Life seemed to be going on as normal, and my surrogate father was beginning to think that maybe the wargs and orcs were a bit of an exaggeration, figments drawn from a war-pummelled imagination and writ large by Stress Response Syndrome; he was beginning to relax a little and think, why not spend a few days at home basking in the warmth of family living, rubbing Thandi’s feet and also pressing his ear to her belly, even taking his boy hog hunting and showing him a thing or two, and then maybe in a week or so he could scout the horizon and see what to do, maybe return with Thandi and Bukhosi to show them the surprise house in Entumbane.
He spent several peaceful afternoons siesta-ing in my granddada’s hut, a room in the homestead his mama no longer wanted to enter. He enjoyed lying on the old man’s mattress, one arm folded behind his head, looking up at the Liberation Hero Jesus Christ, who’d remained steadfast atop the thatch roof, maintaining his loving gaze even as his comrades had since forsaken him to the vicissitudes of wear and tear, to the wind and the dust, and the spiders that entangled him in cobweb crucifixions. Battered but not beaten, was the Liberation Hero, fixing his imperial stare on Abednego lying in that now neglected room in which he could still smell his Baba, could still hear his voice booming, ‘Get on the floor and give me fifty, soldier!’
He was beginning to relax and even dabble in a little nostalgia when, all at once, from the north-east, came the sound of trucks. He leapt up and rushed out to behold them lurching into the Mlambo homestead, a convoy of soldier trucks with flap-flapping tarpaulins. On this day, my surrogate grandma was away at the Ladies of St Luke’s Church Choir practice, and it was the English class for the youngsters that my inamorata was conducting beneath the mopane tree; at the sight of the trucks, frightened feet began thudding on the ground as the children tried to flee. Out tumbled … Black Jesus and his men. (Black Jesus! What the fuck is he doing in this story? How has he jumped from my hi-story to—? What the?) With them was Jepheth, hunched behind Black Jesus, as though trying to hide, thrusting a finger at Abednego. Abednego scrambled through the commotion, away from them, in search of Thandi and his boy. There they were, over there, near the kitchen hut; they were being hauled into the low-walled enclosure leading to the kitchen entrance. He scrambled after them. They ran harder, the children, all around him, left right and centre everywhere, whipping up a dust storm, only to be caught by the jaws of wargs and orcs tilting on their heads red berets with sickle-spangled emblems that caught the eye of the sun.
He parted his arms, Black Jesus, bared his teeth and said, ‘Let the little children come to me.’
The Men in the Red Berets – some of whom wore floppy, army-green hats with the bonnets tied around their chins like innocuous peasants – prodded the little children into his arms. He bent and hugged them, patted their heads, cupped their chubby cheeks and said, ‘Do not hinder them, let them come hither, for Tophet belongs to such as these.’
The little children began to cry.
Thandi started screaming. Now the children, trembling in Black Jesus’s embrace, began to scream too. He cooed to them and they quietened down, although many of them trembled still. Bukhosi began to cry. He tried to run to his father, but Black Jesus yanked him back. Abednego threw himself at his son, only to be met with a fist. It smashed his nose. He crumpled to the ground, whereupon the wargs and orcs leapt upon him and went to work. He clutched his head. Brought his knees to his chest. Di di pa pa gi gi crunch.
Somewhere Thandi was yelling, ‘Mayibabo! Mayibabo mayibabo! Nkosi yami mayibabo!’
The fists and boots rained down. He thrashed at the air. Bit his tongue. Blood flooded his mouth. He gulped. Began to choke. A rusty taste burned his throat. He glimpsed, through eyes puffed up and wet, the Men in the Red Berets herding the children into the kitchen hut, the swirl of Thandi’s pink skirt in their midst. She kicked and flailed, beating her captors with her fists and her elbows and her arms. She broke free. Rushed towards Black Jesus, towards the boy. Black Jesus gripped the boy with one hand. Raised the other. Slapped her across the face with the back of his hand. Punched her in the stomach. She doubled over. Hugged her belly. He grabbed a clump of her mfushwa hair. Yanked her back up. Slapped her. Spat. Raised his hand. In his hand was a scythe. The scythe sliced through the air. It sliced into her belly. Sliced her belly open. She staggered. Clutched her belly. Her belly was spilling. Spilling her intestines, her colon, her stomach. Spilling her spleen, her pancreas, her liver. Spilling her foetus.
Thandi lay in the dirt. Beside her spilt belly. Beside her intestines, her colon, her stomach. Beside her pancreas, her spleen, her liver. Beside her twitching foetus. Her abdomen was bloody. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head.
Bukhosi shrilled.
Abednego vomited.
The boy was yelling for ‡khoā.
He ground his face into the dirt.
‘Do you want to live?’ said Black Jesus.
Somewhere, a shuffle.
Little feet pitter-pattering.
Pitter-pattering little feet.
A great whoosh. Something hot on his arms. He opened one eye. Squinted. Looked up. The kitchen hut was on fire. The hut was burning. Inside, the burning children were screaming. The screaming children were burning.
A screaming thing capered out of the burning hut. It was an apparition. A ball of flames. It skidded across the compound. He’d never heard the boy scream. Not like that. Black Jesus leaned forward. Picked the boy up. Flung him back into the burning hut.
He retched.
Something sweet. Dizzying. His head. It hurt.
He couldn’t stop retching.
Grinned grotesquely.
‘Do you want to live?’
Called for his Baba.
This man. Black Jesus. ‘Baba? Your Baba can’t help you now. Eh, eh! I’m the only one who can save you. Don’t you know? I’m like Jesus Christ. Your life is in my hands. I can heal. I can raise the dead. I can say whether you live or not. Do you want to live?’
He shook his head.
He was retching.
Jesus Christ!
Black Jesus. He cackled. ‘Perhaps it’s mercy I shall dispense on you today and not the justice that you deserve. What is your name? Heh? What? All right, Ahmed, what would you do if you were in my shoes, Ahmed, heh? If a stupid sonofabitch was trying to destroy your country, your family, all the things that you love? You stupid people of Matabeleland busy voting for that loser fatso’s ZAPU party, instead of our Mugabe’s ZANU (PF). Trying to weaken our new nation by voting for the losers, eh? You would, like me, fight to protect your country from such fuckers. I am Jesus Christ. He who followeth me drinketh from the well of Life. So again, I ask, do you want to live?’
He shook his head.
His throat hurt.
Jesus Christ!
‘Yes. You may not see it now, but the truth is that you do not want to die. And me, I am a reasonable man. So, I will spare your life. Even your people, I can raise them from the dead, if I want. There is nothing that I cannot do. Nothing.’
Jesus Christ!
Chuckling. Shuffling. Whistling. Moving. Engine revving. Tyres braying. Fading stutter. Silence.
Everywhere hurt.
His eyes fluttered.
Thandi’s abdomen was abuzz with flies.
The foetus had stopped twitching.
The children had stopped screaming.
The hut was still burning.
He wanted to get up. Get up and fling himself into the blaze.
He didn’t move. Lay in the dirt. Sniffing. Sniffling.
Somewhere yonder. On the blistering horizon. Somewhere. A cock crowing.
Uncle Fani
My Thandi!
My inamorata!
This cannot be.
That man! Black Jesus!
It can’t be!
My Laodamia!
Thou meetest death at the hands of that most vile Trojan brute, that Hector that hath slain your beloved Protesilaus—
Here
I lie roasting in this divine hell, Hades!
While thou, my belovedest,
doth scamper across the meadow lilies up yonder in Elysium—
That man! Black Jesus! He killed – you died at the hands of – that man! He who smoulders like an ember in my own skull! How has he ended up in Abednego’s—? Impossible! Why does he keep taking everything away from me? First my mother, then my past, my hi-story, my very essence, and now you, my inamorata!
Celestial pity, I again implore; – Restore her to my sight – great Jove, restore!
Celestial pity refuses to restore you to my sight. For the past two days, ever since my surrogate father’s confessions about your death, ever since he broke down, breaking me in the process also, ever since learning about how you, too, like my dear mama, died a brutal death at the hands of Black Jesus, I have been cooped up in my pygmy room communing with the religious teachers. I have prostrated myself before the ancestors, before Buddha, before Zoroaster, before Confucius, before Krishna, before Mohammed, before Jesus! I have begged them each in turn to guarantee that were I to take my own life, they would be able to unite me with you, my inamorata, on the other side, whatever the other side may turn out to be. I swore to the ancestors to drink from the ancestral shrine, I oathed to Buddha to follow the Eightfold Path, I promised Zoroaster I’d convert to Zoroastrianism, I pledged to Confucius to take up the banner of Confucianism, I vowed to Krishna to adhere to the laws of Karma, I swore to Mohammed to pray to Mecca five times a day, and I guaranteed Jesus a most ardent disciple. Please don’t think it is cowardice that has prevented me from going through with my Romeo-esque plans, my inamorata! I was only too prepared to drink from the poisoned chalice and declare, thus with a kiss I die. It is only that I’ve received no assurance of casting mine eyes upon your umber visage from any of these indomitable gods, and for fear of taking my life only to find no you waiting for me on the other side, or no other side in which to be waited for, I’ve decided it is best to suffer the rest of my days on this earth with the comfort of my surrogate father’s memories of you in mine manly bosom!
I don’t even know what the hell is going on. The very hi-story I am trying to run away from. The old me I am trying to purge. Memories I’ve been trying for so long to forget. About my Uncle Fani and the day he died. About my mama. I think Abednego broke me. I think I may have broken him also. We broke each other in the living room just as the morning outside broke the night sky, he crying for the family he had lost, and I crying for you my inamorata, crying, breaking, and falling into one another’s arms. He clung to me. I to him. I cupped those wet, yellow cheeks and brought that face close to mine. I stared into those penny eyes. He let me bring my blueberry lips close to his. He did not pull away. I kissed him. He let me kiss him. His lips were moist and cool; his warm breath smelled of ubuvimbo and Johnnie.
‘Uncle Fani!’ I cried.
‘Bukhosi!’ he replied.
I never got to kiss Uncle Fani, never got to cup his cheeks. I just sat and watched as he lay dying at Mpilo Hospital in January of 2002, struck dumb. Even as I sat beside his hospital bed, I was still unable to understand his crying. There he lay, a man of fifty-seven who looked closer to seventy-seven, wrinkles slashing the whole of his tawny face, travelling the breadth of his wide forehead, right down the impasse leading to his smooth, droopy nose, converging towards his uni-lip, to disappear beneath a grey Balbo beard. There were hi-stories mapped all over that face, laid bare by every single one of those wrinkles; perhaps that’s why, as he aged so prematurely, he became so unbearable to look at.
He lay on his hospital bed with my fingers in his cold bony grip and his other hand raised to the second-floor window, where he kept calling out a name, Zodwa, my mama’s name, though I did not yet know it, Zodwa Zodwa he kept murmuring, oh Zodwa you have come for me, but there was nothing there, just the bare branches of a jacaranda tree. His rheumy walnut eyes were fixed not on me, his nephew who had been like a son to him, and at times even tried to be a mother, lending him my skinny chest to cry on, but rather on Nurse Clarence, who was fluttering over him and checking his drip and fluffing his pillows, all useless, for he was dying and no amount of fluttering or fluffing would change that. Meanwhile, her ample rump busied itself with beckoning me away from this man who had been almost like a father to me, Nurse Clarence’s rump shaped like two voluptuous brackets that rolled in and strained against and threatened to burst out of her crisp uniform. It was as he lay dying and I sat mesmerized by Nurse Clarence’s undulating buttocks that Uncle Fani finally coughed up the hi-story that had been gagging him his whole life.
‘It was in ’83 when they came,’ he began.
‘Who, Uncle? Who came?’
‘Mina, I was herding the cattle back into their kraals, and Zodwa and Ntokozo were in the silo, I don’t know where mama was but they found her, they found us all. Me, mama, Zodwa, Ntokozo, Jabu, Andile, Donsekhaya, Velempini and his wife Khathazile, their daughter Khohlwa, then our brother Celani, then Phephelaphi, Hluphekile and Skhubekiso. Is that it, how many is that …? Oh, yes, and Qedindaba. Baba was long dead by then, he’d died a hero in the war and had been buried at the Heroes’ Acre in Phelandaba.
‘They were just young men, nje, maybe five of them, but they had guns and they were wearing the red berets with these shiny scythe badges so, and so we knew who they were. They said there was a meeting at Tshipisane Secondary School, that an important man had come to the village and we had to be there. It was getting to be evening, I remember Velempini shook his head to them and said, it’s late, mama needs to take her pills for her high-high and then she needs to sleep. But as he was turning to go into the hut, they shot him. In the head. He just fell down, just like that, di. Mama started screaming and Khathazile flung herself at his body and she’s rolling and rolling and yelling mayibabo oh woe is me wangenza Thixo wami oh and now everyone is screaming and the killers are shouting shurrup shurrup wena mama shurrup all of you or-o you will be next but how can we stop we can’t stop. They are speaking Shona and nobody can understand them, me I can hear them because I had spent some months in Mberengwa panning for gold but I was staring at them with my eyes wide open like I can’t hear the swine. Then Celani is saying let’s go better we go with them it will be all right but mama is not going nowhere she is pointing and shouting Velempini my son oh bo oh my son how can you survive the war only to die like this oh and Khathazile is screaming better they kill me now also oh bo oh bantu oh what about Khohlwa think about your child and she is getting up and we are going with the killers and these are just youth you understand me I could snap their skinny little necks if it wasn’t for those guns.
‘We are at Tshipisane and it’s like the whole village is there, what is happening everyone is asking who is this person who is come is maybe it’s the President somebody says but the killers tell us it’s Jesus who is coming. Jesus? Yes they say don’t you know you stupid fools that you have a Jesus?
‘And then the man he comes he is wearing army uniform so, like combat gear and a beret but it’s green so, he is black black so, like a polished stone and has these whitest eyes you have ever seen they put him on a stage and Celani says that is him that is the beast and we look at him because everybody knows Celani he’s working with the dissidents for days he goes nobody knows where he is going and then he is coming with fancy things at home that don’t belong to him. You know him I ask he nods says that’s Black Jesus.
‘Black Jesus is walking up and down up and down the stage he starts to talk to us he says with man nothing is possible but with me your Jesus everything is possible. He is speaking in Shona and one of the killers is translating for us to Ndebele. Where two or three are gathered I am there with them says Black Jesus and here we are all gathered in my name do you know why I’m here? He asks. Hmmm? Do you know? I’m here because my disciples here are not spreading my gospel. I have told them that we need bodies, we need bodies to sow here in this barren land, but what are they doing, they are just slappin
g you, just beating you, why are they not shedding your blood? Heh? Are they afraid of you? Heh? Are the women too beautiful? Heh? So I am here to help them do what needs to be done. You maNdebele all of you are busy hiding dissidents in your midst you are a useless good for nothing people and what has no use must perish. But we won’t make it easy for you no no no, you are going to feel it, you will feel it, you will go hungry here there will be no food allowed here, we shall burn all your crops and you will starve until you start eating your dogs, then you will be eating the rats and even the cockroaches, and then you are going to start eating your children. Horayiti now sing! I can’t hear you, mhani, I said, start singing!
‘And we are trying to sing and many hours are passing by and mama faints, yoh, and we are trying to wake her but they beat us they say leave her Celani shouts mgodoyi fuseki and he is trying to pick her up and they shoot him and now he’s dead.
‘Now they are throwing us into these big trucks so and just like that they are driving and when I look back I see mama they have left her kneeling in the dust cupping her head and shake shake shaking it so like somebody who has lost everything. Nobody knows where we are going me I’m with Zodwa and little Khohlwa we can’t see anybody else here after a long time the trucks stop later we find out we are at Bhalagwe camp and there is nobody around for kilometres to help us.
‘They are beating us every day and taking the women as their wives Zodwa they take to Black Jesus. There is a white man who is coming there they call him Lakin I know him he has come before to our village during the war with Smith’s army and taken us to the Protected Villages where they wire us with electricity and hang us upside down and they are shoving sticks up the women and saying we are good for nothing munts who should have gone extinct long ago. He’s CIO first he was CIOing for Smith killing us in the war now he is CIOing for our President doing the same thing. He keeps directing the killers telling them what to do more force he keeps saying it’s the only thing the kaffirs understand and he’s laughing showing us clean shining teeth and the killers are laughing with him and beating us harder. CIO Lakin is taking me they take me to the holding shed he makes the killers wire my thing and tie a rubber around my balls and this man Black Jesus he is shouting me in Shona saying I’m a dissident me I’m screaming no no never then where are the dissidents he asks I tell him I don’t know. Lakin is twisting the electricity and one of the killers he is coming for me with a truncheon—’ He began to tremble, Uncle Fani, he began to tremble. I tried to stop him.
House of Stone Page 14