apology nor reassurance nor consolation.
‘But what is it, Ba Nkoloso?’ Matha said instead, her brow crumpled in frustration.
‘WHAT IS IT?!’ he thundered back, his voice echoing in the empty stadium.
‘What do you want me to say?’
Nkoloso exploded to his feet and marched back and forth on the bench, steps ringing out.
‘Cyclops could have been launched from this very place’ – he waved around at the stadium – ‘nearly five years ago. Z Day, 1964. But no, they said the rock-bang would contaminate the heavens. Now the Americans have beat us to become Controllers of the Seventh Heaven of Interstellar Space! They even promised me two million dollars. But these imperial neocolonialists, they have delayed payment because they are scared of our space knowledge. And now we must disband the programme. The revolution is over.’
‘No, Ba Nkoloso, the revolution, it cannot be over,’ Matha protested feebly.
‘Pah!’ he groused. ‘It is finished! Apollo has landed.’
‘Ba Nkoloso, you did not seriously believe we would get there before the Americans?’
He stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘What was the Space Programme about for you, Matha? You and that Mwango boy were busy looking at each other. You should have been looking at the moon!’ He jabbed a finger at the sky.
* * *
But Matha was no longer listening. She didn’t understand why Ba Nkoloso was going on about the Space Programme as though it were real. She wondered, not for the first time, whether he had in fact lost his mind like all the newspapers were saying. He was still pacing back and forth, his purple cape wafting as he raved about the cadets and their ingratitude, about the death of his dream to reach the moon, which Matha had always assumed was dead on the ground to begin with – a political ploy, a prank like the others. At some point, night fell and the stadium lights clunked on, lighting Ba Nkoloso from behind – a freeze-frame, an explosive black shadow backed by screaming white light.
Was this what James Brown would be like? There were rumours that the American musician was going to perform at Dag Hammarskjöld Stadium in Ndola next year. Godfrey was dying to get tickets. Ever since he had heard James Brown on the radio and seen pictures in Jet magazine, the Just Rockets had gone electric. Their afros and repertoire and the ankles of their trousers had all gone shiny and round. There was a new shimmer to Godfrey too, as he squealed into the practice mic – a stake in the ground with a chimanga husk strapped to it – as he twirled in his silver cape, dropped into the splits, and bounced back up like the handle of a water pump.
After another hour or so of withstanding Ba Nkoloso’s plaints, Matha left him nursing his wounds at the stadium and went in search of Godfrey. The Just Rockets practised in a shed behind a shebeen in Kalingalinga, but she didn’t hear their crunchy, wailing Zamrock sound tonight, just Congolese rumba twinkling into the air, duelling with the crickets outside.
Matha braved the gauntlet of lewd, smelly men at the entrance to the shebeen, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim. There he was. Godfrey was sprawled in a chair, his silver cape lousy with sweat stains. Reuben stood over him, holding forth about Jimi Hendrix. Godfrey tried to take a swig from his Mosi, then held the empty bottle complainingly to the light.
‘Is this where you’ve been hiding?’ Matha laughed as she walked up to him.
Godfrey stood up with a grin, swayed towards her, and ran a finger along her jaw.
‘The Americans reached the moon,’ he remembered, his grin dwindling. ‘Tragic, man!’
‘Not you too.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘Your cats,’ he said. ‘Where will your cats go now, Matha?’
She ordered a Mosi and they went and sat under a tree outside to share it. He took a thronging gulp and passed it to her. She sipped it shyly though they both knew it was far from the first time she’d had a beer. She was being shy to show her love, being small to make him big.
‘So, what did Dr Nkoloso say?’ he asked.
‘That we should have been studying the moon and not each other.’
‘But Matha,’ he slurred. ‘You are my moon! You are my star and my sun and…’
‘The sun is a star, Godfrey.’
‘Oh-oh?’ His eyes twinkled at her. ‘Is it? Ah, you are too bright for me.’
‘Ba Nkoloso also said we are mistaking ourselves for