Watching the Reverend Pastor in action, I remembered Mama Agnes’s proud story about how she stumbled across his Blessed Anointings church. She came across a poster of the Reverend Pastor five years ago, in 2002, on a City Council bin, advertising a revival at his Blessed Anointings church, and felt an inexplicable pull. And wasn’t she glad she had followed the urgings of the Holy Ghost, because how else would she have known that the Catholic Church was not for her, and that her spiritual blessings were to be found at Blessed Anointings?
The Reverend Pastor prayed for Abednego all evening and into the early hours of this morning, and even broke into tongues, Mama Agnes muttering beside him, clapping her hands, her eyes shut tight. My surrogate father just sat on his sofa, licking his lips. I sat opposite him, my eyelids clenched, occasionally opening them to scout the room. Our eyes locked once, but I quickly shut mine; he hadn’t wanted me there. He had said, once again, that this prayer session was private, a family thing, but my Mama Agnes had insisted that I be there, seeing as more prayers meant more weapons against the evil spirits that Satan has sent to afflict her home and her husband. And besides, she said, I lived in their yard, I was practically part of the family. I stood there beaming. I could have kissed her! So, there I was at the family prayer meeting, mumbling and occasionally yelling a loud, ‘Hallelujah!’, just like Mama Agnes. I saw her smiling at me at one point in the night, and began to yell with more verve.
The Reverend Pastor left some forty minutes ago, just after two a.m. Tjo! The man has marathon stamina. He prayed non-stop the whole time. He didn’t have his Mercedes with him today, and asked Abednego to drive him home. When my surrogate father scowled, digging his rump a little deeper into his seat, Mama Agnes offered to drive him instead. Even I was surprised, because she doesn’t like to drive, especially at night.
And now, though I’ve tried, gently and then more forcefully, to steer my surrogate father in the direction of my Thandi and his Bukhosi, he has remained sullen-lipped. I must get him talking about my inamorata again! I promise, this is the last time that I ply him with Johnnie. I’ve added a bit of ubuvimbo for a stronger effect, OK perhaps more than just a bit, but I need to get that heavy tongue of his wet proper!
He grudgingly takes my concoction. I watch him, to make sure he swallows the whole thing. He gulps it greedily, sticking his tongue out to lick the walls of the glass when he’s finished. I get up and lock the front door, and then check the curtains to make sure Mama Agnes is still out. And then, satisfied, I resume my seat opposite Abednego. He has his head tilted back, his mouth open, shaking the glass for any last drop of Johnnie.
‘So,’ I say, leaning forward. ‘Tell me what happened after the war. Where is Thandi? And this other Bukhosi, where is he?’
He’s become a most trusted friend, that Johnnie Walker Blue! Trumpeting the blues better than Miles Davis! Seducing even the most reluctant raconteur. For isn’t my surrogate father now working his vocal pipe harder than any piper?
The year was ’81, the summer at its mildest, the month February, the day brill, the birds chittering, the children chattering and the sky blazing sapphire and arctic and alabaster. He paused to survey Entumbane Township, Abednego, and was pleased by what he saw. Everywhere, the flutter of activity; men in tattered vests and shirtless men in sinewy movement, pivoting up-down up-down to the kong kong of their hammers, smashing rocks, gasping under the weight of cement blocks, staggering, pausing to lean against half-erected walls, slab dabbing brick mortar brick, and up went houses in the newly built Entumbane, layer by layer, corner by corner, wall by wall, zinc sheet by zinc sheet. On the streets, mostly men, mostly soldiers from that Joshua Nkomo’s ZIPRA army wing but some also from that Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s ZANLA army wing, many of them still awaiting demobilization, sauntering past or dragging the remains of landmined feet or otherwise just sitting with their legs dangling in the gullies outside complete or almost complete houses, lagers in hand, cigarette smoke whorling from brooding mouths to form rings around blank faces.
The air that summer was tense with the residue of war. My surrogate father trudged warily across Entumbane, clad in his ZIPRA uniform. There was a careful, almost coiled manner in the way the ZIPRA and ZANLA cadres spoke to one another – each searching the other’s eye, appraising the other’s posture, provoked by the slightest twitch of a smile, the tightening of a fist – ever since talk of hidden arms caches in Joshua Nkomo’s ZIPRA military camp, of jealousies about the Prime Ministership and subsequently soldier mutiny, of some divisive elements from ZIPRA who had thus been downgraded from war heroes to warring terrorists. And what was to be done about those weaselly peoples of Matabeleland, who had betrayed the baby nation by voting not for Prime Minister Mugabe’s ZANU (PF), the one true living party of the nation, but rather for that Joshua Nkomo’s (PF) ZAPU, party of the traitors and the losers and the fatsos? Re-education! Extensive and thorough re-education of the cockroaches, so that they could learn a thing or two about patriotism!
He was glad, my surrogate father, that Thandi had taken Bukhosi to the village for a little while, and was not here for this. The tensions between his cadres and those of the ZANLA seemed to be escalating daily. He scurried through the streets of Entumbane, clutching his demobilization cheque, saluting and at times waving at his comrades-in-arms, who saluted and sometimes waved back, nodding at the women walking about stiffly in their fatigues, bowing demurely at their counterparts with the sucklings squirming on their backs, until he reached the half-erected house he was building for Thandi. He squinted up at the builder who was angled above him on a ladder busy fitting the last of the zinc sheets, and said, ‘The house, it’s going to look great, Jonas. It calls for a celebration. Plus. I got a job today. I’ll be working the machines at Butnam Rubber Factory. Aren’t I a lucky bastard, eh?’
Jonas chuckled, tipped his cap. ‘Indeed, a bastard you are, Mr Abed. As for being lucky, well, I’d say it’s your woman who is lucky, having you build this house for her, that’s what.’
He chuckled. ‘Is it safe to go inside?’
‘Eh, it’s up to you, but if something falls on your head …?!’
He tucked his nose and mouth into his shirt collar as he manoeuvred beneath the ladder into the interior of the almost complete house. He was certain that Thandi would want to move back to the city once the tensions had eased and she saw the home he’d built for them. What was a year apart in a whole lifetime of metropolitan love? A blink and it was gone. Only joy lasted! Only love.
Drones of dust hovered in the air, sunlit sparkles of grey and silver, so that he beheld his house through a dreamy veil. Over there, to his left, beneath the naked window where rubble had piled up, was where they would place his TV and her gramophone and watch late-night feature films of Dr. No and Goldfinger and From Russia with Love and afterwards sway to Nina Simone’s lilting staccato. In that corner, diagonally across from where he stood, they’d ram their sofa and spend many hours folded into one another. (How I wish to spend many hours folded into my inamorata, tucked in her mature bosom!) And then, shuffling ahead, through another doorway, ah, this would be the kitchen; there wasn’t the present chalky smell of cement but instead the future aroma of Thandi’s cooking, the scent of rosemary and oregano and simmering stew. And stepping in here, through another doorway to the right, this would be their love-nest; they’d push a double bed into that corner over there, beneath the window, where they’d spend many hours making babies (oh, spare me please, surrogate father!), a whole soccer team, yes, and then this next room here would be Bukhosi’s and his unborn brother or sister. (For she was with child again, my Thandi! My surrogate father was not a man who wasted time. Jonas the builder was right – he was a lucky bastard!)
‘She’s going to love it,’ he shouted to Jonas. ‘Jonas?’
He rounded the house back to the front. ‘Jonas?’
He found Jonas standing beside the pile of bricks for the house and a wheelbarrow, which he hadn’t seen there before,
circled by four men who, from their uniforms, he recognized as ZANLA cadets. One of them was holding Jonas by the scruff of his shirt. They turned to Abednego as he approached.
‘Ah, look, another cockroach,’ one of them said.
Abednego kept his stride steady as he approached them, although his heart was battering his chest. ‘What do you gentlemen want?’
‘“What do you gentel-menn want?”’ one of them parodied. ‘Who knew that cockroaches could speak?’ The others laughed.
Abednego swallowed. ‘Leave my property, right now.’
‘“Leave my properly right now.” What properly do you own, iwe? You mean this?’ He pointed at the bricks. ‘Why, these are mine!’
With that, two of the ZANLA cadets began grabbing bricks from the pile and placing them in the wheelbarrow.
‘Hey, hey, wena, stoppit!’ yelled my surrogate father. ‘Hey! Fuseki!’
‘Did the cockroach just say foetsek to me?’
‘I said fuseki, leave my bricks alone.’
‘What did you say?’ asked the one who was clearly the leader. He retrieved a pistol from the small of his back, cocked it, and raised it to Abednego, aiming it between his eyes. ‘What did you say to me?’
Abednego swallowed. ‘I said, fuck your mother.’
‘Heyi, iwe—!’ The leader hit Abednego across the forehead with his pistol. Abednego staggered back but did not fall; out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jonas spitting into the face of the cadet who had him wrung by the collar. There was a scuffle, a shout, and then two men were on top of Jonas, punching him and kicking him and pummelling him with bricks. Abednego made as if to lunge at them. But before he knew what was happening, his feet had turned and were sprinting him out of there. Two ZANLA cadets yapped at his heels.
He was halfway down the street when he heard gunfire. He didn’t dare slow down, even to turn and see if Jonas had been hurt. He threw his limbs as he ran. The stench of summer clamped his nostrils. His fists thrust through the air, booted feet pumping down the streets of Entumbane, now deserted. The flesh of his arm tore against a jutting fence, oozing blood and maddening the hounds nipping at his heels.
He tackled a green door and burst into a room reeking of sex. Tripped over a pair of blanketed bodies. The flash of a sweaty breast, the nipple puckered; sweltering rolls of flesh. He raised an apologetic hand at the fellow with his buttocks firmly wedged between the thighs of motherfucking-sweet sovereignty, pumping to the new independence – ‘Sorry!’ – dashed through the kitchen with its clutter of mismatched chairs, down a short corridor and through the back door, into a rupture of light. Tumble tumble he went over more fences, across the cluttered meadows of township existence. The meaning of his own life flickered as in a bioscope: Thandi; Bukhosi, his nasberry son; and his unborn baby.
He ran until the sound of blood thumping in his temples drowned the batter of his assailants. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, he heard a shout behind him. He tried to run faster. But his legs were beginning to feel like sorghum porridge, and he stumbled. A hand gripped his shoulder. The hounds had finally caught up with him! He spun around, swinging a fist, right into the jaw of a skinny fellow dressed in his own ZIPRA uniform.
‘Hey!’ yelled the fellow, punching him back. Abednego staggered and fell, blood sputtering from his mouth. ‘Why did you do that?’ said the fellow, helping Abednego to his feet. ‘Yoh, you look like you’ve braved the crocodiles of the Limpopo, comdrade, and then?’
‘… Must … run …’ panted my surrogate father, pointing in the direction from which he had come.
‘Run? Run from what, those morons? Is that why you’re running?’ He shook his head. ‘Comrade! Kanti, where is your spine? Where are they? Where are the idiots? Show me, I will take care of them!’
‘I don’t know … they were behind me and I’ve been running and … I must have lost them …’
‘Ha, comrade! Running? You want the idiots to think we are cowards, that we can’t beat them? Come, let’s go look for them!’
‘No, no no no, I … tired …’
‘Heh! What kind of soldier are you? All right, come this way …’
It was only when he followed the fellow through a cobweb of backstreets and into a lilting house that Abednego recognized him as none other than Spear-the-Blood. He seemed happy enough to see my surrogate father, although he never tired of teasing him about his propensity to flee – ‘Ha, but, comrade! All this running, all the time? First you ran away from the war in your father’s village, now this? Kanti, what kind of soldier are you?’ – and even tried to get him to join him on his prowls in search of fighting, his voice husky with a lust for battle. But my surrogate father refused, using my Thandi and his Bukhosi as an excuse.
‘What about us, your family, your comrades! Ah. Won’t you fight for your place in this our new country?’
Instead of joining in the fight, Abednego refused to leave, and would spend the next few days hiding in the gloom of Spear-the-Blood’s living room from the escalating fighting between the ZANLA and ZIPRA cadres action-packing the streets of Entumbane. The contagion of violence spread quickly, the township descending into chaos in only a matter of hours, and very soon, the two factions were engaged in all-out war, the battle stretching as far as neighbouring Essexvale, the army mobilizing once again.
Abednego, having stayed put, was assaulted by visions of Thandi and his boy dancing to the tune of gunfire before tumbling to the ground puppet-like. He thought of them constantly, as hours turned into days in Spear-the-Blood’s bunker, trapped by the ongoing combat from leaving for Lupane, Spear-the-Blood coming and going from the battle, sometimes returning triumphant, other times forlorn, his face slicked with blood, and once brandishing the ear of an enemy.
And then a singsong voice ushered echo-like one afternoon from Spear-the-Blood’s radio to announce in rote fashion that they had a War of Wrath on their hands, repeat, a War of Wrath on their hands; The Dark Lord intended to snuff out Comrade Nkomo’s supporters, and had just released his latest hybrids – wargs and orcs of beastly proportions tilting on their heads red berets with sickle-spangled emblems busy executing in the village of Mbengwane by the Celane River near Lupane terrors unimaginable even to the most nefarious mind.
Upon hearing the name of his village mentioned in the same sentence as wargs and orcs, my surrogate father was finally stirred into action. He enlisted a final favour from his unlikely comrade and host, Spear-the-Blood, and had himself smuggled out of Entumbane beneath the canopy of a UN jeep. The jeep dropped him off at the city outskirts; from there he travelled for many days on foot, gypsy style along the Bulawayo–Victoria Falls road.
Here he let his imagination run away with him; he saw himself in his mind’s eye arriving in his Baba’s homestead to part burnt stalks of unharvested maize and sliding over sun-grilled boulders to behold outside the silo a bucket upturned, curdled goat milk foaming at the corners of the proverbial mouth, flies splashing about in milky pools, sun bathing their green fat bodies; outside the kitchen hut the hasty etchings of a broom, in the yard an accumulation of avocado leaves sticky with the blood of my surrogate grandma, my inamorata – my inamorata! – and Bukhosi, and right there beside their bodies over-ripe pawpaws that, too, had fallen to their squishy deaths. And then right here, outside my grand-dada’s hut, sat the old man’s black stick boots, side by side on the cansi outside the door as though at any moment the old man would appear with grinning whiskers brandishing his FAL rifle.
He’s beginning to falter, my surrogate father. His lips have started to twitch; he’s hugged himself again, lifting his knees to his chest, trying to crawl down the back of the armchair. I grab Johnnie from the floor and feed him straight from the bottle – ‘Here, just a sip, you’ll feel better.’ Gulp goes his Adam’s apple, that curse from the rib woman Eva that doth deepen the voice, loosening desire and lust and temptation, the amber balance of cocoa and cedar and leather and spice and moss and peat swirling to work once again its mag
ic. But he doesn’t seem to be getting better at all! He’s started crying.
I would lend him my chest to cry on, like I used to do for Uncle Fani, but I need him to get back to telling me what happened. I retrieve my little plastic packet of ubuvimbo powder from my pocket, take just a pinch and shove it into his mouth with my finger. He looks at me, startled; but his eyes glint at that familiar taste, and he begins to suck, greedily. The feel of his warm mouth around my finger, the urgent suction it makes, is exhilarating. It feels delicious! I can be there for him in any way that he wants. Can’t he see? I’m the son who is here, who will never leave!
It’s with great effort, and a little reluctance, I admit, that I pull my finger away, savouring the tingling feeling where my surrogate father’s mouth has been. ‘And then what happened, was Thandi there when you got to the village? Was she all right? Tell me!’
He arrived in Lupane to find his Bukhosi and my inamorata and my surrogate grandma alive still and well, and before he could stop them like a broken tap the tears were gushing from his eyes. He flung himself at my inamorata who, angry at his infrequent visits no doubt brought upon by gyrations with prostitutes and God-knows-what-other-manner-of-riff-raff, turned her swollen baby belly away from him and continued with her English class under the mopane tree. She’d been doing wonderful things in the village, my Thandi; not only had she started both children’s and adults’ literacy classes in her Angela Davis ‡khoā Learning Centre, as well as rallied together the women to form a Women’s Committee, she had also written a petition to the new District Administrator, Jepheth, regarding inheritance laws and the plight of the widows of Matabeleland North.
House of Stone Page 13