boy suffered no great damage. Native hide is thick and the shot hadn’t penetrated any vitals. The medic didn’t even bother to remove the shrapnel embedded in the skin of his back, which left a pimply sort of rash. There followed months of ribbing me, however. ‘Who shot the pig? What’s the price of pork?’ As it turned out, by the strangest coincidence, the native’s name was ‘N’gulubu’, which means none other than ‘pig’!
Skip ahead two years, and a native boy walks through my front gate. All a-grin. Familiar.
‘Go round the back!’ I shout – natives were not allowed to use the front entrance.
He stays where he is, grinning to the wind like a numbskull. It’s the village idiot, I realise. The one the Italian girl, Lina, had struck down in the dining room. Imagine this:
‘I’m N’gulubu,’ says he and turns around to show me the Braille in his back.
‘Oh, are you?’ says I. ‘Well, here’s ten bob for you.’
Off he goes, fit as a fiddle and just as merry. Everyone was satisfied. Certainly I was: I had peppered a nig for ten bob – and got a shooting cup for it! It just goes to show – if I hadn’t been down with the shakes in the first place, I’d have never snatched Gavuzzi’s wig, Lina would have never struck that boy, he wouldn’t have misjudged his crouch, and I’d have nabbed neither pig nor prize!
* * *
Every manner of visitor has braved the establishment of ‘Mr Percy M. Clark, ARPS, FRGS, FRES’, the oldest curio shop at Victoria Falls. Colonel Frank Rhodes and I talked long hours about his father, whose funeral procession I had photographed. In 1916, I was appointed official photographer to Lord Buxton and two future governors: Sir Cecil Rodwell of Southern Rhodesia and Sir Herbert Stanley of Northern Rhodesia – the two lands were finally divvied up. Sir Stewart Gore-Browne paid us many a visit – a strange man, and too free with the blacks by a mile, but our hospitality was well worth it: he helped us find sponsors for the children’s education in England. I don’t know if they will return, but Africa is in their blood.
I have seen this continent pass into dire civilisation. Where once one might hump one’s blankets and step into the unknown, there’s no unknown no more, as they say. Where once one might tramp toilsomely to gain a few meagre miles a day, now the motor car speeds by and the aeroplane growls overhead. Months stride past in an hour. There is no romance left here. I have seen moving pictures of the once shy and unapproachable Pigmy tribes of the Congo riding around in lorries. This new Africa may be of interest to those who frequent the closer-packed, noisier places in the world. But a greater, more profound noise rings in my ears just across from where I write – the Victoria Falls still keeps her vast and unchanging glory.
As for The Old Drift, which once had the dignity of a place on the map – well, it has been swallowed by swamp. I have chosen to put down roots at Victoria Falls Town, and here I will rot. But I still visit the old stomping grounds across the Zambesi now and again. All that remains is the cemetery: a dozen tumbled-down gravemarkers in the bush, dated between 1898 and 1908, some of the inscriptions eaten away by rain. It is a queer thing to wander the stones and call the roll of the dead and think on those poor crumbling sods. I read their names as warning shots:
Georges Mercier! John Neil Wilson! Alexander Findlay! Ernest Collins! Miss E. Elliott! Samuel Thomas Alexander! David Smith! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown! Unknown!
Miles south of Livingstone’s final abode, above the Falls he renamed for his queen, just before the river takes its furious plunge, lie the stillest waters of the Zambezi and the stilled bodies of those who dared settle there. Ah, Ye Olde Drifte! Over the years, it went from passage to place and eventually gave way to a grave. This is where we live: on the tip of the tongue of the air, full of secrets – black fever, marsh fever, tertian ague – and more than eager to squeal them.
And who are we? Thin troubadours, the bare ruinous choir, a chorus of gossipy mites. Uncanny the singing that comes from certain husks. Neither gods nor