The Death of Rex Nhongo (19 page)

P
atson found Gilbert at the car. Kneeling on the driver's side, he was reaching across the handbrake to the small drawer under the passenger seat where they kept the wheel wrench.

Patson asked him what he was doing.

Gilbert sat back on his haunches, then backed out of the car. The strain such simple movements put on his injuries twisted his face into a grimace. He was holding an ancient, battered paperback. “My book,” he said. “I'm going to take out the car. Earn some money.”

“Now?”

“Why not?”

Patson told him that he'd had an excellent night, that Gilbert could wait until he was fully recovered, that there was no need.

“No need to earn money?” Gilbert said.

Patson sighed. He was too tired for this. He took out his cigarettes. Along with the Mazoe, he'd bought a whole pack of Pacifics—takings had been that good. He unwrapped the cellophane and offered them to Gilbert. This was a first and Gilbert was momentarily hesitant, confused by the implication of the gesture—doesn't everyone know, after all, that men bond over minor iniquity? He took the packet and extracted a cigarette. Both men lit up.

Patson said that Fadzai had told him about the argument with Bessie.

Gilbert exhaled ruefully—so this was the agenda. He remarked that it was just one of those things and, respectfully, it was between him and his wife.

Patson nodded: of course. He nodded some more. He dragged on his cigarette. He let the pause linger. He said, “Of course. However, in this instance, it is my business, too, because you are staying in my house.”

Gilbert said nothing. He smoked.

Patson said that naturally Gilbert was angry, but it would pass and there was no value in taking it out on the rest of the family, his wife least of all. “How often do you see her—once every two weeks? Those should be happy times. You must take comfort in your wife.”

Gilbert smoked.

Patson said that, unlike himself, Gilbert was still a young man, and that youth was both blessing and curse. “You believe you can improve your situation.”

Gilbert exhaled. “You say that like it is a bad thing.”

“It is what I said—a blessing and a curse.”

“So you want me to think it is not possible to get the things I want? You want me not even to hope?”

Patson dropped his head a moment and drew a rough semi-circle in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. “It is hope that causes most problems,” he said.

Gilbert shook his head. He flicked his cigarette, even though it was only half finished. It was an act of defiance. He said, “My fate is my own. I married my wife. Our daughter was born. She came to Harare. I came to Harare. You allowed me to stay. I have worked hard. These were my choices. If I cannot hope to improve the situation for my family, what am I doing?”

Patson stared at his brother-in-law. He didn't know what to say. He was foundering. He was just so tired; too tired. For some reason, he glanced over his shoulder and found Fadzai watching them from the doorway. He must have sensed she was there, or at some level known that she wouldn't be able to resist verifying the conversation was indeed happening. He wondered what his wife thought he was saying. If he could guess, he'd have said it. He'd have said anything to conclude this conversation and be free to lie down. He dropped his eyes to his feet once again. He added a straight line to the parabola to make a P. Then he marked an A and a T, before scrubbing out the letters with the sole of his shoe. Eventually he murmured, “I don't know. I try to find joy in small moments.”

“Like what?”

Patson made a low, gruff noise, somewhere between laughter and protest. “I'm not sure I can think just like that. There are many moments.” He paused. “When I watch Chabarwa play the cornet at New Vision,” he said. Then, quickly, to counter a brief surge of embarrassment, “When one of the guys at the rank tells a joke; my wife; hot food; even a cigarette. All these things.”

Gilbert was staring at him, almost as if he'd never seen him before. Patson was suddenly uncomfortable. Had he indeed said something foolish? But Gilbert's eyes held a near maniacal ser­iousness that forced Patson to look away.

“What about the times in between?” Gilbert asked.

“What do you mean?”

“In between these
moments of joy
…”

Patson shrugged. “I don't know. I am not a thinker. I am a worker. After a certain age, that is what a man does—he works. Otherwise…”

Gilbert interrupted by lifting his paperback to shoulder height and, momentarily and preposterously, his brother-in-law thought he might be about to clap him around the head. But, instead, Gilbert simply brandished the book at him, eyes flashing. “‘Our labor preserves us from three great evils—weariness, vice and want.'”

“What are you talking about?”

“That is what he says. In this book.”

“Who?”

“The writer.”

“Who is this writer?”

“Voltaire,” Gilbert said, checking the cover as if he needed to remind himself. “He was a Frenchman. Hundreds of years ago. You see? Nothing changes.”

Patson, utterly befuddled, nodded. “Weariness?” he said.

The conversation appeared to be over. Where Gilbert had been morose and angry, he now seemed energized. Patson didn't know why and he was too weary to consider it. He left Gilbert two more cigarettes and returned to the house. Fadzai was waiting for him. She asked, “Is everything resolved?”

“It is resolved.”

“What did you say?”

“It is resolved. Everything is OK.”

Fadzai kissed his cheek, resting her hand on his shoulder. It was an intimate, tender moment and Patson could smell his wife and, despite the exhaustion, feel the blood hot in his face and penis. This was, he thought, one of the moments he had told Gilbert about and he wondered if he would ever grow too old to feel enlivened like this.

Fadzai said, “You must sleep.” And she went into the bedroom and prepared the bed for him lovingly.

Gilbert went to Bessie. He apologized for what he'd said. Initially, Bessie was unreceptive, but he was so animated, so sure of himself, that his very manner trampled her reservations. He was talking in abstractions. He said things like, “I will not fight a war I cannot win.” And “I have mistaken hope for joy.” He said, “I know what we must do.”

And Bessie, who had never imagined herself joyful and considered hope, at least in abstraction, a fatuous luxury, didn't ask what he was talking about, but only, “What must we do?”

“Go home,” Gilbert said.

“Home?”

“Mubayira.” He held both her hands briefly.

She thought he would kiss her, but he didn't. Instead, he smiled brightly and said, “I will go to work. We still need money.” She smiled too and patted him amicably on the elbow, even though she now felt an acute if nebulous concern.

Alone at the car, Gilbert lit one of Patson's cigarettes. He knew he was not supposed to smoke in the car, but sudden certainty often prefaces recklessness, especially in young men. He slid himself behind the wheel, cigarette in hand. He leaned over to the passenger side and opened the small drawer beneath the seat. He looked at the gun that he'd taken from the bedroom and stashed earlier. He knew now that he wouldn't use it. Even if he saw Castro or the Chipangano guy who'd stolen his shoes, he wouldn't use it. But there was no harm in keeping it there. Just in case.

I
t was a typical day at the clinic, as busy as it was unproductive. In the morning, for example, Jerry saw a middle-aged woman brought in by her husband. She was suffering acute joint pain. Upon examining her, Jerry discovered a distended abdomen, and gentle palpation revealed a knotty growth approximately the size of a tennis ball, just below the transpyloric plane, most likely on her pancreas. He assumed it was cancerous and terminal. His only doubt was because of the size of the tumor and the fact she was still alive. He had never before come across a tumor that had been allowed to grow gleefully unchecked for so long.

In the UK, cancer was a drug war, a beating back on several fronts in the battlefield of the body. Here it was a walkover. The woman needed a scan she couldn't afford followed by treatment she couldn't afford followed, inevitably, by death.

He asked her husband why it had taken so long to seek medical help. The question came out sharper than he'd intended and the man looked shaken and terrified. He replied that they had been to Outpatients at Parirenyatwa the previous month. He said that his wife had been given some pills that had helped somewhat but were now finished, so they were hoping for a renewed prescription. He passed Jerry a large medicine bottle and Jerry read its label. It was high-dosage diclofenac.

Jerry said, “I see.” Then, “Of course.” He went to the clinic's small medicine cabinet and refilled the bottle. He carefully totted the number of pills, so he knew how much he would have to pay for the anti-inflammatories. His action was both illegal and immoral, but it was also, he considered, indisputably the right thing to do. He had never before experienced circumstances that so frequently required him to square that and other circles.

When the man asked how much the drugs would cost, Jerry waved him away with a reflexive smile of generosity. The effusive, humble gratitude of the man and his dying wife made Jerry briefly think he might cry.

In the afternoon, the power was cut off. This was unusual for a Tuesday, but everyone knew the schedule for load-shedding was euphemistically described as “a guideline.” The clinic would need the generator to power lighting and, especially, the borehole pump. However, Jerry found that they were out of petrol, so he had to dispatch Bongai, the receptionist, to the nearest garage with a container and twenty bucks from his own wallet. The patients sat and waited in resigned silence.

At one point, Tangwerai emerged from his office, stood next to the queue and lifted his face to the sky ruminatively, as if considering a prospective investment. Then he announced, to nobody in particular, “The rains, they are late this year,” before specifically addressing a young man in the queue: “Do you think they will come soon?”

“I think so,” the young man replied.

Tangwerai nodded as if reassured and headed back inside. This was, Jerry thought, the doctor's way of rallying spirits—of saying, “I am here and I am waiting too”—and he admired him for his subtlety.

He caught Tangwerai by the arm. He said, “The light's OK. Maybe we could see a few—you know, anything that's not acute?”

“With no water?”

Jerry shook his head, frustrated. “We should have a water tank,” he said. “Ten thousand liters. For when there's no power.”

“You're right, we should have a tank.” Tangwerai looked at him with the hint of a smile peeping from between the lapels of his oversized suit. “Will you buy us a tank, Jerry?”

At some or other recent expat do, Jerry had found himself describing his role at the clinic, a little drunk, to Derek Sedelski, the cherubic American governance expert. “I feel a bit like that Dutch kid,” he said. “You know, the one who stuck his finger in a dam.” But that was a lousy metaphor, because at least the Dutch kid, however temporarily, had stemmed the flow.

Increasingly, Jerry had no idea what he was doing here: here at this clinic, here in Zimbabwe. He had wanted to work, to be useful, to play a small part next to April's larger part in the UK's altogether grander scheme to save Zimbabwe from itself. But now April was only pushing paper, complaining about pushing paper and complaining about Jerry. And Jerry was paying for painkillers for the terminally ill. Jerry was no longer sure whether Zimbabwe could be saved, required saving or, indeed, wanted it. But the one thing he knew for sure was this: if there was any saving to be done, he wasn't the man for the job.

Jerry came to work only to have a reason to leave the house and, perhaps, collect horror stories that might have capital back in the UK. He was in danger of becoming everything he'd sworn he'd never be: a man of wide and interesting experience and dull and narrow mind, possessed of a dazed, bitter, bewildered, reflexive certainty; just another expat.

By the end of the day, Jerry resigned himself to resignation, although exactly how one resigned when not actually employed in the first place was something of a comedic paradox that spoke volumes about his situation. He imagined suggesting a month's “notice” period, so that at least the clinic could get used to the idea of losing a nurse and, arguably more importantly, his daily contributions to transport, drugs and fuel.

When Tangwerai called him into his office, therefore, Jerry assumed the young doctor had read his mind. Tangwerai had two beers on his desk. He opened the first with the other and the second with his teeth. He offered one to Jerry and they clinked glass. Tangwerai said, “Your good health,” before swigging deep. “I want to thank you, Jerry,” he said. “You have been a godsend to us and I much appreciate your work and commitment.”

“No,” Jerry said. “Really.” And he nodded reciprocal gratitude before taking a drink of his own.

“The clinic is to shut down,” Tangwerai said.

“I'm sorry?”

“Shut down. At the end of the month, we will shut down.”

“What?”

“Our funding has been discontinued,” Tangwerai said. Then, off Jerry's bewildered silence, “Apparently it came from a budget for crisis alleviation. Apparently there is no longer a crisis. And, with the current political situation, donor policy is not to commit to Zimbabwe in the medium term. After all, we are a pariah state.”

Jerry stared at the doctor. Whatever his personal feelings, he couldn't stop the tide of indignation rising in his throat. He made an involuntary noise. He said, “That's ridiculous!”

Tangwerai returned the stare, bottle paused halfway to his mouth. “Of course it's ridiculous,” he said. “It is all ridiculous.”

“And our patients?” Jerry spluttered.

“Our patients will go somewhere else.”

“Where? Where will they go?”

Tangwerai drank. He put the bottle on the table. “Somewhere else,” he said quietly.

Jerry nodded. He gathered his thoughts. Why was he so outraged? Why did he care? It made no difference to be outraged. It made no difference to care. “And you?”

Tangwerai smiled. “I will be OK. I'll go somewhere else too. I am taking Bradford to the UK. I have a place at the University of Sussex for a PhD: ‘Community Health Initiatives in Prevention of Tropical Disease'…or, as we call it in this part of the world, ‘disease.'”

“Right.”

The doctor raised his drink. He said, “Don't look so worried, Jerry. Let's toast the future, whatever it may bring.” They clinked again. “The future,” Tangwerai said.

And Jerry joined in: “The future.”