Читать книгу Chairman of Fools - Shimmer Chinodya - Страница 10
ОглавлениеAt six in the morning, when the windows are turning orange with the first fervid licks of dawn, he takes a bath. He fills the tub with hot water and soaks himself deeply before giving his body a good scrub. He shampoos his dreadlocks and then rinses them with a conditioner. Ever since he left for the States, he had decided to keep dreads, after discovering that he had left his ‘afro-comb’ behind. He thinks he looks well with them. Or different, anyway. He rubs himself carefully with body lotion then picks out his favourite clothes – black jeans, black cotton T-shirt, black sneakers and black socks. He even dabs himself with a little black musk.
Then he locks up. Outside the gate a woman sits in a green VW Golf, blocking his exit. It’s Sunday morning, so he assumes it is one of Veronica’s churchy friends but she seems anxious to talk to him.
‘Are you Mr Chari?’ she asks, and he nods his assent. ‘We’ve never met. I’m Mavis Khumalo and I live in your flat.’
‘Which one?’
‘Oh, the one on Fourth Street.’
‘Fourth Street? The two bed-roomed one? I thought there was a young man living there. An accountant.’
‘The accountant left the flat to me and I’ve now been there for three months.’
‘I was never told this. So, you’ve been living in my flat without my permission?’
‘Your wife said it was OK for me to move in. I understood you were away, in the States.’
‘I’ll have to speak to her about it. I’ve only just got back, but I’ll be here for a while.’
‘Is your wife in?’
‘No.’
‘When I moved into the flat, I paid her the deposit and she told me she would give me the lease later.’
‘So?’
‘When I went to her workplace for the lease she said she was too busy to give it to me and I should wait for you to come back.’
‘But I left her in charge … OK, OK, how do you want me to help you?’
‘I’ve come for the lease.’
‘Have you paid all your rent up to date?’
‘Well, when I moved in I paid her the deposit but I haven’t been able to raise the rent yet. You, see, I’m separated from my husband and my mother died last month and things have not been easy for me.’
Ms Khumalo is an attractive, probably well-to-do, professional but Farai finds her unapologetic manner presumptuous.
‘Now listen. First you move into my flat without my permission. Then you skip rent for three months. D’you think I’m Father Christmas?’
‘Things are tough for me, Mr Chari.’
‘Look, I’m not new at this game. I can tell a problem tenant in two minutes. I don’t care who’s died or if you’re divorced. Rent has to be paid, ma’am. Have you brought the money?’
She hands him a fat envelope.
He counts the notes and pockets them.
‘Can you give me the lease now, Mr Chari?’
‘I’m running. My car broke down last night. Call me and we’ll arrange to meet later.’
‘How much later? And, by the way, your phone is not working. I tried to call you all day yesterday. That’s why I came to find you this morning. I don’t want to keep driving over here.’
‘If I had to wait three months for my rent you can afford to wait a few days for your lease, Baby.’
Farai grabs the car door and bangs it in her face. She cowers behind the window. The girl from next door – his own daughter’s classmate and best friend – stands at the gate, holding a plastic garbage bag, watching them. She looks stunned. Farai doesn’t even bother to say hullo, and strides angrily away to the industrial sites.
Ms Khumalo shakes her head, starts her car and drives slowly away.
The breakdown haulage truck is out when he arrives and he has to wait for half an hour. The security guard at the gate offers him a tin mug of tea and a bun and he politely accepts them. He sips the scalding hot tea and nibbles at the bun. Food tastes strange, like medicine that has to be taken on doctor’s orders. When the haulage truck arrives they set off at once for his car.
His Mazda 323 is parked forlornly at the shops and the security men he left to guard it are nowhere to be found. He thinks perhaps they left at six when their night shift ended. The break-down man looks under the car and at the wheels and whistles under his breath.
‘Is it badly damaged?’
‘They’ll know at the garage.’
They hook up the Mazda and drag it off to the garage. ‘It’s your suspension and your wheel bearings,’ the break-down man tells him. ‘And one of your wheels needs attention.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘It can be fixed but it might take a couple of days. Do you need it in a hurry?’
‘Yes,’ and he adds, ‘I’m travelling. To sort out some things. I don’t have much time on my hands.’
‘It’s Sunday and the garage is closed. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you get the damaged wheel fixed today, so that we can work on the other problems first things tomorrow? It might speed things up. I know a place that’s open today.’
Farai wheels the damaged tyre to a backyard workshop where it is soon fixed and he returns it to the garage.
‘Come tomorrow morning when the mechanics are here,’ the mechanic tells him.
He takes a combi to the city and goes to an afternoon Jazz club. The place, an open garden with chairs, tables, flowers and plenty of shade, is already full of patrons when he arrives. Waiters in khaki uniforms shuttle among the tables and the bar in the corner serving drinks and snacks. The crowd unnerves him, somehow. Voices are loud and everybody seems to be laughing. He finds a place to sit and orders a beer.
The band is taking a short break and the instruments are on the stage. The disco is playing jazz music. Oh there is Piri, the girl in Thomas Mapfumo’s band. Piri holding a drink and waving at him, laughing and what ... she’s coming over.
‘Oh, my sweet darling, you’re alone again,’ Piri says.
‘I didn’t know you liked jazz as well,’ he tells her.
‘Oh yes I do,’ she says, sipping her gin and tonic. She is wearing a white T-shirt, blue denim hipsters and silver slippers.
‘How was the show last night?’
‘The show? What show? Did you go out?’
‘Don’t know. I was out somewhere watching zvigure and my car broke down.’
‘You like zvigure?’
‘Sometimes. So how is Thomas Mapfumo these days?’
‘I haven’t been to a show of his in ages.’
‘But I thought you were a singer and dancer in his band?’
‘Me, never.’
‘I must have been drunk when I met you, then.’
‘You’re always drunk.’
‘Did you cut your dreads?’
‘Ages ago. I like my hair short.’
‘Really, Piri?’
‘Why are you calling me that? I see you have forgotten who I am. I am Matiedza the film-maker. You did some voice dubbing for one of our videos two years ago and invited me to eat mazondo at kwaMereki. Afterwards we went to hear Thomas Mapfumo.’
‘Oh, Mati! Of course.’
‘Don’t worry. It happens. Can I buy you a drink?’
‘You are the first woman in months to offer me one.’
‘These are not the days of roasting loincloths! After all we’re not starving now, are we?’
‘Of course not.’
‘And we only live once.’
He talks with Mati about anything and everything, and makes her laugh. He likes her because she is almost a tomboy, and seems not to care much about what people think about her as a woman. She is an ex-combatant who has found a niche in the film world. He wonders who helped set her up. A white man, perhaps. Amazing, he thought, how many of these educated ex-combatants go out with white men. Was it because they did not paint them with the same tar and ignored the rumours of prostitution and death? Or because white men were gentle and understanding, and had money? He likes her flashing teeth and her strong dark hands and her wood, steel and brass bangles. He remembers now how she had rolled up a fat joint and persuaded him to smoke it with her in her flat before setting off with him on her scooter to the show, and how they had danced for hours on the stage. And now the jazz band is playing and the sun is warm and the drinks are cold and they are both tapping away to Hugh Masekela, Earl Klugh and Jonathan Butler. And now she’s on the stage singing an old Harare Mambo tune and everybody is clapping wildly and she is back sitting on his lap and ordering more drinks. And now he is dancing on the stage with her and everyone is clapping hands and cheering till he thinks his eardrums will burst.
Eventually Mati drives him back home in her VW Beetle and drops him off at the gate of his prison and hugs him and says, ‘Phone me tomorrow.’
Just as she is pulling back into the road another car, a Peugeot 406, pulls in from the other direction and turns into his driveway. For a moment he is dazed by the bright headlights and when he steps out a familiar voice calls cheerily, ‘Hes, Farai!’
‘Mainini Goto!’
It’s his aunt, his late mother’s cousin and a much younger woman, her niece.
‘Come in, come in, Mainini. Hello, Faith. What a surprise.’
As soon as the two women step out of the car he gives them each an exuberant hug.
Mainini Goto sits resplendent with middle-aged matriarchal ease while Cousin Faith, barely nineteen and decked out in purple, pierces the air in the lounge with her exotic perfumes.
‘We heard you were back. We were just passing by and came to check on you. Are you all right?’
‘Yes, Mainini!’
‘How was the States? What did you bring us? Did you meet your cousin Lemi?’
‘I talked to him on the phone.’
‘Where’s Veronica? Gone to church with the kids for the evening service, I suppose?’
‘You know these Pentecostals. Mainini!’ he says, shaking his head. ... ‘Mainini!’
‘What?’
‘Come. Come and see.’
He leads them to the main bedroom, his bedroom, and pulls back the blankets right down to the carpet. Cousin Faith leans forward staring, as if expecting a cat or a baby viper to leap up from between the sheets.
‘What is this, Mainini?’ he asks, pointing to the logos printed on the sheets and the bedspread.
‘That’s the same material for the uniforms which the women at Veronica’s company wear.’
‘Logos, logos, logos, Mainini! Veronica’s logos. That’s what this house is all about, Mainini. This is what I have to put up with every day.’
Mainini Goto thoughtfully chews on a fingernail and leads the way out of the bedroom, back to the lounge. She looks at the logos, wondering if Farai is not becoming somewhat obsessed, after all she knows what fabric costs, and the chance of a cut-price deal …
‘I know,’ she says, ‘Let’s talk. Maybe you can tell me tomorrow, after you have had some rest. Have you had anything to eat?’
‘No.’
‘You can always come to my house if you are hungry or need anything. Remember I am your mother.’
‘All right.’
‘Nobody can stop you drinking, or say drinking is bad, but you must try to cut down a bit. Veronica says you’ve been back three days but most of that time you’ve been out.’
‘Did she call you?’
‘Never mind. That’s not why we came. We’ve just come to make sure you’re OK. Let’s talk tomorrow, when you’ve had some rest. Look, we have to go now or we will find Mkoma Willie waiting.’
‘Is Willie still with you, Mainini? That man must have worked for decades for you now.’
‘Twenty-seven years. He was eighteen when we first employed him, and he didn’t even leave after your uncle died.’
Mainini is good at talking about domestic matters – gardeners, maids, loyalty, security, saving, and education. Using time wisely. A clothes designer, she believes in flowers, rockeries, beautiful driveways, gazebos and women’s organisations. She would be the first to tell your gardener to climb onto the roof and sweep off the leaves, or trim the hedge. She makes you want to get on in life and be somebody she can take pride in. Somebody whose house she could drive past and boast to her church friends, ‘My nephew lives here.’ In this her principles intersected with those of his late father, which was why the latter, just before he died, had written her a long, prophetic letter about his children, somehow entrusting them into her care.
As Mainini drives off who should stop by but Mai Tapiwa, their neighbour. She lives two houses down the road and sometimes comes with her husband to talk, laugh and drink beers with him on an occasional Saturday evening, while Veronica sulks and sips Fanta in the kitchen. Mai Tapiwa of plum lips, long slit denim skirts and forbidden sideways eyes. Tonight she wears lipstick and eye-shadow.‘I just came to check on you’, she says, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be all OK as long as I’m here.’ Mai Tapiwa takes his hands in her warm manicured ones and leads him back into the house …
Mai Tapiwa has left. She came into the house and sat with him, next to him. He played her music from his collection and talked to her about himself. She asked him gently about his trip to the States. She kissed him on the lips before she left, saying her husband was waiting at the gate.
He plays jazz and traditional music. He steps out to the pantry and opens the fridge. It is nearly empty. Or is it? Did Veronica remove the food? There are two or three tiny packets of meat. He picks one of them up and examines it. The meat is red, very red, red pork and it has yellowish pockmarks like little swollen eyes, staring at him. ‘Pork is bad,’ Fatima had said. He hastily throws the packet down. In the pantry the shelves are bare; large, brown nauseous bugs conglomerate over little crumbs of food.
He goes into the bedroom, and plays more music on the hi-fi at the headboard. The music makes him feel expansive and he wants to hug the walls and the curtains of the bedroom but he lies still on top of the blankets, with his eyes closed. A slow inertia grips his body; he lies like that until the hi-fi switches itself to the radio. In the early morning, he vaguely hears the wake-up church service programme, Reverend Mwaita, still going strong, is preaching a sermon about faith. He is a well-known multi-denominational evangelist. Once upon a time, at the age of thirteen, Farai had attended his service in a huge tent outside the township and accepted the Lord. But his new faith, prompted by fears of hell and brimstone, had worn off in a welter of pubescent sin.
The sermon is broken by songs from the choir. Farai knows them well but when he tries to hum the tunes his voice dries up. Before the end of the sermon there is a pause, then Father Mwaita speaks again. The urgency in his voice rises to a pitch.
‘Somebody out there, a child of the Lord, is having problems and he knows himself,’ says Father Mwaita. ‘This person is a well-meaning man but engulfed in sin. He is like an uprooted sapling drowning in a fast-flowing river. He has lost his faith. Yes, it is you my child and I shall not say your name on the air because that would break your frail heart. You know yourself. You have not slept or eaten for days, my child. The problems you are trying to solve need a clear mind and you cannot achieve this without sleep. Why don’t you try to catch a little sleep before you begin another day? Why don’t you try to start afresh?’
Farai yanks the hi-fi cord out of its socket and sits up, his heart beating fast and his hands shaking. The voice injects him with a sudden energy and he staggers to the bathroom to soak himself in hot water. The sun is rising, sketching wry images of faces and figures on the bathroom walls, just like a movie. Outside, next door, the voice of a little girl laughs, and his neighbour chides his dogs.
He carefully chooses his clothes for the day, brushes his teeth, oils his locks and, deodorized, goes out and locks the house. He must go out.
He is late.
He marches along the path at the edge of the road. All the vehicles are going there, roaring up from behind him, very few going the other way.
The drivers of the cars and trucks and combis are stern with the importance of their mission, they don’t turn to acknowledge him, or each other; only the big green truck hoots as it flies past him and the grim-faced driver raises a palm at him.
The green truck must be where the cameras and lights are.
The crew members are in the combis.
The VW Beetle that has just gone past is Matiedza’s. Mati is the assistant director of the film.
Out there, two hundred metres ahead of him, weaving along the dust path at the side of the road are two people, his little daughter Sharai and their maid Maria. Maria is holding Sharai’s hand and they are walking, oh, ever so slowly down the path, towards the vlei and they must not miss the joy of the historic occasion. He must catch up with them and walk with them so that he is not alone, so that they arrive together. But where is his son, his little boy Ticha? Has he already left with Veronica?
A man with a helmet toots at him from his scooter – this must be the man doing the initial shots, capturing the footwork on Polaroid, perhaps.
The Datsun pick-up truck loaded with a mountain of cabbages, tomatoes and potatoes must be for the market scene in the script and the AFDIS truck must be bringing in the drinks already – didn’t the director say there would be a party every day after the shooting?
And Maria and Sharai are moving oh, ever so slowly, floating towards the vlei. ‘Maria! Sharai! Wait!’
Can they hear him? He lopes after them and now he can hear their chirruping voices and their tinkling laughter. He can see the reds, whites and greens of their clothes and their shoes. Now they have stopped for him and joyously he reaches out to grab Sharai’s little hand.
‘Aren’t we late?’ he gasps.
‘Good morning Daddy,’ Maria says, ‘Mamuka sei?’
Maria of peppered breakfasts and clever lunches and late lazy baths and black avocado-pear breasts, that day he burst into the children’s bathroom by mistake, Maria now smiling her little, puzzled, expectant smile and saying good morning, daddy. Maria, for whom he has brought a dress and shoes to say thank you for looking after everything while I was away and now he has got her a part in the film to show the world how he lived and how he worked and what a simple, undemanding man he was …
‘Can we help you, sir?’
And now he feels a searing flash in his brain and Maria shrinks to a bony, middle-aged mother with a recalcitrant brown skirt and a cheap red Sandak shoes, Sharai stretches up into a lanky, knock-kneed teenager with a schoolbag on her back and her hand wriggles awkwardly out of his grip.
‘Can we help you, sir?’
At the garage the security man is having tea and offers him half a bun.
‘Are you coming to the shooting?’ Farai asks him.
The security man gives him a doubting sideways look and takes a sip from his tin mug.
‘Is my car ready yet?’
‘The mechanics come in at nine.’
‘Tell them to work fast, because I’ll need the car soon.’
There is a pub nearby, one of his favourites, and he goes there to wait. On the sidewalk the vendors are laying out their wares and he greets them jovially.
In The Calabash the workmen have already nailed the cables to the walls and the light bulbs are screwed on in the trees and corners. The bar has been closed for this special event. The spectators have been moved away to the shops where they have assembled and he can hear their voices shouting. Waiting for him to act.
The great writer comes home.
Everything is in reverse. It has to be. And that is why the garden is empty, closed up for the show. He has to retrace every step. It must start with him at the airport leaving, his family waving from the balcony and cheering him off for the umpteenth time. It has to start with journeys into the past and forgotten beginnings. It must capture that stark moment when he spilled out of his mother’s womb and screamed into a blurred world. His very first memories of faces and voices and leering shadows, of the warmth of his mother’s milk dripping into his mouth, of his father towering tall and strong, naked, soapy and wet in the shower above him, with him. Of the vast little four-roomed house with innumerable nooks and insistent ghosts shivering in the bananas, and voices cackling in alien languages inside the radio. Of the sharp odour of Dorothy’s bum inside the hot little rolling drum, and the salt bite of his mother’s peach stick on his legs. Of hunger and crowded, stinking classrooms and toilets awash with filth, of dew in the morning on miles of grass and frivolous impossible girls. Of thorny wars between black and white, black and black, wrangles between fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and couples who can’t talk.
This will be a great big film that will include everything; a film to end all films.
‘How long have I been like this?’
He leans back with his hands on the table and confronts his favourite barman.
‘Why, Mr Chari? You’ve only just arrived. We let you in because you were outside and we hadn’t opened. We’re not open yet but we served you. That’s only your first beer.’
‘Give him soda water,’ says a white man with one arm, a regular patron. ‘I’ll pay for it.’
The barmen are still cleaning the windows and lifting the chairs down from the tables. The woman at the front desk waves and winks at him.
‘Have you ever been really drunk, Sir?’ he asks the white man.
‘Every day.’
‘But why aren’t you working?’
‘I am working.’
‘So what sort of work do you do?’
‘I empty Castle bottles.’
‘How much do they pay you?’
‘Enough to feed my missus.’
‘Are you married?’
‘Yep. Got two sons about your age. Late thirties, eh.’
‘And your wife loves you?’
‘We tolerate each other. There comes a time in life when it’s useless to fight. She doesn’t hump me every day but she tries. She knows if she doesn’t do that I can get me a small house any time.’
‘Small house! Ha! What a dirty old man you are! Who do you think would want to have a small house with a wimp like you?’
‘Anybody. White, black or blue. Small houses are not usually plastered, you see, so they don’t have colours. And they are hardy as bricks. Once upon a time I fought with the missus and came here to drown me sorrows a bit. Bang I started talking with one of your soul sisters who drink here. Before I knew it I was shacking up with her in her boy’s kaya. And she was a damn good fat mama too, cooking, washing up, ironing and all that. African women are great housekeepers. Think I must have gained two kg’s in a week!’
‘What did the missus do?’
‘Don’t know who told her, but when I didn’t show up for a week she drove over in her squeaky little Datsun 120Y and beat me up with her walking stick. I don’t know how, but she bundled me up onto the back seat and drove off like an ambulance. You ain’t seen an angrier woman than that. I still have bruises to show for it.’
‘Served you right. Are you a farmer?’
‘Was. Sold me farm before you guys started all this land grabbing and turning this country into thousands of little villages.’
‘So where do you live now?’
‘In a little flat in town. What about you? You look like a rich black bugger with a bag full of questions and a little arithmetic in your head. Four bedroomed house with a swimming pool, probably?’
‘No ways.’
‘Manager or something?’
‘No. I’m a writer.’
‘What do you write? Newspapers? Books?’
‘A little bit of everything. They are going to make a film of me.’
‘Film, hey. How nice. So what brings you here? Why are you guzzling yourself mad at nine on a Monday morning, son?’
‘You wouldn’t want to know.’
‘Come on, boy. Out with it. Why are you so uptight?’
‘I don’t know where my wife is with the children and my car is at the garage.’
‘Had a boxing match with your wife?’
‘Came home late a couple of times.’
‘You ignored her. You don’t ignore a woman, boy, even if you have a small house. She probably ran off to her mother. They always run off to their mothers. You must have paid a lot of mombes, sheep and goats when you married her. Why don’t you call your mother-in-law and ask her?’
‘There’s no phone here.’
‘Here, use my cell-phone. Just don’t be too long about it because my battery is nearly flat.’
Farai dials up and holds the phone to his ear. Veronica’s mother answers and he says ‘Makadii Mhamha?’ She answers with a buttery voice. They go through the only pleasantries possible between in-laws and, to be honest, he has never been really close to Veronica’s mother. A church deacon’s wife, she keeps a tight rein on her children, especially the daughters, whether they are married or unmarried, and is one of the new breed of sturdy dames trained by the harsh economic times to survive by travelling to neighbouring counties to buy and sell. She is hardworking and shrewd like many women married to lowly paid, unassuming church men. He suspects she mistakes his reserve for pride or filial disrespect and that she has been fed a regular diet of untruths about his character by her daughter. Perhaps the least salient fact of the matter is that Farai has never forgiven Veronica the privilege of having a living, seventy-year-old mother when his own died at the tender age of fifty-three.
‘Is Veronica there, Mhamha?’ he cautiously asks.
‘I can’t say, Mwanangu.’
‘Is she there or is she not, Mhamha?’
‘That I can’t say, Mwanangu. I can’t say she is here or not here.’
‘If she calls you or comes over, will you tell her I called?’
‘All right, Mwanangu.’
‘Any luck?’ the white man asks, when he finishes talking.
‘My mother-in-law won’t say.’
‘Probably knows but won’t say. Mothers-in-law always know, you know!’
‘Can I make another call?’
‘Go ahead.’
He calls Mainini Goto, his mother’s cousin. ‘I’m on a borrowed cell-phone,’ he tells her, ‘So I’ll be quick. How are you this morning, Mainini? Veronica still hasn’t come back with the children. I phoned her mother who said she doesn’t know where her daugher is. Do you think you know where she might be, Mainini?’
‘I’ve no idea. Did you try her sisters, or your sister Tindo? Where are you now?’
‘I’m in a pub, talking to a friend.’
‘In a pub, already? Are you all right?’
‘Yes, Mainini?’
‘Did you sleep?’
‘A little.’
‘Have you eaten?’
‘A little.’
‘Look, Farai, you’ll have to forget about Veronica for a little while and concentrate on looking after yourself. It’s time you learnt to respect and value yourself. The children are safe. Take that from me. That’s all I can say. I think you and I need to talk. I wasn’t happy to hear you have been harassing people who come to your house.’
‘What people?’
‘That woman, for instance, who came to pay rent for one of your flats. Weren’t you violent? She reported the matter to the police.’
‘Harassing people! Violent! Police! Who’s been talking to you about this, Mainini?’
‘Never mind. Why don’t you come to my house this evening? You and I need to talk.’
‘I have no car. I don’t know if it will be ready then.’
‘No car? What happened?’
‘I forgot to tell you I had a little accident. Nothing serious. The car’s being fixed.’
‘Oh, Farai, do be careful.’
‘And even if I get the car I might be busy with the shooting. They are making a film of my life.’
‘A film. How wonderful!’
‘Don’t worry, Mainini. I’m very happy and I’m all right. I’m very, very happy and I feel great! I’ve never felt happier in all my life. And who knows, Mainini, I might get you a part in the film.’
‘Any luck this time?’ the white man asks him when he hands over the cell-phone.
Farai shakes his head. Suddenly his eyes gleam and he throws his hands in the air and laughs. ‘Never mind. My aunt said my children are safe and I believe her. She’s a good, good aunt and I love her. I love her and I love my wife and my children and my sisters and my brothers and my friends and anybody who wants to be loved by me. I love you, old man. Are you good at acting? Because if you are I’ll give you a part in my film. Oh yes I will. Barman, can you give us another round, please?’
