by C. B. George
April found something unnerving about the way this generation of Zimbabweans could wait. Younger locals or any expat of any age would have been talking on their mobile or tapping at its keypad; they’d have had their laptop out, or some papers or a newspaper or, at the very least, they’d have ordered a coffee and be sitting back repeatedly checking a watch—their whole demeanor signifying pressing time, distracted attention, extreme busyness. But the older generation just seemed able to wait with a kind of impassive, centered stillness that suggested authority over time or resignation to its vagaries, unless those two were the same thing.
As April approached, she regretted her choice of venue. If Nyengedza might have been put on the defensive by the embassy, Sopranos was, in its own way, just as bad, with its three-buck lattes and obese mothers indulging obese children in bucket-deep milkshakes. As she approached the lawyer, though, and he looked up at her a little rheumily before standing, taking her hand and pulling out a chair for her, she relaxed: Nyengedza looked less defensive than somewhat cowed by the surroundings and that suited her just fine.
April ordered an Americano and asked the lawyer if he wanted anything else. He declined and sipped his water.
He asked her how long she had been in Zimbabwe. He asked her whether she was enjoying the country. She expressed the usual vague but warm platitudes she’d perfected over the last three months. Her coffee arrived. He thanked her for agreeing to meet him, opened his briefcase and produced a sheaf of papers. “My client, Mrs. Henrietta Gumbo,” he said. “Have you had a chance to review her situation?”
She sighed. Then she smiled at him and leaned forward conspiratorially. She said she’d had a long conversation with her predecessor, Jeff, and, though she hadn’t been at the embassy herself at the time, she was confident that all correct procedures had been followed. She said that, while Mrs. Gumbo’s retrenchment was regrettable, the embassy had paid her the full three-month notice period specified in her contract, which had in any case been due to expire. She said that if Mr. Nyengedza had any further questions he was absolutely welcome to contact the embassy’s legal team. She produced Tom Givens’s business card from her purse and handed it over the table.
Nyengedza examined it. His brow furrowed. He looked puzzled. He asked her why she’d agreed to meet him if she was just going to pass him over to a lawyer—couldn’t she have told him on the phone? She sighed again. She smiled again. She said that, if he recalled, she had in fact tried to tell him this on the phone and it was he who had insisted on the meeting. “This is really just a courtesy, Mr. Nyengedza,” she said.
He shook his head, seemingly more puzzled than ever. He began to say something but stumbled over his words. He sipped his water. She held her smile in place. She noticed a fleck of spittle in his graying beard, the frayed cuffs of his white shirt protruding from his suit jacket. She started to feel sorry for him. Nyengedza was, she decided, both past his prime and out of his depth.
The lawyer gathered his thoughts. He asked why Mrs. Gumbo had been retrenched. April told him that the embassy’s need for cleaning staff shifted on a monthly, even weekly, basis, which was why employees were only ever given short-term contracts. She said that Mrs. Gumbo’s services had no longer been required. He nodded. He said, “I see.”
Then he said that Mrs. Gumbo had told him that some stationery had gone missing the day before her dismissal. He said this with a peculiarly hyperbolic intonation, as if he were transmitting quite the most shocking news in the world. April had no idea what this signified, so she didn’t respond.
He looked in his file. He said, “A Mr. Shaw…”
“Jeff.” April nodded. “My predecessor.”
“A Mr. Shaw called together all the staff on the floor and said that two staplers had gone missing and that this petty theft had to stop.” Nyengedza paused, took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. He excused himself. He said that Mrs. Gumbo believed she had been retrenched for the theft of these staplers, although no official accusation had been made. Needless to say, Nyengedza added, the lady denied having taken the staplers. He looked at April through watery eyes. He said, “Did Mr. Shaw tell you about these missing staplers?”
“He didn’t mention them,” April said, which was more or less true. Jeff hadn’t made specific reference to the staplers, but, towards the end of their conversation, he had declaimed in frustration, “Fuck, April. Why all the questions? The woman was just another fucking thief.”
April drained her coffee. She put down the cup with a decisive clink. This conversation was going nowhere. “Look,” she said firmly. “Mr. Nyengedza. I agreed to meet you because you insisted upon it and, as I said, as a courtesy. But I’m not sure what you’re expecting me to do. If Mrs. Gumbo were fired for stealing, there would have been an investigation. But that is not why she was released from her employment so there was no investigation. She was paid to the limit of her contract, so effectively her contract was simply not renewed. Do you think we have behaved illegally? If that is your determination, then you must do as you see fit. Otherwise, as I say, I really can’t see what you’re expecting me to do.”
Nyengedza stared at her. He appeared more than a little taken aback. April was pleased with herself. She could play tough when the situation required. Now he looked down and put his hands flat on the table to either side of his glass of water. It was a curious action, almost one of self-control, as though he were angry and only able to restrain his temper with an act of will. Either that or he believed the table might be about to take off. But Nyengedza didn’t otherwise appear angry—in fact, every muscle in his face appeared entirely relaxed—and the table certainly showed no sign of levitation.
He started speaking and it took April a moment to follow. She wasn’t sure if this was because he’d dropped his volume or his accent had somehow thickened. He was saying that it wasn’t a legal matter—no, no, no—it was a question of human decency. He said that Mrs. Gumbo had worked at the embassy for eight years, was April aware of that? He said that she was a widow with two teenage children and school fees to pay. He said he knew Mrs. Gumbo was not a thief. He said, “I am appealing to you, Mrs. Jones, as a human being.” And then again, “As a human being.”
Later, April reflected that she was entirely right to promise Nyengedza that she would do what she could. She did not know how he was connected to Mrs. Gumbo, but she suspected they must have been related and he’d come to see her less as lawyer than concerned uncle or, perhaps, elder brother. He had appealed to her as a human being and she humbly hoped she’d responded as such. She considered how difficult it was to do the right thing in a situation like this, a place like this. She expressed as much to Jerry: “I just have too much power,” she said. “I mean, for that woman, it’s not just a job, is it? In a situation like this, in a place like this, it’s someone’s whole life. The line between relative security and disaster is such a fine one.”
Jerry nodded in agreement, but April was somewhat put out that he didn’t seem as stirred by the perspicacity of her observation as she was herself, so she asked him if he thought she’d done the right thing, just to check they were indeed on the same page. Jerry shrugged, sure. After all, he said, she’d only promised to do what she could, and if that turned out to be nothing, so be it.
April said, “Jesus, Jerry! I wasn’t bullshitting him. I’ll do what I can.”
“That’s what I said.”
She shook her head. She was sure her husband didn’t understand. “You don’t understand,” she said. “He was this old guy. I swear he didn’t have a clue how it works. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
“The right thing for who?”
“For him. For her. For me. The right thing is just the right thing.”
“Right,” Jerry said. “Great.”
12
Patson was late getting home, as was usual for the weekend. Fadzai woke automatically at the sound of the door and checked the time on her phone. It was after one. Still f
ully dressed, she dragged herself off the bed to prepare her husband’s plate. As she laid it in front of him, she sniffed around him, like a dog. This was what she’d been reduced to. She smelt nothing but cigarettes and the particular cloying body odor of a man who’d sat in a car for fifteen hours straight.
She sat opposite him while he ate. They hardly spoke: partly because Chabarwa and Gilbert were sleeping top to toe in the corner, but mostly because, these days, they hardly spoke.
Patson said, “No meat?” She shook her head.
She watched him in the flickering candlelight, the peculiar, precise way he handled his sadza, rolling it carefully in his fingers until it made an almost perfect sphere, then scooping it through the gravy into his mouth with a deliberate, but somehow extravagant, relish. He had always eaten like this—slowly. When they had first met, she’d considered it a marker of gravitas; that he was a man to be taken seriously. Later, it had begun to irritate her and she’d decided instead that it described a basic, plodding aspect to her husband’s character. Perhaps this was the nature of a bad marriage, she thought. In a good marriage you would learn to appreciate qualities you once loathed, in a bad one vice versa. But tonight, for the first time in a long time and for no reason she could identify, she found something reassuring in the way her husband ate.
When they had first met, Patson had been considered quite the catch and she was surprised when he’d shown interest in her. After all, as a teenager she’d had none of the skills of attraction that other girls seemed to develop naturally, while Patson had that corresponding nonchalance about him that seemed to take female attention for granted. He wasn’t exactly good-looking, not tall, and darker than was generally considered handsome, but he moved with the well-ordered balance of someone who’s properly assembled, he had that thoughtful smile, and his blue-black complexion was a glorious consistent monotone that could swallow sunlight.
Now she thought how shrunken he looked, his shoulders hunched, his head thrust forward, like a single knuckle. His skin hadn’t changed, but it was as if there was now too much of it, creating not wrinkles but one great fold across the middle of his forehead, another on each cheek. She wondered what had made him like this. Was it just time, age, life? She considered what responsibility she might bear for the depth of those folds, the hunch of those shoulders.
She knew that Patson had been unfaithful to her throughout the first fifteen years of their marriage, but she had chosen to look the other way and had consequently never known the full extent of his betrayal. Something had snapped after Chabarwa’s birth, however, and she had confronted him in a blistering attack from which neither of them had ever quite recovered. He had said that he would stop. She had said that she would take him at his word. But the decade or more since had seen her driven almost mad with suspicion and, therefore, bitterness, and her husband engaged in an inexorable process of retreat. She had hoped for more honest communication, but had been left with little communication at all.
Of course she could remember the pain she’d felt as she let his lies go unquestioned, the fear that other women in the neighborhood were talking behind her back; and she didn’t regret taking a stand. But she was also forced to admit that it had brought no resolution and no happiness.
As she watched him now, she finally believed that there weren’t other women any more, not because he’d promised as much but because he no longer had it in him. It was what she’d wanted and she’d made it happen. So why did she feel almost guilty?
She remembered a weekend when Anashe was three or four and they had driven down to see her family in Mubayira. They were outside at sunset while Anashe played with the local children, and Patson had stood behind her and briefly lowered his lips to her neck in that embarrassing way of his. She had shaken him off and, in a moment of confidence, asked if he could spend more time at home.
He had looked at her without recrimination (because this was long before the recriminations began) and he said, “You know I have to work, Fadzai. I am a man. But when I am home, I am home.”
At the time, she’d been disappointed and she hadn’t known what he meant. But now she knew because now, even when he was in the house, he was always somewhere else, his eyes fixed blankly in front of him, his mind out on the Harare streets or, perhaps, locked in some internal maze of fundamental dissatisfaction. Sometimes she nagged at him just to get his attention, but when he gave her his standard riposte—“Why are you always talking?”—she could hardly say that she was just checking to see if he was still there, that some hollow apparition hadn’t taken his seat or made itself comfortable in their bed.
Patson finished eating. He asked for tea, but they didn’t have any. She said perhaps it was no bad thing since it was so late and tea always kept him awake. He asked for water. She fetched him a cup.
She said, “How was your day?”
For the first time he looked directly at her—what do you mean?
What did she mean? She meant nothing, but such was the state of their relationship that even the white noise of small-talk seemed to congest, choke and backfire. “How much did you make?” she said, by way of illumination, because, though money was a dangerous topic, it was something about which they had no choice but to talk.
“Eighty,” Patson said.
“That’s good.”
“Two hundred for the week. I see Gapu in the morning. It’s all his.”
Patson paid two hundred dollars a week rental to Dr. Gapu, the car’s owner. He was at least a month behind. He began to excavate his back teeth with his thumbnail.
“So tomorrow is yours,” Fadzai said gently.
“A Sunday.” He sniffed. Then, “I’ll be out early and back late.”
He looked at her again. He stretched his mouth and, for a split second, she thought he was smiling, but he was just trying to dislodge whatever was wedged in his molars. “Toothpick?” he said.
13
Patson went to the bedroom as Fadzai cleared the table. Despite the hour, she felt restless, so she made sure the kids’ church clothes were ready for the morning before retiring. She expected to find her husband asleep, but he was standing over the small chest of drawers.
“Patson?”
He turned round. He was holding the gun. She couldn’t see his face in the pale glow of the candle behind him, so she instinctively reached for the light switch and flicked it on. It was one of the rare nights in Sunningdale when the electricity was working and the sudden illumination of the naked bulb surprised them both. For a second Patson looked terrified, before he managed to reorder his expression. He lifted the gun in front of him and read along the barrel aloud: “SIG SAUER, Sig Arms Inc., Herndon VA.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it loaded?”
“He shot three times. But I don’t know how many bullets it can hold. I don’t know how to look.” He weighed it in his hand. “It is very heavy.”
“Is it safe?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you pull the trigger, will it fire?”
Patson looked at her with some bemusement. “I have no idea.” He blinked slowly. “What do I do?” he said.
Then his fears came tumbling out of him, one after the next. Harare was a small town, he said. The CIO was drunk and might not remember him, but what if he recognized the car? The soldiers were unlikely to report the shooting incident, but could he be sure? He hadn’t given the man his real name, but he’d told the other one, the young one outside the building, and what if they talked? It was a gun. It was a gun and surely Mandiveyi, the CIO, was going to have to account for it. He was going to come looking. He was going to come looking and if he found him…well, what then?
“What will he do to me?” Patson said. “To you? Our children?”
Fadzai stared at him in shock. Somehow, since that night, she’d largely managed to put the whole shooting incident out of her mind. It was as if, in a life of problems,
no particular one could be allowed to weigh more than any other. But now she knew that her husband was right, because this problem was just too heavy to ignore. She tried to gather her thoughts. She tried to remain calm. He had asked her what to do and it was a genuine question and she wanted to have an answer.
“Take it back,” she said. “Hand it in at the desk. You put it in a bag, say it is something you found and walk away.”
“What if they look? If they look, they will take me. And if they take me…” Patson shook his head. “I think I have to get rid of it. I’ll throw it in a river. If Mandiveyi comes, I’ll tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t know anything about a gun.”
“No.” Now it was Fadzai’s turn to shake her head. “You get rid of it and you have nothing. What if he finds you? He says, ‘Where is my gun?’ What gun? He doesn’t believe you. You have nothing to bargain with. We have to keep it.”
“Keep it where?”
“I don’t know. We will think of something. We must stay calm.” Fadzai told her husband to return the gun to the chest of drawers. She told him in a way that suggested she had a plan. She spoke with enough authority that he did so without complaint. She told him to get into bed and he did, like a child. He lay on his side, facing the wall, his back to her.
She went to turn off the overhead light but something stopped her. Instead, she began to undress, lifting off her T-shirt and unclasping her bra. She put the bra in the chest of drawers—there was the gun. Her heart was beating faster as she slipped out of her jeans and underwear. She dropped her underwear and T-shirt in the washing basket, folded her jeans and slid them into the bottom drawer, taking out a nightdress. She stood for a moment, naked, holding the hem of her nightdress. The room was cold and she shivered a little. As if on cue, Patson turned over and looked at her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had stood naked in front of her husband and she felt a rush of embarrassment mixed with a long-forgotten frisson of daring. She looked back at him as she pulled on the nightdress. Then she turned off the light and climbed into bed.