The Death of Rex Nhongo (2 page)

P
atson drove small circles around the Avenues. It was a familiar routine. The man in the back didn't say much, just “Left…Left here…Left…” But the driver quickly realized the reason for his passenger's breathlessness: he was almost stupefied with alcohol. Eventually the man said, “This one,” and Patson pulled up to one of the streetwalkers.

The man got out of the car. The negotiations were fast. Patson flexed his fingers. He'd been gripping the steering wheel as if he thought it might save him.

The man returned with the girl. Patson looked at her in the mirror. He'd seen many prostitutes in his cab, but it was always hard to estimate their age: there were too many things you had to see past to hazard a guess—material things, like makeup, but intangible things, too, like all that anger and experience. Patson had one client—a white—who was a regular on these streets. He'd once checked out a prostitute in the headlights and commented, “Young girl, old pussy.” Patson, who was not shocked by much, had been shocked by the grim satisfaction in the
murungu
's voice. Nonetheless, the girl now in his back seat, even in her bravado, looked particularly young: maybe no more than seventeen, the same age as his daughter. Patson thought about Anashe. He thought about her in her school uniform. He thought about the way men looked at her and how she giggled at the stringy boys on TV during
StarBrite
on a Saturday. He caught the man's eye, challenging him in the mirror. “The Belle View,” the man said.

The negotiations continued in the back of the cab. The man was forcing the girl's head into his lap. She was feebly trying to negotiate an extra fee. The man said, “Don't be a fool.” Then there was silence. Patson kept his eyes on the road.

He pulled in outside the Belle View, a lodge that rented by the hour. There was no movement behind him. He sat still with his hands on the wheel. He bit down on his lower lip. He turned off the engine. He could hear the man's breathing. He wished he hadn't turned off the engine. Eventually the man said, “All right!”

The girl got out of the cab first. She took a bottle of water from her handbag, rinsed her mouth and spat. Then she applied lipstick in the side mirror, pulling it outwards for her convenience. She was bending over right next to Patson. She didn't look at him and he didn't look at her.

Patson heard the man buckle his belt. Then he got out, too, and leaned in at the passenger side. He said, “Wait for me.”

Patson nodded without turning his head. He'd already figured out his course of action—play it cool and get away from here as soon as the man was gone. Surely the man was too blazed to remember his face or the name of his cab. He just had to play it cool.

The man slammed the rear door. Patson watched the girl tottering towards the Belle View. There was nothing less glamorous than high heels in Harare dirt. He recalled a time in this very place when he'd seen a prostitute stop and peel a used condom from her stiletto.

Patson had his fingers on the key, but he resisted the temptation to turn it. Instead, he checked the back seat. The man had left his briefcase. He hooted the horn. The man turned and Patson buzzed down the passenger window a crack. He said, “Your briefcase.”

What followed happened too fast for Patson to order it later in his mind. He remembered the girl disappearing into the shadows, the distress of the man's breathing as he reached across the back seat, the sudden awareness that they were not alone, the two men in military fatigues who emerged from the night.

He couldn't tell you who spoke first. Presumably it must have been one of the off-duty soldiers, who thought they'd found a way to a fast buck. He'd heard the rumors of this kind of shakedown from fellow drivers, but until tonight they had been just rumors. He heard, “What do you think you're doing, fat man?” He heard, “Who are you talking to?” He heard, “You think we won't fuck you up?” He heard, “Who do you think you are talking to?” He heard his passenger scrabble in his briefcase, then the gunshots stopped him hearing anything. He saw the two soldiers flee. He saw the man's face in his rearview mirror. He saw the man mouth the word, “Drive.” So he did.

He drove into town. He dropped the man at the Jameson Hotel. Before the man got out, he touched Patson's shoulder and said, “What's your name?”

“Moyo,” Patson lied. “James Moyo.”

“Let me take your number, Moyo,” the man said.

Patson gave him a fake number and watched him key it into his phone. “I am Mr. Mandiveyi,” the man said, and pressed “call.”

Patson pretended to answer. “I've got it,” he said. He hoped the man was too drunk to notice, and he was.

“You're a good man, Moyo,” Mandiveyi said. “I will call you.”

Patson watched his passenger stumble into the Jameson public bar, his briefcase bouncing against his knee.

He went straight home. He'd had enough for the night. He was back in Sunningdale before ten. He told Fadzai what had happened. Her brother Gilbert was there too. Gilbert said, “You're sure the guy was a Cee-ten? How do you know he was a Cee-ten?”

Patson considered his brother-in-law. Gilbert was lately arrived from the family home in Mubayira and he used the urban slang for secret police with affected ease. But his question was ridiculous: Patson had picked up a man from the offices of the Central Intelligence Organization who'd shot at two off-duty soldiers—he wasn't a gardener.

As for Fadzai, she only seemed bothered that her husband had cut work so early—what money had he sacrificed, and could they afford it? Patson was startled both by his wife's lack of concern for his wellbeing and his own surprise at the same: there was surely no experience that would have led him to expect otherwise. But he was too tense to argue the toss and insisted on going to bed.

The next morning, their son, Chabarwa, cleaned the cab as usual. Patson, Fadzai, Gilbert and Anashe were eating their porridge when the twelve-year-old came in carrying the gun he'd found beneath the driver's seat. Fadzai stared at her husband, her eyes round with alarm. Patson said, “Give that to me.”

He took the gun to the bedroom and stowed it in the chest of drawers. When he came back to the main room, he found Gilbert entertaining the two kids with an improbable story of the time he had killed a baboon with a stone. Generally, Patson disapproved of his brother-in-law's fantasies, but today he was grateful for the distraction.

Fadzai was washing the dishes outside. He approached her from behind and kissed her neck. This was typically his way of telling her that, whatever had happened, it would be all right. But she shook him off and plunged her hands into the soapy water. “No, Patson,” she said. “No.”

T
he clinic in Epworth was everything Jerry Jones had feared and, consequently, everything for which he'd hoped—a small brick-under-asbestos building with a tin sign that predated In­dependence and a queue of sick people waiting patiently at its locked door. It was due to open in five minutes, but there was no sign of his contact, Dr. Tangwerai, so Jerry sat in his Land Cruiser listening to some alt country band from Swindon that his brother, Ant, had sent him on iTunes.

Jerry had been in Zimbabwe for three months as a diplomatic spouse. In that time, he'd played more squash, drunk more bad white wine and feigned interest in more despicable people than in the rest of his adult life put together. The plan had always been that he would work, but before they'd left London the conversations with his wife, April, about his status on her debut overseas posting had gone no further than the assumption that his experience would surely be valued in a place like this. He hadn't for a second anticipated that his professional skills might be positively unwelcome. And, if April had seen it coming, she certainly hadn't said so. Her lack of empathy with his frustration remained a bone of contention. She was busy and he understood that. But he wasn't busy. And that was the point.

The first time he entered Likwanda House, the Immigration Office on Nelson Mandela, he'd breezed in full of bonhomie and absolutely confident of his position. His goodwill and his certainty had lasted less than a minute, when faced with a uniformed immigration officer who seemed to find his situation so tiresome that she might nod off at any moment. She sat behind the counter, one arm splayed out to the right, her head resting horizontally on her biceps. She considered his passport from this prone position, holding it up over her eyes with her left hand, like she was reading a paperback on the beach. She blinked so slowly that Jerry wasn't sure whether he should wake her. Eventually she said, “You are on a spousal visa, Mr. Jones.”

“Yes. That's what I said. I want to change it to a working visa.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to work.”

“So why did you not apply for a working visa?”

“Because my wife was transferred by the Foreign Office and we thought it would be easier to sort it out when we got here.”

“I see.” The immigration officer sniffed. “That was a mistake, isn't it?”

“I guess so,” Jerry said.

The woman idly flicked through the pages of his passport. “You have been to China?”

“Yes.”

“What's it like?”

“I don't know. It was a holiday. I was only there two weeks. It was great.” The woman raised her eyebrows. It seemed she wanted more. “But very poor.”

“Poor? What do you mean, poor?” She perked up. She even lifted her head an inch or so off her arm.

“I mean the poverty. Where we went. It's very poor. Lots of people have no money.”

The woman made a small noise in the back of her throat, an exclamation of shock. “I didn't know that,” she said. “There are many Chinese things in Zimbabwe. I thought China is the richest country in the world.”

“It is,” Jerry said, then shook his head. “It's complicated.”

The woman had allowed her head to fall again. “You should have applied for a working visa from your country of origin,” she said.

“Can I do that now?”

“Of course.”

“Can you think of any reason why I wouldn't get it?”

The woman shrugged, in so far as it is possible to shrug with your head resting on your arm. “The decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. What work do you do?”

“I'm a nurse.”

“A nurse?”

“Yes.”

“And you do not think we have nurses in Zimbabwe?”

Jerry had left the Immigration Office feeling discouraged but not defeated. The feelings of defeat came later, after meetings with Tapiwa, the HR fixer at the embassy, and two more visits to Likwanda House over the subsequent month.

At first Tapiwa had appeared almost beatific in her competence. “Don't worry, Jerry,” she said, picking up the phone. “I know a guy.” And Jerry returned to the Immigration Office with an appointment to see a senior official on the fourth floor. When he got there, it seemed that Tapiwa's “guy” was not available after all and he was instead received by another official who, if somewhat less indolent, was no more helpful than the first.

“You see, Mr. Jones,” he said, “you are on a spousal visa that does not entitle you to work.”

“I know,” Jerry said. “So how do I change it?”

“You should have applied for a working visa at the same time as your wife,” the man said.

Jerry reported this conversation back to Tapiwa and she was affronted. She vowed that she would accompany him herself and that would make all the difference. To arrange a suitable time for this took a further three weeks. When it finally happened, Tapiwa engaged in a heated conversation with an immigration officer that Jerry, despite not speaking a word of Shona, had no difficulty in understanding. Eventually, Tapiwa turned to him and said, “He says you should have applied for a working visa at the same time as we processed April's diplomatic papers.”

As it stood now, Jerry's situation was in the hands of a high-ranking official at the embassy who would write a letter mixing indignation and contrition in equal measure to a similarly high-ranking official at Likwanda House. Jerry didn't know whether this letter had yet been written, but he was tired of waiting. Consequently, when Jerry met Godknows Mpofu, the director of a local orphanage, at some terrible embassy-sponsored poetry slam for former street kids, he was only too eager to volunteer his services to Mpofu's friend, Dr. Tangwerai, at the Epworth clinic.

“I just want to do something useful,” Jerry told Mpofu. “It's not about money.”

Mpofu smiled at him ruefully. “Would that we could all say that. I will tell Tangwerai.”

There was a tap on the window of the Land Cruiser. Jerry buzzed it down and turned off the music. He would tell his brother he was unconvinced by the alt country band from Swindon, although perhaps their music wasn't flattered by context. He found himself looking down at a short man wearing spectacles, a suit at least two sizes too large, and carrying a small knapsack. He reached up his hand and Jerry took it. “Tangwerai,” the man said. “Nurse Jones, I presume.”

J
erry got home around seven. It would have been earlier, but he had stopped in Bolero at Newlands for a beer that turned into three. He sat alone. He actively didn't think about his day. In the decade between starting at Addenbrooke's and resigning his last position at St. George's, one thing he'd learned was that a tough day needed to percolate for a few hours.

He fiddled with his phone. He downloaded his email. There was nothing of interest; mostly spam and mail-outs from music websites he subscribed to in the UK and US—Rough Trade and Vinyl Junkies, Seven Inch Special and Tru Folk. He perused these idly. They were somehow incomprehensible, laced with a kind of disingenuous irony that he vaguely recognized but to which, in his current state—of mind and place—he couldn't seem to assign meaning.

He gave up and watched the comings and goings in the bar instead. The clientele was local and male. They were all suited and booted, talking in loud voices and drinking Johnnie Walker Black. He had no idea what any of them might do for a living. This was the conundrum of Harare—all those 4x4s driven by well-to-do men like these with apparently limitless disposable income and yet, so far as Jerry could see, outside mining, government and the NGOs, there were no jobs. If you went over to Msasa, Graniteside or Coventry, the industrial areas were now wastelands of empty factories and warehouses, and the rusting signs of companies long since liquidated or departed. Jerry remembered a comment some guy had made at squash a couple of weeks ago: “Zimbabwe used to manufacture cars. Now it imports paraffin stoves.”

At a nearby table, a handsome man in shirtsleeves pushed to the elbow raised a hand and began to snap his fingers at the waitress. His watch was heavy on his wrist. It could have been a Rolex or Breitling. It could have been a zhing-zhong knock-off. The man caught his eye. Jerry looked away. Surely all these guys couldn't be in mining, government or aid. Surely every one of them (including those with the last three great employers) was into something more or less illegal. They might not be thieves, but Jerry suspected they must be the greasers of the rampant klept­ocracy he'd heard so much about, neck-deep in bribes, kickbacks and God knows what. Belief in the kleptocracy seemed almost religious for white people here—they had rarely witnessed it but discussed it ad nauseam, and those who did have direct experience acquired an almost prophetic reputation.

Jerry checked himself. He dreaded turning into one of the expats he met at embassy functions: sour people with big houses and staff, opulent lifestyles, and unattractive, self-righteous indignation about the injustices of their host country. Jerry had the house, staff and lifestyle—he couldn't afford the self-righteousness. He downed his third beer and stood up.

Subconsciously, Jerry was timing his arrival home to ensure that Theo was already asleep. At the moment, April was never home in time to put their two-year-old son down and Jerry was no good at it. Theo cried for his mother throughout the process and thrashed on his shoulder as Jerry rocked this way and that, singing “Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.” Then Jerry would put him into his cot bed and listen to him scream for half an hour, feeling the destructive cocktail of impotence, pity and resentment. And when April finally got home, he was obliged to lie to her for fear of provoking endless questioning of his parenting skills.

Jerry pulled off Glenara Avenue into the backstreets of Greendale. Without street-lighting or signage, he found himself crawling myopically home, even after three months. He eventually located the house by the yellow bougainvillea that climbed the garden wall, buzzed the electric gate and pulled in. The guard saluted as he drove by. The man was new, just sent on Monday from the security company. What was his name? Something curious and biblical: maybe Cephas, maybe not. He was an old man in a threadbare uniform. Jerry figured he'd be no use in the event of a robbery, but, on the upside, he seemed incapable of orchestrating one himself.

Jerry let himself in by the kitchen door. He found Bessie washing the dishes. Theo was flat to her back, wrapped in a
babu
cloth, just like a local child, his head lolling to the side, a picture of comfort.

“Good evening, sir,” Bessie said.

“Hey, Bessie.” He wondered, briefly, if he appeared drunk. “He's asleep?”

Bessie smiled and looked over her shoulder. “Good as gold,” she said.

Jerry enjoyed the girl copying his idiom and the erroneous lilt her accent lent it. He liked her smile too. There was something appealingly straightforward about it. It was a smile that conveyed nothing but a smile.

Bessie lived in the domestic housing at the back of the plot. She and Joseph, the gardener, each had a bedroom at either side of a small kitchen, with sink and two-plate stove, and a long-drop toilet. Jerry had been into the building just once and had sworn to himself that he'd make improvements. Such an oath, of course, ensured that he was the only one disappointed by his failure to live up to it.

He sometimes wondered what Bessie must make of his and April's complicated life of generators, boreholes, WiMax internet, gas cylinders and other lifestyle equipment that seemed to malfunction on a rotational basis; what, too, of the petty realities of their relationship, surely overheard, which malfunctioned likewise. He didn't think about it too much, however, because it would make him feel both guilty and patronizing. But he knew he never smiled like Bessie.

The girl stowed the last glass in the drainer. She said, “Do you want to take him?”

Jerry was already in the fridge, cracking a beer. “No,” he said. “You take him. You've got the knack.”

He sat in the living room, feet on the coffee table. Bessie reappeared five minutes later. “I am finished, sir.”

“Did you make food?”

“Fish and potatoes in the warmer. Greens are on the stove.”

“Thank you, Bessie,” Jerry said. Then, “I'm sorry I was late. Work…”

“It was your first day at the clinic. How was it?”

“Fine,” he said. “Yeah. You know. Fine.”

She hesitated in the doorway. “My husband has come to Harare, sir,” she said. “I want him to come on Saturday.”

Jerry looked at her. He hadn't known she was married. He didn't know what she was asking him. “Good,” he said. “No problem.”

Bessie smiled that smile. “Thank you, sir. See you tomorrow.”

Jerry locked the kitchen door behind her. He drained his beer. He ate some tepid food because he couldn't be bothered to reheat it. By the time April got home at nearly nine o'clock, he was half asleep on the sofa. When he heard her key, he got up and carried his beer bottle and dirty plate into the kitchen.

April dumped her handbag and laptop on the dining-room table. She sighed. She said, “Did he go down OK?”

“No problem.”

“Did he ask for me?”

“Not really.” Jerry gave his plate a cursory rinse in the sink. He felt his wife's eyes on him. “You know. He misses you. But it was fine.”

“I'm busy at work.”

“I know that. How was your day?”

April sighed again. She did a lot of sighing, these days. She said that her day was fine until about five, when she got a call from a lawyer who claimed to represent a cleaner whom Jeff, her predecessor, had fired just before his departure. The lawyer was, April said, “a war vet” (though whether he'd said as much or she'd simply assumed it, Jerry didn't know). He'd kept her on the phone for an hour of blather until she agreed to a meeting. She'd then spent a further two hours trying to track down Jeff at his new posting in Jakarta to find out exactly what had happened. “It's just a fucking joke,” she concluded. “I'm like some glorified HR manager.”

Jerry said nothing. He'd rather thought that “glorified HR manager” was her job description, more or less, albeit couched in the peculiar ranking system of the Foreign Office.

“I'm going to take a bath,” April said.

“There's food. Do you want me to heat it up?”

“I'm too tired,” she said, and was gone to the bedroom.

Jerry locked the kitchen door again. He checked his email again. Nothing. He opened another beer. He looked in on his son. He couldn't see him in the darkness but he heard his even breathing. He went into the bathroom, which was hot and steamy. April was lying back in the water, eyes closed, her thick curls splayed out like a halo. Jerry loved her hair like that—she looked like Millais's
Ophelia
. He wondered how he would feel if she drowned. Without opening her eyes, April said, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. It was my first day at the clinic today.”

His wife murmured acknowledgment. Then, “Are you drinking?”

Jerry twirled the bottle in his fingertips. “Just a couple of beers.”

She sat up in the bath. She covered her breasts with her arms. She looked at him over her shoulder. “Jesus, Jerry. If you snore tonight, I'll fucking kill you.”