Fully aware of the African love of a good joke, Craig clowned for them. Heldanced a jig, pirouetted on the leg, cracked himself across the shin without flinching, and finally took the hat of the youngest, most murderous guerrilla from his head, screwed it into a ball and with a cry of "Pele!" drop-kicked it into the lower branches of the wild fig with the artificial leg. The other two hooted with glee, and laughed until tears ran down their cheeks at the youngster's loss of dignity as he scrambled up into the wild fig to retrieve his hat.
judging the mood finely, Craig opened his pack and brought out mug and whisky bottle. He poured a generous dram and handed the mug to the scar-faced leader.
"Between brothers," he said.
The guerrilla leaned his rifle against the trunk of the tree and accepted the mug. He drained it at one swallow, and blew the fumes ecstatically out of his nose and mouth. The other two took their turn at the mug with as much gusto.
When Craig pulled on his trousers and sat down on his pack, placing the bottle in front of him, they all laid their weapons aside and squatted in a half circle facing him.
"My name is Craig Mellow,"he said.
"We will call you Kuphela," the leader told him, "for the leg walks on its own." And the others clapped their hands IJ in approbation, and Craig poured each of them a whisky to celebrate his christening.
"My name is Comrade Lookout," the leader told him.
Most of the guerrillas had adopted noyw-de-gue7Te. "This is Comrade Peking." A tribute to his Chinese instructors, Craig guessed. "And this," the leader indicated the young, est, "is Comrade Dollar." Craig had difficulty remaining straight-faced at this unlikely juxtaposition of ideologies.
"Comrade Lookout, "Craig said, "the kanka marked you." The kanka were the jackals, the security forces, and Craig guessed the leader would be proud of his battle scars.
Comrade Lookout caressed his cheek. "A bayonet. They thought I was dead and they left me for the hyena."
"Your leg?" Dollar asked in return. "From the war also?" An affirmative would tell them that he had fought against them. Their reaction was unpredictable, but Craig paused only a second before he nodded. "I trod on one of our own mines."
"Your own mine!" Lookout crowed with delight at the joke. "He stood on his own mine!" And the others thought it was funny, but Craig detected no residual resentment.
"Where?" Peking wanted to know.
"On the river, between Kazungula and Victoria Falls."
"Ah, yes," they nodded at each other. "That was a bad place. We crossed there often, Lookout remembered. "That is where we fought the Scouts." The Ballantyne Scouts had been one of the elite units of the security forces, and Craig had been attached to them as an armourer.
"The day I trod on the mine was the day the Scouts followed your people across the river. There was a terrible fight on the Zambian side, and all the Scouts were wiped out."
"Haul Haul" they exclaimed with amazement. "That was the day! We were there we fought with Comrade Tungata on that day."
"What a fight what a fine and beautiful killing when we trapped them," Dollar remembered with the killing light in his eyes again.
"They fought! Mother of Nkulu kulu how they fought!
Those were real men!" Craig's stomach churned queasily with the memory. His own cousin, Roland Ballantyne, had led the Scouts across the river that fateful -day. While Craig lay shattered and bleeding on the edge of the minefield, Roland and all his men had fought to the death a few miles further on. Their bodies had been abused and desecrated by these men, and now they were discussing it likea memorable football match.
Craig poured morel whisky for them. How he had loathed d-iem and their fellows terrs', they called them, terrorists loathed them with the special hatred reserved for something that threatens your very existence and all that you hold dear. But now, in his turn, he saluted them with the mug, and drank. He had heard of R.A.F and Luftwaffe pilots meeting after the war and reminiscing as they were doing, more like comrades than deadly enemies.
"Where were you when we rocketed the storage tanks in Harare and burned the fuel?" they asked.
"Do you remember when the Scouts jumped from the sky onto our camp at Molingushi? They killed eight hundred of us that day and I was there!" Peking recalled with pride. "But they did not catch me!" Yet now Craig found that he could not sustain that hatred any longer. Under the veneer of cruelty and savagery imposed upon them by war, they were the true Matabele that he had always loved, with that irrepressible sense of fun, that deep pride in themselves and their tribe, that abounding sense of personal honour, of loyalty and their own peculiar code of morals. As they chatted, Craig warmed to them, and they sensed it and responded to him in turn.
"So what makes you come here, Kuphela? A sensible man like you, walking without even a stick into the leopard's cave? You must have heard about us and yet you came here?"
"Yes, I have heard about you. I heard that you were hard men, like old Mzilikazi's warriors." They preened a little at the compliment.
"But I came here to meet you and talk with you," Craig went on.
"Why?"demanded Lookout.
41 will write a book, and in the book I will write truly the way you are and the things for which you are still fighting."
"A book?" Peking was suspicious immediately.
"What kind of book?" Dollar backed him.
"Who are you to write a book?" Lookout's voice was openly scornful. "You are too young. Book-writers are great and learned people." Like all barely literate Africans, he had an almost superstitious awe of the printed word, and reverence for the grey hairs of age.
"A one-legged book-writer," Dollar scoffed, and Peking giggled and picked up his rifle. He placed it across his lap and giggled again. The mood had changed once more. "If he lies about this book, then perhaps he lies about his friendship with Comrade Tungata," Dollar suggested with relish.
Craig had prepared for this also. He took a large manila envelope from the flap of his pack and shook from it a thick sheaf of newspaper cuttings. He shuffled through them slowly, letting their disbelieving mockery change to interest, then he selected one and handed it to Lookout.
The serial of the book had been shown on Zimbabwe television two years previously, before these guerrillas had returned to the bush, and it had enjoyed an avid following throughout its run.
"Haul" Lookout exclaimed. "It is the old king, Mzilikazi!" The photograph at the head of the article showed Craig on the set with members of the cast of the production. The guerrillas immediately recognized the black American actor who had taken the part of the old Matabele king. He was in a costume of leopard-skin and heron-feathers.
"And that is you with the king." They had not been as impressed, even by the photograph of Tungata.
There was another cutting, a photo taken in Doubleday's bookstore on Fifth Avenue, of Craig standing beside a huge pyramid of the book, with a blowup of his portrait from the back cover riding atop the pyramid.