Laughing Now: New Stories from Zimbabwe

Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness

47 Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness Alexandra Fuller FOR TEN YEARS, SINCE SETTING UP THIS FISH-AND-BANANA farm in the lowveld, Mum and Dad have made their sitting room under a tree that is mostly obscured by my mother’s garden, an exultant snake sanctuary of cultivated excess: creepers, buffalo grass, wild bananas, pawpaw trees, vines. It’s as if here, where topsoil was brought from the plateau hundreds of miles away and where daily buckets of water were laboured up from the river, any living thing with half a desire to exist has attached itself to the ground and flourished. Snakes especially. Then a visitor came and told Mum that the tree under which they sat was a Tree of Forgetfulness. Mum liked the sound of that. ‘Romantic,’ she said, pleased. And so she sits here in her wall-free sitting room, under her ceiling of the Tree of Forgetfulness with her camp-chairs, a coffee table and her treasure of flotsam and jetsam collected on her journey through the world: a fish-shaped ashtray made by the carvers at the Kafue bridge, a bin made out of beer tops, old animal bones, snake skins, interestinglyshaped sticks, pebbles, the pod of a sausage tree, a gag novelty of a howling toy cat stuffed into a miniature sack. Additionally, my mother has decided to associate forgetfulness with forgiveness. So she sits here every evening, under her tree, as if she were a religion. She says, ‘I forget all the sins committed against me,’ and she smiles in a way that she thinks makes her look beatific. ‘I’ve forgiven all my enemies. I don’t even fight with the Apostle any- more.’ Which is true, although I think this has nothing to do with the Tree of Forgetfulness, and more to do with the time. Mum grew fed up with the Apostle’s tricks so she dressed up in a Halloween outfit and scared the living daylights out of the Apostle’s nine children and his three wives. Mum’s Halloween furnishings (bought at a jumble sale on a visit to America) came complete with a bleed-on-command Edvard Munch-inspired ‘The Scream’ mask, a black cloak and plastic skeleton hands. It was a lot of black nylon and white plastic. ‘I nearly died of heat-stroke wearing the bally thing,’ she admitted afterwards. ‘What are you doing got up in that garb?’ Dad asked, looking up from his Aquaculture Today. ‘Oh nothing,’ said Mum, her voice muffled by the mask. Dad went back to his magazine. A few days earlier someone – Mum blamed the Apostle – had made a circle of whitewash in the yard in which there were left several feathers and the depiction of an owl and several awkward stick figures representing, presumably, my mother and her many dogs. The farm’s resident witch (when pressed) agreed to interpret its curse. ‘This just means you and the dogs will die,’ she told my mother, matter-of-factly casual. My mother seized herself by the throat. ‘Oh no!’ And when, by horrible, but not uncommon, coincidence, one of Mum’s dogs was killed by a mamba some hours later she, weeping by the still body of yet another untimely-deceased Jack Russell, vowed revenge. ‘All fun and games until someone loses an eye,’ Dad predicted, as Mum practiced pumping blood around her plastic Edvard Munchinspired face. ‘This is not fun and games and a dog is worse than an eye,’ said Mum, a sudden burp of fake blood gushing loose down the mask. Dad chewed on his pipe placidly. ‘Is there enough blood on my face, do you think?’ asked Mum, for whom more is always better. She squeezed the pump frenziedly. ‘Gallons,’ said Dad, not looking up. Mum marched off from the camp with resolve. Dad poured himself another cup of tea and made notes in the margin of his magazine. *** The real Tree of Forgetfulness was in Ouidah, Benin, on the Slave 48 Alexandra Fuller 49 Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness Coast. The tree itself is long-since dead and a statue of what looks like a mermaid-come-trumpeting-angel has been erected in its place. But even memorialised by this unlikely, pseudo-Nordic-looking monument, the spirit of the Tree of Forgetfulness lives on in the memory of people who visit the place every year to see...