The Book of Memory

by Petina Gappah

  It is ridiculous, the tangentially connected, orphaned thoughts that come to you in a moment like that. ‘He died with his socks on’ was the first thought that came to my mind. Hysteria and shock then took over. I burst into tears. They were immediately followed by hysterical laughter. I reached for the phone. There was nothing but a dead sound. My mobile was not charged, and nor was Lloyd’s.

  My first instinct was to remove the bag on his face. Beneath it, his face was purple with strain. His eyes were wide open. As I moved towards him, I tripped on his laptop computer cable but managed to regain my balance. I touched the open laptop and it came to life. As soon as I saw what was on his screen, what he must have been watching, I understood at once.

  I thought at first that I could save him. I tried to give him mouth-to-mouth, but even as I put my mouth towards his face, I knew it was too late. Still, I tried. I sobbed out the numbers as I counted to myself.

  Even as I tried to revive him I knew that my efforts were in vain. After minutes that seemed like hours, I stopped. Even as I had tried to revive him, the governing thought in my mind had been that I could not let anyone find him thus. With comprehension had come the conviction that I could not let him be found like this.

  When I think of those moments now, more than two years after it all happened, it is hard for me to explain just what I thought I would achieve. All I know is that I did not want them to find him, without articulating to myself who exactly it was that I meant by ‘them’.

  I did not want anyone, even strangers, to see him like that, or for his death to be a lurid headline in a newspaper, or the subject of titillating speculation on the news websites.

  It was this governing thought that led me to my wild plan: I would make it look as though he had died accidentally. He had indeed died accidentally, but I would transform this accident into another type, to make it seem as though he had died in another way.

  In that moment, I remembered what Alexandra had told us about how the Collinses on Hazlemere had died, how their bodies were found floating in their swimming pool, how their attackers had still not been caught. I remembered the squatters on Liz Warrender’s property. And I remembered that Alexandra had insisted that Lloyd keep a gun.

  It was then that my plan came to me in its completeness. In the turmoil of my wild panic, I decided to make his death look like he had been shot during a robbery. I would shoot him with his gun, and then I would drop his body in the pool.

  You will understand from this that I was clearly not thinking straight: in the extremity of my panic, I was even prepared to go to the swimming pool, the one place that I had always kept away from. Nor did I think about ballistics and forensics and post-mortems. I imagined that the police would simply see his floating body in the pool, connect it to the Collinses, and conclude that things were just as they seemed.

  The first thing to do was dress him. But as I looked down at him, my courage almost failed me. His discarded clothes lay on the floor of the bed. His body was floppy beneath my ministrations. I pulled his briefs and trousers on. I could not manage a shirt – my hands were trembling too much for me to even consider putting all those buttons into the button holes – so I pulled out a tee-shirt from his wardrobe.

  I was sobbing as his arms resisted my efforts at manipulating them into his sleeves. I ran to the safe and took out his gun. If this were to work, I would need to make it look as though he had been surprised.

  I stood some way away and shot him in the back. The report rang in my ears. The recoil of the gun made me drop it to the ground.

  I picked it up from where it had fallen and tucked it into the front of my jeans. There were forests and trees in Umwinsidale where I could get rid of it; I could even drive out of the area altogether and dump it in a river – the Hunyani, perhaps, in far-off Chitungwiza.

  My tears were hot on my cheeks. I needed to get him to the pool. I dragged him through the living room. We stopped. His foot had hooked a lamp and I could not move him. I sobbed in frustration, and pulled harder. The lamp fell over and smashed to the floor. I managed to get him out of the room and onto the veranda. It was just a few metres away now. I dragged him across the veranda, and towards the pool.

  I approached the pool from the shallow end. Without looking, I pushed him to the side of it. There was a splash. It was the gun. By the time I realised what had happened, the gun rested on the final step of the shallow end.

  I cried out my frustration.

  I willed myself to walk in. The old fear held me back. I could have gone in; it was just one step, two steps, three steps to where the gun lay. But the thought of stepping into that water paralysed me into inaction. The njuzu would get me; the Chimera would drown me. I thought wildly that I would get the long-armed net that Biggie used to remove leaves from the surface of the pool, but even that seemed beyond me.

  By now, I was overwhelmed by exhaustion. Tomorrow, I thought; tomorrow. I will do it tomorrow.

  I turned back to Lloyd’s face. With my eyes closed, so that I did not see the water, I pushed him. There was a heavy splash. It was immediately followed by a scream. It seemed as though the sound came from the body in the pool. There was another scream, and I realised that it came from behind me. In confusion, I whirled to face the veranda.

  Alexandra looked at me, her eyes wide above the hand clasped over her mouth. The phone in her left hand fell to the ground with a clatter. As though in slow motion, I saw the battery go one way, the phone and SIM card another. Alexandra made a strangled sound.

  Babbling and weeping, I made to move towards her, my hands turned to hers in supplication, pleading with her, willing her to understand. Now that she was here, I could let go of my preposterous plan, what I had planned to do. Now that she was here, I would tell her everything. She would help me, I thought; we would decide what to do, the two of us.

  As I moved towards her, she backed away. I understood in that moment that she thought I had done this.

  ‘You have to believe me,’ I said. ‘I found him dead.’

  But the words remained in my mind. I could not speak them.

  ‘Alexandra,’ I finally managed to say.

  She backed away and went round to the side of the house where she normally parked her car. Overcome by the wild emotion and exhaustion, I sat down on a chair and closed my eyes. When I opened them a few seconds later, I heard the sound of heavy breathing and running feet followed by the sound of her engine starting and her car driving away from Summer Madness. From the veranda I saw the twinkling lights of her car winding down Umwinsidale Drive, headed towards Enterprise Road, towards my fate.

  *

  You will hear many stories about the inefficiency and corruption of the police, about impunity for sale. But, as I found out, in cases that have nothing to do with the poisoned politics of this country, the police are much more thorough. Perhaps they would have been more inclined to believe me if I had not moved his body. But I had moved his body – there was Alexandra’s statement of what she had seen.

  There was the will. He left me the house.

  They asked me how I came to live with him. I told them. They did not believe me. ‘We don’t sell children in this country,’ they said.

  When they failed to believe that truth and cast it as a lie, it naturally followed that everything else I said was a lie. Even when I told them the truth, chokwadi chaicho, the real truth, as Officer Dimples called it, they exploded with laughter at the mere thought.

  ‘Whoever heard of such things?’ Officer Rollers said. ‘We know they are strange creatures, these whites, but really.’

  ‘Whoever heard of such a thing?’ echoed Officer Dimples.

  As soon as Alexandra arrived back at Summer Madness with the police, they took me to Highlands police station. They left me alone in a room for more than an hour. Officer Dimples, the man who said my crime was no laughing matter as he laughed jovially, then came in to ask me what had happened.

  I said nothing.

  Then Of
ficer Rollers came in and asked if I would like a drink: water, maybe, she suggested, or maybe Mazoe. The kindness in her voice disarmed me, but it was a short-lived relief. I was left alone for another hour.

  Then Officer Dimples came back with the same questions. Officer Rollers followed him with offers of food and drink. This was not so much good cop, bad cop as it was bad cop, worse cop.

  In my first week there, I did not talk. I had no lawyer. No one came to see me; no one knew where I was. I thought then about what it must have been like for Lloyd, alone in the cell for two weeks, with no one knowing where he was.

  They finally charged me with murder two weeks after they arrested me. I have read different accounts of what they do in police cells here – the beatings on the soles of the feet, the twisted arms. Nothing like that happened to me.

  They played a much subtler game that was, in the end, more terrifying than actual pain would have been. They removed me from the first cell, in which I had found myself with women arrested for prostitution, and moved me to an empty cell, a small windowless space filled with the smell of many bodies. When they first put me there, there had been a power cut, and all I got from my new surroundings was the smell, overpowering and fetid, of urine, sweat and faeces.

  When the power came back, I wished the darkness had remained. There were stains that looked like blood had dried on the walls and floors. On the wall immediately opposite me were marks that looked like they might have been made by a bloody hand moving along the width of the wall. On other parts of the wall were traces of dried faeces, vomit and blood.

  I felt then the terror that Lloyd must have felt. More than the discomfort of my surroundings, I felt an unshakeable guilt. I could not disconnect the act that had led to Lloyd’s death from my own actions all those years ago. That is wildly exaggerated – I see that now, of course – but I am telling where my frenzied reactions at the time sprang from, and not the reasoned conclusions that I have meditated over for the last two years.

  So this is what was in my mind then. He had been in this very police station all those years ago when Alexandra found him. I had not killed him, but I had been cold and cruel to him. I had rejected him. I thought then about Lloyd, about why he had died the way he had. Was it because of me that he had rejected all human touch? Was it the fear of discovery? Or had it always been like this for him? What did I know about Lloyd beyond what I saw? What had I ever known? What did I know about the things he dreamt about, fantasised about?

  After three days in that place, Officer Rollers made the threat that finally broke me. When she said it, it was not even a threat. She said it casually, as if it was the most reasonable solution to their administrative problem.

  ‘Now look here,’ she said. ‘Do you see all the women in the cell?’

  They had committed minor crimes, these women, a bit of theft here, a bit of soliciting for prostitution there. They were not hardcore criminals but minor offenders – an admission of guilt and a fine in most cases would cover their offences. They had not committed serious crimes like I had. They had not killed anyone. My crime was far too serious for me to be with these other women.

  But there was one problem now, she said. The only other serious criminals they had arrested were four men who were members of an armed gang that stole from the cars of female drivers after raping them. One of those victims had died, she said. They needed to put them somewhere, these men. And the only other place possible was the cell that I occupied. At the same time, they could not put me in the women’s cell, because my crime was too serious.

  ‘You see how it is,’ she said, and scratched her nose.

  I signed the statement that Vernah Sithole may have shown you, the statement that sealed my guilt. The words were dictated to me. The statement was then read back to me and I signed it. I did not think it meant anything beyond an escape from my present hell. I would explain it all to the judge.

  It occurred to me then that, even if Alexandra had not come to Summer Madness that night, my plan would never have succeeded. Now I pinned my hopes on the very things that I had hoped against. I became certain that there would be a post-mortem. There would be forensic evidence. It would become clear that Lloyd could not have been shot. The judge would see that he had been shot after his death. There would be technical and detailed reports about lividity and rigor mortis, gunshot wounds and the state of his blood. It would all come right at the trial.

  By the time my trial began, the Law Society had appointed a pro bono lawyer for me. That is how I ended up with my first lawyer. Vernah has explained to me much that puzzled me about him, why he would barely look at me, why he spent more time laughing with the prosecutor than going over my case with me, and why he was so obsequiously anxious to please the judge.

  I know now that the Law Society obliges all law firms in the country to take on pro bono cases. And the High Court requires that everyone accused of capital crimes be represented by lawyers. But there are no large fees that the law firms can make from this kind of case. On the other hand, there is money to be made from conveyancing and selling houses and commercial contracts. So the senior lawyers, the most experienced lawyers who know the law best, do the undemanding work that brings in the money, while the lawyers who charge the least because they are the least experienced, the lawyers who are barely out of school, get the murder cases in which they fight for people’s lives.

  I was brought before the court for a bail hearing. My lawyer said very little beyond trying to be as agreeable as possible. ‘Accused has been out of the country and has a passport. Accused is likely to abscond or interfere with witnesses. And as accused has already pleaded guilty, accused may as well stay in prison,’ said the prosecutor.

  The judge denied my bail. There was the trial, then Chikurubi. The cracking of my skin was the first indication that my nightmare was beginning. It was as though I was going back to the child that I had once been. And when I slept, the dreams came to me and I was drowning and Lloyd was speaking in my mother’s voice and the njuzu that was like the Chimera was telling me that I was dirty, I was dirty, and I needed to bathe.

  PART THREE

  CHIKURUBI

  1

  I have finally understood Loveness’s unexpected overtures to me. I know now what it all meant, the newspapers, the lotions, the extra pens and notebooks, the dropped confidences. Yesterday afternoon she came to fetch me from the laundry, where I was ironing with the others. As we worked, we helped Beulah to prepare for her trial. She had finally been given a date.

  ‘Make sure you don’t look directly at the magistrate,’ Jimmy was saying. ‘Look down on the ground, like you do with the guards. If you look directly at them they think you are challenging them.’

  ‘Unless the magistrate is white,’ said Monalisa. ‘I have worked with whites all my life. It is different with them. If you don’t look straight at them, they think you are lying.’

  Evernice turned to her. ‘White people, white people, chii chacho? Why are you always going on about white people? Where is she going to see a white magistrate? Where is she going to see one, tell me that. Where have you seen a white magistrate?’

  Sinfree said, ‘There is a white magistrate in Bulawayo. He was the one who sentenced me.’

  Evernice rounded on Sinfree. ‘What has Bulawayo to do with anything? Is she going to Bulawayo? Are we in Bulawayo? Does she look to you like she is going to Bulawayo?’ She let out an explosive sound of disgust and accompanied it with a matching moue. Then she calmed down as quickly as she had flared up and, her voice less strident, said to Beulah, ‘If they ask you if you are sorry for your crime, just tell them that you are the only breadwinner in your family.’

  ‘Ehunde,’ Jimmy added. ‘You can also say that your sister or brother passed and left you their children to look after, or you can also say the whole thing is based on heresy.’

  ‘Do you mean hearsay?’ asked Verity.

  Jimmy nodded. ‘That’s right, heresy. But honestly, I won’t l
ie to you,’ she continued, ‘the best thing you can do for yourself is to just say that you have really come to know Jesus.’

  Loveness came in at that point. We stopped talking at once. After ordering us to work in silence, she turned to me. ‘I want you to come with me,’ she said.

  The others looked at each other. I could not think of anything that I had done that would warrant my separation from the others during the day. In silence, I followed her out of the laundry room, down the corridor and out of the courtyard and into the compound.

  The ground was muddy. I blinked in the sun. It had rained almost every day of the week before. We had not been out in more than a week. Synodia and Patience were in the yard, talking while they watched their charges sweeping the rainwater that had collected in the courtyard. Patience waved to Loveness as we passed. I kept my eyes to the ground, keen to avoid drawing any further attention to myself. I did not dare to glance back but I knew that the others must have looked up from their work to follow us with their eyes, because as we passed them I heard Synodia say, ‘What are you staring? Get back to work at once.’

  Loveness led me past the garden and the fields, where small clusters of A and B prisoners were resting after planting the new beans. As we passed the administration block, my right flip-flop remained stuck in the mud. I stopped to rescue it. Loveness stopped with me. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘As soon as the next donation comes from the Fellowship month-end, I will make sure to get you some nice shoes.’

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  On we walked, past the perimeter fence, until we had left the prison compound altogether and were approaching the staff houses. The homes of the guards are set back from the prison; you do not see them when you drive in. Before I could ask Loveness where she was taking me, we had stopped at a little house with a green hedge around it.