Those Who Live in Grass Houses

Appointment

Appointment

It had been many years since I last looked up at the massive wall of the enclosure at Great Zimbabwe. That had been over fifty years before and I a callow youth only lately arrived in my teens. Nothing had changed in the ruins over the years when I moved from place to place and continent to continent. These ancient stone buildings endured the years in stolid immovability, only the lichen creeping year by year over the faces of the rocks and changing the colours as they did so.

And now I was back again, briefly, to make good a promise made a few years after my visit. It had been a ghoulish idea really, a romantic hippy notion to meet in this place on one hearing of the death of the other. I do not recall ever discussing with Garth the existence or otherwise of ghosts, but I suppose the mists of Mary Jane dismissed from our minds any thoughts that such matters might impede the post mortem meeting we envisaged.

Far from our minds, too, must have been the possibility that we would both travel so far in the intervening years that the choice of venue might be an obstacle. Garth and his wife, Sharon, with baby daughter Genevieve, did indeed move to Cape Town a few years later, and set up a shop selling trendy trinkets made by other hippies in the area. Some time later, I heard that the couple had divorced and Garth emigrated to Australia. That was the last I heard of him until a mutual friend advised me of his death, thereby sparking memories of the promise we had made so many years before.

My own travels and settlings had left me a considerable distance from Zimbabwe, too. The journey back there took me over an ocean and across the equator, a long way to go in the hope of so unlikely a reunion. But I made the trip without expectation of success. It would be good to see Africa again, anyway.

So here I was, wandering amongst the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, reflecting on old times and waiting for midnight, the appointed time for the meeting. In the late afternoon, I climbed the steep track up the hillside to the Acropolis, that fortress built into the top of the hill that towered above the main ruins in the valley. It was more difficult than I remembered, age having drained much of my enthusiasm for exercise, and I arrived at the top later than I expected, with the star-scattered African night sky already spread like a canopy over my head.

I rested a while, then made my way around the edge of the escarpment to the whispering cave. This was a shallow indentation in the side of the hill, protected from the weather by an overhanging rock, with a marvellous view of the ruins far below. It was said that the acoustics of the cave meant that messages whispered there could be heard in the great enclosure and this had been used by the inhabitants to maintain contact between the two sections of the city.

I sat down with my back against the rock and waited for midnight.

It came eventually and, with it, a dark figure that walked along the path leading to the cave. I stood up, not believing that it might be Garth.

But it was him alright, instantly recognisable with his shock of dark hair and voluminous beard, his glasses and confident swagger. Even his clothing was much as it had been in the old days.

I greeted him as though the years had fallen away and we were young again. “Garth, you old bastard, you remembered.”

He smiled that well remembered grin, revealing his top teeth resting upon his lower lip like some really bushy rodent. “There are some things that are never forgotten,” he said.

“I heard you were dead,” I continued.

“Such reports are wildly exaggerated.” He was always quick with the witty reply.

But I knew that he was being economical with the truth. No one at our age looks exactly as they did in their early twenties. And Garth had not changed in the slightest. There was no doubt in my mind that I was looking at a ghost but, somehow, it did not matter. We fell into conversation as animated as it had always been, swiftly reverting to the hippy slang of those bright days in the height of the sixties cultural explosion.

“Man, Garth, it’s really good to see you. What the hell have you been up to all this time?”

“Oh, this and that, man. I’m an Ozzie now, you know? Just like Zim but drier.”

“Still writing poetry, are you?”

“Nah,” said. “Gave that up when I discovered I could make more money selling gear other cats made.”

“Cool enough,” I replied. “And writing’s about all I do these days. Funny how things turn out.”

“It’s all good, man. Cosmo has spoken!”

And so it went, two old hippies living again their golden age, carried away in the nostalgia of a time that was gone forever. The night flew by as the memories were swapped in quickfire bursts. The dawn was breaking when Garth prepared to leave.

“Gotta go, man. They only gave me the night. The powers that be, I mean. And that rumour you heard, about my death. I lied, man. Sorry.”

“I know, Garth. It’s the same for me.”

He looked at me with eyes wide in surprise. “What? I never heard anything about you dying.”

I shrugged. “Word of mouth’s not a reliable news medium. But being dead sure made getting here a lot easier.”


House Martell

Word count: 949
For "Game of Thrones"  The North Remembers, Travel Marvel Prompt 34
Prompt: 34. You arrive at a destination you promised an old friend you’d visit after they passed, only to find them there too.