Zambezia (1987). XIV (ii).BOOK REVIEWSUnder the Skin ByD. Caute. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1983, 447 pp., £3.95,ISBN 0-14-005604-1.The Espionage of the Saints ByD. Caute. London, H. Hamilton, 1985,160 pp.,£9.95, ISBN 0-241-11750-X.The K-Factor By D. Caute. London, M. Joseph, 1983, 216 pp., £8.95, ISBN0-7181-2260-7.David Caute is the kind of person White Rhodesians invited to dinner and then
regretted having done so. More than any other account of the last years of UDI hisUnder the Skin exposes their obsessions and neuroses. And it does so by merginghistorical fact with numerous conversations gleaned from dinner parties and
braais Š conversations recorded in the comfort of Meikles Hotel or within thelaagers of remote farmhouses. With an uncanny ear for speech patterns andcliches Caute allows his subjects sufficient verbal rope to hang themselves Š thenstands back and lets us view the result:*in my opinion our black Rhodesians are the finest in Africa' [says a company directorfrom Borrowdale], 'they are fine people and I am proud of them. If certain people would
only get off our backs and let us get on with the job of building up this wonderful countrythen I believe we could make this thing work, I do believe that, David, I wouldn't stay hereif I didn't' (p. 27).Such conversations speak volumes.But the narrator of Under the Skin is not a totally detached reporter. As theevents of the war reach their bloody crescendo he becomes an eloquentspokesman against violence Š aware, though, that words somehow sanitize thehorror:There is an unreal orderliness about lists of the dead ... Death on the field of battle iscontingent, violent, anarchic: a list of names is orderly, a way of regrouping in regimentalsquares after the chaos. This trooper hit by a landmine in the Mount Darwin area, that
corporal stopped a bullet near Lupane; they rub shoulders for the first time after their lives
have ended. One died in a flash, the other bled slowly, yielding his life through large,
ragged wounds. But there is no blood, no sound of dying, on the printed page (p. 295).This is the voice of one whose apparently careless cynicism masks a deep moralcommitment to individual freedom and dignity.And it is also the voice behind Caute's other important work aboutZimbabwe Š the essay 'Marechera and the Colonel Š a Zimbabwean writerand the claim of the State' which appears in his book The Espionage of the Saints
(pp. 1-96). Here Caute examines what he sees as three challenges to civil liberty
during 1984 Šand the Orwellian overtones are fundamental to his theme. In
England there is the betrayal of Clive Ponting and Sarah Tisdal; in Zimbabwe theimprisonment of Dambudzo Marechera. Despite their personal shortcomings,147148BOOK REVIEWSsays Caute, all three share a kind of heroism in the refusal to let their separatevoices be quelled by the State and its apparatus.Of course, it is not as simple as that in the telling Š certainly not when dealingwith Marechera Š and Caute acknowledges as much in his Preface to the essay.He will, he disarmingly tells us, make some changes to 'the truth': certainconversations may be slightly altered; certain gaps may have to be filled. Butthrough this fictive approach Š paradoxically Š events and people (oftenunnamed) are eerily recognizable, certainly to Zimbabwean readers. And it seemsan ideal way of writing about Marechera, whose own relationship to objectivereality was often problematic but whose work Š given its rootedness in theshifting states of the unconscious Š offers far more historical perception thanmost other Zimbabwean writers. Indeed, Caute's leaning towards the fictive inthis essay frees him so that he can offer a much more complex picture than iscommon in journalistic writing of his hero/anti-hero: the man whose writing'blisters every totem pole'.But what happens when Caute turns to the novel form itself? Is he freed evenfurther? Perhaps in his earlier work like Comrade Jacob (London, Quartet, 1974)and The Decline of the West (London, Panther, 1968) this was the case. But inThe K-Factor Š his metafictional account of the death of White Rhodesia Šsomething goes very wrong. The story seems promising enough: it is 1979 and Mrand Mrs Laslet of Hastings Farm are surrounded by the effects of war. EnterHector Nyangagwa, supposedly researching land issues for his Ph.D. But is he allhe seems? Or is he really working for the comrades? And is not there somethingdecidely strange about the Laslets? Does their six-mdnth-old baby really exist or isit a figment of everyone's imagination?This final question is never really answered and yet the baby is central to anyunderstanding of the novel. It is the focal point of Sonia Laslet's racial neurosis,but when the child is 'kidnapped' by a group of guerrillas their ransom note ispainfully ironic: 'Your baby has gone. What have you lost?5, it reads. So is thebaby meant to stand for White obsessions and fantasies? Or are the references toSonia's 'virgin birth' to be seen in coejuction with the predominant motif of thebook: sexuality at its most animal and brutal?Perhaps Caute feels that metafiction of this kind is the best way of exploringthe absurdities and senselessness of White Rhodesia. But what are we left with? Abrittle, superficial novel shocking only for its gratuitous violence. And, anyway,the Rhodesia of 1979 was far more surreal than any writer Š except DambudzoMarechera Š has yet been able to grasp.University of ZimbabweFIONA LLOYDTo Breathe and Wait 'By Nancy Partridge. Gweru, Mambo Press, 1986,242 pp.,ZS7.88, ISBN G-86922-379^8.This story of Deidre, a widow in the Bulawayo of 1978, whose knowledge thatshe is dying brings her an ever-increasing awareness of perception about those sheloves and the country she lives ie, will perhaps excite uncomfortable memories for