The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHARLIE PICKS UP A PASSENGER

THE TAXI LICENCE for which Charlie had applied would be approved, he had been told, but the document itself, the important piece of paper, would not be ready for at least two weeks. For a young man of Charlie’s age, and attitude, that was a long time—too long a time to wait for a mere bureaucratic formality. And so he had decided to start plying his trade rather than wait for the officials in the public transport department to get round to picking up their rubber stamps and validating his papers. Those idle civil servants! he thought. There are too many of them in this country. That is all that we make—civil servants. He smiled. He was a businessman now—he could think such thoughts.

The car which he had acquired from Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had been cleaned and polished until it shone. Charlie lived as a lodger with a maternal uncle, who had a small two-room house at the side of a busy street off the Francistown Road. The now gleaming Mercedes-Benz looked out of place among the shabby cars that stood outside these modest houses and Charlie was worried that it would be stolen. On the first night that the car spent in its new quarters, Charlie had decided to tie a piece of string to the front grille of the vehicle and then feed the other end of the string through the window of the room in which he slept. That would then be tied to his big toe before he got into bed.

“You will certainly wake up if the car is stolen,” said his uncle, who had watched, bemused, as the string was unwound from its ball.

“That is why I am doing it, Uncle,” Charlie had replied. “If I wake up when the car is moved, I can get out of bed and deal with the thieves.”

The uncle had stared at his nephew. “There are two problems that I see,” he said. “Two. The first is this: What if the string does not break? This new string is very strong, you know. I think it could probably take the weight of a man. It could pull your toe out of the window, with you still attached.”

Charlie said nothing. He stared down at the ball of string. The label proclaimed: Extra Strong.

“Then there is another problem,” said the uncle. “Even if the string woke you up and then broke before it pulled your toe off, what would happen then? How exactly are you going to deal with your car being driven away? Run after it?”

Charlie put the ball of string down on the table. “Maybe I will not do this,” he said.

“No,” said the uncle. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

The car was not stolen that night. When Charlie awoke the next morning, he immediately rose from his mattress on the floor and pulled aside the thin cotton curtain that covered his window. The car was still there, exactly where he had left it, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

That morning he had arranged for a sign-painter to stencil the name of his taxi firm on the driver’s door. This took barely an hour to do, but consumed almost half of the final week’s pay that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had given him. At least he would not have to pay for fuel just yet, as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had given him a full tank of petrol as a parting gift. So now he was ready, apart from the licence.

Charlie stood outside the sign-painter’s shop and admired the newly painted legend on the side of the car.

The sign-painter, a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth, contemplated his handiwork. “Why are you calling it the No. 1 Ladies’ Taxi Service?” he asked. “Are you getting a lady driver?”

Charlie explained the nature of the service to the painter, an explanation which was followed by a brief silence. Then the painter said, “There are some very good business ideas, Rra. In my job, I see many businesses starting. But I hardly ever see one which is as good an idea as this.”

“Do you mean that?” asked Charlie.

“Of course. This is going to be a big success, I can tell you, Rra. A big success. You are going to be very rich. Next month, maybe the month after that, you will be starting to get rich. You’ll see. You come back and tell me if I’m wrong.”

Charlie drove away with the sign-painter’s prediction ringing in his ears. Of course the thought of being rich appealed to him; apart from that brief spell when he had been taken up by that wealthy, married, and older woman, he had known only poverty so far, had owned only a single pair of shoes, had made do with turned collars on his shirts. If he had the money, he could dress in a way which he knew would attract the girls; not that he had ever had any difficulty in doing that, but in a way which would attract a fancier sort of girl. That was what interested him.

He had intended to drive straight home in order to conserve fuel, but then, as he rounded a corner, a woman stepped out from a driveway and waved him down. For a moment he was puzzled, and then he remembered. I am a taxi driver! I get waved down.

He drew in at the side of the road, coming to rest immediately abreast of the woman. She stepped smartly to the back door and climbed in. He watched her in his rear-view mirror; a well-off woman, he thought; well-dressed, carrying a small leather briefcase.

“Where to?” he asked. He had not rehearsed the phrase, but it sounded right.

She told him that she wanted to go to the bank at the top of the Mall. “I have an appointment,” she said. “I am a bit late for it. I hope that you can get me there quickly.”

He shifted the car into gear and drove off. “I will do my best, Mma.”

In the mirror he saw the woman in the back relax. “A friend was coming to collect me,” she said, looking out of the window as she spoke. “She has obviously forgotten. It was a good thing you came along.”

“Yes, Mma. We are here to help.”

The woman seemed impressed with this. “Some of you taxi people are really rude,” she said. “You are not like that. That is a good thing.”

Charlie looked in the mirror again, his eyes meeting his passenger’s gaze. She was a good-looking woman, he thought; a bit too old for him, but one never knew. That last time, when he had been involved with that older woman, he had enjoyed a marvellous time, until her husband…Well, one could never tell how these things would work out. He glanced into the mirror once more. She was wearing a necklace with green stones and a pair of large dangling ear-rings. Charlie liked ear-rings like that. They were a sign that a woman liked a good time, he always thought. Perhaps he might ask this woman at the end of the journey whether he could come back and pick her up after her appointment. And she would say to him that this would be a very good idea because, as it happened, she had nothing to do and perhaps they could go out to a bar somewhere and have a beer because it was getting hot again, did he not think, and it would be a good thing to say goodbye to these winter nights when one really needed somebody nice and warm in one’s bed to keep the chill away…

He did not see the traffic lights, which were red, against him; nor the truck that was approaching and that had no time to apply its brakes. Charlie, gazing in his rear-view mirror, saw nothing that lay ahead; not the frantic movements of the truck driver as he realised that impact was inevitable; not the crumpling of metal as the front of the car folded in; not the shattering of the windscreen as it fragmented into little pieces, like diamonds or droplets of water in the sun. But he heard the screaming of the woman in the seat behind him and a slow ticking sound from the engine of his car; he heard the slamming of the door of the truck as the driver, shaking, let himself out of his relatively unharmed cabin. He heard the protests of metal as his own door was prised open.

Another motorist had stopped and had put his arm around Charlie’s passenger. She was standing beside the car, weeping with shock. There was no blood.

“Everybody is all right,” said the other motorist. “I saw it happen. I saw it.”

“I was coming that way,” stuttered the truck driver. “The light was green.”

“Yes,” said the motorist. “I saw that. The light was green.”

They looked at Charlie. “Are you all right, Rra? You are not injured?”

Charlie could not speak. He shook his head. He had escaped injury, thanks to the solidity of German engineering.

“God must be watching,” said a passer-by, who had seen all three step unharmed from the wreckage. “But look at that car! I’m sorry, Rra. Your poor car.”

Charlie had now sat down on the side of the road. He too was shaking. He was staring at his shoes; now he looked up and saw the ruins of his Mercedes-Benz, with its crumpled front, stained green by spurting coolant; at the metal rubbed bare where the truck had ground across it; at the buckled door with its newly painted sign. The ruptured metal had shortened the sign. The No. 1 Ladies’ Tax it now read; a curious legend which caused the policeman who shortly afterwards arrived at the scene to scratch his head. Tax?

Charlie reached home four hours later. His aunt was there, and she could tell immediately that there was something wrong.

“I have had an accident,” he said.

The aunt let out a wail. “Your beautiful new car?”

“It is finished, Aunty. That car is finished now.”

The aunt looked fixedly at the ground; she had known, of course, that this, or something like this, would happen. Charlie, silent now that he had pronounced the requiem on his car, sat down. I am twenty, he thought. Twenty, and it is all finished for me.