Rotten Row

by Petina Gappah

  The Cecelia that Anna is escaping is also a vendor. Her stock in trade is pirate DVDs and CDs. When the municipal police did their raids just four months ago and moved the vendors out of First Street into Mbare Musika, Cecelia’s wares had been smashed by municipal truncheons. The vendors have now been corralled into Mbare Musika where they are to pay a dollar a day to the Council, but in addition, they had to buy a ruling party card, as well as join the Grassroots Empowerment Flea Markets and Vendors’ Trust Association, paying ten dollars a month for the privilege of being empowered.

  Anna is able to meet her target, and actually exceed it, but on most days, Cecelia comes to the market just to stand. People just do not seem to want her pirated wares as much as they want Anna’s baboon’s piss. And no, they do not also sell, who only stand and wait. So Cecelia has seen Anna collect dollar after dollar for packets of baboon’s piss. It does not help that Anna likes to remind herself how much she has earned by occasionally fishing out her takings from her bra and counting them over and over again, counting and recounting, licking her finger to the dirty notes to separate them while from the next stall, a dour Cecelia looks on with a sour face.

  We will probably find many things on which we disagree as we go along, you and I, but we can probably agree that it is rather too much to expect the human spirit to rejoice without reserve at the success and good fortune of a neighbour, particularly when that neighbour has waxen fat, thick and sleek on baboon’s piss.

  Cecelia believes two things, firstly that Anna has a secret herb or something that gives her the power to make money. Maybe she even has something like a bushbaby limb. Cecelia has heard that the nocturnal and deceptively cute bushbabies are such powerful creatures that a person in possession of a bushbaby limb only has to declare what she wants and it will happen. Just like that. So Anna is probably using something like that, or a divisi, no, not a divisi, that is a lucky charm to make crops prosper without rain or fertiliser.

  Cecelia also believes that she herself has a munyama, a bad luck that sticks heavily to her like a leaden smell. The combined effect of these two is to increase Anna’s prosperity while decreasing Cecelia’s own. Of course, you could look at it in economic terms and advise Cecelia that her munyama is nothing more than an unfortunate choice in the consumer product she has chosen to peddle in a saturated market.

  Or you could look at it in psychological terms and advise Cecelia that if she laughs, the world will laugh with her. If she weeps, she weeps alone, because this sad old earth must borrow its mirth, but has troubles enough of its own. Sing, and the hills will answer! For the truth is that Cecelia’s sharp tongue does not encourage people to linger over her wares, not to mention that Cecelia is unfortunately endowed with a cast of countenance that makes her look permanently bad-tempered, which, as it happens, she is, particularly when Anna is near.

  Anna, on the other hand, is as effulgent as the lark on the wing in springtime, the only pretty ring time, when birds do sing, hey ding a ding ding. Sweet lovers love the spring! She is there first thing in morning, cleaning her stall and laying out her herbal remedies to look as attractive as possible. The minute she sees someone look her way, she is out there smiling and coaxing and singing the endless virtues of her products. She even has a loud recording that repeats on a loop the message dollar-for-two-dollar-for-two-weti-yegudo-dollar-for-two, dollar-for-two-dollar-for-two-weti-yegu-do-dollar-for-two. But Cecelia believes it is just munyama.

  The crisis had come a week ago. Cecelia had managed to sell a DVD that claimed to contain all of the Twilight, Hunger Games and Fifty Shades films on one disc, including two, The Hunger Games: Doing Snow and Fifty Shades Raw, whose existence would have come as something of a surprise to studio executives in Holly wood.

  The DVD had cost four dollars and, in payment, the customer had given Cecelia a ten yakabatana. She had then asked Anna to split the ten-dollar note into smaller denominations so that she could give the customer his change. Anna had given her five notes, a five-dollar note, one two-dollar note and three one-dollar notes. Cecelia had then given back to the customer the five-dollar note and what she thought was a one-dollar note, but had in fact been a two-dollar note. So that by the time the customer had left and she had recounted her own money, Cecelia found that she was a dollar short.

  ‘It is an easy mistake to make,’ Anna said. ‘The notes are so dirty that you gave away the two dollars in error.’

  ‘The mistake is yours if you think I am a fool,’ said Cecelia ‘You think you are so superior, sitting there counting out your money then short-changing people when they ask for change.’

  The ensuing quarrel had drawn a crowd of other vendors and onlookers. ‘It was a mistake,’ Anna said. ‘Look, here is a two-dollar note, here is another one. Look, you can see on the front the president is different to the one dollar, and at the back there is a group of presidents. But if the note is very dirty you can hardly see them.’

  A Form Two boy dressed in a George Stark High School uniform piped up to say, ‘They are not presidents, actually, they are the men who signed the independence document in America. They are called the Founding Fathers.’

  Cecelia had waved away the Founding Fathers as she insisted that whoever they were, they were not on this note that Anna had given to her. The povo around her had various opinions. Some said yes, the money was so dirty that you can’t see which one is which. Even where the money was washed, it was sometimes so frayed that you could barely make it out. For instance, this note was so caked in dirt it was hard to see which president it was, while others, led by a large-limbed tomato vendor called Ma’Nelly said, yes, that may well be but two dollars is two dollars and it is one more than one and if you have two dollars you will just know you have two dollars and you will not have the stupidity to confuse a one-dollar note for a two-dollar one. The general mood was summed up by a man who said, impatiently, ‘Why do they even have the two-dollar note mhani, it causes nothing but confusion.’

  A dreadlocked man called Jah T, who, in another life and another country, might have been a fiscal economist and not a roasted maize vendor said, ‘Y’see, the problem is with the small denominations that circulate the most, y’see. They are the ones that cause confusion because they get dirty quickly. And of course, we can’t recall the notes to destroy and reprint because it is not our money, y’see.’

  Cecelia, mishearing, had flared up and said, ‘What do you mean, it is not my money? Were you there when she gave it to me? What makes you so certain? Who are you, the school monitor wepamusika. Are you the market monitor?’

  ‘Une pamuromo iwe,’ said Jah T, ‘I said it is not our money.’

  Anna had attempted a pacific settlement to the dispute. ‘Sorry horaiti,’ she said in a conciliatory tone. ‘If it was me, I am sorry. Here is your dollar.’ But sensing the crowd was really on Anna’s side had enraged Cecelia further.

  ‘First you try to hoodwink me and rob me thinking I am a fool, then you show off and wave money in my face,’ she said as she worked herself up into a passion. ‘Musatanyoko. Handisi fuza ini. Kutopfuma nemaziweti egudo. Handibati zvemushonga. I am a Child of Christ. I was bathed in His blood. I am perfumed by his Grace. I am a Child of Christ.’

  The Child of Christ had lunged at Anna. To the great delight of the crowd, Anna and Cecelia had managed to trade a few blows, scratches and ripped buttons before a passing constable had stopped them, broken up the fight and arrested them for causing a public nuisance. At Matapi Police Station, they had both been warned, cautioned and made to sign Admissions of Guilt for which they had to pay police fines of twenty dollars each.

  Anna had fished out the money from her bra and paid it there and then. Cecelia had had to ask to call her brother, who had not come himself but had sent the money with his wife, Cecelia’s sister-in-law, and their stepmother. The stepmother, the sister-in-law and Cecelia all disliked each other intensely, coming together only to form a triangulated circle of gossip about other family members. The two women
had grudgingly paid the fine, but first, in front of the police and within earshot of everyone within hearing of Matapi Station, which meant a rather significant population of Mbare, they had upbraided Cecelia in the most unpleasant and scatological terms, so abusive in fact, that a policeman called Sergeant Mafa, who normally did not flinch at such language, being a master of it himself, had had to warn them that they too faced a fine for breaching the peace if they did not stop. Cecelia, un able for once to retaliate with equally stinging retorts because she needed the money they had brought, had smarted and burned under the humiliation of being addressed thus in public. This too, she had laid at Anna’s door.

  Thus, while Anna had thought the matter finished, Cecelia had borne a hatred that sometimes threatened to choke her. She nursed her dislike and envy of Anna into an obsession to destroy her. And so it was that Anna called in the Highest and Darkest Power she knew. This was Chipangano, the youth group that was the enforcer for the ruling party in Mbare. The weak often turn to a Higher Power, which is as it should be if such a Power is a Benevolent one, because those who are both weak and malevolent often turn to the less Benign.

  Cecelia had gone to see Chopper, one of the leaders of the group. Anna was an opposition supporter, Cecelia said and should such people be allowed to prosper when they were against the ruling party. Chipangano had directed her back to the Grassroots Empowerment Flea Markets and Vendors’ Trust Association, which had voted to throw Anna out of Mbare without hearing her side of things.

  And so poor Anna, who had never before inked her pinky finger in a universal franchise to select the candidate of her choice in a free and fair election in ha ha ha Harare, Africa’s fun capital, who had never ever voted, not once in her whole life, had been forced back into town, away from her secure spot. She had applied for a stall at the Fourth Street flea market, but they had not yet considered it, and so she was back in town, walking along Julius Nyerere and along First Street, trying to find a medium between calling so softly that potential customers would not hear her and calling so loudly that she risked attracting the police.

  So it was here, on Julius Nyerere, just outside the supermarket that used to be owned by the Brothers Amato that she had seen Cecelia. And it was seeing Cecelia that caused her to duck into the supermarket, with the look on her face that Boniface considered so shifty. Boniface follows her and without warning grabs her shoulder.

  ‘What are you doing? What is in that box? You are supposed to leave the parcels at the parcel counter. Where are you going? Come back here at once.’

  Anna shakes him off and runs towards the door. Caught between the Scylla of Cecelia’s wrath and the Charybdis of Boniface’s suspicion, she hesitates. Boniface grabs at her again. But Cecelia is out of sight now and Anna takes her chance to run straight out of the supermarket and into the road where a car screeches to a halt as it swerves to avoid her. The car just misses Anna, swerves to the sidewalk where it hits a metal City bin. Horns blare as the cars behind screech to a sudden stop. Anna stumbles to safety but her box is not so lucky. It flies from Anna’s hands and is flattened by a kombi speeding in the direction of Mbare Nash. Packets of baboon’s piss and other herbs are scattered all over Julius Nyerere and run over by passing cars. Anna takes advantage of the commotion to disappear from Boniface’s pursuit into Joina City where she melts into the crowd.

  *

  The man who almost hit Anna with his car gives a fluent curse as he inspects the damage that has come from the collision of his silver Pajero with the City bin. His name is Dickson. His car has dented the smiling face of a man advertising Protector condoms. He should wait for the police, he knows it will help with the claim from his insurance, but he sees no point, and in fact, he would rather they did not know. Dickson has the distinction of being both a fine and upstanding member of the establishment and a criminal. Fear not, he is not your MP or other occupant of High Political office. Rather, Dickson is a junior doctor under contract to the Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, which is just a fancy way of saying that he is a poorly paid civil servant indentured to his government until he can achieve his manumission. Dickson, is, however, more special than other junior doctors. You could say in fact, that he is the only doctor who makes house calls, only he comes to kill and not to heal.

  Dickson is aiming to do a Master’s degree in neurosurgery in the United Kingdom or in Australia, and from there enter the exclusive club of neurosurgeons. But it takes a King’s Ransom to educate a neurosurgeon, and Dickson is no king. As he can’t make money as a junior doctor, he raises money to study the brain by extracting unborn foetuses from women who would rather not be pregnant.

  Dickson is sick of being a doctor but not a healer. He is tired of daily death. It has even touched him, and not just in a professional capacity. A few months ago, a woman he was sort of sleeping with without sort of intending anything serious was murdered by one of her sort of boyfriends. The death of Kindness had been, you could say, his Wake-up Call. He is tired of dispensing palliative cures, of being surrounded by the Walking Dead.

  In the Land of the Medically Uninsured, his kind of medicine is the last resort, precisely because his services will cost families everything. So firmly have ChiKristu and ChiVanhu gripped the country that his patients come to him only after the prayers of the Pentecostals and the traditional remedies of the n’anga have all failed. He sees patients when it is far too late to help them.

  He is sick of sickness, of disease and contagion and sick of being sick of it. He reads the Lancet and other journals. They are filled with tales of medical developments so advanced they could be miracles. He finds himself in the grip of real envy. He wants to be a god among men. He wants to open up the brain, with all its synapses and neurons, to look upon the medulla oblongata and study it, repair it, to have the patient wake in the morning and say, ‘Doctor, what power is in your hands’ for what is it but Godlike to slice open a human head.

  Vagoni zvavo, in the words of the Beatitudes that his grand mother, who raised him, loved so much. Only his Beatitudes are not about the Peaceful and the Lovers of God and the Meek. To own the truth, he is extremely impatient with the Meek, and thinks the Meek deserve everything they get. No, he has other Beatitudes, Dickson. Vagoni zvavo who have clean hospitals and drugs in them. Vagoni zvavo who do not have to kill to heal. Vagoni zvavo who can imagine any life they want, and take it. Vagoni zvavo, vagoni zvavo, vagoni zvavo.

  Through his hands have passed at least twenty-three foetuses in the last seven months. Before twelve weeks, he uses dilation and curettage, an operation that he carries out in broad daylight in hospitals under cover of the need to scrape excess lining from women’s wombs. The nurses nudge each other in knowledge but no one says a word. For the more advanced pregnancies, well, I do not want to cause you any distress, so let us stop there.

  It is a thriving business, abortion. But that is too harsh a word for what it is. That is the word on the ‘Abortion Kills’ homemade signs that are posted on every third tree in the Avenues, the district of the City Centre where in the night, prostitutes stand and flash drivers as they crawl past, checking out the flesh.

  He and those who perform these operations prefer the language of the law. What he does is not abortion, it is just an illegal operation, or, if you like, a termination, an unlawful termination of pregnancy in violation of Section 60 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act as read together with the Termination of Pregnancy Act: ‘Any person who unlawfully terminates a pregnancy or terminates a pregnancy by conduct which he or she realises involves a real risk or possibility of terminating the pregnancy shall be guilty of unlawful termination of pregnancy and liable to a fine not exceeding Level Ten or imprisonment for a period not exceeding five years or both.’

  But you need not worry for Dickson.

  There will be no Level Ten Fine for him, no Imprisonment For A Period Not Exceeding Five Years, no Both. Not for Dickson. It is not doctors like him who are caught. It is only those whose instrum
ents are coat hangers and knitting needles, those who use traditional herbs such as the other herbs sold by Anna, the ones she does not advertise, it is those who use Norolon pills, the self-terminators and township women, and oh yes, they are only ever women, those are the ones who are caught and Imprisoned or Fined or Bothed. So don’t eat your heart out for Dickson. And it won’t be for long. He needs to perform just thirty or so more terminations before he has enough money to leave the country. He is almost there, Dickson, he is on his way.

  *

  As, incidentally, are we, for the day is yet young and there is much more to see. Next, we cross Nelson Mandela Avenue, head to Angwa Street and on to Samora Machel, to Pegasus House, where triumphant Pegasus, wings aloft with no Bellerophon astride him, is looking down on a man called Edwell, Eddie to you and me, who is about to be beaten up by an angry crowd.

  Just moments ago, as Anna dashed out of the supermarket, Boni face in pursuit, a brown house snake, the Lamprophis Capensis of the order Squamata and the family Colubridae, was seen making its way to the coolness of the shade under Eddie’s car. Now, the instinct of a house snake under attack is to flee and not to bite, so the snake, lucky creature, managed to escape in the commotion, but Eddie may not be as lucky. The crowd thinks he owns the snake, you see, they are firm in their conviction that he is the owner and master of this evil creature.

  A Good and Rational but Ultimately Foolish Samaritan who looks like he might be called Fungai will try to reason with the crowd, but it is not to be reasoned with. The crowd is relentless in its logic. If Eddie is not its master, why else would the snake have chosen this car, and only this car to rest under, it must mean the snake is his, and people like this fellow who seek to Defend the Indefensible must know something about it. The crowd plans to show Eddie, and his defender Fungai, just what they do with sorcerers who think they can just move around the city with their snakes in broad daylight. Come now, don’t loiter, we don’t have all day.