An Elegy for Easterly (18 page)

‘Juliana, I smell a burning pot,' said my grandmother.

We ate our
sadza
and leaf vegetables with charred black meat that night, but we dreamed along with
Mainin
'Juliana and shared
Sekuru
Lazarus's certainty that the Prime Minister would be Joshua Nkomo. Only Susan doubted that the changes would change her life. ‘It may well be that there will be this socialism, Juliana,' she said, ‘but I can tell you right now that no amount of socialism will make my madam wash her own underwear.'

Two days before the elections, we went back to Mr Vaswani's shop to buy shoes for Danai. ‘It's like you have fertiliser in your feet,'
Sekuru
Lazarus said to him.
Mainin
'Juliana had promised us pork pies, and we were looking forward to this treat.

Mr Vaswani's voice stopped us as we left. ‘Now, now, Juliana, what is this, where are you going?'

‘You said I could leave early today, I have to take the children home,' she said.

‘Well, yes, but you look now, there are so wary many customers.'

‘I am going,'
Mainin
'Juliana said. ‘That was the agreement.'

As she turned to go, Mr Vaswani pulled on the sleeve of her jersey. There was a cry from Mrs Vaswani. The next thing we saw was Mr Vaswani lying on the floor of the shop, blood streaming from his nose, his spectacles beside him, the right eyeglass smashed. Still crying, Mr Vaswani's wife ran out of the shop, a bright pink whirl into the street. She returned just minutes later with a policeman who marched us all to the Charge Office, Mr Vaswani with a handkerchief to his nose, Mrs Vaswani clucking beside him,
Mainin
'Juliana on the policeman's arm and Danai and I following, Danai clutching his shoes to his chest.

The Charge Office was a confused mass of policemen in red-brown shining shoes and khaki uniforms, and people complaining about crime, people accused of crime, and people enquiring about people accused of crime. ‘Just sign an admission of guilt, and the whole thing will be over,' the policeman who arrested Juliana said to her in Shona.

The old
Mainin
'Juliana may have done that, but
this new
Mainin
'Juliana was drunk on
gutsaruzhinji
. ‘
Handina mhosva
,' she shouted. ‘I have done no wrong. This is Zimbabwe this, we left Rhodesia behind. I will do it again if I have to.'

‘You see how she is threatening me,' said Mr Vaswani. He glowered at Juliana through the still intact left eyeglass. ‘Arrest her, arrest her.'

‘Arrest me, arrest me,' said
Mainin
'Juliana. ‘If you don't,
ndinomuita kanyama kanyama
, you will have to sweep him from these Charge Office floors. Arrest me, arrest me.'

She was arrested.

And this is how
Mainin
'Juliana spent three of Rhodesia's dying days at Salisbury Remand Prison.

Sekuru
Lazarus was wrong: the new Prime Minister was not Joshua Nkomo after all. After the results were announced, the people on our street crowded into our neighbour's house to watch Prime Minister Robert Mugabe on television. He said it was a time for reconciliation, for turning swords into ploughshares. He said we should reach out our hands in friendship so that black and white could work together to build the new country. Perhaps Mr Vaswani, though neither black nor white, watched the Prime Minister's address too, because two weeks
later, he sent Timothy to tell
Mainin
'Juliana that she could have her job back if she wanted it.

‘
Ende futi Mu
India thinks he is funny,' she said after her first day back in the shop. ‘He is now saying to people that if they steal, he will set me on them. She will beat you like she beat me, he says.'

It took her another three years to achieve her dream, but eventually,
Mainin
'Juliana got a job as a typist at the Ministry of Employment Creation. Mr Vaswani was there with his wife, clapping beside Timothy,
Sekuru
Lazarus, my grandmother, my parents and Danai and me when
Mainin
'Juliana received her secretarial diploma.

‘No room for layabouts in this world,' he said again to Danai and me. ‘See how hard your auntie works.'

We continued to remind
Mainin
'Juliana about the day she punched Mr Vaswani. Even after she married, and put violence behind her as a staunch pillar of the Anointed Church of the Sacred Lamb, she never quite shook off the reaches of the past, so that even her husband used the incident to cajole their children into behaving. ‘Your mother is a boxer,' he said. ‘She will deck you like she decked that Indian.'

Mr Vaswani became as much a part of her children's
lives as he had been a part of ours. She took them to the shop like she had taken us, only she went as a valued customer the week before the school term. She often came back complaining that Mr Vaswani was getting soft in his old age. ‘It is bad management practice to give so many freedoms to employees,' she said.

When she died, Mr Vaswani came to her funeral. He sat with the men of the family while the women whispered his name. When the mourning became too heavy, we laughed at the many ridiculous episodes of her life. We asked one of the family daughters-in-law to imitate the actions of the deceased. Her fist punched the air and the room rang with our laughter as she acted out, without prompting, the right hook that
Mainin
'Juliana gave to Mr Vaswani.

The Cracked, Pink Lips of Rosie's Bridegroom

T
he wedding guests look upon the cracked, pink lips of Rosie's bridegroom. They look at Rosie's own lips that owe their reddish pinkness to artifice, they think, and not disease. Can Rosie see what they see, they wonder, that her newly made husband's sickness screams out its presence from every pore? Disease flourishes in the slipperiness of his tufted hair; it is alive in the darkening skin, in the whites of the eyes whiter than nature intended, in the violently pink-red lips, the blood beneath fighting to erupt through the broken skin.

He smiles often, Rosie's bridegroom. He smiles when a drunken aunt entertains the guests with a dance that, outside this celebration of sanctioned fornication, could be called obscene. He smiles when an uncle based in Manchester, England, calls on the mobile telephone of his son and sends his congratulations across nine thousand kilometres shortened
by Vodafone on his end and Econet on the other. His smile broadens as the son tells the master of ceremonies that the uncle pledges two hundred pounds as a wedding gift; the smile becomes broader still when the master of ceremonies announces that the gift is worth two hundred million dollars on Harare's parallel market. He smiles and smiles and smiles and his smile reveals the heightened colour of his gums.

The wedding guests sit in the rented marquee from Rooney's. It is resplendent in the wedding colours chosen by Rosie, cream and buttermilk, with gold to provide the contrast. They chew rice and chicken on the bone and wash it down with mouthfuls of bottled fizzy drinks, beer and an intensive colloquy on Rosie's bridegroom's reputation.

This is his second marriage, everyone knows.

He buried one wife already, even Rosie knows.

What Rosie doesn't know: he also buried two girlfriends, possibly more.

The evidentiary weight of his appearance, circumstantial in isolation, is corroborated not only by the death of one wife and two girlfriends, but by other incidents in the life of Rosie's bridegroom.

For instance
: it is known that he was often in the company of Mercy, now deceased, formerly of Glen View Three, notorious Mercy with men from here to Kuwadzana.

Another thing
: he drank nightly at the illegal she-been at
Mai
Tatenda's house, with
Mai
Tatenda who has one Tatenda and no
Baba
Tatenda,
Mai
Tatenda who provided her clients with home comforts and then some,
Mai
Tatenda who was seen only last week, just skin and bones, coughing-coughing and shivering in this sweltering December. One doesn't want to be unkind of course, they say, but that is what happens to whores who wrap their legs around men that are not their husbands.

And finally, incontrovertibly
: Rosie's bridegroom's car was seen parked outside the house of a prophet who lives in Muhacha Crescent in Warren Park, he of the hands that can drive out the devil Satan who has chosen to appear as an incurable virus in their midst. This prophet has placed an advert in all the newspapers. He responded to that advert, Rosie's new husband, he must have, for his car, the silver Toyota Camry that was always in front of
Mai
Tatenda's house, was seen outside the house of the prophet.

‘Is any Sick among You,' the advert says, ‘Let him call for the Elders of the Church; and let them Pray over him, Anointing him with Oil in the Name of the Lord. And the Prayer of Faith shall save the sick, JAMES 5:14–15. Jesus of Nazareth Saves,' the advert says. ‘Come to have His healing Hands placed upon your Troubled Hearts. All Illnesses Cured. For
Nothing Is Too Hard for Yahweh, GENESIS 18:14.'

There is but one disease that drives men to turn their Toyota Camrys, their Mercedes Benzes, Pajeros, BMWs in the direction of Warren Park. There is only one illness that pushes both the well-wheeled and un-wheeled to seek out the prophet. It is the big disease with the little name, the sickness that no one dies of, the disease whose real name is unspoken, the sickness that speaks its presence through the pink redness of lips, the slipperiness of hair, through the whites of the eyes whiter than nature intended.

They are gifted with prophecy, the wedding guests, they look at Rosie's bridegroom's lips and in them see Rosie's fate. She will die first, of course, for that is the pattern, the woman first, and then the man. The woman first, leaving the man to marry again, to marry another woman who will also die first. They will keen loudly at Rosie's wake; they will fall into each other's arms. Their first tears shed, they will talk of the manner of her death.

In the public spaces they will say: She just fell sick. Just like that, no warning, nothing. She woke up in the morning; she prepared food for the family. Around eleven she said: My head, my head. And by the time she should have cooked the supper, she was gone. So quickly, they will say. No one can comprehend the speed with which it happened. It burdens
the heart, they will say. Where have you heard that a person dies from a headache?

But in the dark corners away from the public spaces they will say:
Haiwa
, we knew all along. Her death was there in the bright pink lips of her bridegroom, how far did she think it could go? Remember the first wife, remember Mercy, remember
Mai
Tatenda, remember the two girlfriends, possibly more? How far did she think it would go?

But that day is still far, it is not here, it is not now. Here and now, the wedding guests clap and cheer and sneer as Rosie dances with her new husband. They pass rice and chicken through their own reddened mouths, and complain that there is not enough to eat, not enough to drink. The master of ceremonies cries
enko, enko
, and the wedding guests dance.