Two months had passed since the awful flight from the rooftop of their Harare citadel and the gentle, gilded rhythms of wealth and privilege, ticking over like tumblers in a Swiss vault door, had soothed the Mugabes into something resembling normalcy. Indeed, that very morning Grace had awoken hungry for the first time in weeks and, after a breakfast of condor embryos on a bed of puréed manatee tongue, she had telephoned the ministry of foreign affairs and had been waiting in the lobby when the motorcade arrived to take her shopping in Sandton.
Robert adored his wife, but it had been an oppressive time for them both and it was good to have a morning to himself to shuffle about in the cool marble corridors of Exile House, the sprawling colonial Pretoria mansion whose doors were always open to socialist reformers in need of a sabbatical away from the solidarity of the proletariat, and whose windows were always closed to the prying eyes of accountability fetishists.
He tugged on a robe and headed for the Haitian wing. A flight of doves rattled into the sky beyond the old conservatory as the angle grinder sounded again. The renovations had begun yesterday and already the diplomatic grapevine was dripping innuendo and titillation around which African patriot was about to make a hard landing at Exile House, saddle sore or cramped foetal after days nailed into a wooden crate aboard a dhow.
Some swore it was Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, on the run since clandestinely selling Khartoum to Belgium in late 2007; however, most insiders were backing King Mswati of Swaziland. It made sense, thought Robert as he swished at a fly with his rolled-up copy of The Guardian: Mswati’s latest decree — declaring virginity an act of treason punishable by a royal shag — had not gone down as well as the king had hoped, and he had fled the country in his Maybach sedan, nine brides in the boot, as the mob came for him and his little love-sceptre, brandishing a tiny guillotine designed specifically to cut short the king’s reign by about six inches.
At first Robert didn’t notice Jean-Baptiste Aristide, mistaking Le Petit Prince for a garden gnome in the pretty stand of ferns in the courtyard. When the Haitian hailed him, there was an awkward minute in which he believed he was being spoken to by an undead homunculus, conjured by British witches to rob him of his revolutionary mojo. But soon the mistake was cleared up and the two were ensconced in the deep wicker chairs out on the Sadeck, a wooden deck carpeted with the flags of Africa, on which Mugabe carefully wiped his feet. Aristide swung his little legs gaily over the edge of his seat, sipping noisily on a Steri Stumpi.
‘I hope you didn’t pay for that,” said Robert. Aristide looked sheepish. ‘Oh, my dear man! You really are straight off the boat, aren’t you?” He laughed and waved an elegant finger at a nearby door. ‘The Free and Fair Buffet. Fabulous place. You just take whatever you want and the South Africans declare it free and fair.”
‘I gather,” said Aristide, serenely ignoring the barb and ruffling open his newspaper, ‘that the Democratic Alliance in this country wants to target you with smart sanctions. It says here that these sanctions will ‘block much of the subcontinent’ from you.”
Mugabe nodded enthusiastically. ‘Thank God for that! Can’t stand the damn place. Crawling with Africans. Luckily for me, most of my houses are in Cape Town, which technically isn’t part of Africa.”
‘It’s a protectorate, isn’t it?” asked Aristide.
‘Have a Boudoir biscuit,” said Mugabe. ‘Grace calls them Ian Smith Penises. Sort of short and white and crusty.”
‘And covered in sugar,” mused Aristide.
‘Well, that’s not really —”
‘And very more-ish.”
‘No.”
‘And when you dip them in custard —”
Mugabe slapped Aristide smartly and they sat in silence for a while. At last the Haitian sighed and turned earnestly to the Zimbabwean.
‘Why do they tolerate us, Robert? Why do they defend us at every turn?”
‘God knows,” said Mugabe. ‘And have you tried getting them to criticise you? Bloody impossible. A case in point: pass me that telephone.” Aristide obliged and Mugabe dialled. ‘Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, please.” He yawned and winked at Aristide. ‘They’ve put me on hold. Lovely music. I think it’s Simon and Garf — … Nkosazana?” He beamed. ‘It’s Robert. Listen, I know you’re busy, but do you think you could come over and shine my shoes? Twenty minutes? Make it 10 and I’ll give you Liquorice All-sorts. Fabulous.”
He winked at Aristide again. ‘Oh, and this Sadeck is pretty hard, so bring your Nepads.” He hung up and sighed.
‘The worst part,” he said, ‘is that they come. They come, and they kowtow, and the more awful you are, the more they refuse to notice. Last week I told her Sarafina II had given me diarrhoea and that I wanted R100-million to write Parafina II, a jolly musical in which schoolgirls burn down the ministry of trade and industry because there’s been another blackout while they were trying to do their homework. And she said she’d table it before Parliament.”
Aristide shook his head mournfully. ‘Quite inexplicable. What is one to think, mon ami?”
‘To hell with thinking,” said Robert. ‘They’re not, so why should we?” He reached for the Ian Smiths.