When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin Read Free Book Online Page A

eland sanctuary, its edges lined with dense foliage that teems with morning glories and flame lilies, red-hot pokers and buffalo beans, serrated bracken and perforated elephant ears. The only people we encounter are barefoot Ndau tribespeople who step back into the bush to allow our stately progress and to stare after the Silver Shadow crunching slowly by. Georgina, in her green chiffon hood and pearls, waves with the back of her hand pretending to be the Queen of England, and they return her wave, astonished at this passing specter. She giggles with nerves.
    “Stop the car,” she says as we near the falls.
    “What?”
    “Stop the car, I need to pee.”
    “Can’t you hold it?” I ask as I pull over.
    She swings out of the car, walks behind a small tree, hoicks up her chiffon frock, and pees, trying to keep the splash from wetting her shoes. Dad and I stand watching a troupe of vervet monkeys scampering in the umbrella trees above us, chattering indignantly at our intrusion. And when Georgina returns, he lights up two cigarettes and gives her one, and they stand smoking in silence.
    I get down on my knees and begin picking off the black jacks and burrs that have attached themselves to her dress.
    “I can’t go through with it,” she suddenly blurts above me.
    Dad rolls his eyes.
    “You have to. Everyone’s waiting,” I say, rising to my feet. “And we’re already late. C’mon. Let’s get back in the car.”
    I take her by the arm toward the open door.
    “No.” She shrugs off my hand. “I want to call it off.”
    “Listen.” I can hear the panic in my own voice. “Just go through with the ceremony, and if you still feel like this afterward you can get the marriage annulled.”
    She sighs and throws her cigarette down on the road and twists it out with her shoe.
    “
Fodga?
” asks an old Ndau tribesman who has caught up with us. He wants a cigarette.
    Dad hands him his unfinished one, and the man immediately takes a drag and exhales twin plumes through his nostrils while he cocks his head to one side and observes us arguing.
    “Oh, all right, then,” says Georgina. “Let’s get it over with.”
    At Bridal Veil Falls, I open the heavy bronze door and let her out into the enchanted fern-flush glade to greet the congregation gathered on a grassy hummock in the lee of the waterfall.
    A string quartet from her old high school is playing, but they are drowned out by a white filigree of water that tumbles a hundred and fifty feet down the cliffside behind them. When Georgina and Jeremy had reconnoitered the venue, it was dry season, and the river was far smaller. Now, as they exchange vows, we can see their lips move but can barely make out their words over the rush of the water.
    After the ceremony, we move down to a long trestle table topped in white linen where canapés and Mukuyu brut de brut, a local sparkling wine, are served. A camera crew from ZBC is filming the procession for a little feature to be shown later on the national news, Georgina arm in arm with her maid of honor and best friend, Ellah Wakatama — black and white together, totally at ease, friends since elementary school, Zimbabweans now for nearly twenty years. Race, it seems, is finally losing its headlock on our identities in this little corner of Africa.
    Four
    May 1998
    Y OU DRIVE ,” says Georgina.
    I am passing through Harare on my way back to New York, where I have been living for more than a year, since Joanna accepted an assignment there for the
Guardian
. My daughter Holly, from a previous relationship, is nearly four and lives with her mother in London, and now Joanna is pregnant. In order to be able to work in New York, I have begun the lengthy process of applying for permanent residence in the United States, a so-called green card, under the portentous category, “alien of exceptional talent.” For this I’m endeavoring to prove that I’m an invaluable cultural asset to America, which, as my father suggests, grinning,