This Mournable Body

“That can happen,” your cousin says.

  “Why yes is said when it is meant no? This is something that it is always difficult for me to understand,” says Leon.

  “That kind of thing can be difficult,” says Nyasha.

  “But here it is done constantly!” Cousin-Brother-in-Law exclaims before he goes out to the kitchen.

  Popping a bottle of sparkling wine, your cousin pours a glass for herself and her husband.

  “It’s not the best way to celebrate your homecoming, Tambu, but really, I got this for myself,” she admits. “You’ve no idea how I missed you. Over all these years. It could have been a more auspicious reunion. But what will you have, not to destroy the equilibrium that’s just been given back to you? Especially since you’ve already tippled. Leon said he was getting you a sundowner.”

  You opt for a sip, explaining that no alcohol passed your lips, that all you did was enjoy a refreshing bath.

  “Take your time about getting back on your feet,” Nyasha says kindly. “Take it from me. Relax as much as you can.”

  You sip your drinks until Leon returns with the sauce. Over the meal, Nyasha talks about her travels, how having completed her A levels she had yearned to return to England but had found the country in which she had spent much of her childhood disappointing and so had opted for continental Europe.

  When you are all done with the meat and potatoes and your cousin is stacking the plates, “Dessert, Mama! We didn’t have it!” Anesu cries.

  “Mama says we can have dessert every time when we have a very special visitor,” your niece explains affably enough, although she looks accusingly in your direction. “Even in the week. When there aren’t any visitors like that, Mama says we can only have dessert at weekends.”

  Hopeful and preoccupied at the same time, the young lady demands, “Auntie Tambudzai, are you special?”

  “Oh, yes, I am,” you reassure your niece. “I’m so special I’m in the beauty spot.”

  “That’s Mama’s!” the girl exclaims as though talking to an uncomprehending schoolchild. She grows cross-eyed with concentration as she examines you.

  “No, Mama,” she decides at last, turning to Nyasha. “Auntie Tambudzai isn’t special. She’s just … just … she’s just …” your niece says as though being “just” is an act as perfidious as sedition.

  “Just human capital,” supplies Cousin-Brother-in-Law with a snort.

  Nyasha stands up and fetches the dessert along with another bottle of wine.

  “Enough, Leon!” she says, popping the latter open. “Capital is an object. Even if it’s a concept. Created by humans. Certain ones. For their own benefit.”

  Your cousin turns to her daughter, suggesting that if the child hugged you, you would cease being “just,” and metamorphose into “special.”

  Your niece hugs you. You endure the closeness, overcoming a desire to pull away from the warm, round body.

  The moment your niece’s arms fall, “Now can I have the ice cream, Mama?” she asks.

  Nyasha scoops a spoon into the plastic carton of Devonshire, declaring it is just as well human beings grow out of cupboard love, while Leon starts fretting about the biggest-piece-of-meat syndrome Fela Kuti sings about spreading to his daughter.

  “We should have stayed in Germany. We should teach the children all guests are equal,” he says, pouring honey over his ice cream. “I do not like this ‘special’ affair. In Germany we do not have this kind of thing. You have it here from the British. From them because they have a class system which is terrible. And their administration system is worse than ours as Germans.”

  Nyasha thinks Leon should give girl children a break, instead of comparing them to man-made abstract nouns or countries.

  “But look at your students,” Cousin-Brother-in-Law says, filling his glass. “The way they behave begins somewhere. It begins when they are children, here in this country. And most of them have not been to foreign lands, where they can see another way of living that can change their thinking. The way they are begins in this place, in this time of history. That is why they are human capital and nothing more. Value has been added to them, but it is not their value for themselves that has been added. That is why you can do nothing with them, Nyasha. It is only value for someone else, for the person who has added it to them.”

  “Yum!” Anesu exclaims, rubbing her stomach with her left hand and running the right around her dessert bowl’s creamy rim.

  “Pana,” she says. “One hand goes on your tummy. See? The other has to go round and round your bowl. Like this, see? Can you?”

  “Oh!” says Panashe, distressed. “I can’t. Ane, I can’t do it!”

  “Finger first,” demonstrates Anesu. “That’s more difficult. On the bowl.”

  The boy’s plastic bowl spins off the table. Nyasha catches it, reflexes intact even after several glasses of wine.

  “Here, Panashe, this is how,” Nyasha says. Standing behind her son, she puts her hands over his until he catches the rhythm. Nyasha grins and tells Panashe he is wonderful.

  “Story time,” Leon booms, looking at his watch. “You two, what do you want me to read for you today?”

  The children kiss their mother good night, hug you, and Leon leads them away, Panashe demanding Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt and Anesu insisting on Das doppelte Lottchen.

  “I should read to them in English,” Nyasha nods to herself, picking up the wine bottle. “But I don’t. And I ought to read to them in Shona. How can I, when I’m still paying for that damn English upbringing? Maybe that’s something you could do, Tambu, when you feel a little better? This is only going to last as long as Leon has his grant. Then I don’t know. I have to find a way to earn something.”

  She does not allow herself to be drawn when you inquire about the workshops, beyond saying she is teaching theory and practice of narrative. She tips the wine bottle up again. It is empty. She departs to make a pot of rooibos tea.

  “Do you ever think of the classes you taught at that school?” she asks on her return.

  Her countenance is shining again, not with the damp glow of alcohol, but in a serene way that emanates from her centre, a place that you do not know whether you possess and believe that if you did, you would find nothing resembling light in it. You fight an impulse to get up and slap your cousin. You become absorbed in sugaring your tea so as not to answer.

  She would like to know about Northlea, she continues, approaching the matter softly-softly as she sips the red-bush infusion. “I have my issues too with some of my young people. It’s not as if issues and young people are altogether unheard of.”

  “Northlea?” you exclaim. “No, I wasn’t there long enough. I didn’t get involved. Things happen everywhere, but no, I didn’t take part in any of that issues stuff. For me it was just the usual duties.”

  “I haven’t told anybody here, I mean Leon, anything about why, well, let’s say the details about, well, your experience,” your cousin says. “I was going to. But then I just told him Mainini Lucia had contacted me, after a friend had contacted her. I couldn’t. Not everything.”

  “OK,” you nod.

  “I just said something about a fight. That got out of hand.”

  “OK,” you say again. You settle back in your seat in relief.

  “You could go and visit the girl,” Nyasha suggests. “Kiri never found out what she’s called. What was her name?”

  “Oh, you! You’re still thinking about that thing,” you reply. Your throat is tight but you give a laugh. “That thing about the newspapers. And you’re calling it an issue? Wasn’t it just people? These things happen!”

  “Issues need to be explored,” your cousin says. “Clarified.”

  You try to laugh again. Your mouth hangs open for a second. You close it because no sound emerges.

  “How about forgetting?” you say. “Sometimes forgetting is better than remembering when nothing can be done.”

  “Forgetting is harder than you think,” says Nya
sha. “Especially when something can be done. And ought to be. It’s a question of choices.”

  “They want to forget, too,” you say. “Because what can they do? Forgetting. That is what they have been doing already for a quarter of a year. If I go, they’ll see me again. They’ll remember all the things they thought then. For their revenge. They might find someone to do something.”

  “Do it,” persists Nyasha. “For your own good. Sometimes your own good is the common good. We are wired for the right act to benefit everyone.”

  Your laugh is a wry guffaw that you break off as, distantly, you hear the hyena cackle. You request another glass of wine. Nyasha brings in another bottle, pops it open, and says it’s the last. Leon returns from reading to the children. He reassures Nyasha that they are asleep. Nyasha puts an arm around his waist and leans against him. You excuse yourself as soon as you have drained your glass and climb back up the stairs. As you get ready for bed you kick a soft mass by the bedside table. It gives to the touch of your foot, emitting a stale, musty odour. It is the bag of mealie meal Christine brought from the village. Your cousin has rescued it from Widow Manyanga’s. You throw it into the back of the closet. Your hand rests on the brass handles again as you figure out a way to rid yourself of the bag the next morning, without anyone noticing.

  CHAPTER 12

  You wake up early, still influenced by ward routine in which an orderly would roll the medication trolley by at dawn. Stretching luxuriously in your three-quarter bed, you listen to kingfishers rattle out their sharp twitters and starlings chatter anxiously. You mull over the previous night’s conversation. What was your cousin’s point in suggesting you apologize for that sad, mad, and foolish incident concerning your pupil? Seeing no sense in revisiting such an unthinkable aberration, you have put it firmly behind you.

  You strive—you believe earnestly—to understand your cousin. First you mull over Nyasha’s initial hesitation to share her house with you. Disappointed by that, you weigh up her reluctance to condemn for you the people whose actions brought you down. She barely suppresses a yawn when you talk about the board women at the hostel whose policies had caused Mrs. May to send you to Widow Riley where you encountered a bad-tempered maid. Her reminiscing about old mission adventures when you find fault with the Manyangas, who wasted all their opportunities, making it impossible for you to continue to lodge with them, magnifies your discouragement. “I wish I could help” is all she says when you fret that before all this were Tracey Stevenson and her staff at Steers et al. Advertising Agency who paid you miserly wages for copy white men put their names to. You observe her all but biting her tongue on several occasions so as not to exclaim impetuously about something or other that you have done or omitted.

  A new idea unfurls within you. For the first time since meeting Nyasha decades ago, you begin to suspect that your cousin does not like you. You are convinced there can be no other reason for her suggesting such a thing as engaging with the Chinembiris on the very same day she brought you into her home. The idea slips under the light duvet and lies down with you when you go to bed; it rises with you each morning.

  To fortify yourself against it all, you remind yourself you have already decided to escape Nyasha’s negligence. You vow to succeed more than anyone in your family has managed, including your uncle and aunt at the mission and your cousin, but you will only depart for this major move when you are ready. After all, you have a right to live in her house as she is not only your cousin, but someone you grew up with as a sister. More importantly, Mainini Lucia, who stands in loco maternis since both your mothers are absent, has ordered the two of you to cohabit.

  You spend a lot of time contemplating how you will launch your next sortie into life when you are well enough. You lie in late enjoying the room, planning the incredible life you have contracted yourself to build. You descend to the kitchen after the family has eaten and left. Nyasha has instructed Mai Taka to engage herself thoroughly in your convalescence. When you appear the help cheerfully prepares for you scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee.

  Your relatives eat early because of the children’s school timetable. One morning, however, a few weeks after your arrival, you roll out of the comfort of bed, put on the dressing gown your cousin first lent then gave you, and go down to find Leon and Nyasha at the table. It is well past the time for all of them to be away at their different tasks. You hesitate in the doorway, assessing the situation, whether it is good or bad and whether, should it be the latter, you want to be part of it. You are about to close the door and retreat softly up the stairs when Nyasha, without looking up, says, “Good morning, Tambu. It’s all right. Come on in if you want to.”

  Retreat being impossible, you return the greeting and proceed.

  Your cousin is slumped forward, her chin in her hands. A bowl of homemade mulberry yogurt, Leon’s speciality, sits ignored in front of her. She usually seats herself so as to avoid viewing the glistening annelids. At this morning’s angle, although she can see them clearly, she does not give the wiggling forms a glance.

  Cousin-Brother-in-Law is leaning back in his chair. His arms are folded over his chest with a touch of defiance. His expression alternates between I-told-you-so and the beginnings of disenchantment.

  Mai Taka turns round as you enter, her weight on one leg. She crushes several worms as she does so. She stares from you to your cousin.

  Resenting Mai Taka’s soundless plea to intervene, you sit down in your usual seat.

  “Good morning, Maiguru. What can I make for you?” Mai Taka says dutifully, turning back to the sink.

  “Scrambled,” you reply.

  You wait. Mai Taka rearranges some dishes in the sink, draws breath sharply, and begins a long, slow limp to the pantry where the tray of eggs is kept.

  Nyasha and Leon look at each other. There is no shine about your cousin today. She looks as though all her energy is being drained away from her to sustain a far-off, raging furnace.

  “You hope for the best. You believe,” says Nyasha, in such a faint voice it is practically a whisper. “But it’s all talk, talk, talk. There can’t be a country that hates women as much as this one.”

  “Yemen,” nods Leon. “Pakistan. Saudi Arabia.”

  Mai Taka returns with two eggs in a bowl. She breaks them and dips in a fork.

  “Go down. Have a rest,” Nyasha says to the help.

  Mai Taka keeps beating the eggs, her face set like clotting blood.

  Nyasha goes over and takes the fork from the woman’s hand.

  “If you get better later on, and you are able, please come back,” she says, holding the fork as if she wants nothing but to return it to the woman.

  “Go on. It’s all right,” she encourages, in a voice that says a day without backup is more than she wishes to deal with.

  Refusing to move, “No, no, it is OK, Mha-mha,” Mai Taka says.

  “Go!” Nyasha repeats, unscrewing a bottle of cooking oil. She pours a thin short stream into a frying pan.

  “You can give it to me,” Mai Taka says without enthusiasm.

  Fat starts to smoke in the frying pan.

  You observe all this, watching in the way you do when you do not want to be involved, mentally placing wagers with yourself concerning what will happen, weighing the consequences of each possible outcome against your wish, which at this moment is breakfast.

  As unobtrusively as possible, you pour cereal into your bowl.

  Mai Taka, her injury much more pronounced now, hobbles back to the sink and recommences cleaning the dishes.

  “Shall I drive you down, Mai Taka, if it’s too difficult for you to walk?” says Leon.

  “Fine, sir, Ba’Anesu, I’m going now,” Mai Taka agrees meekly, having interpreted the offer as an order. “I can manage. See, it is not all that bad!”

  She limps out through the stable door. Her scarfed head bobs past the kitchen window as she shuffles down to the servants’ quarters.

  “There have to be alternatives,”
says Nyasha.

  Pressing her lips together, she gives the scrambled eggs a hefty stir.

  You spoon up the last of the cereal from your bowl and hold up your breakfast plate.

  “Sometimes I think if I had known, I wouldn’t have come back here!”

  Nyasha tips the rest of your breakfast into your plate, then sinks back into her seat and rests her chin upon the heels of her hands once more.

  “We can go back to Germany. If I do not find a job. There we can at least live on social security,” says Cousin-Brother-in-Law.

  “Not coming back is one thing,” says Nyasha through fingers that hide her face. “Giving up and going back is another.”

  “What will you do with the children?” asks Leon. “Do you think I will leave them here? Where I come from the state pays you to look after your little ones. That is the one good achievement of capital!”

  “Whatever,” says Nyasha, refusing to engage.

  “So that’s it,” says Leon. His voice is calm but his face changes colour the way the faces of white people do when they grow angry.

  You commiserate with Cousin-Brother-in-Law, confident Nyasha must have dragged him to your hopeless country in the first place. Aversion to your cousin’s stubbornness grows. You chew your eggs, the longing you quietly harbour to leave the house, the country, the continent burgeoning in your heart as you suspect it does also in Cousin-Brother-in-Law’s. You want to be part of a stable, prosperous nation like his. Each mouthful of breakfast takes too long to chew, because you do not have enough saliva.

  “You want to be away from your children. This makes it all convenient,” Leon says softly. “You will let me go, so you do not have them. Pretending that you are doing something here with this nothing, these workshops and these egotistical young women.”

  Nyasha takes her hands away from her eyes. She looks as though she is going to cry as a result of her old, youthful rage coming back or, if not that, because the last of her energy has been devoured and she is broken.

  “Capital is about scale,” goes on Cousin-Brother-in-Law. “Women like you just haven’t got it. Scale. Because no one wants you to have it. They have to make sure you never do! They don’t want women like that. They want women the way they are now, just something with a shelf life, that ages. Can’t you see there’s nothing about women to interest any kind of capital unless it’s solutions for aging? Botox, liposuction. That’s at one end of the scale. At the other end, all they have to do is keep you being women. Like Mai Taka. The scale of the billionaire or the scale of numbers. Not the scale of Nyasha or Tambudzai,” Cousin-Brother-in-Law says coldly.