The town of Mutare lay at the foot of the Bvumba Mountains, some two hours west from Marange. Arves and I had to hitch three lifts to get there; first a maintenance truck that dropped us off at a rock called the Stone for Girls, where six girls had been killed by lightning; then a white guy Arves knew from his Family AIDS clinic who dropped us at a taxi depot. And, finally, a taxi driver who agreed to take us the rest of the way free of charge after Arves slipped him a small brown paper packet.
We drove past Sakubva township, past a roadside market of mounds of exhaust pipes and secondhand clothes, along the ilala palm–lined Herbert Chitepo Avenue, and were dropped off opposite Meikles Department Store at midday. Naked white mannequins stood behind the glass windows, frozen in a different age. I peered into the shop at the rows of empty shelves. Election posters for the opposition party, the MDC—Movement for Democratic Change—were stuck in the corner of the window. The people of Mutare did not vote for President Mugabe, which was probably why this shop was empty.
“Come on,” said Arves, dragging me away from the window. “It’s time for me to eat.” We ran across the busy street, dodging cars, until Arves spotted a woman selling roasted corn on the cob.
Munching the corn, we headed down one of the alleys off the main road and passed shops with makeshift signs announcing BABYLON INVESTMENTS, LUCKYFIELDS ENTERPRISES, and GIRAZI GIANTS. “No, not here,” Arves said as I tugged at his shirt. “Banda sells his stones to all of these guys. The dealers at Dairy Den will know where to find Boubacar and the Baron.”
“Hey, Arves, stop holding on to the bag like that,” I warned, throwing my cob into the gutter. “People will know you have something worth stealing.”
“I’m still hungry,” he complained, tossing the bag more casually over his shoulder, and heading for another street vendor. “Sadza and relish?”
Sitting on the pavement with a pile of hot, clean-white sadza with spicy atchar between us, Arves and I ate handful after handful, washing it all down with a can of Fanta grape. It was one of the best meals I’d ever had. I pulled my phone from my pocket. Four messages from Sheena.
School’s out. Don’t want to talk about school. U there?
Going crazzzy thinking about u. Hmmm, any friends? Girlfriend?
And then the text that took my breath away:
Do I mean anything to u?
And then the last one:
Ignore that. Nvm.
I thought for a minute, put down my can, and texted back. Arves watched me carefully, wiping up the last of the gravy with a handful of sadza.
School is great. Lots of homework. Got no time for running. Yah, good friends. No girlfriend. Yes, u mean a lot to me. Xxx
“Girlfriend problems,” stated Arves.
“Nah, just an old friend from Bulawayo.”
He shook his head and looked at me with pity. “When you come to the fields, Patson, better you forget your old life. Nobody really understands what happens to you when you get here.” He pointed a sticky finger at me. “It’s like we’re living two lives—the one on the fields, which is all about hard work, and the one in our imagination, which is all about the good life we think we’re going to have. When you come to the fields, you enter the girazi zone and become a zombie digger under the spell of girazi.”
“Arves.”
“Uh-huh?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up at me.
“Okay. But you know I’m right.” He chuckled. “You said this Boubacar guy came from the Congo. Jamu said that he was a mercenary. You’re sure we can trust him?”
“Sometimes you got to trust somebody,” I said, putting my phone away, pleased with the text I had sent to Sheena, and slipping Grace’s tie from my pocket to my neck.
“What’s with the tie?” asked Arves, licking up the last of the atchar and sadza with his tongue.
“Lucky charm.”
“Let’s go.” He jumped up, full of energy, and headed off down the pavement. “Come on, Patson, hurry up. We don’t want to get back to Marange in the dark.”
I hoped that Boubacar would remember me. It was unlikely that Uncle James would have paid him anything for bringing us to the fields. He might not even want to see me, but I had kept these doubts to myself and then, seeing his tie hanging above Grace’s mattress, I brought it along, sure that Boubacar would remember “Mademoiselle Gracie.”
“The diamond dealers of Dairy Den,” announced Arves as we turned a corner and stared at the shiny Mercedes-Benzes, Hyundais, and BMWs that stood gleaming in the ice-cream parlor parking lot. The men, dressed in the latest gangster style—gold chains, baseball caps, wifebeater vests—leaned against their cars talking into cell phones, with their beefy arms draped over the thin shoulders of long-legged women wearing bling from head to toe. Waitresses from Dairy Den bustled to and fro serving ice-cream sundaes to the women, and burgers and beers to the men; street kids washed cars that blared hip-hop music; a crowd stood around a man holding an open black briefcase chanting auction-speak. Across the road, a police van idled in the shade of a government building, its blue light whirling its silent warning.
“Watch and learn,” said Arves, handing me the precious bag. “When I find out where Boubacar is, we’ll find Baron Farouk Abdullah. I want you to follow me at a distance. If anything happens to me, you run and I’ll meet you at the naked mannequins. I know how to deal with these goat herders turned millionaires.”
“But, Arves,” I protested. “What if—”
“It’s going to be cool. I’m sure they’ll know where the Baron hangs out.”
“Arves, I want to come with you.”
“Relax. Who’s going to hurt a skinny kid with HIV? I get a lot of pity and sometimes sympathy can be useful. I’ll give you the thumbs-up when it’s safe but it will be better if you keep your distance.”
Arves sprinted across the road, heading for the group of street kids washing a midnight-blue Isuzu Trooper. After a brief exchange with the washer-boys, he approached a man talking on two cell phones simultaneously.
The radio chatter coming from the nearby police van made me nervous, and I realized how tightly I was holding the bag. Before we left the mine, the others had warned me about the dreaded plainclothes officers of the Central Intelligence Organisation who roamed Mutare searching for dealers. Diamond dealing was illegal. You had to have a permit but nobody knew how to get one. If you were caught with stones, you were arrested and thrown into the back of a police van and never seen again. Remembering this and my own advice to Arves, I slung the bag more casually over my shoulder. I tried to ignore the parked police van but its slow-moving, silent blue light made my skin prickle and then I noticed the reflection in the shop window.
A scruffy boy with legs and arms brushed with light-gray powder stared silently back at me. The boy reminded me of those other boys standing on the side of a highway who had lifted their hands to form the shape of a diamond. Now I had become a mailasha—a smuggler of diamonds—just like the boys I had seen in the long grass trying to sell me their ngodas. The words of the driver returned: signing their death warrants by sticking their necks out like that. They’ll be dead in a week.
I shivered and scanned the street for Arves.
He had moved to a woman lounging across the hood of a car. He offered her something that she looked at with interest, before slipping it into her brassiere and handing him her ice-cream cone. Then she pointed to a man with a nest of fat dreadlocks, lounging on a sofa in the back of a brand-new Nissan pickup. Arves walked up to this open-air office and hiked himself up onto the open tailgate, swinging his legs and licking his ice cream as if he were on holiday. They talked for a while and then Arves got up, tossed the man another small brown packet, and wandered away. He didn’t look back at me but I noticed him scratching his head with his thumb.
That was our signal.
I started moving but then I noticed that Dreads had called one of his men, a man with baggy basketball shorts and dark glasses, and pointed at Arves strolling up the street. Dark Glasses nodded and headed off behind Arves.
Why had Dreads sent a man to follow Arves? I crossed the road, keeping both Dark Glasses and Arves in my sight. Arves turned a corner; Dark Glasses followed. I crossed the road and saw that Arves had stopped before a shop’s entrance. He looked up at the building, glanced in my direction, scratched his head with his thumb, and then took off running through the traffic and disappeared down an alley, leaving his ice cream melting in the doorway. Dark Glasses ran across the road and narrowly missed being run over by a speeding taxi. By the time he got across the street, it was too late. Arves had disappeared. Taking off his glasses, the man looked up and down the street and then, after a while, shrugged and strolled back toward the Dairy Den.
I waited until he disappeared around the corner, scanned the street for any sign of Arves or shiny shoes and large watches. Did Arves want me to go into the shop alone? Suddenly, I felt that everyone looking at me knew I was carrying diamonds. I had to keep moving, so I crossed the road and paused at the puddle of melting ice cream.
Above the door was a sign: FAROUK SPECTACLES.
Arves had found the Baron.