by C. B. George
Fadzai showed Gilbert the ten hundred-dollar bills, clean and crisp. He shook his head and made a noise of contempt, which she didn’t fully understand. He said, “You must keep that to yourself. You know how it is when you have money. There is always someone in need. That money is for you.”
Indeed, she knows how it is and she was grateful for the advice. But now Gilbert has needs of his own and the previous evening, when he was bemoaning his situation to their father, she had felt the burden of his every complaint weigh upon her shoulders. He has not asked her directly. He doesn’t have to.
Fadzai doesn’t know what she will use the money for. There is the baby, of course, school fees for Chabarwa and Anashe, even music lessons (for hadn’t Patson delighted in his son playing the cornet?)…There are countless incalculable expenses stretching over the horizon of an uncertain future, and a thousand dollars will ultimately be nothing more than a coin tossed down a well. Perhaps to allocate the money to chicken feed for a novice farmer is no less productive a way to spend it than any other. However, Fadzai remembers Patson’s advice that poverty makes you panic, which causes problems of its own. She is determined not to panic.
Today, fortunately, Gilbert seems to have put his worries to one side in that unique, admirable, infuriating way of his; when Hope finishes feeding, he sweeps her up and holds her in front of his face, cooing delightedly. “Little one! Little one!” He sits on the ground with Stella and puts the baby on his daughter’s knee. He looks up at Bessie and says, “It is our turn next! A son is overdue.”
Fadzai considers her brother’s joyful expression and wonders yet again at his optimism, even if its ecstatic quality has gone and the restlessness returned. She turns to her sister-in-law. Bessie is watching her husband and the two small children with unconcealed pleasure. But behind it Fadzai can see the worry, and she has a sudden, disquieting terror of the future: surely, Bessie will leave her brother; surely she will leave him and nobody will blame her, because the sum of books, ideas and hope has never fed a family.
Bessie is indeed worried. However, the source of this worry is not as Fadzai assumes. Rather, Bessie has a secret that she has so far kept to herself—a letter she received from Mr. and Mrs. Jones a month ago; a letter that’s been followed by two calls in the past fortnight. The English couple have offered her a job as Theo’s nanny. They believe they can secure an appropriate visa and they will fly her to London. They say that they live in a small flat and she will have to share a room with the child in the first instance, but they hope to move somewhere more spacious. On the phone, Mrs. Jones explained that she won’t have a work permit, but she can stay for two years. They will pay her in cash to save her owing any tax. Bessie doesn’t understand the details as the woman explained them, partly because her brain stalled on the mention of the proposed salary: more than twice the two hundred dollars she earned as their maid and all her meals included. “Think about it,” Mrs. Jones said.
Bessie has thought about nothing else. She is a person without material ambition, but such characterization is meaningless in a monetized, globalized world. If she goes, she thinks, she will save enough to secure her family’s future. She could support Gilbert’s efforts; or buy a plot of land, build a house, make efforts of her own; or both.
Bessie believes she should accept the job. However, she believes this in much the same way Fadzai believes she should save her small nest egg. And both women, for all their apparent practicality, are ruled by their generous hearts—often stoicism’s secret ingredient. Bessie will never leave Gilbert because, as much as love is action, it’s also an article of faith and, even when she can’t believe in him, she believes in God enough for them both.
Gilbert will use Fadzai’s thousand dollars to vaccinate his chickens and buy more seed. He will promise to repay his sister five-fold for her generosity and Bessie will work tirelessly to ensure he keeps his word. Gilbert will watch his wife in the field, bent double, pulling weeds and picking stones, and he will know that he is blessed—uyu ndiye mukadzi chaiye. This isn’t a happy ending, but it is a new beginning and the outcome is as yet uncertain.
Coda
Mandiveyi first met the Irish journalist in the Brontë Hotel on the August night in 2013 that the Zimbabwean election results were announced. ZANU (PF) had won a resounding victory and Robert Mugabe was elected president for a fifth full term. The city was quiet and the hotel almost deserted. Mandiveyi took a table on the veranda, adjacent to a group of white foreigners who were conducting a post-mortem with a mixture of confusion and horror—What just happened?
Mandiveyi listened as the whites, an assortment of media and diplomats, took turns to tell stories of the stories they’d heard of falsified ballot papers, the manipulated electoral roll and assisted voting. None of them had actually witnessed any corrupt practice, but they were all convinced it had taken place. And now they were bewildered that they should have had the wool pulled over their eyes by the very black politicians they liked to characterize as almost imbecilic. Mandiveyi was amused: it wasn’t just in the Central Intelligence Organization that smart men learned to play stupid; it was also true at the heart of government.
One of the men went to the bar and Mandiveyi followed. The man was small and balding with wisps of hair flying in all directions. He was probably no more than thirty-five, but looked older.
Mandiveyi had little trouble engaging him in conversation. He told him that he was a ZANU (PF) activist and the man—Chris, from Dublin—was immediately hooked, thrilled to be drinking with the enemy and looking over his shoulder to make sure that none of his fellow hacks might usurp his good fortune.
“You know, Chris,” Mandiveyi said, with a happy sigh, “we won the argument, the ballot and the rigging. If we had known we were so far ahead in the first two parts of this equation, we wouldn’t have put so much energy into the third.”
Chris lapped this up and three days later Mandiveyi found himself quoted in the Irish press as “a ZANU (PF) source.”
Now it is December 2014 and the CIO has been feeding the Irishman occasional stories for almost eighteen months. Loosely, it is instructive to see which make it into the foreign media: a way of taking the temperature of international opinion. Mandiveyi knows that the West loves to report every radical anti-imperialist statement emanating from the Zimbabwean government almost as much as the Zimbabwean government loves to see them reported—a mutually beneficial exercise that allows each side to retain a moral high ground above local political slurry. Mandiveyi has no specific agenda passed down from on high. He is, as he always has been, playing his own small game within the game within a game.
For the last three years, since he finally returned the gun to Phiri, his boss, and his investigation into the American died almost under his very nose, Mandiveyi has been passed over for all important work. He has not found it hard to accept this fate. He knows that he was both too stupid and too smart to climb the ranks of the Organization and he is happy to be free of the associated risks. Besides, it has allowed him to spend more time with his family.
Mandiveyi’s son Tendai’s condition has deteriorated significantly as he has reached adolescence. The weakness in his legs has now referred upwards in a progressive kyphoscoliosis of the spine and Tendai is permanently confined to a wheelchair, his lungs constricted, looking at his feet.
The boy remains hardy, however, and insists on attending school. It is his neck that causes the most pain as he is forced into a terrible contortion simply to lift his head and look his peers, teachers and parents in the eye.
Mandiveyi and his wife find connection in the care of their son. When they drive to church, ease Tendai into his wheelchair, register the sympathy, fear or plain curiosity of onlookers, they are almost a normal family.
Mandiveyi has a new girlfriend. Her name is Celia. She stays in a small flat in Highfields, which costs him only a hundred and fifty dollars a month. She is very young. They rarely have sex. When he visits her, she pours him a drink and
sits at his feet, massaging his hands.
Mandiveyi is coming from Celia’s flat when he meets the Irishman at the Brontë again. He finds him at an outside table. He orders a drink from a passing waiter. It was the Irishman who requested this meeting, but Mandiveyi suspects he knows the reason why.
The ZANU (PF) congress has just ended amid high scandal. Vice President Joice Mujuru (Rex Nhongo’s widow) has been controversially ousted from office to be replaced by former head of the Organization, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Chris wastes no time in getting down to business. He says, “Have you heard?” Mandiveyi doesn’t reply. “There has been a cyanide attack on Mnangagwa’s office,” the Irishman continues. “His secretary has been taken to hospital.”
This is news to Mandiveyi, but he doesn’t show as much. Instead, he just inclines his head a little—So? Then, when the Irishman offers nothing further, he says, “It is a combustible time, as you can imagine. We know that many of our enemies would like to exploit a perceived instability. Even within our own body there are historical rivalries and resentments.”
“You’re saying it was the Mujuru faction?” Chris says this with a tone close to scoffing.
Mandiveyi is taken aback. Frankly, he has no idea what he is saying since, until thirty seconds ago, he knew nothing of any cyanide attack. But he is irritated by the Irishman’s attitude—as if a foreign journalist could possibly know any better than he. Mandiveyi says, “It was difficult for Comrade Mujuru. Her supporters were much weakened by her husband’s passing.”
The Irishman considers Mandiveyi closely. The waiter brings a drink. Mandiveyi sips it. The Irishman thinks while his companion cracks ice in his teeth revealing a large expanse of pale pink gum that is peculiar and grotesque. The Irishman does not like these meetings, but he finds them useful; even as he recognizes that he must take everything Mandiveyi says with a pinch of salt. This thought leads him to imagine that pinch of salt applied to the gum and the idea it might contract like a slug.
The Irishman is aware that he has riled Mandiveyi and he is intrigued by the possibility this offers. He decides to push a little harder. “What are you implying?” Mandiveyi doesn’t answer. The Irishman says, “I have good sources who tell me Rex Nhongo was killed by Lebanese diamond dealers. They say a deal went bad and a woman was sent to seduce him who put a small incendiary device under the bed.”
Mandiveyi makes a contemptuous snorting noise. “Who are they, these sources?”
The Irishman smiles. “Come on, Albert. I can’t tell you that. Are you saying it’s not true?”
“It’s not true.”
“What happened, then? What is the truth?”
Mandiveyi stares at the Irishman. He reveals his teeth, less a smile than a simple retraction of the lips. What is the truth? He does not know the answer to this question, neither conceptually nor in fact. Truth is not one of Mandiveyi’s tools. It is a blunt instrument in comparison to his more refined apparatus. “One day, Chris,” Mandiveyi says, wagging a finger at the Irishman, “one day, I will tell you a story of the death of Rex Nhongo.”
About the Author
C. B. George has spent many years working throughout Southern Africa. He now lives in London.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Epigraph
Preface
Part One 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Part Two 21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
Part Three 58
59
60
61
62
63
Coda
About the Author
Newsletters
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2015, 2016 by C. B. George
Cover design by Allison J. Warner
Cover art by CSA Images / Getty Images
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First North American ebook edition, July 2016
Originally published in Great Britain by Quercus Publishing Ltd., September 2015
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ISBN 978-0-316-30052-0
E3 20160524-DA-PC
