could see that the man you hate is no longer worthy even of death!'

'No, brother!' said Stanley. 'I no longer harbour a grudge.' As he said those words, he realised them to be true. 'It was war, and you did what you had to. Things change. Here we are drinking beer, in an independent Zimbabwe. What you did made me become a Freedom Fighter.'

A couple more drinks later and they were on the road again. Stanley dropped him off in the city centre. He proceeded to Chitungwiza, to a place next to the Central Police Station.

A place surrounded by a concrete wall. As did most of the establishments in the area, except that this one did not have a placard or sign to tell people what it was for.

It did not need one. The only people who ever went there knew exactly the nature of the business they transacted at this complex. Those that were taken there soon found out. If they came back, they were never keen to tell outsiders. Speculation was rife, and the walls were associated with sinister goings-on.

For Stanley Chipatiso, Central Intelligence Organisation operative, the ability to regard the walled complex as simply the place where he worked had become something of a remarkable exercise in mental discipline. He specialised in interrogation, in getting ordinary folk apprehended for careless remarks on the bus or such like public place to confess that they were M.D.C activists in the pay of foreign, Western forces.

As he reported for work, he was given a list of people to talk to that evening. A printer whose employee, bitter at being demoted in favour of someone from a tribe he regarded as inherently inferior, had tipped the C.I.O that he was making posters for the M.D.C. Stanley knew that the allegation was false, but he too believed that tribe to be the scum of the earth and shared the rat's outrage. An old man who, after a few pints, had speculated loudly on the bus on the paternity of President Mugabe's children by Grace.

Ah, further down the list was a writer who had posted articles on the internet. He loved writers. He would read to them what they had written, and they would babble protests, denying ever having written that. Then, after he had sorted them out, they would confess that they had been lured with filthy money from both the United States and the United Kingdom, but now they saw the errors of their ways. They would pledge allegiance to Zimbabwe, to President Mugabe and the Revolution. And beg for forgiveness.

Forgiveness. The word struck him. He was walking down a corridor, silent and sterile as any in a hospital. He imagined that he heard the muffled sounds of interrogation in progress behind the doors he passed. It occurred to Stanley that one day, he too would be a broken, ragged man, bereft of the aegis of the system that sustained him now, commending himself to the mercy of those who were his victims.

He steeled himself against that poignant question, and turned the handle on the door to room 57.

Yesterday's Dog was written by Masimba Musodza.

Copyright Masimba Musodza 2008.

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