The President (a short story)
by Paul Williams
11 November 2011
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,
And in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
It is the same nightmare over and over again. Strange, it recurs every night, building and building in more and more detail.
In his dream, he is standing on the top of a hill, looking down on his vast dominions. All mine, all mine, he says. But the green valley quickly turns into a desert. It begins to writhe with worms. No, they are not worms, they are people, dead souls, carrying their lifeless forms with them–crushed bones, deformed faces, bloody entrails, and calling out to him, reaching up hands to grab his cloak—yes, he is wearing a strange, woman’s cloak, like a Messiah figure.
A rushing flood of twenty, thirty, forty thousand people, all dead, all bloody, apparitions rushing at him…. All the people he has killed, in chronological order, when he was ZANLA commander, first the petty kills when in training, then when he was in power, the Third brigade massacres, the car crashes.
Who are you?
We are the envoys sent by Ndabaningi Sithole to meet you. We were captured, murdered and, laid out in a line at the side of the road as a warning to local people.
And you?
Don’t you remember the car accidents? Those you ordered killed in car accidents?
I never ordered any….
Border Gezi.
Moven Mahachi.
Elliot Manyika.
Christopher Ushowekunzwe.
Peter Pamire.
And you?
An army of twenty thousand, three hundred and fifty seven chanting men, women and children. Yes, even children. But he doesn’t have to ask this time. ‘We are the chaff that blew away in the wind. You have heard us calling you night after night from those deep mineshafts.’
‘Any more?’
A few stragglers, white farmers, farm labourers. And finally a shadow of a man, limping along, bloody faced, talking loudly above the murmur of the undead, a finger waving in the President’s face: ‘The dead are always with you,’ he said. ‘And we keep count.’
‘Who are you?’
‘You are accountable, for every man and woman and child you have killed. Every hair on their head is numbered.’
‘The Rhodesians did this…. The British….’ The President cries out in his dream, but strangely, his voice is small, unvoiced. ‘Cecil Rhodes cut through our land with a broad sword of destruction. He killed our people, brought his never-ending train of robbers and pirates, and Rhodesians, who continued to kill and decimate our people. These are his dead, not mine….’
He is not being heard. The shadow wags its finger. ‘And then the judgment. And every deed and thought will be brought forth. We will know, meanwhile we wait, we cry out, we make our supplication known.’
The dream always ends the same way too–a rumble of thunder, a stampede of starving women, children, rickety skeletons, children with bloated stomachs, hobbling along, millions of them, running at him, stamping bare feet over him. He feels his own bones crush, his innards squelch out. And then he is falling into a mineshaft of cold dark steel blackness. Falling, falling, falling, falling.
*
His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe stares out of the window of his living room at his full length pool. It laps turquoise against the French doors, shimmers like a mirage to the white walls, and mirrors the blue sky. He has never swum in it. No one as far as he knew has ever swum in it. Yet the gardener religiously cleans it with a large scoop, fishing out leaves and centipedes. The kreepy-krawly thuds its way around the bottom sucking up the corpses of Christmas beetles.
The house is marble and stucco, with colonnades, a Louis IXV Versailles planted in sub-tropical Africa. Every window is arched and heavily ornamented with columns, frills, fake coats of arms. And why not? But he has not intended his retirement house to look this way—he simply let his wife order from catalogues. Strange, in every other way he is in control of his life, his country, his foreign policy; he has held the West at bay by sheer force of his own personality, yet at home, she rules. Or rather, he indulges her. So he watches the boxes arrive, the carpenters and builders hammer and clink away, and each visit to the new house his heart sinks. ‘You’re building a Roman villa!’ he shouts at the workers who grin sheepishly at him and indicate the plans, the instructions, and the woman standing over them.
So he is a stranger in this white marble palace, wandering ascetically through its hallways, under its heavy chandeliers and through its arched and achingly vacuous caverns. And now he is ill, the cancer slowly creeping through his bones. He will never be able to enjoy this all.
He has everything his heart desires, he has to tell himself, to fill the emptiness of these echoing chambers. And it does not stop. Today, he spies a pile of new boxes at the door to her room. She is back then from her latest shopping trip in London.
The carpets are plush under his bare feet as he pads to the bathroom. It annoys him. He is not a materialist, which is why he finds it surprising that he is living in such opulence. It means nothing to him. It has been foisted onto him. He is happy with simple food, his single bed in the spare room, and his books.
‘Comrade President?’ The knock at the door is timid, apologetic.
‘Have the guests arrived?’ he calls out.
‘They’re all here, sir.’
‘I’ll be there in moment.’
*
‘This way, your Excellency, your seat at the dinner table is right at the head.’
The president waits for his entourage (the four bodyguards, his wife, the attractive child bride) to stand, and then slowly walks towards the dinner table as people applaud.
‘A traditional feast tonight, Comrade President, sadza ne mbudzi.’
It is a feast. Goat, yes, but also pheasant, duck, caviar, prawns from Mozambique, carrots carved in the shape of exotic animals, and a place laid for each of the ten honoured guests. They stand respectfully behind their chairs, and servants, one a chair waiting behind them. It is a routine the president is used to. He gives a perfunctory glance at the food, and then at his place.
He turns in annoyance to the maitre de, a bowing scraping, over-smiling man who is ushering him to the table. ‘But there is no seat for me. Someone had taken my seat.’
‘Your Excellency, I can assure you….’ The man ingratiates himself further by bowing and gesturing towards the empty seat. ‘The place of Honour as usual.’
But the president blanches. ‘Get him out of here! It’s him. It’s you. Get out of my seat!’ He gestures with trembling hand, and then turns to his security guards. His security men step up and cordon him off, and one draws a weapon, a small Luger pistol.
‘There’s no one there, sir.’
But the president is inconsolable. ‘You can’t do this to me!’ He rushes forward to the seat, staggers back, a look of terror in his eyes. He falls backwards, crashing into the Minister of Education’s ample stomach which cushions the fall. The Minister holds him down, but is rewarded with a blow to the face. The president cannot take his eyes off the empty chair. ‘Why so bloody all the time, Josiah? Why?’
A murmur rises from the guests. Concerned friends come to his assistance. The security guard is now examining the table, the chair, the cloth dais behind it, the tent wall. Perhaps his Excellency has spotted a bugging device, or an explosive booby trap. But he can find nothing. ‘Nothing, sir.’
This infuriates the President even more. ‘My god, he’s dripping all over the table cloth. Get him away. The food is ruined….’
A wave of sympathetic cooing and some demonic whispering fills the tent. ‘Josiah!? Who does he mean?’ But they all know who he means. It is no secret that he lays a place for Josiah Tongogara at every meal.
He does not hear them. He does not see them. His vision is transfixed by some terror hovering in front of his eyes. ‘Why are you showing me this, Josiah?’
‘We should have laid a place for his imaginary friend,’ whispers the General to the Maitre De.
‘Can no one stop him?’ says the president, with arms outstretched and blind eyes, as if he is sleepwalking.
A woman screams as he jostles her in his bid to grab whatever imaginary object he sees hovering in the air. Other screams follow and pandemonium breaks loose in the tent. The security guards usher people out, holding them away from the swaying president. ‘He is unwell,’ calls the Minister of Defence. ‘Give him air. Let him breathe. Please clear the tent.’
No one needs a second command. They bolt out of the entrance flap, some looking back to see the President—their President—flaying his arms in terror, swatting imaginary giant bats around his head. ‘We are cancelling the banquet. Please leave in an orderly fashion.’
*
The bath is ready, a stooping servant informs him, so he slips into the room that embarrasses him most of all. The bathroom with its white tiles and mirrored walls is more of a Biblical sacrificial altar, with its raised Jacuzzi and four columns. He drops his ill-fitting clothes, and steps in, grunting with approval that the servant has got the temperature just right this time. He sinks into the depths of the foam bath, finding the seat ledge where he can lie and stare out of the window at the tall fir trees in a line at the back of the house. Not that he feels dirty; he feels too clean these days; much too clean; antiseptic clean. Like living in a sterilised hospital in quarantine.
It’s all kitsch: roman columns in his bathroom, a statue spewing frothy water into his sink, an arched column supported Jacuzzi. He lies back in the bath and closes his eyes, always a dangerous thing because of what he sees inside those lids.
He stiffens. The breeze blowing through a closed and locked window tells him that he is not alone. ‘Who’s there?’
He opens his eyes. Nothing. He emerges from the bath and stands before the full-length mirror. He scrutinises his reflection. What does he see? An old man. A sad figure, shrunken and withered, in spite of the Botox injections. His hair needs dying again. Without his glasses, the world is a blur. He used to see an image of his ideal self; he used to see the picture on the scarves of his election posters. But now he just looks old.
He can feel the dead watching him, even now, as he stands naked in his own bathroom. He can no longer keep the voices quiet with drugs, flattery, a lavish lifestyle, the pitter-patter of applause everywhere he goes.
He jumps. Standing before him in the mirror is a sepia skinned man with short stubbly hair, stubbly unshaved face, dressed exactly the way he was on the day he was killed. He is wearing the Chinese uniform he sported as a general. And in the reflection of the mirror, he stares unflinching with those accusing eyes.
‘Josiah? What do you want?’
The man speaks. ‘When did you betray this country? Was it in 1979 just before you took power? Or was it in 1982? 1985? 1990? Again and again, over and over, the dead have been showing up at my door, complaining about you. All those car accidents, Robert. Why? What about the revolution? The dreams we talked about of this country… What we fought for all those years?’
The President turns away from the mirror, but the man steps out, through the glass and into the room. ‘Tell me, Robert, tell me then what you have done for this country?’
The President burbles. ‘You know what I have done. The revolution is complete. I have done all I have promised. The land is redistributed to the povo, the vanguard party has transitioned into a Socialist state….’
The man shakes his head, clucks his tongue. ‘You believe this?’
‘ZANU PF threw off the colonial yoke. We started the war of liberation. You know this. We often spoke of it when you were alive. Our victory. ZANU PF fought and won the second Chimurenga, and it was ZANU PF who established a vanguard party to course this country onto a Socialist footing. We have destroyed our enemies. The British and American Imperialists tried to halt the slow revolution of our democracy, our freedom, our sovereignty, but we have defeated them.’
The words seem papery now, empty of meaning. Repeated too many times. Like stones falling from his mouth.
‘The witness does not lie, Robert.’
The guards outside the door do not hear this man’s cackling laughter. The President dares not cry out loud, though he wants to. ‘Why do you come to mock me? Haven’t I paid you back in full?’
The chipoko stares at him, showing the same wounds that he was found with at the bottom of the ravine in Mozambique. A gruesome tear across his face, still bleeding. Won’t it ever heal, that wound he has carried for the last forty years? ‘I am the rightful ruler of Zimbabwe,’ he says, ‘and you think you can brush me off like this?’
‘I was found innocent of those charges. I was blameless. It was a car accident. You always drove recklessly. And that day in Mozambique….’
‘You dare contradict me?’
‘Tekere publicly came out and told them I did not do it…’
‘Tekere is a drunken fool. An April Fool.’
‘I have done all you said.’
‘You want to rule forever? What vain myths you cling to, Robert! You think you can stop history, you who once rode on its frothy waves? You are like the grinning fool who pulls the table cloth down on him, the country has tumbled and crashed because you insisted on clinging to power with your yellow fingernails. But the end is soon. We are all waiting for you. All the dead.’
The President tries to smile. ‘There have been many rumours of my death. But I am still here.’
‘This may be your last night, Robert.’
And the man is gone.
*
He tries to stay awake that night, but at midnight he drops into a deep slumber in his armchair before the television. As usual, the nightmares visit him. But this night it is different. Tonight he finds himself driving a black funeral hearse to Heroes Acre, and in the back is a coffin, draped with a Zimbabwe flag. It is a state funeral, and the road ahead is lined with dignitaries—Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole, Rex Nongo, Lookout Masuku, and Solomon Mujuru. And Josiah Tongogara, who winks at him. There is Samora Machel, and look, even Ian Smith is here. There is his wife Sally, talking to another woman—oh it’s Susan Tsvangirai. And down the road, his old friends. Nicolai Ceausescu, and there, look–Muammar Gaddafi.
He drives slowly, but the car begins speeding up, past hundreds of soldiers. He should pay attention to where he is going, because the road becomes a steep mountain pass, sloping down into a vast blue hazy valley. He touches the brakes lightly, but there is no response, so he presses them with a firm foot. Nothing happens. The car speeds up, faster and faster past the crowds—down the steep mountain pass. The brakes do not work! He stamps on the pedal. He tries to change gears, and the car screams in third gear, second gear, first gear, but does not slow.
The speedometer is showing one hundred kilometre an hour, to hundred, three hundred. Ahead of him he sees the end of the road: a cliff edge, and below, the Honde Valley, pimple mounds of mountains, the plains of Mozambique below him. The crowds watch him go past, waving flags, ululating, as he plunges over the edge and tumbles into the air, slowly, then faster and faster. The earth is coming up to meet him, that red earth, and he sees granite boulders piled up in impossible formations getting closer and closer as he speeds down, falling, falling, falling.
