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1 19 L LO ON NG G D DA AY Y’ ’S S J JO OU UR RN NE EY Y Ajax and Hercules knew something was amiss. Both had begun to whine like puppies. George was wondering whether to go barefoot like the little girl, sockless in his tackies, or socked (Woolworths) in his Chinesemade reinforced cardboard shoes. He decided on the first option. The soles of his feet were now hard enough to withstand most obstacles. The rest of his attire was the familiar khaki shirt and shorts, and red fez with its somewhat worn tassel. With the added bottle of water and the relish pot, his stolen backpack was packed (that’s not a wobble, George, it’s a crash!). He slipped it on and adjusted the straps for a comfortable fit. He held out his hand to the little girl and together they walked away. The dogs, whimpering, accompanied them to the side gate, where George and Joseph had first seen the child lying on her tummy on the road, waiting for the next car to take her even further away from her rural home than Bulawayo. George hugged the dogs, told them to hush, held back a tear, and lifted the child and himself over the gate. There was no moonlight but the Milky Way – dominated by the giant hunter of Boeotia, his belt so polished that George could detect, by its light, a predominance of yellow blossom along Leander Avenue – the Milky Way guided the travellers: A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear, Seen in the galaxy – that Milky Way, Thick, nightly, as a circling zone, thou seest Powdered with stars. Crikey, Milton is heavy going! It was tecoma, mostly, but also cassia, the buttercup tree, smelling of fruit followed by scrambled eggs on toast. In the thick foliage of the syringas, bunches of bright green berries gleamed, berries light enough to sting but not damage the flesh of playground children in another place and another time. 122 They crossed Hillside Road. The child pointed out clumps of tithonia, no longer in their prime, in the culverts and under the bougainvillea hedges; and lavender tinted convolvulous, trailing along, under, and over everything. George had heard somewhere that you could extract pounds, shillings and pence from the seeds of these lovely flowers. They passed the Church of Ascension where George’s parents had been joined together in holy matrimony, where he and his brother had been christened, and where Mom, Dad, and little Percy had, in his or her time, been given a solemn send-off. They walked briskly, filling their lungs with cool, woodsmoke-scented air. The cocks had not yet begun to crow, not even the high-pitched Toyota from what was once next door. At Matopos Road they turned left and walked along it until, just after Napier, they entered the Old Gwanda Road. Here the smells became more competitive: a burst sewerage pipe was contending for dominance with a grove of eucalyptus trees. The verges on either side of the road were teeming with grasses of every variety, testimony to a good rainy season, and a bankrupt municipality . Where Tait Road begins, they picked up their first scent of the bush beyond : the acacia Karroo was beginning to flower. And then, George’s heart swelled with nostalgia when he detected the first farmyard smells: dung and silage mingled with threshed corn. Suddenly the road was littered with bits of chewed-and-spat sugar-cane. As they passed Knott’s Way, and then Circular Drive, the houses thinned out considerably, and there was a reassuring presence of real bush. Fine thatching grass began to dominate the space on either side of the road, but it could not conceal the stench of household rubbish – wealthy household rubbish. This was Bulawayo’s prime area for the extremely large, ostentatiously designed ‘small houses’, which the chefs of Zimbabwe – businessmen, criminals, and senior civil servants – were providing for their mistresses. At the point where the tarred road ended and the dirt road began, there was a bottle store called Bagwale, on the right, and a sign to CHESA FORESTRY RESEARCH, on the left. The odd couple kept walking. They had not yet seen a single human being. George wanted to be well away from town before first light. The little girl showed no signs of tiring , and George was in reasonable spirits despite the tearing pain...

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