by C. B. George
“Go home,” Gilbert said.
“Home?”
“Mubayira.” He held both her hands briefly.
She thought he would kiss her, but he didn’t. Instead, he smiled brightly and said, “I will go to work. We still need money.” She smiled too and patted him amicably on the elbow, even though she now felt an acute if nebulous concern.
Alone at the car, Gilbert lit one of Patson’s cigarettes. He knew he was not supposed to smoke in the car, but sudden certainty often prefaces recklessness, especially in young men. He slid himself behind the wheel, cigarette in hand. He leaned over to the passenger side and opened the small drawer beneath the seat. He looked at the gun that he’d taken from the bedroom and stashed earlier. He knew now that he wouldn’t use it. Even if he saw Castro or the Chipangano guy who’d stolen his shoes, he wouldn’t use it. But there was no harm in keeping it there. Just in case.
45
It was a typical day at the clinic, as busy as it was unproductive. In the morning, for example, Jerry saw a middle-aged woman brought in by her husband. She was suffering acute joint pain. Upon examining her, Jerry discovered a distended abdomen, and gentle palpation revealed a knotty growth approximately the size of a tennis ball, just below the transpyloric plane, most likely on her pancreas. He assumed it was cancerous and terminal. His only doubt was because of the size of the tumor and the fact she was still alive. He had never before come across a tumor that had been allowed to grow gleefully unchecked for so long.
In the UK, cancer was a drug war, a beating back on several fronts in the battlefield of the body. Here it was a walkover. The woman needed a scan she couldn’t afford followed by treatment she couldn’t afford followed, inevitably, by death.
He asked her husband why it had taken so long to seek medical help. The question came out sharper than he’d intended and the man looked shaken and terrified. He replied that they had been to Outpatients at Parirenyatwa the previous month. He said that his wife had been given some pills that had helped somewhat but were now finished, so they were hoping for a renewed prescription. He passed Jerry a large medicine bottle and Jerry read its label. It was high-dosage diclofenac.
Jerry said, “I see.” Then, “Of course.” He went to the clinic’s small medicine cabinet and refilled the bottle. He carefully totted the number of pills, so he knew how much he would have to pay for the anti-inflammatories. His action was both illegal and immoral, but it was also, he considered, indisputably the right thing to do. He had never before experienced circumstances that so frequently required him to square that and other circles.
When the man asked how much the drugs would cost, Jerry waved him away with a reflexive smile of generosity. The effusive, humble gratitude of the man and his dying wife made Jerry briefly think he might cry.
In the afternoon, the power was cut off. This was unusual for a Tuesday, but everyone knew the schedule for load-shedding was euphemistically described as “a guideline.” The clinic would need the generator to power lighting and, especially, the borehole pump. However, Jerry found that they were out of petrol, so he had to dispatch Bongai, the receptionist, to the nearest garage with a container and twenty bucks from his own wallet. The patients sat and waited in resigned silence.
At one point, Tangwerai emerged from his office, stood next to the queue and lifted his face to the sky ruminatively, as if considering a prospective investment. Then he announced, to nobody in particular, “The rains, they are late this year,” before specifically addressing a young man in the queue: “Do you think they will come soon?”
“I think so,” the young man replied.
Tangwerai nodded as if reassured and headed back inside. This was, Jerry thought, the doctor’s way of rallying spirits—of saying, “I am here and I am waiting too”—and he admired him for his subtlety.
He caught Tangwerai by the arm. He said, “The light’s OK. Maybe we could see a few—you know, anything that’s not acute?”
“With no water?”
Jerry shook his head, frustrated. “We should have a water tank,” he said. “Ten thousand liters. For when there’s no power.”
“You’re right, we should have a tank.” Tangwerai looked at him with the hint of a smile peeping from between the lapels of his oversized suit. “Will you buy us a tank, Jerry?”
At some or other recent expat do, Jerry had found himself describing his role at the clinic, a little drunk, to Derek Sedelski, the cherubic American governance expert. “I feel a bit like that Dutch kid,” he said. “You know, the one who stuck his finger in a dam.” But that was a lousy metaphor, because at least the Dutch kid, however temporarily, had stemmed the flow.
Increasingly, Jerry had no idea what he was doing here: here at this clinic, here in Zimbabwe. He had wanted to work, to be useful, to play a small part next to April’s larger part in the UK’s altogether grander scheme to save Zimbabwe from itself. But now April was only pushing paper, complaining about pushing paper and complaining about Jerry. And Jerry was paying for painkillers for the terminally ill. Jerry was no longer sure whether Zimbabwe could be saved, required saving or, indeed, wanted it. But the one thing he knew for sure was this: if there was any saving to be done, he wasn’t the man for the job.
Jerry came to work only to have a reason to leave the house and, perhaps, collect horror stories that might have capital back in the UK. He was in danger of becoming everything he’d sworn he’d never be: a man of wide and interesting experience and dull and narrow mind, possessed of a dazed, bitter, bewildered, reflexive certainty; just another expat.
By the end of the day, Jerry resigned himself to resignation, although exactly how one resigned when not actually employed in the first place was something of a comedic paradox that spoke volumes about his situation. He imagined suggesting a month’s “notice” period, so that at least the clinic could get used to the idea of losing a nurse and, arguably more importantly, his daily contributions to transport, drugs and fuel.
When Tangwerai called him into his office, therefore, Jerry assumed the young doctor had read his mind. Tangwerai had two beers on his desk. He opened the first with the other and the second with his teeth. He offered one to Jerry and they clinked glass. Tangwerai said, “Your good health,” before swigging deep. “I want to thank you, Jerry,” he said. “You have been a godsend to us and I much appreciate your work and commitment.”
“No,” Jerry said. “Really.” And he nodded reciprocal gratitude before taking a drink of his own.
“The clinic is to shut down,” Tangwerai said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Shut down. At the end of the month, we will shut down.”
“What?”
“Our funding has been discontinued,” Tangwerai said. Then, off Jerry’s bewildered silence, “Apparently it came from a budget for crisis alleviation. Apparently there is no longer a crisis. And, with the current political situation, donor policy is not to commit to Zimbabwe in the medium term. After all, we are a pariah state.”
Jerry stared at the doctor. Whatever his personal feelings, he couldn’t stop the tide of indignation rising in his throat. He made an involuntary noise. He said, “That’s ridiculous!”
Tangwerai returned the stare, bottle paused halfway to his mouth. “Of course it’s ridiculous,” he said. “It is all ridiculous.”
“And our patients?” Jerry spluttered.
“Our patients will go somewhere else.”
“Where? Where will they go?”
Tangwerai drank. He put the bottle on the table. “Somewhere else,” he said quietly.
Jerry nodded. He gathered his thoughts. Why was he so outraged? Why did he care? It made no difference to be outraged. It made no difference to care. “And you?”
Tangwerai smiled. “I will be OK. I’ll go somewhere else too. I am taking Bradford to the UK. I have a place at the University of Sussex for a PhD: ‘Community Health Initiatives in Prevention of Tropical Disease’…or, as we call it in this part of the w
orld, ‘disease.’”
“Right.”
The doctor raised his drink. He said, “Don’t look so worried, Jerry. Let’s toast the future, whatever it may bring.” They clinked again. “The future,” Tangwerai said.
And Jerry joined in: “The future.”
46
Jerry was waiting outside the clinic for Patson to pick him up. He checked the time on his phone and found he had a text from April: she wouldn’t be home until after eight. She wanted to stop in on the Appiahs. “Another disaster,” she wrote.
Jerry considered the commitment his wife was showing to this family they barely knew. He was irritated that it ate into the already limited time she made available for their own son. He caught himself and tried to think more generously: perhaps the night they’d found Kudakwashe had affected her more profoundly than he’d realized. Nursing had inevitably, if sadly, inured him to other people’s blood and pain, but April had clearly been shocked by it all and thrown herself wholeheartedly into a supporting role, particularly listening to Shawn, an outlet for the man’s stresses, fears and loneliness.
Out of the blue, Jerry wondered whether his wife had a crush on the American. It was a thought that gave him pause and, the more he dwelled on it, the more he was certain it was true. There was something obvious about it—the amount of time she spent there, of course, but also the way she talked to him about Shawn and Rosie, filling in the latest from the hospital, the man’s worries for his wife’s sanity and the apparently bizarre reaction of Kuda’s family to the sad situation. In fact, this was more or less the only thing he and April now talked about, a kind of conversational neutral territory where there was no reason for either to be irritated.
Jerry even wondered whether April had acted on her crush, but he quickly dismissed the idea. It wasn’t that he imagined his wife morally or emotionally unsuited to infidelity. He knew that she wasn’t; not like him. But she had lately become so cold, so hard, so loaded with resentment that he could no longer picture her as a sexual being. It didn’t occur to him that her calcified loathing was reserved for him alone.
Jerry checked the time again. Patson’s implacable lateness bugged him. Actually, it wasn’t the lateness so much as the easy dishonesty with which the guy estimated an arrival time and avoided questions of his whereabouts—Yes, Uncle. At the clinic? I will be there now now. / Where am I? I am near. Very near. / Ten minutes, Uncle. No more than half an hour. I am on my way.
Jerry considered his options. If he went home now, he could give Theo his bath and supper and put him to bed. Indeed, if he went home now, he could do all that and still have time to call Bessie back to babysit and be gone before his wife’s return.
Trouble was, Jerry wanted a drink. He told himself it was the beer with Tangwerai that had given him the taste. But no sooner did he tell himself this than he felt obliged to concede the lie: these days, he always wanted a drink. That bothered him.
April thought he had a drinking problem. Although she never spoke about it with that level of directness, she clearly worried that she was doomed to repeat her mother’s mistakes. Jerry sympathized. Of course he did. But she needed to understand that the neuroses were her own, not to be projected onto him. And he seemingly didn’t sympathize enough to stop drinking.
Still, Jerry was bothered by his thirst. Why? Because it was yet another signifier of the typical expat: hapless victim of cheap childcare, boredom and burgeoning self-importance. So, he vowed to go straight home. He would put Theo to bed. He wouldn’t drink tonight. Maybe he’d fuck about on Facebook for an hour or, bandwidth permitting, try to torrent some new music.
The Raum pulled up, but it was Gilbert who got out, with his bright smile and cheery “Hello, Boss!” Patson must have knocked off for the day and Jerry’s heart sank. As Bessie’s husband, Gilbert provoked in Jerry an almost paternal sense of responsibility, but Gilbert was also a talker and Jerry much preferred Patson’s quiet concentration. Jerry hadn’t seen Gilbert since the “incident” and knew he’d have to ask him about it. Worst of all, if Gilbert had no other fare, he’d want to visit Bessie for an hour or two. Jerry couldn’t really face attempting to revoke his laissez-faire attitude, but he knew that if the taxi was in the driveway when April got home it would undoubtedly put her back up.
“Where are we going?” Gilbert asked.
“The house.”
“No drink tonight?”
Jerry found the question, the smile, grating. “No,” he said. “No drink.”
He asked the obligatory question about the beating and, in spite of himself, found he was intrigued and increasingly horrified by Gilbert’s story. He discovered that Bessie had given him the sanitized version. He had often thought April knew nothing of what it meant to live in this country for the majority of its population, not compared to Jerry, who worked in a ghetto clinic. But as Gilbert unfurled the brutal absurdity of what had happened, Jerry appreciated that his own limited experience only allowed him to confirm his wife knew nothing, not to pretend that he knew more.
“Did you go to the police?” Jerry asked, but he knew the answer even before the young man’s snorted response. Then, “Chipangano: they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.” He said this only because it was true, not because it had meaningful consequence.
“You are right,” Gilbert said.
“And how are you feeling?” Jerry asked pathetically. “Are you better?”
“I am quite OK.”
“Good,” Jerry said conclusively, but his burst of sympathy had already given the young man all the encouragement he needed to continue.
So, Gilbert told Jerry that the beating had been a watershed moment, and he now admitted the city wasn’t for him. He said he’d come to Harare to be close to Bessie and further his ambitions. He’d studied at KBC—had Jerry heard of it? Jerry shook his head. “Kadoma Business College,” Gilbert said seriously. “It is an excellent school.” He said he’d planned to work for Patson, to save enough to find a job commensurate with his skills and interests, to set up a business of his own.
“So what happened?” Jerry asked dutifully.
“These are dreams, Boss. These are dreams.”
Gilbert then launched into an impassioned if semi-comprehensible diatribe. “You think it is possible,” he said. “You think anything is possible. Education opens doors—that’s what they say. But what doors does it open? I have read many books—very many books. I am an educated man, but what doors are open for me? None of them. I am just a poor African, Boss.”
Jerry made a noise somewhere between demurring and sympathy—what else could he do?
But this only prompted Gilbert to outline his plans to return to Mubayira with Bessie and become a farmer. He seemed energized by the prospect: “I will be the best poor African I can be.”
“With Bessie?” Jerry said, suddenly engaged.
“Of course.”
Gilbert said he was just hoping to raise enough money for the move. Land wasn’t a problem because his father or the headman would allocate him a plot. But he needed capital for seeds, fertilizer and a few chickens to get started. “If I have a thousand dollars…” he said, in an open-ended, musing fashion that left Jerry in no doubt of the underlying intent. Then, “How long has my wife been working for you, Boss?” Then, “I have been driving you three months, isn’t it? And we often talk like this. We are friends. I think of you as one of my good friends, one of my very good friends.”
In the back of the taxi, Jerry shook his head. He knew where this was going. He hated where this was going. He had lent money before—relatively small sums to Thomas, the gardener, to buy a handcart for his rural home, to Bessie for reasons unspecified (probably, in retrospect, to get her husband to Harare)—and it had felt good: the gratitude, the sense of contribution. But local problems, like his own, were a bottomless pit and, at heart, he knew that he couldn’t actually afford a thousand dollars and, besides, it wouldn’t solve Gilbert’s problems any more than it would so
lve his own were he to spend it on flowers for his wife. Jerry said, “I can’t afford that kind of money, Gilbert.” And the young man lapsed into sullen silence.
Jerry’s phone rang. He looked at the display. It read: “Albert Mandiveyi.” He answered. He listened briefly. He needed no further excuse. He said, “Sure. Why not?” He rang off. He leaned forward to talk to Gilbert. He said, “Change of plan.”
47
These days, I watch TV all the time and Momma not even there to disaprove. When I get up in the morning, Gladys give me bathtime an then I watch TV while I eat breakfast—Sofia the First; iss bout an ornary little girl who become a princess. Sumtime, if he not workin, I watch wid Daddy an he give me a big squeeze an say, “You’re my princess, little bird.” An I don say nuthin, but I know I not a princess cos princesses not black: thas true on TV an iss true at school too where Emma-Jade say the same thing an she a big girl wid long red hair like Sofia. I watch TV after school, an sumtime I even watch after supper.
Sasa say, “You see? Iss good thing Momma gone, little bat, cos now you watch TV whenever you like.” Usually Sasa talk like a screech, but he say this real soft like a bird—chirrup-chirrup.
But it still make me sad an I say, “Mom’s not gone, she sick. An when she a bit better I gonna be allowed to visit.”
Sasa say, “I think your daddy better already.”
An I say, “What you mean?”
An Sasa sing, “Better with the white bitch! Better with the white bitch!” Chirrup-chirrup.
I miss my mom real bad, only I try not to show it cos it make Daddy sad when I cry, an sumtime it make Sasa angry. Also, the white bitch roun the house all the time these day, an why I gonna show her how I feel when I don barely know her at all? I mean, she nice enough, but she smell funny and I don wanna call her “Aunty April” like Daddy say, specially when she all embarrassed an go, “I don’t know about ‘Aunty,’ April’s fine,” in that funny voice of hers. An I don wanna call her April neither.
