When she finally pulled away (I released her reluctantly), I followed her into the kitchen, where she lit a candle, took her supper from the fridge and began to eat it cold.
‘I want you to know, Ma,’ I said, whispering so Abednego wouldn’t hear us. ‘About what you saw … I’ve been trying to get Father to stop drinking. You notice how drunk he is, every night?’
She sighed again. ‘I’ve been trying to get him to come to church with me. The Reverend Pastor can deliver him from the drink demon that has taken over him. I don’t know what to do. Sometimes, when his drinking gets so bad, he becomes …’ She shuddered.
‘He just needs a gentle hand,’ I said, helpfully. ‘Because we don’t want him to start hiding the bottles from us. But don’t worry, Ma, I’ll look out for him.’
She smiled. ‘That’s exactly what Bukhosi would have done.’
The boy would have done no such thing! He was a little weakling, and yet others found him easy to love. Even Dumo, who always praised his zeal for the Mthwakazi Secessionist Movement, anointing him a real maverick, a soul made of the fine stuff, possessing the recklessness of a true revolutionaire. In this praise, which he seemed to heap upon Bukhosi more and more aggressively, was the screaming indictment of my own failures, for I was given to asking questions rather than accepting answers. Like an old toy, I was quickly tossed aside, and the boy, the new favourite, won over Dumo’s affections, which had previously been reserved for me. They even began to see each other outside of our tri-party meetings. It’s not my fault that the boy went missing! Not really, when you think about it! He wouldn’t have even been there at the Mthwakazi rally were it not for Dumo, so he’s more to blame than me!
‘Yes,’ she continued, unwitting of how much it hurt me to hear her praise the boy. ‘He was good for Abednego. He grounded him, you know? Without him, he’s just become a mess. He probably needs to keep busy, that’s why he keeps going out every day to look for our nanaza. I pray our Bukhosi comes back to us, so everything can go back to being all right.’
I slinked off to my lodgings before she could hear my sobs.
I long to show my surrogate father what I’ve written, to show him the beginning of his – our! – hi-story on the page; to win his fatherly approval. But would he indulge me, what with him looking so terrible this Friday afternoon? Yesterday’s abstinence proved short-lived, the man has been drinking the cheap beer from the shebeen all morning, ever since Mama Agnes left for her prayers with the Reverend Pastor. He’s terribly drunk, slumped in his chair, his elegiac insobriety casting its shadow across the Mlambo sitting room. Even though the sun punches through the little star-shaped holes in the lace curtain, the sitting room is still shrouded in gloom, a gloom not only caused, I have surmised, by my surrogate brother’s vanishing, but also by too much clutter. The sitting room was never this cramped when Uncle Fani and I lived here. We didn’t have these plump sofas that lull you to sleep; we didn’t have my surrogate father’s armchair; and we certainly didn’t have the armchair Bukhosi used to occupy.
That empty chair is maybe the loudest indictment.
On the wall, beneath a photo of our parents in wedding garb with the inscription August 1987, is a bigger, framed portrait of the enlarged face of baby Bukhosi at one year old, cupped in a bonnet strung around his chubby chin. He assesses me with frightened, emerald eyes. It’s telling, isn’t it, that although there is, in this family living room, a photo of mother and father and then a photo of son, there isn’t a photo of mother, father and son? I see not the unity of the holy trinity.
Below the photos, rammed against the wall next to Bukhosi’s armchair, is a peeling bookcase holding a very precious book, the boy’s Tiffany-blue baby album, chronicling his crucial formation years. Beneath the album is a dusty shelf of peculiar books that often supplements my own reading, otherwise no doubt unread and almost entirely for show: Das Kapital, The Color Purple, Qilindini, I Speak of Freedom, The Art of War, uSethi eBukhweni Bakhe, Love in the Time of Cholera, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, Without a Name, Nabokov’s Butterflies and also some poetry, Wordsworth’s ‘Laodamia’, Chitepo’s Soko Risina Musoro, and a tattered edition of The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats.
There’s also a television on a glass TV stand – which my drunk surrogate father is watching intently – and a Newegg CD shuffle radio and a kitchen table whose cobalt is in an embittered battle for attention with the maroon of the sofas. There is no space for four-sitter kitchen tables in the kitchens of Luveve, and so the kitchen table must impose itself upon the living room. I see in the battle between the kitchen table and the sofas Mama Agnes’s struggle for middle class relevance. But no matter! I am sure whenever she looks at her possessions cluttering the living room, she is comforted by the illusion of plentitude. I understand it; growing up we were poor, thanks to Uncle Fani’s drinking sprees, and I yearned, whenever his weeping would bounce off the walls and reverberate in our sparsely furnished house, for the comfort of a plush sofa to cushion the sound. I get how empty spaces can creep like a draught into the heart and fill it, too, with lonely emptiness.
Speaking of emptiness, I’m ashamed to confess that last night I dreamed about Thandi … She was astride me, pumping her hips and hurling throaty moans at my pygmy roof, her pawpaw breasts calling out to me, and in my dream, I licked them, those gorgeous pawpaws, I licked them and sucked them and nibbled on them, and oh, they tasted so good. Yes, I know it’s obvious that I’ve never been with a woman. I’ve never experienced that most transcendent of human pleasures, as natural as breathing or eating or laughing, akin to gobbling copious amounts of chocolate or a teensy snort of ubuvimbo. I admit, female feathers make me shy. I see, in all of them, my mama, whom I never knew but know of, bless her spirit, though she rests not in peace. But not in Thandi! And now, no matter how hard I try, I can’t get her out of my mind. I yearn for more of her. But he deprives me, my surrogate father. I can’t stand him when he’s so glum and sullen-lipped, like this.
But wait – here comes a familiar tinkle from the TV that sets my surrogate dada alight; it’s a ruling party jingle, a bewitching symphony of drum and guitar, mbira and hosho. Before I know what the hell is happening, my foot is going tap-tap-tappity-tap. I wasn’t born yet during the liberation struggle, but even I, falling prey to the strumming and the drumming, feel my blood roiling with the guerilla morale of the ’70s; my pitter-pattering heart yearns for a little fracas, my hands fumble about for a weapon, and my throat itches with a warring cry. O what juju tricks are these that history is playing?
It wafted in the gunpowder-smog like braaied carabeef, the stench of our charred soldiers, croons the raspy voice of the Minister of Agriculture and Lands from the television. He, or some other ruling party songster, is always serenading the TV and radio air waves with these jingles, interrupting, indiscriminately, our family viewing to educate us on our patriotic history, in their version of which the ruling party is the country’s sole superhero, every other sucker be damned. They are very catchy, these ruling party jingles; I have often heard children carolling them, their voices chorusing from the street into my pygmy room.
My surrogate father has begun to sway softly in front of the television, like a snake in front of a pungi. Peasants, in the accompaniment of their lead singer, the Minister of Agriculture and Lands, fill the screen, decked in the most elaborately woven suits made from African print, on which feature the faces of His Most Excellent Excellency our Comrade President Robert Gabriel Mugabe, in various states of anime, from benevolence, to humility, to bliss. They are busy shaking their booties, the peasants and their lead singer the Minister of Agriculture and Lands, busy getting down real hard and proper. Jingle-jingle they go to the liberation struggle, nimble fingers plucking furiously at the mbira, that revered thumb piano that has the power to evoke the ancestors; it summons the body, flails the limbs, discombobulates the soul and casts the spell of togetherness – together we live, together we suffer, together some l
ive better than others and others suffer more than some – so that, like a puppetry of Pinocchios, we boogie to the beat of our Geppetto.
Toolooloo, wails the mbira.
Remember the slushy rain? croons the Minister of Agriculture and Lands’ raspy voice. Remember the slippery hearts? Oh, our brothers!
‘I remember slushy rain and slippery hearts,’ croaks my surrogate father. ‘And Skinny Zacchaeus in an oversize helmet and glasses that looked like a handy man’s goggles, wailing like a woman at a funeral.’
My heart starts thumping. He speaks! I slip my hand beneath my shirt, pull out the sloshing Bell’s, twist the bottle-top – ‘Hmm, and what happened next, surrogate father?’ – lean over, and fill his waiting glass.
‘He kept asking me if we were going to die, going to die, oh fuck, are we going to die, Abeddie?
‘Will you shoosh, I said. Are you trying to get us killed?
‘Best we surrender and negotiate, yes? he replied, the little mouse! He said, you know I was the first President of the Debating team at school, I can lobby on our behalf—
‘And I cut him off and yelled, just shuttup, please!’
(He seems to waver, whether caught in the moment of the memory or waking out of it I can’t tell. I lean over, pick up his glass and proffer it to his lips. He gulps down a mouthful, like a baby on a teat.)
‘He wouldn’t stop, the little nincompoop, so scared, I swear he wet himself. Why didn’t we just take Muzorewa’s deal and form a coalition government with the whites? he cried. Why didn’t we just deal with this like civilized human beings, heh? I don’t blame them for thinking us savages. What is this, heh? This gorilla warfare. Like we’re still wearing animal skins in the bhundu? Heh? We’d better give ourselves up, me I can’t die here, I’ve a degree from Oxford, destined for great things, I’m not a violent man me, I—
‘I swear if you don’t shut that trap I’m going to put a bullet in that dwala head of yours!
‘Finally, he shuttupped, the little mouse! Busy sniffling as I held my dying men. My comrades, bo! We served together in Joshua Nkomo’s ZIPRA military wing, yoh, and every day I remembered him from my Thandi’s photo and I thought how proud of me she would be! But nothing can ever prepare you for watching your men die.’
Something clinches my chest as he speaks, something that makes it difficult to breathe, a born-free type of guilt. Yes, I am a born-free, birthed in 1983, after the war for liberation, after our independence in 1980. I fold myself humbly on Mama Agnes’s sofa and try to grunt comfortingly, to no effect, as my surrogate father stifles a sob.
Everywhere, the smell of death, oh, death everywhere! croons the raspy male voice from the TV.
Toolooloo, wails the bewitching mbira. Toolooloo toolooloo toolooloo!
‘I smelled death everywhere!’ cries my surrogate father. ‘Everywhere death!’
MaBorn-free, where are your SAFN-49s? croons the raspy male voice. Where were you during the struggle, maBorn-free?
I sink lower into the sofa.
Toolooloo!
‘I clung to my SAFN-49 rifle,’ says my surrogate father. ‘And when the landmines began exploding, I almost shat myself! I could no longer see Zacchaeus—’
Do you remember Camp Pyonyang?
‘—and I remembered my time in Camp Pyonyang—’
Toolooloo!
Do you remember China?
‘—I remember China—’
Toolooloo! Toolooloo!
Do you remember the wise words of Chairman Mao?
‘—Chairman Mao asked us, what is it that we always strive at? And we chorused, dialectics: the art of arriving at the truth through the logical deduction of logical arguments!
‘Very good! said Chairman Mao, kind grandfatherly Chairman Mao who had offered his services to our nationalist leaders, donating his time and knowledge of the evil machinations of capitalism. Tell me, he said, what is it that I said capitalism aims to do?
‘And we chorused, to provide an anti-synthesis, Chairman Mao, to rule through the logical deduction of illogical arguments!
‘And he beamed, Chairman Mao, our Messiah in Holy Trinity with Marx and Stalin, he beamed and said, come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!
‘We cried, make us fishers of men, Chairman Mao!
‘And he replied, what is it, my little black disciples, that we fight against?
‘Here we cried, the forcing of the peasant off his land, his only real power, into slavery so he may sell his labour!
‘And I wept for my father, the bull of the Mlambo clan. Our ancestors were kicked off the land when the settlers came, to make way for Thornton Farm. Crammed into the Tribal Trust Lands where not even the thorn tree dared flourish! My Baba, strong and proud with the gait of an ox, his spirit was broken in the Tsholotsho mines. And then – crook! – he was carted off, just like that, to fight their wars over there in Europe, of all places.
‘Very good! said Chairman Mao. And what is it that we are aiming to do?
‘Communism is a hammer that we use to crush the enemy! we chorused.
‘A seraphic grin spread across Chairman Mao’s divine countenance.
‘What is our ultimate goal? he asked, testing us one more time.
‘The people, and the people alone, are the motive force in the making of world history! we cried.
‘He winked at us then, Chairman Mao, and we felt the glow of certain victory warming our bellies.’
What of our brothers who died for this our Zimbabwe? Oh, let them not die in vain! MaBorn-free, let them not die in vain!
Toolooloo! Toolooloo toolooloo toolooloo!
‘I stumbled through the smoke yelling for Zacchaeus,’ says my surrogate father, slumping in his chair, looking suddenly frail, so frail and so old. ‘I found him trembling beneath bloodied limbs, covered in the stench of burnt human flesh. He was alive! Bruised but unharmed. I clung to him. I clung to the little mouse. I cried.’
He wipes his tears on his shirt sleeve and turns away from me to face Bukhosi’s sofa.
Spear-the-Blood
Dumo warned me about this, about how the state apparatus hijacks our hi-stories, appropriates them, rewrites them, edits out the wrinkles and then feeds back to us some real sweet-tasting shit. This shit tastes so good that sometimes we’re even tempted to swallow! Tsk-tsk!
Dumo’s eyes glittered whenever he talked about the machinations and cover-ups of power, what he called reading the ink beneath the ink, a skill he burnished by quoting widely from his eclectic library. For, to be any kind of respectable vanguard, he liked to say, a man had to rid himself of the stifling confines of education, that top-down programme enacted by a state to produce conservative men and women in thrall to its doctrines, be they tyrannical and unruly, and instead invest in an intimate relationship with knowledge. During those days, when I was still an infant in this revolutionary business, still suckling on Mother Knowledge’s bounteous titty – before Bukhosi usurped me as his heir apparent – when Dumo’s extensive book collection was my first foray into vast worlds, hi-stories, dreams and ideas spanning from as far back as Valmiki’s Ramayana to Plato’s Timaeus to the Solomonic Kebra Nagast to Equiano’s The Life of Olaudah Equiano to Goethe’s The Pied Piper to Ekra-Agiman’s Ethiopia Unbound, all I could offer in response to my mentor was a tentative nod, and an attempt at my own premature theorizing.
‘What we need,’ I said to Dumo, my head still going bop bop bop with foggy wisdom, ‘is to expose the truth.’
He threw back his symmetrical head and guffawed. ‘What is truth?’
‘Well, the truth is—’
‘There’s no such thing as truth, mfana! Truth is optics. And there are so many options out there, these days it’s all about choosing your flavour. You like your truth blackberry-cherry or you like it lemon-lime? There’s even a zero-calorie truth!’
‘But the truth of Gukurahundi isn’t optics!’ I cried. ‘What happened to my mama isn’t optics.’
‘You’re goin
g to have to be smarter than that, if you’re going to survive in this world,’ Dumo snapped. ‘What we are trying to do is to seek justice for our people and what they experienced under the Gukurahundi Genocide at the hands of the state apparatus. To say, look, I’m a human being, and what happens to me matters! Everyone out there in the world is holding a megaphone, mfana, and it’s the most dazzling one that gains audience. And audience is power. Audience is freedom! We are aiming to latch onto a loud megaphone. To add some flavour to our truth, to attract some moths, you understand. We’re trying to own the truth …’
To own the truth? Dumo could often sound perilously like the very people he was denouncing – although there was something seductive in the idea of owning the truth, I admit. Achilles, Napoleon, Shaka, all men who have shaped their own truths until hi-story has believed it and accorded them greatness! Still, I do not aspire to greatness; I simply aspire to make sure my surrogate father doesn’t swallow shit, sweetened, zero-caloried or otherwise. The glazed-over, painstakingly edited, jingled half-truths trumpeted by the peasants in the accompaniment of their lead singer the Minister of Agriculture and Lands don’t fool me. This is not how things happened. My poor surrogate father is remembering not his own, but the state’s memories, shoved down our throats every single day for the past several years so that they are beginning to replace our own memories. He has never been to China. As far as I know, surrogate Uncle Zacchaeus never even fought in the war, let alone sheltered in a tangle of bloody limbs. The only limbs he sheltered in were the warm, open legs of Lady America! No, my surrogate father is eating some shit! I don’t blame him. In these days of food shortages, what with the supermarket shelves gaping empty, shit tastes so good. Look, even me, I was beginning to shimmy left and shimmy right on Mama Agnes’s sofa, yearning to shake my booty and slip into the nostalgia of guerilla warfare. And I wasn’t even born yet during the liberation war! What the man needs is another strong dose of that truth serum, Bell’s. When I hand him a glass of the syrupy liquid, he downs it in one, making him cough violently, though when our eyes meet, he grins. Reminiscing about the war has fired up his belly and fired up his loins, and I know, as his eyes glaze over and that silly love-struck smile topples his scowl, that we’re getting back to the things that matter, that matter to him and therefore to me.
House of Stone Page 6