Tata-tah-tah-ta, Tata-tah-tah-ta the marimbas begin again. A girl turns round, stamps her feet, and shakes her buttocks at the visitors. Herr Bachmann extracts his hand from his pocket and throws a ten-deutschmark note into the clearing. Guests are pleased to have something to do. Various bills of small exchangeable denominations flutter onto the sand. Mrs. Samhungu springs at a note and deftly banks it inside her wrap.
Tata-tah-tah-ta the marimbas continue.
“U-u-u! U-u-u!” your mother and the women swell Nyasha’s ululation.
White dust spurts from under your mother’s soles. She plants her feet in the ground like tree trunks. With each of her steps it is as though a living tree is dislodged from the earth.
So your mother dances. The tips of her toes tap down, causing more clouds of dust, and she slides her back foot forward to plant it again.
Herr Bachmann snaps several photographs and then pushes you forward.
“With your mother. With the woman who is your mother,” Herr Bachmann cries, focusing the camera.
“Mother,” your client continues to call. “Madam Mother, move here, please. This one, please, with your daughter.”
Frau Bachmann places a friendly hand on your shoulder and nudges you forward.
Your mother does not miss a beat of planting her feet and wrenching them from the earth as she gathers her strength in her calves and thighs, measures distance with burning eyes, and approaches.
Taken by surprise, Herr Bachmann continues smiling and adjusting his focus for several seconds. Tracey blanches.
“Do this for me, Tambu, please,” your boss whispers.
You take your position for the photograph. Your mother leaps at the same moment.
“I am your picture, me!” your mother shrieks, rolling the camera cord over astonished Herr Bachmann’s head.
“Me, that’s what you think I am. Not a someone, but that I am whatever you want to put in your picture.”
By the time those who want to restrain Mai start to do so, it is too late. Those who prefer to let things be are shaking their heads and at the same time laughing. Christine, Lucia, and Netsai fold their arms and consult each other.
“Well, here I am!” exclaims Mai, “I am your picture. Just see what your picture is doing.”
Round and round her head by its cord Mai twirls the equipment. With a grunt she opens her hand. Away the camera sails, with everyone looking up, following the arc and then gazing down, to see where it lands.
Herr Bachmann has too much decency to grapple a fierce and half-naked woman.
“Eh! What has my camera got to do with you?” he cries sadly.
“She’s got to go,” Tracey breathes into your ear. “I’m sorry, Tambu, she just has to.”
Your mother gazes in exultation at the camera dangling from the mango tree.
Propelled by satisfaction at the damage she has caused, Mai jumps toward Herr and Frau Bachmann.
“How dare you,” she screams, although the visitors cannot understand her. “You want to laugh at my child when you are back home because her mother is a naked old woman!”
“She’s got to go,” your boss repeats.
Babamukuru starts out of his wheelchair and stands teetering, holding on to the armrest. Maiguru bursts into tears, for Babamukuru has not stood up since Independence. Your father, who has not taken an interest in anything, remains seated on the stairs to Babamukuru’s new house.
“Don’t put her together with me. No, don’t put her together with her mother,” Mai wails and falls onto the sand, biting grit.
You think you are obeying your boss’s instructions. You approach your mother to lead her away. When you reach her, grief wells past the banks of a pale purple pool and rushes into your throat. You will it back. It wraps around your heart and constricts to stop it. Your heart refuses to be stopped. It grows and grows. You have no strength to lift her, because your tears are falling onto your mother’s skin. Your heart bursts. You burst with it and fall down next to your mother.
Herr Bachmann stares at the mango tree. The camera swings backward and forward. It drops from the slender branch where it is caught, to lodge in a fork between two others.
You land, first on your knees, then in a heap, across Mai’s naked torso. You caress her cheek with the back of your hand and whisper to her that everything is all wrong but it shall soon be right, as though you are speaking to a baby. Mai does not respond. It does not matter now. You are not expecting an answer. She is the child and you are the mother.
Herr Bachmann discovers a long stick. A small boy is hoisted onto distant cousin Takesure’s shoulders. With one or two pokes, the camera is retrieved and returned to its owner.
You try to gather Mai up. She resists. Mai Samhungu calls to her to get up and leave the yard. When she does not, the chairwoman orders a young woman to pick up Mai’s blouse and cover Mai’s shoulders with it.
“Now you have found a cloth for me, now, Tambudzai,” Mai wails, when she is wrapped in the blouse. She falls back in another faint.
Tracey comes over. Anger, disappointment, and embarrassment vibrate from each of her pores.
“Sort this out, Tambudzai.”
You stand up and dust off your knees.
The Women’s Club, having donned green and purple blouses and wraps, swarm around your mother, pushing you out of their circle. The vice treasurer and the secretary come and help Mai to her feet. You stop hurrying over to the Bachmanns and hasten back. You stretch out your hand. You mother recoils.
“Leave her,” the secretary tells you. “Wait until the shock is over and she is better.”
You watch as the two women lead Mai to the old house. Mai disappears through the door. You turn back to your tasks.
You apologize to Herr Bachmann on Mai’s behalf, and your own, for not warning him about the photograph. You smile as you speak, and assure the Bachmanns, who are feeling very bad, that your mother is prone to hysteria and will recover soon.
“I am sorry too. I thought it would be nice. Vhy did I not think of it? Vhy did I not think of it?” Herr Bachmann says.
Christine, Lucia, and Netsai, with the help of several of the more sober men, usher the villagers away. The Women’s Club joins in. You drift on the edges of groups, keeping clear of strangers and nodding at family members, not daring to speak. Once the yard is fairly empty, Lucia has a word with Tracey. When they finish nodding their heads and shaking them and stroking their chins, they shake hands. This Lucia and Tracey follow with a joint announcement that festivities at the homestead are over for the day. However, those tourists who wish to will be transported to magrosa. Mai Samhungu has succeeded in a very short time in organizing for a ghetto blaster to be set up at the shops to play Chiwoniso Maraire and Oliver Mutukudzi. An impromptu disco is to take place while dinner is prepared.
As all these arrangements are made, Chido whisks Babamukuru away to Mutare General Hospital to determine whether the progress in the head of the Sigauke clan’s legs is permanent.
Pedzi is detailed to accompany the tourists, and Tracey oversees dinner herself. You remove yourself from Green Jacaranda activities and sit in the kitchen. After two or three hours, the tourists return and are fed. Buckets of water are carried into the newly constructed ablution shacks. Gas lamps are lit in the round houses and insecticide is sprayed. Pedzi reads the next day’s options out to the visitors from a printed sheet. The guests sit around a fire in the yard and contemplate the following day’s hard labour, or fun, depending on their disposition, in the fields and at the river. Lucia, Kiri, and Nyasha make themselves comfortable with the guests. Later, they send Concept to fetch you. No one refers to the matter of the camera, but by the end of the evening two days’ quota of the wine stored in the provisions trailer has been consumed.
In the morning there is a meeting with Tracey in the Green Jacaranda minicoach. You promised yourself to look her in the eye, but she stares straight ahead during the entire conversation, so that you see a vein in the si
de of her neck pulsing.
Tracey asks many questions concerning Mai’s reliability, her suitability to be the Village Eco Transit’s rural hostess, and why you did not warn the organization about your mother’s instability.
You listen and do not answer. When your boss is finished, you go into the old house, past the side room where your nieces sleep, and into the back. You pack your small bag.
Nyasha offers to drive you, but you prefer to walk to the bus stop at magrosa. You walk over the gully and past Mai Samhungu’s residence, away from the village. Your aunts and sister watch you go in silence.
As you walk past the fields and the water pump, and Mai Samhungu’s orchard, a group of young men who attended the previous day’s gathering accost you. They want to find out Mai’s reason for throwing away Herr Bachmann’s camera, why she wanted to spoil the project, and whether you are leaving in order to make sure that the programme comes to disaster, depriving them of employment. They threaten to beat you up but they accept some five-dollar notes and allow themselves to be talked out of it. Your umbilical cord is buried on the homestead; in the empty space that widens within at every step, you feel it tugging.
Eight hours after you leave the homestead you arrive in the city. At the cottage you tell Ma’Tabitha you are leaving.
You write a letter of resignation. You deliver it in person. Tracey thanks you for your thoughtfulness and graciously waives notice. She offers you an arrangement on the cottage. You decline and find small lodgings in the Avenues.
When your shame has healed sufficiently for you to speak to people without weeping, you take a combi to Greendale to see Nyasha. Your cousin listens for the best part of an hour and then invites you to join her in her nongovernmental organization. But, she says, always truthful, she still has not found anyone to sponsor her young women’s programme.
Mainini Lucia’s security company, on the other hand, is doing very well, as there is more war in your country’s way of peace than any of you had expected. Nyasha asks whether she should convey to Mainini Lucia that there might be somebody somewhere who is now considering joining AK Security. Humbled and expecting nothing because you know everyone has seen you at your worst, you give your cousin your consent. When you finally visit Aunt Lucia in Kuwadzana you are surprised but at the same time hopeful, since your aunt has become rather wealthy. At work she is as tough as ever. She gives you little tasks. To deliver a package or a letter, to fetch forms from the tax office—such things. Over the course of several months, she delivers several lectures when she joins you in the premises’ kitchen or on occasions when she gives you a ride home in her car, concerning the unhu, the quality of being human, expected of a Zimbabwean woman and a Sigauke who has many relatives who either served or fell in the war. Soon you can do nothing but keep your head low as you listen to her and watch your tears drip onto your thumbs. After many of these sessions, Mainini relents. From being a messenger, you are promoted to office orderly. Your aunt makes you sweep the floor and brew tea for everyone, including the typists in her office and the janitors. You carry their cups to them and fetch them and do the dishes. Within two years, however, you are interviewed and selected from a strong field, on merit, your aunt says, to become assistant general manager.
Christine is well employed at AK Security. She is doing business studies and also has her eye on a managerial position. She says she does not mind being passed over for promotion this time round, since there will be other opportunities; and, she says, your education is not only in your head anymore: like hers, now your knowledge is now also in your body, every bit of it, including your heart. You frequently offer to help her with her studies. This is a small first step toward maintaining your knowledge in the location of which Christine spoke.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am immensely thankful to Julia Mundawarara, who read an early manuscript and encouraged me to persevere. My heartfelt thanks go to Spiwe N Harper and David Mungoshi for reading early chapters and giving me invaluable advice. I would not have completed this work without unwavering support from Madeleine Thien and Reginald Gibbons, to whom I am truly beholden. I am deeply grateful to Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, whose interest in the work, followed by skilful editing, led to this volume being published. Many thanks also to Fiona McCrae and all the staff at Graywolf who believed in the story told here. I am not sure what my family went through while I wrote this novel, and they have graciously not told me. I am indebted to my husband, Olaf, and my children, Tonderai, Chadamoyo, and Masimba, for ignoring some things and supporting me in others. Particular thanks are due to Tonderai for being my first reader and providing insightful comments, to Chadamoyo for an ever-attentive ear, and to Masimba for patiently scanning hundreds of pages.
Finally, I am indebted to Teju Cole and his 2015 essay “Unmournable Bodies,” which put many matters into perspective for me and inspired this novel’s title.
Tsitsi Dangarembga is the author of two previous novels, including Nervous Conditions, winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. She is also a filmmaker, playwright, and director of the Institute of Creative Arts for Progress in Africa Trust. She lives in Harare, Zimbabwe.
The text of This Mournable Body is set in Adobe Garamond Pro. Book design by Rachel Holscher. Composition by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.
Tsitsi Dangarembga, This Mournable Body
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