“Yes, I’ll tell her. I’ll make sure she hears everything.” The young man smiles, keeping your hostelmate’s hand in his.
“Sisi, you have heard them, haven’t you?” he tells her.
When Gertrude stands shivering, head bowed, and does not answer, a builder calls in a voice loud with disgust, “Now that you’re decent, why don’t you go in?”
Grief mounts Gertrude’s face. Another urchin lobs a plastic bottle at the combi in a halfhearted gesture, as Gertrude clambers into it.
“Iwe! Do you know whose combi this is? What I’ll do if I catch you?” the driver hollers at the youngster.
The boy darts away, teeth shining, holding the loops that bob from his ragged shorts away from his knees. The stone rolls out of your hand.
CHAPTER 3
That evening it is as though the hostel has folded its arms more tightly against you. You feel this the minute you walk into the dining room and see Gertrude. She is sitting at her group’s table, where the young women talk about the latest lipsticks and vie with each other to be the best loved of or worst abused by their respective boyfriends. You never sit at their table.
Gertrude’s face is like the relief maps you pored over at school in geography classes. Hills and riverbeds are carved out of gashes and bruises, the imprints of feet, some bare, some shod, some booted. Evening light drips shadows onto her skin, thickening the knots of swelling, deepening lacerations.
Isabel passes the back of a finger across Gertrude’s cheek, delicately, with such care that surely she touches only the hairs on the other woman’s face. Gertrude winces and grasps Isabel’s wrists; even this gentle touch is too much. They sit for a while, hand in hand. The five forget pale yellow custard dripping over rich brown pudding in dishes before them.
Your people say: you don’t lose your appetite over another person’s problems. Knowing this, you are impatient to sit down to your meal. You edge toward the white girls who sit further in, closer to the buffet tables. They chatter amongst themselves. They dribble stock cube gravy over slices of pot roast beef and boiled potatoes. Your hostelmate and her companions lift their chins at you as you pass, tilting their heads to one side as though they are a single woman.
When you are several steps away they turn to each other. They suck air in through their teeth in harsh hisses.
Five.
This is your thought.
Against a market. Five. Against a city, a nation. A planet. Women. Five. What do they think they can achieve? They can hiss as much as they wish.
Ten eyes stare you down as you walk back past, your tray laden with food. You sit alone, letting them see your profile to prove their eyes cannot touch you. When they leave, you return to the buffet table, making sure to walk slowly. Onto your plate you load more meat and potatoes, and another double portion of pudding. You pass your hostelmates’ empty table. There are smears of blood where Gertrude’s arm rested.
Chew and swallow; chew and swallow. You do this until the bell rings for the end of dinner. Waiters in khaki overalls cover up chafing dishes. They stack plates and haul them away. A young man stands sentry beside the hall door to let the last diners out and stop late arrivals from entering. You smile at the youth briefly, then work a piece of gristle stuck between your teeth back and forth with your tongue.
“Manheru! Good evening, good evening, Auntie,” he nods respectfully, holding the door wide for you.
“And greet your family, too. Everyone at home,” you say, wishing him a peaceful evening.
The youth’s smile widens, as he promises to deliver the message.
You tread gently across the foyer in order not to disturb Mrs. May. You sigh with relief when her head remains bent over her crossword puzzle.
“Is that what you do,” you say, stopping outside your room.
You don’t bother to put a question mark into your voice. Why should you put a question mark anywhere? So many things have happened today and no one has asked you anything. Besides, what you know is this: you did not want to do what you did at the market. You did not want all that to happen, nor did anyone else. No one wanted it. It is just something that took place like that, like a moment of madness.
“So now you’re standing here to ambush me,” you say to Isabel.
She is waiting for you in the shadow of a pillar. Your lips part in a parody of a smile. You like the fact that the young woman wants something from you. This grants you two powers. Your first power arises from her desire. You can laugh at a woman who wants something, as you watch her run here and there to obtain it. The other power, which trickles down from the first, is your right to refuse her.
“We could report you,” Isabel says in a low, trembling voice. “She is in so much pain. Groaning! This isn’t nothing-nothing. You must pay for a taxi. We are taking her to the hospital.”
Down the hall, Gertrude opens her door. She calls to Isabel to leave it.
“If anything happens, when her relatives come asking, you’ll have to pay much more. In damages,” Isabel threatens.
“It’s all right now. Leave that one, Bella. Rachel gave me Panadol,” Gertrude says.
“Hm-hm!” you sniff, pulling your door key from your pocket. “What’s wrong with you? Get away! Why are you standing there like that, as if there’s anything to speak of? Who told you I am responsible?”
The following day you apologize to Mrs. May for having bungled the interview with Widow Riley. You ask the matron to save you each day’s Clarion so that you can search through the smalls for a room.
The matron agrees. She pushes the rolled up paper into the corner of the reception desk every evening. You make sure you find it quickly to prevent other inhabitants from taking it.
“Big room with God-fearing widow.”
The announcement drifts into focus a few days later.
“In large, attractive, well-kept house. For sober, single, God-fearing young gentleman.”
You propose a bargain concerning your gender to God and call it praying.
In the phone booth you throw the fact that you are unemployed and the number of decades you have walked the earth into your plea as you dial the number given.
“I have relatives who speak like you,” the widow says after a couple of minutes of conversation. With that, she asks where you come from.
“From the mountains,” you say. “Manicaland. Mutare.” It is the truth and for once the truth seems to be the right answer.
On the day of the meeting you find the property and rattle the gate. It is a long time before the widow comes out. Even then, the first thing you register is her voice.
“Mwakanaka! Mwakanaka, Mambo Jesu! You are good, you are good, King Jesus,” roars a ferocious alto.
The sun glares at you off what looks like millions of teeth. They are too large and too pointed. You smile, smothering an instinct to flee. The widow swings the gate open and gestures you in.
“Good afternoon! I am so glad, so glad so glad you like my house,” your prospective landlady declares.
Her eyes slide to the bare fingers at the end of your handshake. You twist them together behind your back, wishing you’d had the foresight to purchase a fake wedding ring down at the market.
The woman bends down to slide the bolt of the tall wrought iron gate back into the earth. It is her second exertion in a few minutes. When she straightens up, sweat pops out on her nose and slides from beneath her green and purple Nigerian-style headdress. She fans herself. A herd of rhinoceroses lumber round her index finger on a thick gold band. Beside it, on the middle digit, a cumbrous emerald glitters. A two-ring matrimonial set bulges large but dull from the fourth finger of her other hand. Crud is caked in the crevices of her jewellery. All of it needs cleaning.
“Yes, this is so wonderful, that you telephoned and now you are here,” the widow says. She sails up the drive. “I have to talk to people carefully on the phone and I have to know where they come from. You cannot trust anything anyone says today.”
She moves slowly on fragile-looking pointed sandals, the fashion dictated by Nollywood television. You realize you are in danger of overtaking her. You adjust your stride to keep yourself half a pace behind.
“You have heard, haven’t you, these are the End Days,” your prospective landlady remarks. “All the big prophets are saying it. Yes, the time has come, because now, these dreadful days we are living, do you receive when you give? Never. You lose everything. You are left with nothing after the giving.”
You open your mouth and close it again, understanding with some relief that your response is irrelevant.
“And me, even though I am my husband’s widow,” your companion jabbers on, “you can’t imagine what people come here saying. That they want to work or want somewhere to live. Just so they can find out what I have and make a plan to steal it. These people are using the intelligence God gave them not to multiply, but to reduce the little bit VaManyanga left me. I am trying to multiply, to make it bigger, just as the Bible says it must be when the master leaves. But those, they want everything I have to be smaller.”
By now your breathing is shallow. You swallow saliva, suddenly bitter. You realize you are afraid of her. You do not know why. You laugh silently at yourself for indulging such timidity.
“But you say you have been living in Harare for some time,” she forges ahead. “Miss Sigauke, I did not want to inquire over the phone. No matter how many things the white people brought, some things can’t be said like that. But now you are here, that is good. Tell me, are you working?”
You are sure something has given you away. This in spite of the Lady Dis your cousin sent, paired once more with the skirt and matching top from your past that you wear again to this new interview.
“Working? Of course, yes. I am not one of those who just sits. I’m a worker, a real one,” you respond with only slight hesitation. “Work is something I have known from the time that I was little.”
“That is good,” the widow says.
“After the fields as a child, I was teaching—temporary. But now I have a job at the advertising agency Steers, D’Arcy and MacPedius. You know it. ‘Down in Honey Valley where the finest fresh foods grow.’ That is one of mine. The whole of Zimbabwe knows it.”
You hum the jingle from the old account and wonder who is writing their copy now.
“Oh, you are going there?” your prospective landlady exclaims, recognizing the tune after a moment’s reflection.
“I am between the teaching and something better,” you assure her, as it is clear this is the kind of thing she wants to hear.
“A big company! What will you do there?” the widow inquires. “Will you be doing the singing?”
You smooth the edge off your voice. “The words,” you explain.
“Oh, you sing the words! Like me. At church, I am one of the best leaders in the Praise and Worship team.”
As you approach her house, the widow interrogates you about your morals: Are you married by common law, or any other, or thinking of it? Do you associate with male friends or have one who might wish to visit for some time? This is not permitted. For, contrary to what you will hear from the neighbours, she does not run a brothel.
You mumble something about not going to church much, preferring to pray privately.
Widow Manyanga responds she is a prayer warrior and gives a litany of the people she has healed, the miracles she has wrought. You walk up chipped stone steps, past a rusting security door into a dim verandah.
“Welcome, Miss Sigauke,” the widow says, holding the inner door open. “You have come to the house of a God-fearing family.
“Do you see that, there?” She inclines her head toward the adjacent wall. Pushed up against the bubbled paint is a row of desks. A telephone sits on each desktop.
“That,” the widow begins. She stops with one hand supporting her on a desk, to gather a coil of cable up from the floor. “That is the harvest of revelation.”
Dust crawls up your nostrils. You sneeze, and apologize for your allergy.
“That revelation did not come to me,” the widow goes on. “It was given to VaManyanga. My husband. The late. But it came while I was praying with him. So it was because of me that he had this revelation.”
You nod as you examine your surroundings, and succeed in looking appreciative, since the widow’s circumstances, though dubious, are very much preferable to your own.
“Those phones you are seeing,” volunteers Mrs. Manyanga, “are one of the many things my husband was working on when he left me. VaManyanga was not like other men, never! He did things like this for the university students because after he had the revelation that he was called to do something for someone, he did not know which people to do what thing for. And so I decided to help him. I said, VaManyanga, there are more and more students because the government is educating young people. So isn’t this thing that you have to do, isn’t it something we can do for them? Yes, it was me. I said it!”
You stand in a dim, stuffy hall while your companion searches for the right key on a metal ring the size of a small tambourine, which she removes from the drapes of her West African robe.
The first key sticks.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “Don’t worry about anything. All the doors are perfect. VaManyanga wanted things like that. Everything perfect. That’s what he wanted.”
She inserts another key after a brief hunt. The lock clunks. The heavy teak door swings open.
“I thank God,” your prospective landlady announces, proceeding. Once inside, she pauses to take her bearings. The living room has been locked up for a long time. The air is musty.
“Yes, I do, I thank God,” she declares, “for the gift I had, of a perfect husband.”
The room is crammed with bits and pieces like a secondhand shop: with occasional tables and coffee tables of Tonga, Cape Dutch, Pioneer, and Colonial Railway sleeper origin, as well as a couple of the sort you can purchase by the roadside from vendors and weavers; and on them are all sorts of figurines. Heavy armchairs and sofas, and kudu skin pouffées fill the leftover spaces. Your prospective landlady steadies herself with a hand on a chair back as she threads her way forward.
She motions you to an armchair. The seat emits a mist of dust at contact.
“Yes, it was clear to anyone who has the correct spirit to listen to divine instruction, Miss Sigauke, that something was needed for our young people at the university. How many of them have cars? Most of them don’t. So isn’t it most of them are suffering? Isn’t that the way things are happening?”
The widow lowers herself onto a sofa. You lean toward her; now she has your attention. Suffering! Of those who are no longer children but are not yet old: the widow has defined your own quandary. It is soothing, though at the same time alarming, to have your situation scrutinized, turned this way and that and dissected by someone you do not know.
“Yes, Miss Sigauke, you see,” says the widow, encouraged by your engagement. “Look at yourself. You have a degree.” With that she reverts to the students, encouraging you to consider them in a Christian manner. “Now think about those poor young people. When we go to the Women’s Fellowship meetings it breaks our hearts to hear how many of those girls at the university are just giving in these days. I am sure it was not like that during your time.”
You nod. You believe you are still a virgin, although there are a few incidents you are not sure of: does it count if, overtaken by circumstances, you had inserted a tampon to make sure you did not get pregnant?
“But now,” the widow proceeds with passion, “the young ones at these colleges are lying down all the time, with anyone. So therefore, because the university is just over there, where those girls are, I said to VaManyanga when he had his revelation, I am going to be like a mother to those distressed students. I said, yes, I am going to treat them well.”
Over the course of the interview, you learn that VaManyanga, being involved with many other business interests at the time, wished to beg
in to act on the revelation slowly. On the other hand, Mai Manyanga, who had a few months before been elevated from executive secretary to spouse, did not want to lose a moment. Overflowing with enthusiasm, she immediately put down a concrete slab at the back of the two-hectare property. A bit of corrugated iron nailed onto a short pole was still in the back garden, proclaiming how the concrete slab was destined to become the “SaManyanga Students Village.” At the same time as termite poison was poured into the boarding rooms’ foundations, to ensure that her future tenants could communicate freely, Mai Manyanga began the pay-phone venture, the investment that now lay scrambled in the verandah.
“Ah, those poor students.” Your prospective landlady shakes her head and stares into her recollections.
“What a dreadful blow for them! Did they know my husband was going to be grabbed from them, like that? When there was no problem. None. With anything. We were even going to take the women students. Women like you would have benefited, Miss Sigauke. And they were going to be safe. VaManyanga never ran here, there with anything that lies down! No, that is not what VaManyanga did, like other men, so there was no problem with taking the women students.”
Your palms are now clammy. You are anxious for the interview either to begin properly, or to be over. Your armpits are dripping in the tight costume, yet at the same time you want the widow to go on talking, flinging further and further into the future the moment of decision as to whether you are or are not adequate.
“Ah, yes, you have recognized them,” crows Mai Manyanga.
You dodge outright denial: “It is a beautiful picture.”
The photograph, which you happen to have glanced at, is placed grandly at the centre of the widow’s display cabinet. Around it are half spheres filled with water containing small white flakes and models of the towers found in several European cities.
“Don’t you see it? The resemblance? You must,” the widow says. She waves her jewelled hand to cool herself. “I am sure you see who they are.”