The Inheritance

by Sheena Kalayil

  Grace left school at sixteen, in 1993, when Zimbabwe was in the midst of an economic boom. By 1998 she was working as a hairdresser’s apprentice, at a chic city-centre hotel, Meikles, a Harare institution. She lived in a women’s hostel in the Avenues area of the city and met a Mozambican man, with whom she had a child. He left her as a single mother when he returned to Beira, his hometown, a year later.

  The political changes that ensued had been forecast, but the speed at which events took place had not. Mugabe’s decision to honour the terms of the Lancaster House Agreement to the letter cemented his statesmanship in the continent, where leaders were too often ridiculed as peddlers for the West. Mugabe reinstated the system of two-tier citizenship lauded by Ian Smith, with a reversal of fortunes. The economy began its decline. By 2003, the women who still attended the beauty salon on the rooftop of Meikles hotel were only told how much the cost of their treatment would be at the end of the session, because of constant changes in the value of the currency. A few months before the end of 2003, after five years of service, Grace lost her job:

  G: I lost my job and I have a son. He was now ten years old and I couldn’t look after him. So I sent him back to my village, to my grandmother.

  I: Did you not have family in Harare?

  G: My mother, she had died of AIDS two years ago. I found a job, in Sam Levy’s [Sam Levy’s village, an upmarket shopping centre] but Borrowdale is too far. I pay too much for the CO [commuter omnibus] so I need to move now.

  I: Where will you go?

  He closed the book, laid it on the floor beside him and turned off his lamp. He did not need to look behind him to know that Rita had fallen asleep; he knew by now the rhythms of her breathing. He lay for some minutes in the dark, and then he sat up, felt for the book, walked across to his bookshelves and placed it in a gap on the highest shelf.

  He had been reading his brother’s book because he had hoped it was a way of communicating with his dead sibling. But it wasn’t; it wasn’t the Ben he knew in those words. These were hard-working and courageous women whose personal struggles pointed to grander narratives. But they were not speaking to him: only to the researcher in front of them, Ben. He had never had that relationship with his brother, who was only that, his brother. If he expected to read something directed at him specifically – Fran, take care of Rita – he would not find it in the works his brother had published years before the girl had arrived in their lives. From now he would have to listen to himself, and those still in the living world. The man who had written the words he had immersed himself in the last few months was gone; he, Francois, remained.

  21

  THE women’s voices reverberated in his head as he slept; the feel and look of the photographs he had nearly forgotten about drifted in and out of his dream-vision. He heard the rustle of the quilt as the girl got out of bed while he was still lying down. He pulled on some clothes and walked through to the kitchen to brew some coffee, heard her leave the bathroom, and then she appeared at the door.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked. ‘Porridge? Toast?’

  ‘I’ll grab a piece of toast in a bit,’ and then she hesitated. ‘Should I go and see the lady at the dance school? Find out whether she needs anyone?’

  ‘Sounds like a good idea.’

  ‘Just in case I can pick up a few hours.’

  ‘Go for it.’

  ‘It might keep me out of your hair a bit.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about that, but you might enjoy it as well.’

  As he was having his coffee at the table, she emerged from behind the screen in a short maroon skirt, a dark fitted top.

  ‘You look nice.’ More than nice: she had touched some colour to her lips and to her eyes.

  She smiled. ‘Would you give me a job?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ He raised his cup in a salute. ‘Good luck.’

  He heard her pull on her boots at the front door, and then she was gone.

  Without leaving his chair, he reached behind him and lifted the folder of his photographs off the shelf. The photograph of Ben was still at the top. He laid it to one side and leafed through the others until he found a photo he had taken of his parents in the garden. He examined it closely and saw what he was looking for, what had been troubling him through the night. There was a vague form in the background, moving between the bushes like a ghost. A shimmer of long fair hair, long limbs: Denise. She would have been visiting, and he might have tried to include her surreptitiously in the shot. He had no memory of such an entrapment, but judging from the age of his parents, it would have been the right period of time. It was probably one of those days when she joined the family for lunch, while he burned up with jealousy across the table, before Ben would walk her back to her house. Down the road they would go, hand in hand.

  His phone beeped and he stood up, retrieved it from under his bed: Lucie. Can you meet me after my classes at 2 today? And come back for late lunch? He stared at the message. This was how they had made arrangements over the last four years, but she had not done so for some weeks now. Love to, he replied. See you then. He walked back slowly to the table. So, Denise had returned to jostle with Rita in his thoughts, and as if she could sense this, Lucie had reasserted her presence.

  He had cleared the breakfast things when the doorbell buzzed. He dried his hands and went to the door with a sense of foreboding that yet another woman he had either lusted over or wronged would speak to him through the intercom. But within minutes he was opening the front door with some surprise to Gildo, who appeared at the top of the stairs, panting.

  ‘Did we organise something?’

  ‘You mean, “Good morning, Gildo, my old friend. It’s nice to see you” . . .’

  His friend pushed past him and walked into the living area, his head turning one way and the other. ‘A menina?’

  The girl. Even he himself, in his head, still referred to Rita as ‘the girl’.

  ‘Out,’ he said.

  ‘Out?’ Gildo looked at his watch, then glanced over at Francois, at his papers and materials.

  ‘I know it’s hard for you to believe,’ he said, ‘but I don’t sit around all day.’

  His friend ignored him. ‘Where did she go so early?’

  ‘There’s a dance school in the Baixa. She wants to find out if she can teach some classes.’

  Gildo was smiling. ‘Well, she can move, as we saw . . .’ Then without waiting for any response, he walked over to the screen at the foot of the bed, drawing a finger along the wooden frame before moving forwards and bending down to inspect the toiletries Rita had set out on the windowsill.

  ‘Looking for something?’

  ‘No, no.’ His friend grinned, straightened up, turned around. ‘I’ve got a meeting later in Graça. I thought I’d take you out for breakfast.’

  ‘I’ve already eaten.’

  ‘Come and join me for a coffee. And you can watch me eat a prego.’

  Gildo wanted to revisit an old favourite. A shack behind the Panteão, on the side of the hill facing the river, which served an old-fashioned steak sandwich: a heavy breakfast, but one which would transport them to the barracas in Maputo. He knew he would be tempted into having a half portion. While he gathered his keys and jacket, his friend continued to circumnavigate his flat, until he said, finally, unable to keep the irritation out his voice, ‘Gildo, what are you doing?’

  ‘Imagining, Francois,’ still grinning, ‘Just imagining. Very nice. Very intimate.’ Muito intimo.

  ‘You know my flat is what it is.’

  ‘I do. Certainly, I do.’

  He ignored his friend’s antics. He knew already what was being implied, and he refused to join in on the tease. On the way down the hill, Gildo spoke of the family’s plans for the spring school holiday. They would be going to the Algarve, where Jacinta’s family owned a restaurant. They would be spending a week there, no more, because their daughter wanted to revise for exams. She was incredibly driven, like a changeling; they could o
nly sit back and watch her in amazement. Jacinta secretly wished she would study medicine, but neither wanted to place further pressure on her shoulders. Young people nowadays seemed to crumple under the difficulties of the world.

  They arrived at the shack and ordered their sandwiches, two coffees and a bottle of mineral water to share. Because he knew why his friend was paying him a surprise visit, and to avoid any accusations of avoiding the topic, he decided to say, ‘Rita enjoyed your party.’

  Gildo was drinking, motioned with his palm, swallowed and said, ‘She’s a nice girl.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sweet.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘And she looks like her photograph. You understand what I mean.’

  ‘Mm.’

  A short pause, then, ‘When did you decide to bring her back with you?’

  ‘Well, I never thought I’d meet her or find her or whatever. I didn’t plan anything.’ And he found himself continuing, peevishly, ‘I told you she went to see my parents.’

  Their sandwiches were called out, and Gildo went to fetch them. For some minutes, they ate in silence. Again the thought arrived in his head: let him do the work.

  Finally, Gildo spoke, wiping his mouth on a napkin, enunciating his words with relish: ‘And her parents, her Indian parents, are happy she is staying with—’

  ‘They don’t know.’

  His friend nodded, placated. ‘I thought so.’

  When he made no response, Gildo put his sandwich down, making no effort now to hide his exasperation. ‘Do you think this is a good idea? That they think she is one place, but she is in a different country?’

  ‘She’ll tell them when she’s ready, I’m sure.’

  ‘Está fraca, Francois,’ chastising, shaking his head, ‘muito fraca.’

  ‘Gildo, I know she’s fragile.’ He wiped his mouth with a napkin, placed the remnant of his sandwich on the plate. ‘That’s it exactly. She didn’t know what to do or where to go. I just want to give her some breathing space.’

  ‘And nothing more?’

  He glared at Gildo, who met his eyes coolly. It was unpleasant to be found out: he had no intention of admitting to his thoughts over Rita.

  Instead, he said, ‘You’re making this into something that it’s not.’

  ‘I’m opening your eyes.’

  He pushed his plate away, threw the napkin into its centre.

  ‘This is between Ben and me.’

  His friend raised his eyebrows. ‘Ben is dead.’ His voice was low. ‘But this girl . . .’

  ‘She’s of age. An adult. She came of her own free will.’

  ‘Free will?’

  Even as he had said the words he had cringed, but now he stared defiantly at Gildo, whose voice was rich with scorn: ‘You don’t have a daughter, Francois. And neither did Ben.’

  The words cut through him. Gildo did not look away, but a shadow moved across his eyes. The silence between them lengthened and yawned, stretched its limbs, then looked at one man and then the other, expectant.

  Finally, he spoke, slowly, holding Gildo’s eyes. ‘All the women,’ he said, ‘all the women you’ve had. You’ve been thinking, she is someone’s daughter?’

  Gildo grinned, his teeth a flash of white, bowed his head as if to accept the challenge, but his eyes were angry. Then his smile fell away, and he growled, ‘Filho de puta. Why can’t you see when someone wants to help you?’

  ‘You’re helping me?’

  ‘Do what you like, filho de puta.’ His friend picked up the menu card, tossed it over. ‘Do you want anything else?’

  He shook his head, his heart thumping with anger. Gildo left their bench and walked over to the cash desk, paid for the meal. When he returned to stand next to Francois, he picked up his glass of water and drained it. ‘I have to go,’ he said.

  They stayed like this for some minutes, the heat between them faded. Both men watched the street where opposite them a narrow alley led further down the cliff. Gildo relaxed, leaned against the bar, and he in turn allowed his body to uncoil.

  ‘You never met my father.’ Gildo spoke suddenly, his voice moderate, light. ‘He was from the bush, you know, a real man of the land,’ grinning now. ‘It was my mother who made sure we all went to school, spoke Portuguese, had the good manners for society . . .’

  He tried to smile back, to show his friend that he wanted, too, to end their rendezvous well.

  ‘In my father’s tribe, in the villages, this still happens in some places. If a man dies, then the younger brother becomes responsible for the widow and children left behind, so she stays in the family and she will be looked after. But you know, Francois,’ he leaned down so that his lips were an inch away, ‘sometimes the brother can choose if he wants to marry her. He can have sex first with his brother’s widow, to cleanse her of spirits. After that, he can decide if he wants her or not . . .’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  His friend straightened up, his fingers mussing Francois’s hair. ‘To remind you how uncivilised we Africans are. Those Africans you love so much . . .’

  He shook him off, slapped Gildo’s hand away. ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  His friend was laughing now, but the jollity was a veneer – that was clear to see.

  ‘I’ll mind my business, Francois . . .’

  ‘Espera,’ he said impatiently, and they were silent for some time. More people were entering the shack, and there was now a queue for orders. Most had the look of having arrived in Lisbon from further afield: from islands in the Atlantic, or from the countries that dwarfed their old colonial master with their sprawling land masses: Brazil, Angola, Mozambique. All gathered now in the shack in search of a reminder of what they had left behind.

  ‘You’re worried that something will happen between me and Rita,’ he said eventually.

  Gildo raised his head, looked him in the eye: ‘It’s inevitable, don’t you think?’

  ‘I’m not like you.’

  ‘Yes, you are, Francois. Yes, you are. Tell me you haven’t thought of it?’

  ‘I haven’t thought of it.’

  ‘You’re lying. Lying. And you’re making her lie to her parents, to everyone. Like your brother made her lie.’

  ‘When did you become a professor in moral philosophy?’

  ‘When I finished my degree in architecture. You didn’t know?’

  ‘Thanks for breakfast.’

  ‘OK. OK.’ His friend laughed, collected his keys from where he had left them on the bar, slipped his jacket back on. ‘Just let me say my last word, Francois. Don’t think I don’t see what you are feeling. It’s difficult to lose a brother.’ Then he clapped him on the back. ‘Are you going back to your flat?’

  ‘In a minute.’ He paused. ‘Thanks again.’

  ‘Até a proxima.’

  He knew there would be a next time: before him stood his closest friend, who had, as always, upended him. He took no pleasure in hurting Gildo, who loved Jacinta, who was a better husband than he had been or could be. He had an image of himself, Ben sitting by his side, while before them was a courtroom, a judge in wig and gown, regarding them over his glasses. Yes, the court accepts your noble intentions – here he exchanged a look with his brother, who raised his eyebrows slightly – but, and the voice changed, so the judge became Rita’s mother, pulling at her shapeless house-dress in distress, but she is bright, she is sweet.

  He left the shack and walked up the hill. He took his time: there was a heaviness in his step. The stairwell of his building appeared even gloomier than usual. The steps seemed to have doubled in number, felt endless, as if he were climbing higher to acquire something more portentous than a better view of the city: an answer to something. He opened his door; his feet led him to his bookshelves. He ignored his file of photographs and reached higher, lifted the book, Daughters of Africa, from where he had placed it only the previous night. He found a cigarette, which he lit, opened one set of French doors and leaned against the ba
lcony railing. Gildo’s lecture had reminded him of a passage he had read some weeks before in the introductory chapter. It only took him a few minutes to find the section.

  The Matrimonial Causes Act passed by the Zimbabwean government in 1985 ensured that a woman would not be stripped of property when widowed or divorced, and enshrined in law the man and woman as equal owners of land and property. However, I argue that continued social practices, and the sexual obligations they entail, diminish a woman’s ownership of her own body or sexual behaviour. Rather than being a lament on the social mores of a nation, the practices I describe below give context to the complex struggles women face when aspirational and ambitious. The negotiations the women undertake in managing the varied niches of their lives illustrate the underlying thesis of this book: that the daughters of Africa are the driving force of change.

  He skimmed through the paragraph, turned the page:

  In a polygamous culture, control of the sexual encounter is still a male preserve, and husbands are excused infidelity or have multiple wives. Social practices such as lobola (where a dowry is paid by the future son-in-law; one which increases with the ‘mombe yechimanda’, a reward to the bride’s family for preserving her virginity), the tradition of kupindira (where a man’s impotence can be hidden by a younger brother engaged to impregnate the wife) and the tradition of muramu (where the younger sister of a wife is considered the husband’s ‘junior’ wife) . . .

  Not here. His eyes zigzagged over the text until he found it:

  The persistent tradition of levirate marriage imposes the brother of the late husband on the widow. Shona culture is not alone in affording brothers with such entitlement. Indeed, in disparate cultures, over millennia, brothers have been endowed with a powerful oneness, regarded as unitary. In fact, levirate marriage is a feature in Central Asian, Jewish and Kurdish communities. There is even mention in the Old Testament, where Onan marries Tamar, the widow of his brother. What all these practices shine a light on is how sibling relationships are intensely gendered, so that brothers share and inherit property: be that property land, a house or a wife.