She smiled as she remembered those early days, when they had sometimes spent whole mornings and afternoons in bed, tasting each other. There had been dreams. Little things to hope for, aspire towards. Education for their children, professional success, two family cars. Travel to South Africa, maybe even to England. Small, small things burned in the flames of inflation.
After the pregnancy with Nobuhle, there was only one thing to be done. She knew that what she felt for him was not what he felt for her. She wanted only him. He had not been the first, but he was the last. She had not been his first, and she certainly knew she was not the last.
Nobuhle had died at five years, of meningitis said the doctors, witchcraft said hers and Thulani’s mothers. That was the beginning, she thinks. She tottered, but did not fall. Then the blow that had felled her: Thulani had made another woman pregnant. The woman had come to her school, she loved Thulani, she had said, and he loved her. There was nothing that could be done, she was going to have his child. She was four months pregnant she had said. Due at Christmas. And Nobuhle was dead.
Thulani stayed. She had not asked him, but he did. He had said nothing about the other child. She had asked no questions. Part of her knew that he remained for reasons more complicated than love. She had Busisiwe and Nkosana after that, but like a missing tooth that is present even in its absence, Nobuhle remained.
She knew, throughout the years, that Thulani had other women; she had seen the evidence. After his last Law Society conference, she had found a packet of condoms in his jacket. It had been opened. Two were missing. There was ice around her stomach, but her only coherent thought was to wonder whether both condoms had been used on the same occasion.
And after that, her revenge — Peter Kapuya, the trainee teacher straight from Belvedere Teachers’ College. She seduced him in her car as she drove him home after a late staff meeting to discuss a strike. She had resented him, this stranger, with his unfamiliar intrusion, but the memory of the missing condoms spurred her on. That night, for the first time in months she had made the first move towards Thulani.
As Vheneka checked her mirror before driving into the school, she caught her reflection. ‘To look so antique and me only thirty-five,’ she said. She was suddenly frightened as she imagined another fifteen years of this.
Thulani had once asked for a divorce.
She had felt then a wave of rage so sharp it threatened to cut her sanity, but she had forced herself to speak slowly, calmly. In his language she had told him, ‘First you undo me this scar, then you unlearn me this language. After that, you can come back and we can talk about divorce.’
He had said nothing more after that. Sometimes she thought that she should leave him, but the fear of being alone hits her. She has nothing beyond him, beyond her family; the job she loved has deserted her. She can no longer escape to her great love, can no longer explore plot and plot devices in The Mayor of Casterbridge, find pleasure in explaining iambic pentameter. The girls she teaches are not interested. And who can blame them? How will Eliot and Pinter and Golding get them a fast buck? What guarantees do Achebe and Marechera and Dangarembga offer? They want the new subjects, computer science, accounts, economics, management of business. They want to find a way to London now, to act on Studio 263, to enter beauty pageants.
As she walked away from her car, she heard someone calling out to her. She turned. It was Thulani. She looked from him to his car, which he had parked outside the school gate.
‘You followed me,’ she said. The words sounded like an accusation.
‘I don’t have time for this,’ she said.
‘This is not about us,’ he said. There was something in his voice, but before she could speak, her mobile phone rang from her handbag.
‘Let it ring,’ he said.
She looked from him to the bag, and knew from his face that nothing was right.
‘I followed you, your brother called just after you left, but I wanted to tell you myself.’
The children, she thought, the children. But they were safe, they were in school, she had taken them there herself.
‘It is your mother,’ he said. ‘There was nothing anyone could do. Your brother said she just collapsed, and that was it.’
The phone rang again.
‘Leave it,’ he said again.
‘But the people, all the relatives, friends, they will want to say … to know the arrangements,’ she said.
‘And the school,’ she added, ‘I can’t go to class now. I have to tell Mrs Muza.’
He walked with her to the headmistress’s office where the message was given and understood. As they walked back across the school quadrangle, the bell rang for morning lessons. They were caught in a sea of laughing girls in green and white uniforms running to their classrooms. Their voices faded as Thulani and Vheneka walked to the car park.
The phone rang again as they neared the car. She reached inside her bag for it, and he caught her hand. ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ he said, in the most formal expression of condolence that Shona allowed.
Why doesn’t he hold me, she thought, why does he say the words of a stranger, why, but even before she had completed the thought, he had taken her other hand. She was afraid to cry because she knew, when it came, she would not stop. Then she was in his arms and he was holding her and he held on to her as they walked to the gate. They left her car behind and drove back home in his. On the way, they talked about calling the funeral home and about all the other things, large and small, that needed to be done.
Midnight at the Hotel California
It is hard to remember that there was ever a time when you could buy a half-dozen eggs, a packet of Colcolm sausages, two loaves of bread, a packet of Tanganda tea and still have change from a ten dollar note for two Castle lagers and a packet of Everest. I was thinking of those days as I walked from Mbare to Tynwald today. I had gone to Mbare to collect my car, but my mechanic Lovemore had not finished with it.
A couple more days, m’dhara, he said.
I had to contend with that. Shaky called while I was in Mbare and said that he knew someone who knew someone who could get me a good deal on fifty litres of petrol. It is a super deal, m’dhara, he said, it is only valid today, take it or leave it.
I could not leave it; this was the only thing in my pipeline. Just ten days ago, I had had to suspend another deal — some moron thought he was doing me the world’s greatest favour by offering me nine hundred billion for a four-stroke diesel generator. He actually expected that I would smile and say Jesu wangu, but I said, forget it, there can be no deal for such a low price, and he said, you will not be able sell it for more, and I said, I would rather hang on to it in that case, simbi haiore, m’dhara, uye haidyi sadza.
These were thin times in the Gumbo household with the wife pulling faces, and in the small house the girlfriend was suddenly too busy to see me. So when Shaky’s super take-it-or-leave-it fuel deal came up, I set off at once. There was no transport to be found, and I had to walk all the way from Mbare to Tynwald.
My immediate thought when I saw the fellow I was supposed to meet was that he was high on something. I am Clever by name and Clever by nature, ha, ha, ha, he said, and ha, ha, ha, I said, now how much do you want for it? He pushed back dreadlocks from his forehead and said he wanted half a billion. You are dreaming, I thought to myself, and pulled out one of the drinking straws that I carried in my battered Old Mutual briefcase. I put the straw into the barrel, sucked at it to draw some of the fluid into my mouth, which was just as well because there was definitely something else mixed in with the petrol. I spat it out, hoping that it was only water and not urine — urine is preferred by the more unscrupulous because it is the same colour as petrol.