But it was inevitable that we would develop relationships with soldiers. Girls fell in love with them too. Besides, how could they say no to men of violence, who forcefully took what they wanted? Casper, the light-skinned soldier who'd first spoken to me on that fateful night, would sometimes visit me with Chico, his pet monkey. His platoon had established their base camp next to the water reservoir and from there infiltrated deeper into isolated villages. Work on our village had been completed. We patiently waited for those kidnapped to come back, however deformed.
I got up at dawn just to see Casper's platoon set off, his camouflage shirt neatly folded above the elbows, his combat trousers tucked inside his boots, and the laces on his boots pulled tight. It was as if all body parts had been reassembled, harnessed, and set in motion. Arms swung, and legs moved at the same pace.
They sang in beautiful soldierly voices, as if the songs would somehow ameliorate the bitterness of war and assign, in its place, new beginnings. They killed to a rhythm; the song galvanized effort, ironed out the clumsiness of the blows, added purpose to mindless killing work, and absolved their conscience.
Through song they did work that they had to do diligently. They smoked human beings like wild game; they pruned, cut, and splayed bodies open, as if working in a cane field. Inside the war song, terror was reconfigured and passed on.
The songs would echo long after they'd gone.
Amai nababa, musandicheme,
kana ndafa, nehondo,
Ndini ndakazwipira kurwira Zimbabwe,
Kana ndafa, nehondo
Casper's machine gun pointed ahead menacingly. But Chico, alert on his right shoulder, was a much better hunter of people. When he found them hiding in their lairs, he sought them out, bared his teeth, and remonstrated with them till they came out. And when they came back from their patrols, Casper sought me out. Sometimes I would be out in the forest looking after our animals. Somehow, he always managed to find me. Together we entered inside the shade of the tree whose branches swept the ground. From the outside, you could not see inside. Mostly, he wanted to know what had been going on. But I didn't ask where he'd been; I already knew.
Casper fell asleep with his left hand clutching the belt of bullets that fed into his machine gun. I studied all of him, right down to his giant fingers. And I watched him breathe-in, out, in, out. His chest rose and fell. Under his spell, I felt very small, irrelevant. I prayed for myself to grow quicker: if every man in our village was a liar and a coward, I dreamed of becoming a remorseless killer, because there was so much power invested in the gun.
He was amiable and kind. When he played with Chico, when he relaxed, he folded his camouflage trousers just below the knee. Every so often, he removed his bayonet from its scabbard, looked at it, only to replace it without saying a word. But I noticed a pattern- whatever I disclosed to him determined what happened next. So I had to be extremely careful with my words.
On the surface of things, he appeared to enjoy my company. But I was thirteen years old; I had no idea why. Perhaps I was the only source of intimacy he had. Inside the madness of war, intimacy was the most persistent of longings. It was inside forbidden tenderness that we knew that we hadn't lost everything. What happened between us stayed under the solitude of the tree. Afterwards, it was hard to feel places in my body with raw nerve endings. Everything felt numb like an overused arm that was no longer part of me.
Sometimes, I tried to figure out who he really was, but of what use would it be to know the full extent of his monstrosity beyond what I already knew? I could also see, in small glimpses, that he longed for peace, but I didn't ask him to account for the heaviness on his shoulders. When he drifted into a deep sleep, he slept like an ordinary man and not a killer. It was as if he walked through an invisible door, beyond which no sound could reach him. There was something remarkable about his kind of tiredness.
Chico sat above us in the canopy of the tree, fastened to a leash that was tied to a branch. He, too, was tethered to the violence. He came down, sat right next to me. We shared his monkey nuts from a small pouch attached to Casper's ration pack. He fell into fits of agitation. He pulled and rattled the bullets and jumped on the tree branches above us, causing a fracas to Casper's consternation. It took time for Chico to calm down. When his fit of rage was over, he came back down. Between us three there was a connection. Perhaps I, too, possessed the power to hurt, maim, and kill.
'He goes mad for no reason. One day I'll let him go, but where will he go when I release him?' Casper said. I did not know what Chico had witnessed. After everything that had happened, I could never afford to fully trust men like Casper. In war, no bond was sacred, every relationship was contingent upon prevailing circumstances. It was all about survival.
Inside, I felt isolated; I had witnessed, first-hand, the powerlessness of the adult world.
But, looking back as an adult, I could not say- hand on heart- that Casper had coerced me into doing anything. Or that he molested or sexually abused me. Somehow, it felt as though subconsciously I had willed for it to happen. But I also felt a deep sense of shame because silence in war is a double bind; it protects as it betrays: how could I avoid betraying others, when betrayal meant protecting myself and those closest to me? Conversely, to what does a thirteen-year-old boy consent under duress? Because consent implies freedom of choice, and a full understanding of that to which one is consenting. But the silence-mine, the adults', and the state's- was a kind of wounding too. And, even after all these years, it is still hard for me to think that I was a brave little boy who risked everything just to survive.
After the whirr of the helicopters and the distant rumble of the machine guns had ceased, everything stood still- sky, trees, homes burned out hollow. Nearby, donkeys took a dust bath and afterwards retreated under the meagre shade of the mopane tree. Even that momentary peace seemed fabricated.
