The Death of Rex Nhongo

by C. B. George

  His guilt stemmed both from the misogyny he revealed, and from the fact that nothing he said even touched upon reality, except in so far as to express his general discontentment with his wife. Once, for example, at the Maiden, the pub in Harare Sports Club overlooking the cricket pitch, he told a complete stranger how his wife was always in a bad mood and, using a mixture of euphemism, insinuation and mumble, managed to convey his belief that this was because she didn’t have sex with him enough and, what was more, that this exemplified the crucial point that she—like, in fact, all women—didn’t know what was good for her. Much to Jerry’s surprise, his companion not only took his story at face value, but had experienced the very same trend in his own marriage, a discovery that even had Jerry briefly believing his own bullshit.

  Tangwerai emerged from the Gents. When it came to Jerry’s drinking companions, the doctor was the exception to whom the Englishman never mentioned his marital problems. This was partly because the pair worked together and Jerry instinctively (if not consciously) knew better than to pollute an ongoing relationship with untruths that might one day require justification or denial. It was mostly, however, because Tangwerai was a widower. For Jerry to start bad-mouthing his wife in the company of a man who’d lost his seemed…well, it seemed lots of things, but foremost among them was wrong.

  Jerry had found out the raw facts of Tangwerai’s status within a couple of days of their acquaintance: he had asked the doctor if he was married and been told plainly, “My wife is late.” However, in the subsequent weeks, he had uncovered little further information. He knew that the bereavement was recent (“Last year,” Tangwerai had said, when asked in that same exchange) and that the doctor now lived with his sister and six-year-old son, but he had no idea how the woman had died and, for some reason, struggled to ask. Jerry considered how he might feel if April had died in the last twelve months and imagined it would be something ever-present: a chronic pain, a weight in his stomach, a desperate breathlessness that would roll through him in peaks and troughs and regularly reduce him to tears or strike him with panic or leave him stultified. “And I don’t even like her,” he said to himself, drunk and bitter.

  But Tangwerai, at least superficially, seemed to have moved on from his wife’s passing: never pausing mid-consultation to look away, never dabbing at a welling eye, never taking a moment to sit alone and wallow in the horrible injustice of it all. And, for some reason, Jerry thought this apparent lack of emotion simultaneously intriguing and somehow threatening; particularly when drunk, he found question after question crowding the tip of his tongue, like commuters at a rush-hour bus stop.

  Jerry held up his beer bottle by way of an offer. Tangwerai shook his head. “Enough for me. I want to get home before my sister puts Bradford to bed.”

  “One for the road,” Jerry pushed.

  “You don’t want to go home or you are trying to get me drunk.” The doctor smiled. “You know, my boy doesn’t like it when I have been drinking. ‘Daddy, you smell of beer,’ he says. Just like that.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with drowning your sorrows once in a while.”

  “True enough, my friend.” Tangwerai nodded. His eyes, magnified by the thick spectacles, betrayed nothing. He gave Jerry his hand. His grip was firm and his palm warm and dry. He said, “Till tomorrow.”

  Jerry watched the doctor’s exit, the confident grace with which the small man negotiated the crowded bar despite the somewhat comedic flapping of his oversized suit, and felt suddenly and profoundly ashamed of himself. Jerry knew why he felt ashamed, but the reason the feeling had chosen that moment to surface so poignantly was beyond him.

  22

  May I?”

  A thick-set man, late forties, suit, was hovering by the seat Tangwerai had just vacated.

  “Be my guest,” Jerry said.

  “Thank you.” The man struggled to maneuver himself onto the bar stool, huffing somewhat and exuding the sickly smell of flesh and booze. “You’re drinking alone? Nobody should have to drink alone.”

  “My friend just left.”

  “But you decided to stay. I will keep you company. Two tots of Scotch whisky, that’s my poison.” He settled onto the stool and looked at Jerry closely, a thick furrow above his brow. Jerry looked right back at him, unblinking. He’d spent enough time in the city’s bars to be familiar with these macho games of pressure and obligation, even if he couldn’t quite figure out their rules or precise purpose. He wasn’t in the mood. The man cracked a smile that revealed pale pink amphibian gums and reached into his jacket pocket to produce a silver money clip. “I am joking. What will you have?”

  Jerry shrugged. “A Castle. Thanks.” He stared at the money clip. It was thick with bills, though he had no idea of the denomin­ations. Jerry had never met anyone who carried a money clip before and for a moment he thought he might burst out laughing. It appeared to crystallize something he’d been thinking, which hadn’t previously cohered into words. The bar’s décor, the waiters’ bow ties, the clientele’s mustaches, cigarettes and polyester suits, the money clip: Jerry had the sensation that he was in a 1970s cinema ad—“For a swinging night out, visit the Jameson, adjacent to this theater.” He found that he was smiling. He picked up his fresh beer, clinked with his new companion, and they dropped easily into conversation, the man opening with the usual questions and Jerry wheeling out his usual replies—“Leatherhead”; “Not London exactly, kind of like a suburb”; “Almost five months”; “My wife’s work”; “The British Embassy”; “Me? A nurse”; “No, never my ambition”; “No, haven’t got a visa. I’m just volunteering at a clinic”; “Just one. Theo. He’s two”; “Greendale. You know Arcturus Road? Just off there.”

  The man asked how Jerry found Zimbabwe and Jerry said he liked it very much and it was certainly an easy place for a Brit. The man nodded, and observed that this was unsurprising, considering almost a century of colonial rule: “More British than the British.”

  Jerry studied his expression for signs of hostility but found none. He said he knew what the guy meant but, actually, the longer he stayed, the more foreign he felt. “Everyone speaks good English and watches American TV and listens to bad rap music—just like the UK. But whenever I scratch the surface I find I just don’t get it.”

  The thick-set man patted him matily on the arm. “We are Africans,” he said, less explanation than marker to allow the conversation to move on.

  But now, fizzing with fizzy lager, Jerry didn’t want to move on and he heard himself say, “Take death, for example…” And he launched into an expansive explanation of his colleague Dr. Tangwerai’s situation (so far as he understood it), a detailed description of his behavior and a thorough account of what he, Jerry, found peculiar about it.

  Jerry’s companion listened politely, then said, “What is it you expect this colleague of yours to do?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing. Something. We’ve become friends. We have a drink together. I’m just surprised he doesn’t talk about his wife.”

  “To you. He does not talk about her to you.”

  “No.” Jerry shook his head. “I’m sure he doesn’t talk about her at all.”

  The man shook his head too. “She is dead, isn’t it? What do you want him to say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The man drained his Scotch. He flashed the glass at Jerry, who ordered him another. “Here in Zimbabwe,” he said, “I don’t think we see death like it is in UK.”

  “I know,” Jerry interrupted. He’d heard this before. “Death is part of life, I get that. And I know in the West we all think we’re immortal.”

  “It is not just death. It is catastrophe. The whites I have met don’t know what to do when there is catastrophe. They think it will never happen. Zimbabweans, blacks, we expect a catastrophe and we know what to do. We don’t panic. Our economy collapses, money’s worth nothing, HIV, angry ancestors, failing crops, crashing cars, all of these things…and still we get up in the morning and still
we have to feed ourselves and our children, isn’t it? You guys with your insurance and credit and pensions and welfare state, I think you have plenty of time to worry. Whites…” Jerry wasn’t looking at the man. He was examining the hair on his knuckles, picking dry skin from around his fingernails. But this repetition of “whites” made him glance up and, though there was no visible change of expression, he was sure he hadn’t mistaken the contemptuous tone; and now it came again. “…whites. It is the mark of how civilized you are, your freedom to worry.”

  Jerry sipped his beer. Now it was his turn simply to want to move the conversation on. He looked the man directly in the eye. “You know what Gandhi said about Western civilization?”

  “What’s that?”

  “That it would be a good idea.”

  His companion smiled and any tension was gone. There were those pink gums again; not amphibian, Jerry thought, but piscine. The man examined the ice cubes in the bottom of his glass as if he expected to find something there.

  23

  My youngest son is a cripple,” the man said. “Ten years old and he walks with a frame. The doctors say that, as he grows, maybe he will not be able to walk at all. You are a nurse, isn’t it? What is that?”

  “I don’t know. Could be lots of things. Was he sick when he was younger?”

  “No, he was not sick.”

  Jerry shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  The man studied his face, as if checking whether he believed him. Then he said, “Genetic. That is what they say: a genetic disorder.” He drained the rest of his whisky. He spat out an ice cube.

  He lifted a finger at the barman and an eyebrow at Jerry, who said, “I’m fine for the moment.”

  The man took a second to consider whether this was acceptable. Then he nodded. “My wife found it very difficult,” he continued. “She believed people looked at him and thought we must have done something wrong. In the end, we took him to the n’anga. You know this word? It is what we call a spirit medium, like a traditional healer.”

  “Sure.”

  “We took him to the n’anga. We discovered the source of the problem. We made some sacrifices.”

  “What was the problem?”

  “What was the problem?” The man repeated the question and considered Jerry ruefully. “Issues in the family. The problem is always issues in the family. But we consulted the n’anga, we made some sacrifices and we solved the problem.” The man blinked, too slowly, in a manner that seemed to convey deep, albeit unknown, significance. “And do you think it has improved my son’s legs?”

  “Doubt it,” Jerry said.

  “No. And yet we have solved the problem. Do you see?”

  “Not really.”

  The man gave a short, unamused chuckle and exclaimed, “Ah! You are very English, my friend!” Then he shook his head and sat back on his stool. “Come on, man, keep up. Everything about being an African is right there! You people? You are free to do what you want, for better or worse. But we are superstitious people. Africans are superstitious people, so we are always caught up in these webs of obligation and blame and, even if you run away, you can never escape, you know?” Now Jerry’s companion leaned in and held his left forearm, thick fingers tight on the shirtsleeve. “Family, friends, work. You cannot see these…these…What are they? These restraints. But you feel them holding you back and rubbing you raw.”

  “Even now?” Jerry said.

  “What do you mean ‘even now’?”

  Jerry freed his arm to lift his beer. “I mean even now. In 2011. This is a modern country.”

  “Ha!” the man exclaimed. “Yes! Even now! You know, my boss, he’s a very important guy. He is an important guy because he knows how to create a situation of duty and debt. He’s a very clever guy, very modern. You think I could ever go against my boss? No way.”

  His companion was looking at him so intently that Jerry felt he had no option but to be flippant. “Perhaps you need a new job,” he remarked.

  The man stared at him momentarily, then smiled: those gums. Jerry was drunk. He found himself picturing Bessie, standing at the sink, efficiently gutting bream. He needed to eat something.

  “You’re right,” the man said at last. “Perhaps I need a new job.”

  Jerry said he should go. The man nodded and slid off his bar stool. “Back to the wife,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Jerry said. “Something like that.”

  They walked outside together. Jerry found himself swaying slightly, struggling to avoid the pedestrians on the busy city street. He was drunker than he’d realized.

  He was looking for Patson’s cab, the navy blue Raum with “Gapu Taxis” in bright yellow on the side. He couldn’t see it. He was now using the cab on an almost daily basis: to take him to and from the clinic, to take him to or from whichever bar—it was easier than arguing with April for use of the Land Cruiser. As a rule, he preferred it if Patson were driving, because when Gilbert—Bessie’s husband, Patson’s brother-in-law—had the wheel, he talked incessantly, telling Jerry his plans and, particularly, his business ideas with puppyish enthusiasm. Worst of all, he seemed to believe that Jerry might be prepared to advise or even invest. Patson, on the other hand, was largely silent. The downside was that the older man had a tendency to go AWOL if he got the offer of another job, even if he’d been asked to wait. And then they had to go through this whole rigmarole of lies as Jerry threatened to find another taxi and Patson swore he was only seconds away.

  Jerry dialed and lifted the phone to his ear: “Where are you?”

  “I am very close, Uncle,” Patson said. “I will be there just now.”

  Jerry tutted and cut the call. He turned to his companion from the bar, who was looking at him quizzically. “Your driver?” the man asked.

  “Cab,” Jerry said.

  The man opened an arm into the street. “There are plenty of taxis.”

  “I know this guy,” Jerry said. “I like him.”

  The man raised an amused eyebrow. “And he is taking advantage,” he said. He offered Jerry his hand. “It was good talking to you.” The two men shook. “You were saying you were having trouble with your visa. Perhaps I can help. I can help with lots of things. I know some people.”

  “Thanks,” Jerry said, “but I know people who know people. No luck so far.”

  The man smiled. It was, Jerry thought, a sinister expression. He decided he didn’t like the guy much. “Perhaps you know the wrong people,” the man said. “Or perhaps they know the wrong people.” He opened his arms—Who knows? “In this country, you need to know people. But I’m sure you understand that. I am lucky to know a lot of people and I would always be happy to help a visitor like yourself.”

  “Thanks very much,” Jerry said. “That’s kind.”

  “What’s your name?” the man said. “We have been talking all this time and I don’t even know your name.”

  “Jerry. Jerry Jones.”

  “Mandiveyi,” the man said. “Albert Mandiveyi. Take my number.”

  The two men shook hands again. They swapped mobile numbers. Mandiveyi made sure that Jerry entered his name correctly. He admired Jerry’s iPhone. Jerry slurred some vague small-talk about how the iPhone wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. They shook hands a third time. Mandiveyi said, “It was good to meet you, Nurse Jerry.”

  “Likewise.”

  Mandiveyi flagged down a taxi and was gone. Patson pulled up seconds later, profusely apologetic. They barely talked on the way out to Greendale.

  The house was dark and silent. The guard—Petros?—was asleep. The Land Cruiser was in the driveway. Jerry checked his watch: eight—April was home early. For once, she wouldn’t be able to complain of a lack of sleep. Jerry struggled with his keys. He stopped in the kitchen. There was no food out for him. He cut a piece of cheese and looked for bread. There was no bread. He ate the cheese with his fingers. He turned on the alarm and turned off the lights. He was about to go straight into the spare room, but saw the
light under the master-bedroom door. He had an unlikely, drunken vision of his wife waiting up for him, eager for his return. He opened the door. April was sitting up in bed, reading. She didn’t acknowledge his arrival. She turned a page. Jerry stripped off his jeans and exchanged one T-shirt for another. April’s attention didn’t flicker. Jerry climbed into bed. Without looking up, April said, “You’re not going to brush your teeth?”

  “No,” Jerry said.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Yes.”

  Jerry lay on his side, watching his wife. She kept reading until eventually he turned over. He closed his eyes. He could feel April’s presence behind him and he couldn’t relax. He imagined how it would feel if she buried a knife in his back. He was just drifting into inebriated sleep when she said, “I wanted to tell you something.”

  Jerry opened his eyes. He found the room was slowly starting to move around him. He focused on the cupboard door to concentrate his mind. He said, “So tell me.”

  “I can’t talk to you when you’re drunk,” she said.

  “So talk to me when I’m sober.”

  He heard her shut her book. She said, “Do I need to make an appointment?”

  Jerry heard his wife slide out of bed. He didn’t look up as the bedroom door opened and closed. April had gone to the spare room. He felt fleeting vindication, which even his drunken self couldn’t ratify. He rolled over and switched out the bedside light. He spread himself on the bed as if this was what he’d wanted all along. The pitch darkness didn’t stop the room spinning; quite the opposite. He slipped into unconsciousness but was awake again within minutes when he knew he was going to vomit. He stumbled to the bathroom and was sick. He tried to be sick quietly. He hoped that April wasn’t hearing this.