At the mention of the 5 Brigade and Gukurahundi, my surrogate father begins to convulse. He blinks at me wildly, and tries to push me away, squirming at the feel of my hand on his back. I bend over and grab Johnnie from the floor and shove it to his lips, feeding him straight from the bottle. I grip him by the neck, but I can feel him trying to push me away, his body struggling away from the sofa, away from me. My grip on his neck tightens, and I pull him close, until his head is resting against my chest. I’m pouring Johnnie straight into his mouth. He swallows, sputters, begins to cough. I lift the drained bottle from his lips and place it on the floor.
I imagine his throat must be burning and that’s why tears are streaming from his eyes and down the sides of his face.
‘Are you trying to say something, Father? Hmmm?’
His eyes, glistening red with the tiny veins visible in the sclera, are trained on me.
‘There, there, Father, everything is going to be OK.’
We sit like that, me cradling him, for a long time, until his head lolls on my chest, and his body becomes limp. I gently push him back on the sofa, until he is sitting slumped with his back against its incline.
‘Father?’
He groans.
‘Father, can you hear me?’
His eyes flutter.
‘Do you see me, Father? It’s Zamani. Say, “Zamani.” Say, “Zamani, my son.”’
He just groans. No matter! I slide my slim torso next to him, on the sofa. I cup his yellow cheeks and bring his face close to mine.
‘It’s your son, Father. It’s me, Zamani.’
He’s comatose, now, I don’t think he can hear me.
‘I love you, Father.’
I stare at those closed eyes, imagining their penny hue; stare into those teardrop nostrils, at that moist, peeping thicket. I bring my blueberry lips close to his and kiss them. They are cold, his breath warm. It reeks of Johnnie.
My Father.
I sidle up against him. Take his hand and place it across my tummy, where it rests on my hip, limp. Take my Nokia N76 out of my trouser pocket. Angle it above us. Press my cheek against his. Smile into the camera, and snap our selfie. I shove the phone back into my pocket and put my arms around him. Place my head on his chest.
‘It’s going to be all right, Father.’
Together, we watch the Saturday twilight through the sitting room window, creeping stealthily across the sky.
This morning, my surrogate father told me he thinks he should stop drinking. He was wearing his scotch jacket, a Gideons’ pocket size bible fisted in his hand. I recognized it as belonging to Bukhosi.
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Is something the matter?’
He refused to meet my eyes, saying as it was a Sunday, he had decided to go to church with Mama Agnes and pray for the boy.
I had already planned our day; we were going to sit together in the sitting room like we always do, I would bring Johnnie, and he would tell me what happened with Thandi after Spear-the-Blood dampened her enthusiasm for revolution. (I dreamed about her again last night. Maybe my surrogate father could tell me where she is, and I can go and visit her! I would love to sit beside her and watch her talk. I bet she’s still a blot-out-sun.)
My surrogate father never goes to church, and I couldn’t help but be crestfallen at his announcement; I think I hid it well. I forced myself to sound chirpy as I said, ‘Oh, great, wait, let me put on something decent, and I’ll come with you.’
‘No.’
We stood there by the back door, both startled by the force in his voice. And then, he said, ‘We are going for a private prayer session with the Reverend Pastor. It’s family only. You can pray for us here, if you like.’
I smiled. ‘Of course. And if there’s anything else you need me to do?’
He nodded vaguely, and then turned around and walked back into the house. He didn’t even say goodbye, like Mama Agnes did, as they left in his red Peugeot 405, even though I waved at him. I spent the morning pacing up and down the dirt path that separates my pygmy room from the main house. Then, I went inside the house, and stood by the boy’s sofa, appraising his baby portrait hanging on the wall above it. His frightened baby eyes were now frightening. I sneered at that portrait, I glared at it, I even tried to stare it down; but the feeling of fear did not leave me. I sat down on the boy’s sofa, but I could not sit still. A dreadful discomfort overtook me, and I found I could not bear to sit on it, his sofa, so I got up and began pacing, again.
Finally, I decided to visit Old Ntombazi. The traditional healer lives far away, Makokoba certainly isn’t just a stone’s throw away on foot, but the walk calmed me. I used to take this very route to Old Ntombazi with Uncle Fani, in his last years, when he discovered the magic of ubuvimbo root powder. I needed some ubuvimbo, and Old Ntombazi is the only one in the city purported to have it. I know a strong opiate like this will do my surrogate father good; it will lighten his mood, just as it used to do for Uncle Fani, and maybe get him talking to me again. Then he won’t look at me the way he looked at me this morning – I couldn’t stand that look, like I was a stranger, or something worse. It’s family only.
The old witch charged me a whole arm and practically both of my legs, but I came away with what I needed, and I knew Abednego wouldn’t be able to last the whole day at Mama Agnes’s church. Marathon prayer requires an endurance and a faith he doesn’t have. I found him at home when I returned from Old Ntombazi, and immediately made him some tea. Ha! That surprised look on his face when I offered it to him was priceless; I bet he expected I was going to offer him some Johnnie.
Still, he declined the tea.
‘It will help you get over your hangover,’ I said. ‘You look really terrible.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘Kanti, what’s your problem?’
He was glaring at me. I decided to stand my ground, and said, ‘You are a grown man,’ I even tried to flatter him, ‘a strong-willed man. I understand how difficult it has been, with my brother missing, and—’
‘Will you stop it.’
‘What?’
He sighed, as though talking to a small child. ‘I’m tired of you always coming here—’
‘If you don’t want the tea, just say so.’
‘I already said I don’t want the tea. Can you just leave me alone, I want to be alone, nje, for once. Whenever I look up, here you are, hovering like a fly. Kanti, what do you want?’
‘I want to help—’
‘Can you go away. Can you just get out of here. Fuseki, bye bye!’
I cupped my ubuvimbo-laced tea and crawled away, back to the stifling confines of my pygmy room. I wept as I looked at our selfie on my Nokia, before stuffing it under my pillow. I don’t know what to do; I’ve been trembling all afternoon; I feel … lost.
I shouldn’t have drunk the tea. It made me feel vulnerable, and I ended up doing what I promised myself, from the day Abednego called me his surrogate son, I would stop doing. I opened my Red Album, and indulged myself with pictures of that man … my father … purportedly my father. Where is the proof? And yet I admit I have, ever since Uncle Fani’s deathbed confessions in 2002, searched for the man in newspapers and in history books. I have cut him out from the dailies, I have ruined many a library book tearing out certain pages, and I have pasted it all into my Red Album. I have tried to trace, like a story, the man’s life. I have even watched him, followed him, stalked him, and dreamed of lining him up in the crosshairs of a rifle scope – but why do I torment myself with these thoughts? I have studied with expert concentration that face the colour of black feldspar – can’t a man tame his obsessions? – I have caressed those lips in the shape of a flat-bellied heart; I have traced with my thumb those cheeks that curve elegantly from either side of the columella in the distinguished silhouettes of smoking pipes – dammit, the man does have a fine bone structure!
And then, always, after this inspection, my hand rises involuntarily to s
troke my own face, which is the colour of black feldspar. And if I take a piece of paper and cut it into the shape of a heart and then clip off the bottom, I have the shape of my lips exactly. Also, I have the most aesthetic cheeks, whose bone structure is profiled by shaded slopes on either side of my nose.
Could it be that his darkness is in me? But I love Abednego. I wish to know my surrogate father far better than this man who is my father, who cannot be my father; eish, but why, Uncle Fani! Why did he have to confess his secrets to me? Why did he tell— Ah, what is the use of torturing myself with these memories? I’m a man on a new path, after all. By the end of these chronicles of our family hi-story, I shall be born again, into a Mlambo son. I shall have succeeded in escaping the dreadful past bequeathed me by my uncle on his deathbed.
And yet, I can still smell the cough-drop smell of which my uncle always reeked his whole life, the smell of a hi-story which had burst many-a-time, over the years, from his eyes in long, dreary, inexplicable squalls, in response to which I, first as a scrawny kid, would thrust my finger at his glistening face and burst, ‘Look, Uncle Fani is crying! Like a gal!’ This seemed to amuse him, and at times he even managed to smile through his tears. And then, as a pimpled teen pockmarked by pubescent shame, I began to lend him my bony chest, reluctantly I admit, for what the hell was a grown man crying for, on which to lay his head and mewl. And then I could bear it no more, and sought refuge in my tattered volume of Lord of the Flies, in the pages where Simon speaks to the pig’s head, which I’d read out loud, shouting at the top of my voice as though at a recital in a big hall, so as to drown out those horrible, deep-throated, grown-man sobs.
It was always me and Uncle Fani; just us two. The story of how my mama – and apparently my father – died in a mysterious fire when I was a baby was told and retold in our house until it began to take on the texture of lore.
‘But no aunts …?’
He shook his head.
‘No cousins …?’
No cousins.
‘No—’
‘It’s just me and you, mfana, OK?’
How could it just be me and him? Where were the intertwining branches of our family tree, those boughs that should have hung heavy with the fruit of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces? Where was our rural home?
‘Why do you bother me with all these nonsense questions? Am I not mother and father enough to you?’
His walnut eyes taking on a sad hue as they took in my searching, hungry face; I his nephew who had been like a son to him, and at times even tried to be a mummy; this man who had been like a father to me, albeit not a very good one, and who had on occasion tried to be both father and mother.
It was just us two.
Did I feel the dark seeds of the man who fathered me swirling in me even then? Have I inherited his traits? His mannerisms? His dark talents? His penchants?
Am I my father’s son?
‡khoā
I knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away from the drink. Just one day, and by the end of yesterday he was already sweating. Only one day after his professed sobering up, and already he was thirsting after Johnnie like nothing else could ever quench him. I understand his thirst; the Red Album has been haunting me since I made the mistake of opening it, and I have been thirsting after our family hi-story to fill these holes I feel echoing like hollow chambers.
I could hear him pacing outside my pygmy room while I stayed locked inside, still sore from his sharp words and still woozy from the ubuvimbo. His agitated fluttering has alarmed Mama Agnes, though. He’s going to get us caught! She came to see me yesterday evening in my pygmy room, saying she was worried about him, he’d been acting strange, going to church with her and then coming back home in a funk, and now outright possessed by some evil spirits. I was pleased that she sought counsel from me, and pretended to spend some minutes pondering this.
‘Should I call the Reverend Pastor to come and do some prayers? First my son and now my husband …’
‘No no, leave him to me, Ma. He talks to me, I’ll get to the bottom of this.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Hundred per cent.’
‘Let me call the Reverend Pastor …’
I sighed, and tried to smile. ‘Just wait, Ma. I know what I’m doing. I can help him.’
I didn’t think he would hold out through the night. I feared he would invade my lodgings. But he didn’t! He waited until Mama Agnes had left for work this morning. I applaud him! He respects my Mama Agnes that much, at least. We were supposed to go on another community search for Bukhosi today, and increase our radius, but he cancelled even that, telling our neighbours he would call them later, he just needed to follow up a lead or some such. I heard one of the neighbours saying that they would press on without him; he promised to catch up with them later and then he barged into my lodgings. The way he was sweating! The way his hands were trembling. The way his penny eyes glinted as they scouted my room for Johnnie.
I didn’t want to give him any, lest his conscience decides to come back again and he wants to blame me for his drinking. I offered him some tea, instead, with a pinch of ubuvimbo. He looked at the tea like I was trying to insult his tongue, his facial muscles twitching as he said he just wanted something to relax him, some little thing, nje, just one drink, what would tea do for him?
‘So tomorrow you can call me a fly?’ I said, inclining my head to one side.
‘Just one glass! OK, you are not a fly, half a glass, ke, just a little bit – give it to me!’
‘See, you are shouting now,’ I said sulkily.
‘I’m not shouting—’
‘—but you are.’
‘I’m just stressed, bantu, I, I just need a sip, please …’
I had to promise him a glass of Johnnie for him to try out the tea. He gulped it down impatiently, burning the roof of his mouth in the process, but I could see a sparkle in his eyes when he was finished. It was such a delight to see him looking so euphoric for a change, instead of the dull stupor that booze has been getting him into of late, where he can’t even talk, he just sits and weeps about Bukhosi or Baba, depriving me of the whereabouts of my Thandi.
And now, here we are, back in Mama Agnes’s sitting room where we belong; our hi-story room. His tongue has gone totally loose, my surrogate father, busy hooking me with roundabout yarns of Zacchaeus and Thandi and something about a war and a son, which I must now, with all the skill of arti-farce I can muster, put into proper order.
Following the death of his surrogate father at the hands of a wet-behind-the-ears private, and the stories circulating thereafter from all quarters about the old man’s perfidious nature, which many theorized was a hereditary trait carried in the Y-genome – which in village speak was a curse passed down from the ancestors for some wrong done by a forebear, thus manufacturing from their vitriol a lineage of traitorous Mlambo males who had been selling out everybody since time immemorial – my surrogate father had no choice but to flee for his life. Under night cover, he bolted into the bush, not to the war, no, but into hiding, hunkered down by my beloved Thandi who refused to be left behind.
As a result of the unpatriotic actions of both father and brother, my Uncle Zacchaeus, too, had to flee, for a Mlambo son Spear-the-Blood intended to conscript, whether older yellow face or younger parrot mouth he did not care. Under night cover, with the assistance of Father Dlodlo, who understood very clearly that his star pupil was destined not for the brawn of the bush but the brains of bureaucracy, where all the real decisions were made, my Uncle Zacchaeus fled the village for his first taste of big-city living, and, true to the vision of his haughty-roving-eye – but especially the influence of that great political body the Catholic Church – he tumbled across towns, cities and countries until he found himself at Oxford University, Oxford, England. Here he began studies in law but, taken over by the flourishes of the great English poets, that Wordsworth and that Keats – and also unsaintly visions of a naked Thandi g
yrating before him with her swollen baby belly, to which he pumped his manhood repeatedly every night, ejaculating prosodies in her honour – he abandoned the law for a wispy BA in English Literature.
He graduated in ’79. That great political body the Catholic Church had had great civic ambitions for him but, having discovered in him not concrete precepts of the law but rather eccentric flights of linguistic fancy, they nevertheless put him to good use in the vaulted rooms where men of political intention gathered. He was even invited, the same year as his graduation, to Lancaster House in London where that new, sparkling babe Zimbabwe was conceived through some rather clumsy coitus. He bowed demurely before the men of political intention – those Britons who were led by Lord Carrington on one side, and on the other side the Patriotic Fronters led jointly by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo – he bowed and trembled, felt the power of the politicos quivering through his body, felt it shivering down his spine and then shivering back up; he twitched as it crept into his soul; it tickled his tongue, it warmed his larynx, it summoned Keats, who laughed boisterously and declared, To Hope, my dear Sir Zacchaeus, an ode To Hope! and out tumbled the eccentric flights of linguistic fancy, and though none of the politicos could understand the effervescent young man’s libretto-like speech, they all agreed that he had outdone himself, and it was thanks to this stellar performance that he was later invited to wax lyrical at Zimbabwe’s first Independence Day celebrations at the Rufaro Stadium on 18 April 1980.
A young sage! declared the politicos. An old soul! Indeed, indeed, the young man would go far.
The young man would indeed go far, much farther and in more dangerous ways than any of the politicos, in their prophetic proclamations, had intended. He, after all, hadn’t the capacity for irony, my Uncle Zacchaeus. Hadn’t a satirist’s bone in him. If he had, he may have escaped the fate that befell him. For, it was at Oxford, where he returned after independence in 1980 to do his Masters and then PhD, that he cultivated the intellectual umbrage that ferried him to infamy in the late ’80s and ’90s, not only in Zimbabwe but also in New York where, fleeing state persecution for his writings about the Gukurahundi Genocide, he spent fourteen years of his adult life.
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