From State House, Samson crossed the road to the Keg and Maiden. He worked his way through the crowded bar to the long veranda that ran the length of the building. He stood for a minute to drink in the sight of the pristine and manicured cricket ground. Ahead in the short distance, he could see the Northfields penthouses. What he would not give to live on the top floor of that building and wake up every morning to the best view of Harare.
At a table at the end of the veranda, Samson spotted his friend Jimalo, who waved him over. If it had been later in the evening, Samson would have found a reason not to join him. Jimalo suffered the affliction of marambadoro, that condition where alcohol disagreed with a man to such an extent that he became a nuisance to others.
There were three types of drunks, Samson decided. There were happy drunks who were fun to be around and for whom alcohol was simply the sparkle to their fireworks. Then there were the morose drunks who became more and more morbid and talked endlessly about death and all the dead people they had lost, but were otherwise harmless. And then there were the marambadoro drunks like Jimalo who got more and more aggressive with each drink until they ended up picking fights, vomiting or pissing over themselves or, usually, doing all three.
At this time of evening though, Jimalo was safe. He was sitting with a couple of Rasta men that Samson did not know. He went across and greeted Jimalo and his companions as he sat down.
‘Ari sei malevels,’ Samson greeted them.
‘Sharp sharp,’ said Jimalo.
‘Uri sei wangu,’ Samson said to the other fellow.
‘Sharp m’dhara,’ the fellow responded.
‘Ko, shasha,’ Samson said to the third man.
The other simply nodded without saying a word.
Jimalo said, ‘Samson, this is Bhidza, and this is Tonderai. Bhidza was just telling us his usual theory about the currency.’
Samson said, ‘Oh yes?’ It was one of the things that amused him the most about the ruling party, that for all its talk of sovereignty and independence, theirs was the only country in Africa that used a currency printed in a Western country.
Bhidza was the man who had not responded to his greeting. He looked to Samson like he might turn out to be a drunk of the morose variety. ‘You know the problem with this currency?’ Bhidza said.
His voice was low and urgent, as though he was imparting a great secret. ‘I’ll tell you what the problem is with this currency.’
‘It’s printed elsewhere so there is not enough money circulating,’ Samson said. ‘That’s why we have these dirty dollars.’ He fished out a dirty five-dollar bill and indicated to the waiter that he wanted a beer.
‘Ndipoo chibhodhoro,’ he said.
The waiter nodded and hurried off.
‘No mhani,’ Bhidza said, ‘The problem with this money is that it is controlled by the Illuminati.’
‘Sorry, what?’ said Samson.
The waiter brought him his Black Label beer.
Bhidza continued, ‘The Illuminati is trying to take over the world, together with the Freemasons. There are Illuminati symbols everywhere. Look at this. Look at this.’
He shuffled into his wallet and took out some dollar notes. ‘The Reserve Bank yekuStates, inonzi chii, Federal Reserve whatwhat. They are part of the Illuminati. Look at that. What is that? What is that?’
He held up an uncharacteristically crisp one-dollar note.
Jimalo said, ‘That is George Washington.’
‘No mhani,’ Bhidza said. ‘George Washington what. What is that, on the other side?’
‘The pyramid?’
‘Above the pyramid, what is that?’
‘Oh, that eye.’
‘No mhani that is not an eye. It is not just an eye. Look at it! Look closely! That is no ordinary eye. That is the symbol of the Illuminati. They are everywhere, these symbols, they are simply everywhere. My son, he is nine, I have banned all this Disney nonsense, Cartoon what-what Nickel this-that zvimapopayi zviya izvi because everywhere you look mhani, you find Illuminati symbols. Myself, as soon as I find myself with one-dollar notes, I get rid of them as quickly as I can.’
Once Bhidza began, there was no stopping him. ‘Do you know why they are everywhere? Do you know who controls the world? I’ll tell you who controls the world. It is the Illuminati, that’s who controls the world, the Illuminati working with the Freemasons. And the Jesuits, yes, they have two secret societies, the Knights of Columbus and the Knights Templar. They have infiltrated the IMF, and the double, what it is it called, the double you T O, you know those ones that do trade and shipping what-what. And the European Union and African Union and Asian Union and all those unions. They all make up a secret government, it is global, I tell you, completely global, and they will use a social engineering technique that they call Secret Weapons for Quiet Wars. It is all in this book.’
Bhidza dug into the satchel next to him and held up a book in triumph, before slapping it on the table. Samson reached for his beer before the book could knock it over. The cover showed a naked woman in the grip of a grinning skeleton, both astride a winged white horse. Samson flicked through to the epigraph page and read: ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’
‘Why has no one told me that this bar has been turned into a library?’ The four men looked up from the grinning skeleton as they were hailed by a loud voice. It belonged to a short but well-padded man who approached their table. Samson knew him well. Keen to escape the skeletal grip of the Illuminati, Samson hailed him with more enthusiasm that usual. He was an opposition party Member of Parliament who had been his senior at school. Then as now, his permanent cast of countenance was the gently lacerating look of a benign yet desperate man plotting to start a Prosperity Church. As he sat down to join them, Samson remembered that this was the same Member of Parliament claimed by AmbuyaVaDudley to have approached her looking for a lucky potion to advance his political career.
The men at the next table to theirs also recognised him, and in five minutes, the Illuminati was forgotten as the two tables gathered around this uniting force. Smiling and laughing, the Member passed greetings around the joined tables as freely as he had given out buckets of donor maize seed in the last election. ‘Muripano zvenyu vadhara vadhara. Baba murisei. Ah, muzukuru, ndiwe uyu. Ah, Tommy! Chibababa! How is it going with the business? Samson, ari sei malevels?’
The man called Tommy said, ‘You know how it is, life in Sosibheri. It’s like being in a prison where you are fed on a diet of daily buggery.’
Jimalo said, ‘And all you can say is, boys, just please be gentle.’
The Member chuckled as he added, ‘Or you bring your own soap!’
Both tables burst into uproarious laughter.
Turning to Tommy, the Member said, ‘So you were given a visa tonight. I thought you were under sanctions.’
Tommy said, ‘The wife gave the visa baba but the visa is conditional. She said I can go anywhere as long as it is not to see those naked dancers that are all the rage. I am the only man in Zimbabwe who has not seen them dance live.’
The Member said, ‘Pane nyaya paya, I tell you, when they dance, there is not a soft member in the house. Not even this Member! But what is the worst your wife can do, and besides, how will she know?’
‘My wife has relatives from here to Chitungwiza,’ Tommy said. ‘I can’t misbehave without bumping into some unemployed muzukuru or tezvara. And they all gossip like market women in that family, saka tight. Even if I wanted a small house, I have to go all the way to Kwekwe or Gweru, ndinotorova out of town because Harare yakatorohwa embargo. Just as well, I can’t afford a small house even if I wanted one.’
‘Speaking of small houses and wives,’ said the man opposite Tommy, ‘Komurungu wenyu, what’s happening with your party leader, what’s all this talk that he did not want to marry that woman?’
The Member became agitated. ‘She is a lunatic. What sort of woman claims to be ma
rried to a man who clearly says he did not marry her?’
‘He should just accept the inevitable,’ said Tommy.
‘Accept what inevitable? Can a man be forced to marry when he does not want to?’ the Member said.
‘Of course a man can be forced to marry,’ Tommy said with indignation. ‘What man ever wants to marry? Do you know any man who got married willingly? Did you yourself get married willingly? No one ever does. A girl just turns up pregnant at your house and says now you have to marry me. So you marry and there you are. No two ways about it. It can only be marriage by ambush, by force or by ginya.’
The men burst into laughter. The Member feebly defended his leader before conveniently spotting a familiar face across the room, and making a hasty departure. As soon as he left, Tommy said, ‘Ko muchinda uyu adzoka futi? I thought he had left with the other guys who split from the party.’
‘Unotamba nezhara iwe,’ Jimalo said. ‘My friend, hunger has no allegiance. It drives you to whoever pays the most.’
As the talk became general and political, Jimalo began to get more and more agitated. Another three rounds and he would be at the marambadoro stage. Samson took that as his cue to leave. From the veranda he walked out the way he had come in, through the crowded bar. The screens were now showing a tennis match; it was Federer playing Djokovic. This must be the match from New York on which Father Abraham had wanted to put Samson’s rent advance. As Samson stepped out from the veranda and into the bar, Federer missed a volley. The room roared with howls of pain interspersed with cheers.
‘Musamutyire,’ yelled a loud voice. ‘Don’t fear for him. It’s Federer, he will escape this one, anopunyuka chete. Musamutyire, ndiFederer.’
Federer missed a drop shot.
There was a universal groan.
Samson’s way out was blocked by two men who were well in their cups and who were talking animatedly without listening to each other. The first said, ‘They wanted to raise the price of beer. Manje ipapo ndipo paanga avakuda kuirasa manje ipapo. There would have been a revolution, I tell you. Ndaitora gidi chairo. Revolution.’
Without listening, his companion said, ‘So I said to him, if you can do that, I will shake you by the hand, I swear on my son’s life, I will shake you by the hand.’
His companion said, ‘You know that shit that happened in Tunisia, that Arab Spring. Well, that would have been nothing in comparison. Myself, I would have led from the front. If they had raised the price of beer, I would have raised hell.’
Samson pushed his way past as he chuckled to himself. He was still laughing as he reached Rotten Row.
Saturday evening, 20:45
The Rainbow Towers stood at the no man’s land where Speke Avenue met Rotten Row. Samson walked through the lobby. It was packed with what Nixon Nhongo would call revellers. The women wore outfits of varying degrees of tightness. The men were dressed in differing interpretations of formal wear, at one end, lounge suits worn with rakish bow-ties, African print jackets worn over lurid open-necked shirts, and, at the other end, imitation Sean John t-shirts worn with fake FUBU jeans and Michael Jordan sneakers.
Samson was pleased to see that he had timed his arrival so well that he would not have to spend any money on the over-priced beers in the hotel bar. As soon as he made his way to his seat in the Conference Centre, which was the pageant venue, the proceedings began. On stage stood the mistress of ceremonies, a pretty, dimpled and effervescent radio personality who had herself been a pageant winner.
She introduced Killer T, a dancehall singer, and asked him to serenade the twelve contestants as she called them one by one to the stage. They walked out in bikinis and high-heels that made it impossible for them to walk with any comfort or grace. Samson had his eyes on Deliwe, who wore a hot pink bikini and a beaming smile.
‘Hotty property,’ Killer T sang. ‘Everything you want I will do for you. Yes, you are hotty property.’ At the end of their parade, the contestants stood in formation and turned their backs to the crowd, which roared its approval.
The contestants left the stage, and were replaced by Winky D who gave an energetic performance of his two most recent hits. Next came the Evening Dress segment. During the parade, a contestant stumbled on the hem of her dress and almost fell over Deliwe. The crowd booed. As more performers took to the stage, the judges conferred and eliminated four contestants. To the mockery of the crowd, the young woman who had stumbled during the Evening Dress segment burst into loud sobs. Samson was delighted to see that Deliwe made the cut,
Then came the question and answer session. The questions focused on national beauty spots and monuments, for the pa geant was supposed to help to promote tourism. Quite what the link between tourism and a beauty pageant was, Samson could not work out, apart from the obvious: come to Zimbabwe where the women are ‘hotty property’.
The contestants were eliminated until only five were left. They were then required to show their talent. The first contestant came back to the stage in a costume of faux leopard skin that left little to the imagination. She danced a Jerusarema solo. In this rendition, the Jerusarema became, not a harvest festival dance with protected world heritage status, but something that would not have looked out of place in a strip joint. The next contestant sang a Beyoncé song with competence but no flair. The next two contestants were also singers, and both off key. The crowd became restless. The last contestant was Deliwe.
‘I am going to sing,’ she said.
Samson’s spirits sank.
‘Are you are a singer?,’ the mistress of ceremonies asked.
‘Not yet, but I want to be a gospel singer.’
Samson groaned. With the exception of the Beyoncé imitator, every contestant who sang had sung gospel. Badly.
‘But today I am going to sing Chris de Burgh. Carry me like a flower in your heart. Sorry, fire, like a fire in your heart.’
As Deliwe sang, Samson realised just how little he knew her. She had offered to sing for him once, but he had declined partly because he had assumed she was not very good, and he would not have known what to say. But her voice was pure and true. The mawkish sentimentality of the words was redeemed by the purity of her voice. After she finished, there was a hushed stillness and then, a second later a roar of applause and whistles. He found himself with a tight chest and a feeling he had never known before, a combination of happiness, pride and possessiveness.
He barely noticed the rest of the ceremony. He felt a moment of tension when Deliwe made it to the top three, together with the Jerusarema pole dancer and an off-key gospel singer. The gospel singer was announced as the First Princess and still Deliwe stood there with another girl. When the Jerusarema dancer was announced as the winner, Deliwe gave a squeal of joy as she threw herself at the winner. She might have won herself, such was the radiance of her joy.
Still in her leopard skins, the Jerusarema dancer shouted ‘Ebenezer!’ and gave a loud prayer of ecstasy. Deliwe’s beaming face was enlarged on the screen above him. Her joy was infectious. He had to remind himself that this was, after all, just a beauty pageant. As Killer T returned to the stage to sing ‘Hot Property’, and the Jerusarema dancer gyrated to the delight of the crowd, Samson made his way out. On his way back home, he stopped at Tipperary’s and proceeded to get thoroughly and absolutely trashed.
Sunday morning, 07:45
Through his drunken haze, the voices of his landlady and her husband came. But they were not quarrelling: Makorinde was urging Father Abraham to get ready because there was no excuse, he had to come to church today. After that, Makorinde said, they would go to get some chickens with Samson’s rent money. Samson smiled. It looked like Federer had come through for Father Abraham after all. From Jah T’s house, the Wailers lamented that they had made their world so hard. Samson looked at his phone. It was a quarter to eight. The windows shook as Marley pleaded for the teachings of His Majesty and the Wailers rejected the Devil’s philosophy.
Samson opened his folder of photos. He looked
at his mobile to check his messages. Without opening the folders, he moved all of Deliwe’s photos to the trash folder. Then he moved to the trash folder and emptied that too. As Makorinde hurried Father Abraham along because they would be late, and he knew she hated to sit at the back and Father Abraham said, ‘I am coming, Chihera mine, let me just tie my tie,’ Samson went back to sleep and this time, he had no dreams at all.
A Note on the Text
Four of the stories in this volume have been published previously as follows:
‘The News of Her Death’ was first published on the website of the Sunday Times newspaper on 28 February 2016.
A version of ‘Copacabana, Copacabana, Copacabana’ was first published by Amnesty International in the multi-author anthology Freedom: Short Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration for Human Rights under the title ‘An Incident At Lunchtime’ (2010).
A version of ‘Miss McConkey of Bridgewater Close’ first appeared in the Guardian newspaper in December 2009.
‘The Lament of Hester Muponda’ was first published on the website African Writing Online (2009).
The lyrics from the songs ‘Totutuma’ by Oliver Mtukudzi, ‘Njoka’ by Mokoomba, ‘Umuti WabuFyashi’ by the Mulemena Boys, ‘Simudza Mawoko’ by Tocky Vibes, ‘Chinamira’ by Jah Prayzah and the Third Generation, ‘Makomborero’ by Fungisai Zvakavapano-Mashavave, ‘Ziso raBob Marley’ by Sniper Storm, ‘Ebenezer’ by Reverend Chivaviro and Friends and ‘Chikwama’ as arranged by Kapfupi are all used with the kind permission of the artists.
The quotations used at the beginning of each story are taken from the King James Version of the Christian Bible, as finalised in 1611, and from Bhaibheri: Magwaro Matsvene aMwari, the first full translation of the Bible into ‘Union Shona’, finalised at Morgenster Mission and published in 1949.
Acknowledgements
I have, as always, a million ‘gratitudes’.
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