My aunt and my mother have been locked in a lifelong war of attrition, the same war that is fought in households across the country between wives on one side, and the mothers and sisters of their husbands on the other. Between my aunt and my mother, it expressed itself in the up-and-down looks from my aunt as she asked, ‘Is that a new dress?’ and then, ‘I would have thought with your issues you would not have time for such finery.’ It expressed itself in my mother’s finger running across furniture to collect dust, in her fastidious eye that picked out the merest hint of a smear on the windows.
Above all, it expressed itself in the competition between their children. We have not achieved Lisa’s material success, having sent no stoves and fridges from Radio Limited home to my mother. But even our modest successes, my soon-to-be-achieved medical degree and Jonathan’s accountancy qualification, are cancelled out by Peter’s failures.
I often think of my aunt as the opposite of that trio of horsemen galloping though the night to bring the good news from Ghent to Aix in my favourite poem as a child. She crosses the city from Mufakose to Greendale in her eagerness to bring us bad news before anyone else can do so. And for all the distance between London and Birmingham, Lisa seems to be remarkably well informed about Peter’s failures. She passes one Peter story after another to her mother who endures the discomfort and oppressive heat of one commuter omnibus after another as she arrives to sweat out her bad news.
Then finally, she brings us the worst news of all.
But we were not to worry, she said.
Lisa would bring Peter home.
As she boasts of Lisa’s accomplishments, my aunt chooses not to recall that it was my father who said to her, ‘Sister, your daughter has finished her nursing diploma. Instead of rotting in some rural outpost, why does she not try her fortune where others have gone?’
It was my father who gave Lisa the money for her air ticket. My mother did not speak a civil word to my father for a week after his decision to buy Lisa’s ticket; their voices rose in the night, my mother insisting that his first duty was to his own children, Father saying that it was in their children’s interests that others in the family succeeded so that we all shared the family burdens, and my mother saying that he was too weak for his own good, and did not our elders say that if you rear a dog on milk, it would only end up biting your hand?
Though he did not live to see Lisa’s success, he continued to do good for us from beyond the grave. It was his life insurance money that sent Peter to London. I try to avoid thinking it is not fair, it should have been me, and I would have honoured Father’s memory. Even then, I could see the sense of the plan; I had my studies, Jonathan his training. And there was Peter, shiftless and idle. Harare was not the place for a nineteen-year-old boy who was bright and able, but too lazy to achieve the grades to get into the local universities, and who could not get a job but liked to drink.
So we sent him to London.
He had been more fortunate than those of our countrymen and women who have flooded England to wipe old people’s bottoms for a living. No menial labour for Mother’s last-born son. Father’s money had paid his tuition. But Peter’s ambitions were as broad as the range of courses available to him; he moved from architecture to business studies, from economics to statistics, from quantity surveying to computer science. ‘This time, I won’t change my mind,’ he said every time that he changed his mind.
Wafa wanaka, our elders say. Not only does this mean that death is the ultimate peace, it also means that we are not to speak ill of the dead. Once a person has crossed over to the realm of the spirits, he takes his transgressions with him, and we speak only of the good. So as we mourn Peter, we are to forget how he bled the family dry. It was not enough that my mother paid his fees and provided his accommodation and his food. The phone would ring, shrill and insistent at three in the morning. I would stumble to answer it, banging my foot in the darkness as there was never electricity at night, I would rush for the phone hoping to get to it before my mother picked up the extension in her bedroom, I would grab for it too late, to hear my mother answer as Peter said with no ceremony, ‘I need money.’
‘Nhai Peter,’ my mother would plead. ‘What hour is this to be calling and asking for money? How can you say you need money, what about all the money we have sent?’
‘I need money.’
This was Peter, who always got his way, who picked out the biggest apple, the brightest-coloured kite. And as she had done all his life, my mother gave in. She bought pounds on the black market and smuggled them to him, risking a jail term under the newly enacted crime of externalising foreign currency. And we had no jam on our bread, no milk in our tea while Peter drank away our father’s inheritance in London.
Wafa wanaka; we are to forget that before he went to England, Peter stole anything he could from the family, including the stethoscope that Father left me, the stethoscope through which I heard the sound of my heart as a child, sitting on Father’s knee as he teased me and said there was a laughing sound from my left ventricular cavity and a crying sound from my right ventricular cavity, and I should always listen to the left side for in this matter left was right; the stethoscope that was engraved ‘Peter Munyaradzi Chikwiro: Best Results University of Aberdeen Medical School, 1972’, the stethoscope that I hoped to use to listen to the heartbeats of my own patients.
Wafa wanaka; we are to forget the increasingly hysterical phone calls as Peter threatened to take his own life if Mother did not send more money, the phone calls that led her to sell all the shares that Father had left to provide her security, to take out a loan at eight hundred per cent interest, a loan she struggled to repay from her modest teacher’s salary that became a trifle as inflation rose first from thirty to seventy per cent, then from one hundred and seventeen to nine hundred and sixty-seven point five three per cent until it broke the one thousand per cent barrier. We are to forget that my mother’s blood pressure rose with inflation as she sold item after item to feed the demands from England, her visits to the doctor becoming more frequent as she sought to control Peter’s excesses from seven thousand kilometres, until he said again he would kill himself if she did not send money, and my mother, broken by approaching penury, fatigue and illness, said, ‘Then do, Peter. Do, for maybe then we will all get some rest.’
There is laughter from the back garden as the daughters-in-law cook over an open fire. ‘You are not serious,’ says Mukai. ‘That cannot be what she said.’
‘Honestly!’ says a voice that I recognise as my Uncle Donald’s wife. ‘I swear by my father who is buried at Serima Mission that that is exactly what she said.’
There is more laughter. It is not out of place in this house of mourning. This is how things are; we meet only to bury our dead. And why not laugh as we do so? We part only to meet again at funerals. The statisticians whose business it is to quantify, measure and average human experience say that there are three thousand deaths every month in our country, and I imagine that in this very month there are three thousand homes holding three thousand wakes, there are three thousand lots of chema funeral donations, three thousand homes in which will arise the sudden quarrels between those who do not like each other but must surrender to the undeniable imperative of blood, three thousands lots of daughters-in-law laughing over the funeral pots.
As I turn away from the laughter, I am followed by Uncle Donald’s wife who pulls me into a corner and tells me that MaiLisa has been saying things. I am as used to MaiLisa saying things as I am to the solicitous relatives who ensure that we hear every word.
‘I do not mean to be a gossip,’ she says, in what she considers a whisper, ‘but MaiLisa is saying your family is pestering her daughter, and that it is not her fault Peter drank away his father’s inheritance, and what sort of education did you and Jonathan receive if it means that you must rely on her child, and anyway, she has told Lisa to do what is best for herself, to do what is convenient to her and not worry about what ungrateful people might
think. For, do not the elders say that if you rear a dog on milk, it will bite your hand the next morning?’
‘You know I am not one to gossip,’ Uncle Donald’s wife says again, ‘but I feel that your mother should be told these things.’
My mother would not care if MaiLisa spewed out her poison before her. She has turned her face to the wall and does not always respond to Mukai’s entreaties to eat or to rest, or to walk in the garden. She no longer asks after the news from England. I know that she must think of the words that were spoken between her and Peter, and that she must wake in her living nightmare of having said words that cannot be taken back; words that were spoken out of defeat and exhaustion; words that mean everything and nothing.
I am the only one apart from Peter who heard those words, but I cannot comfort her. I cannot say to her: ‘It was not you. This was a path he was on from which we could not divert him.’ To say these platitudes would be to acknowledge that those words were said, to acknowledge that they were said would mean asking questions that only Peter can answer. So I find myself hoping for the only thing that can make it better, that the post-mortem will show that he did not die of his own hand, that another murdered my brother.
As the days become nights and the weeks become one month, Jonathan and I resolve to handle the matter ourselves. We go to the British embassy to apply for visas to go to England. Inside we are caught in a sea of humanity whose hopes are pinned on those words: ‘Leave to enter granted.’ As we wait, my attention is attracted by a woman in a red beret who has her eyes closed as her lips move in prayer.
I am close enough to hear her mutter, ‘Lord you are mighty, Jehovah. Look on your suffering servant and assist her, Jehovah. I call upon your blessings this day, Almighty.’ She has to interrupt her prayer as her number is called. Her shouted ‘Thank you, Jehovah’ as she sees the magic words in her passport is infectious, people crowd around her to see and marvel at the visa, to touch the passport, and maybe transfer some of her good fortune onto themselves. Her joy suggests that she is just a tourist exulting at the thought of seeing the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
This is the only light moment that morning. The window is shut as Jonathan and I get to it, and we have to stand in another queue. We are served by a man who does not look us in the face, but ticks our forms as he eyes his watch.
‘What is your business in England?’
‘One of us must go to England to bring my dead brother home.’
‘Do you have his death certificate?’
‘No, sir, we do not. We need to go there to get it.’
He looks up at that. ‘Then this could be just a story you are telling me. How do I know you really have a dead brother if you do not show me his death certificate?’
Jonathan struggles to explain. ‘The death certificate cannot be issued without a post-mortem. And that is taking too long.’
And I say to myself, Jonathan does not explain properly, he must explain that only when they have separated his brain from the cerebral cavity, separated the medulla oblongata from the frontal lobe, done toxicological tests, only then will they determine what killed him, only then will they be able to say whether he died by his own hand or by that of another. Tell him about the relatives, I will him. They will not go until Peter comes home. Tell them about the body viewing. How can we have a funeral without a body to view, without people filing by to pay respects as he lies in his coffin in our living room, all the while the daughters-in-law singing him away?
I open my mouth to voice these thoughts but the man is impatient, and waves us off. As Jonathan continues to plead, the official is joined by a woman who has been hovering in the background. She has heard only a part of the conversation, and grabs the end of what she thinks she has heard. In her crisp English voice, she says: ‘If you want to see your brother, just ask him for an invitation letter. We must see his bank statements over the last three months, his lease agreement, and proof of immigration status. It is all there in the Guidance Note.’
‘But he is dead!’ I cry out at last. ‘We want to bring him home because he is dead.’
The others in the room cannot pretend not to have heard. They turn their faces away as if afraid that our misfortune will infect them. The woman’s face reddens and she hides her embarrassment behind the mask of officialdom. ‘Well, in that case, we have to see the death certificate.’
Our consolation must be that even if they give us the visas, we cannot afford the flight. Jonathan had said he would borrow the money, but the air ticket alone is more than his annual salary.
And so we continue to rely on Lisa. I do not always get through to London. I sit for hours sometimes while the mechanical voice from the exchange tells me that calls to my destination are not possible at this time. When I do get through, the calls are not always answered, and when they are, Lisa can barely control her impatience.
‘Maininika,’ she says. ‘I cannot do more than I am doing already. Should I break into the mortuary and steal his body? Or is it that I am to turn myself into Peter wacho so that you can bury me?’
I resolve then that I will pay back every pound that she has spent if it takes me my entire life.
We dance our dance of sorrow as the daughters-in-law keen for the new arrivals. I am a stranger in my own home, surrounded by women who wear my clothes without asking, emptying my bowels by candlelight in the middle of the night for it is only then that I can be private without someone banging on the door, asking, ‘Who is there?’ and then saying, ‘Ah, is it you, Mary, how long do you think you will be?’
Just when I think that I cannot take any more, the phone call comes that promises that this time Peter really will be on the Friday morning flight. MaiLisa takes it upon herself to call back those relatives that had left. She insists that she come with us, for is it not her child who has made the arrangements? And anyway, she says, my mother is not in a fit state to go. But my mother insists on going with us and we cannot refuse her.
We make our way to the airport as we have done before, and wait with others as we have done before. The scenes are the same as the last time we were here, happy relations waiting for something nice from London. Jonathan doubts that Lisa really will come. So we expect Peter to be unaccompanied, and Jonathan identifies himself to the airline. MaiLisa adds to the tension of the wait by mistaking every young woman of Lisa’s build for her daughter.
‘There she is, I see her, Lisa, Lisa, psst, here, Lisa’, only to have her waving arm fall to her side as she says, ‘Ahh, honestly, this is what old age does. I need glasses, surely. Ahh, there she is, Lisa, psst.’
But there is no Lisa among the passengers. Jonathan checks again with the airline, but there is nothing for us. He cannot find the words to tell us, and he only shakes his head. My mother begins to laugh, a sound that is worse than any crying.
MaiLisa stands aside and studies the contents of a curio shop through the glass windows. All the while, I can see her stealing glances at my mother. As I watch her pretending interest in a zebra-skin rug, I feel rage so bitter that it is like bile in my mouth. I am unaware of the first hot tears that course down my cheeks. They are the first tears that I have shed, but I do not cry for him, they are tears of hatred for him and his miserable little life and what he has done to our family.
My mother’s moment of hysteria does not last and it gives way to her usual catatonia. She lets Jonathan and Mukai lead her away. MaiLisa pants after us. ‘Not to worry,’ she says, ‘she will be on the next flight. The next flight, definitely.’ She mumbles theories that no one wants to hear. I try to shut out her voice, and concentrate so hard that I do not hear my name being called. A hand on my shoulder brings me back from myself. It is a woman in the faded green and beige livery of the national airline.
‘You are surely Mary Chikwiro,’ she says. ‘I have a picture of you here.’ Through my tears I see a picture of me with Lisa and Peter sitting beneath the mango tree outside our house, weeks before Lisa left for England. T
he woman smiles again and says, ‘I have something from your cousin Lisa. She said it was a special delivery, and didn’t want to have to go through customs.’
I blink away my tears but she is oblivious to my distress.
‘People send me with things, you know, nice things from London. I charge only fifty pounds per package. It’s a living, isn’t?’
She now seems to notice my mood and says quickly, ‘Here is the package. Enjoy.’ She smiles uncertainly as she thrusts the package into my arms.
I take the box and walk towards Jonathan who stands some metres apart from the women. We both look at the package wrapped in gaudy purple and silver paper and tied with purple ribbon. I open the box to reveal an urn of dark wood. Peter’s name is engraved on a brass plate on the lid. There is nothing to say. We follow my mother and MaiLisa out to the car park.
In the Heart of the Golden Triangle
You hear your mother say to MaiMufundisi that her daughter has a big, big house deep in the golden triangle. ‘Right in the heart of the golden triangle,’ you hear her say. In the golden triangle, you live a stone’s throw from the Governor of the Central Bank. In the street behind the French Ambassador’s residence, your house is next to the residence of the British High Commissioner. You try to remember that you are to call him the British Ambassador now, because your President pulled your country out of the Commonwealth.
An Elegy for Easterly Page 6