Rotten Row Read online

  ‘… that you are just two vowels from State House,’ she says with a smile. ‘I saw your presentation.’

  She introduces herself as a postgraduate student. Her name is Pepukai. She has almost finished writing her Master’s dissertation, she explains. Transitional justice is her subject. Over lunch, they have a choice of three starches – rice, potatoes and sadza – three different types of meat – chicken, beef stew and pork chops – and two salads – coleslaw, and lettuce and cucumber. The Familiar Faces do not believe in choice. They take all the options.

  Mr Dube moves to stand behind the Special Guest who is helping herself to salad, and in a loud voice says, ‘We Hard Mashona Types don’t eat these leaves.’ The Special Guest, surprised by the address coming so loudly from behind her, turns with a startled smile.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ says Mr Dube. ‘I am high voltage.’

  He laughs loudly.

  He follows the Special Guest to a seat, but his eye keeps moving to Mr R. G. Magaba’s companion. He has gotten to know in a special way five of the women in this room, in fact, he has gotten jobs for three of them after coming to know them well, and he would like to extend his knowledgable assistance to the young lady. He invites her and Mr Magaba to sit with him, much to the displeasure of Mrs Chikombe, who looks a little sour. He is unable to make much headway, not only does Mr Magaba monopolise the Unfamiliar Face completely, Mrs Chikombe also monopolises him, and instead of discovering more about the Unfamiliar Face, Mr Dube finds himself listening to the all too familiar talk of budget cuts and the scandalous conduct of Mrs Chikombe’s female staff, female domestic servants, and some of her female relatives.

  After lunch they go into break-out groups to discuss the ‘takeaways’ from the day’s session. Mr Dube had planned to use that time to nap after his heavy lunch, but the new colleague fascinates him. He is afraid that beside the polish of the younger RGM, he might not look as shiny. Mr Dube calculates that he will only have a chance if he can offer the young lady a job. As it happens, a position for a Programme Officer is soon to become available in his organisation.

  MaiWashington, his mother-in-law’s niece has been pestering him to employ her daughter-in-law. ‘These Beijing Beijing things’, she had said the last time they saw each other at a family funeral, ‘and all this Gender Gender Business is just the sort of thing for Washington’s wife. She is a real dunderhead, that one, without five O levels to her name, just imagine. But she would do very well in this Gender Gender Business.’

  To Mr Dube, this Pepukai person is a much more attractive prospect than Washington’s wife. He decides to forgo the nap and use the break-out session to press his advantage. But first, he returns a call from his wife to discuss a funeral she is on her way to.

  They go into the wrap-up plenary session where the day’s presenters open the floor to questions. Pepukai asks Mrs Chikombe, ‘I wanted to question your statement that political violence is the biggest killer of women in this country. If the violence is cyclical as you say, how does it manage to beat the statistic for deaths from domestic violence, high numbers of which occur almost weekly? And the state media, which has dedicated court reporters, documents that at least five women are killed every week, so surely women are more likely to be killed by their intimate partners than they are to be murdered for political reasons?’

  Mrs Chikombe says, ‘When you have been in the field long enough, you will know that it is best not to take any statistics from biased media.’

  The young woman presses on. ‘But what is the state media’s interest in inflating figures for domestic violence?’ ‘And what about road traffic accidents? Given the state of our roads, and the condition of our ageing fleet of motor vehicles, surely more people, whether men or women, die in road traffic accidents than from politically motivated violence? The police indicated that just this last Christmas alone …’

  ‘You surely cannot take seriously anything the police says,’ interrupts Mrs Chikombe.

  ‘I am not saying the problem is not serious. Not at all. I just want to understand it in a proper perspective.’

  ‘Perspective is academic,’ Mrs Chikombe says sharply. ‘It is academic and we have no time for academic questions here. Look at this, look at this.’ She goes back to her slides and her pointer moves frenetically over the maimed, the beaten and the dead. ‘Tell me if these people know anything about perspective. Tell me if they would rather not have died from road accidents or domestic violence.’

  That last statement makes no sense at all, but in the face of the wounded and the eloquent dead, the young woman can only retreat. A few more questions follow, to which Mrs Chikombe responds with the prologue, ‘Now that is a constructive question’. Mr Dube asks for one final question. Pepukai raises her hand.

  Mr Dube looks around the room before reluctantly indicating that she has the floor. ‘What will happen if the ruling party learns that it has other ways to steal an election without using violence? What is the strategy then?’

  In the silence that follows her question they hear a squeaky trolley moving outside. A waiter pops his head round the door and waves towards the top table. Mr Dube announces this is an opportune moment to break for tea, but they would think about the question over the break. After tea, there are no more controversies, just final statements mapping the way forward and more pam-pams of appreciation. No one answers the last question

  A cocktail follows. In the background, a band plays Bee Gees covers. Mr Dube watches as Mr Magaba and Pepukai dance energetically to ‘Tragedy’. The Unfamiliar Face is no dancer, but her joy is infectious. He cannot remember the last time he saw anyone as animated as she looks. After the song, she moves to the bar, where she is approached by the Special Guest. They sit at the bar stools. He cannot hear what they are saying above the music. Mrs Chikombe comes to him and says, ‘Now look at that.’

  They watch as the Special Guest hands over her card.

  ‘I found out during the tea break that that one has a sister who is married to a Tarumbga,’ says Mrs Chikombe as she nods her head towards the Unfamiliar Face.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Tarumbga. There is an Assistant Commissioner of Police with the name. She has her own agenda I am sure. Probably CIO. In fact, I am certain she is. And frankly, she has no professionalism, none at all. Her skirt is much too short for a gathering of this nature.’

  Mr Magaba joins them. ‘She is quite a dancer that one.’ As he says this, they notice the presence of a second Unfamiliar Face, a dreadlocked young man in a black leather jacket and very tight jeans. The Unfamiliar Face makes her excuses to the Special Guest, jumps off the bar stool and embraces him with abandon. The three Familiar Faces watch as she leaves the room, talking animatedly to her companion. A cocktail glass drops to the floor and shatters. A waiter comes scurrying up to clear it. ‘Well,’ says Mr Dube, ‘I think that’s it for me. I am turning in.’ Mrs Chikombe follows suit. Mr Magaba waves them off. The band strikes up the introduction to ‘Staying Alive’. The remaining Familiar Faces dance.

  A Short History of Zaka the Zulu

  Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?

  – The Book of Jeremiah –

  Ndakabudireiko pacizaro, kuti ndivone kutambudzika nokucema, kuti mazuva angu apere nokunyadziswa?

  – Buku yaMuprofita Jeremia –

  He was always a bit of an odd fish, Zaka the Zulu, but he is the last boy that any of us thought would ever be accused of murder. According to the boys in his form, from his very first days at school, he had worn his school uniform every day of the week, even on Sundays. Not being a wit, a sportsman or a clown, he was not a popular boy. We could, of course, have admired him for his brains. In the high-achieving hothouse that was the College of St Ignatius of Loyola, the annual winner over a consecutive fifteen-year period of the Secretary’s Bell for Outstanding Results, we admired any boy we labelled a Razor. Zaka, though, made such a song and dance ab
out his sharpness that you would have thought that he was the only Razor in the school.

  He became most unpopular when he was made head prefect. In a school like St Ignatius, where everyday order is outsourced to the prefects, being head can bring out the tyrant in even the nicest sort of chap. Zaka brought to that office an obnoxious and big-headed self-importance that made him absolutely insufferable.

  As head prefect, he took off demerits for the slightest offences, marking down boys who did not wear ties with their casual khakis at Benediction, making unannounced spot-checks for perishable goods in our tuck boxes and trunks, sniffing to check for beer on the breath of every boy who had snuck out to Donhodzo, the rural bottlestore in the valley below our school and, from the strategically placed Prefects’ Room, making forays at unexpected times to see if he could catch anyone smoking outside the library.

  It seemed to us that he would not be happy until he had taken away as many of our pleasures as he could. We were sure that it was Zaka who made the suggestion to Father Rector that the Middle and Junior House boys should have an extra period of prep on Friday afternoons. He wanted us out of the way on the days when the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary girls took their weekly swim. We called them Mary Wards, pronounced Merrywards. We felt the injustice of this edict keenly.

  The swimming pool was set in a quadrangle with the Junior House common room at one end, and at the other, the Middle and Senior House dormitories. From the vantage points offered by the common room’s high windows and the dormitories’ balconies, the whole school had a good view of the swimming Merrywards.

  They were sylphs in our eyes, every single one of them from the fattest to the thinnest, from the tallest to the smallest, not because they were particularly beautiful as girls went, but because they were the only girls that we saw on a daily basis. Imagine four hundred boys with their storming, raging hormones, locked away for three months at a time at a boarding school deep in rural Mashona land and you will understand that even our choirmaster’s wife, with more hair about her chin than her husband, was, to some of us anyway, a vision of beauty.

  There were forty Merrywards in any one year. They came to the school for A levels, but lived separately, at Mary Ward House, under the authority of Sister Hedwig and her fellow Sisters of Loreto. The presence of the Merrywards was considered necessary to tame the older boys. The thinking of the Jesuits was that the boys should get used to seeing and being around girls, so that no boy went demented at the flash of a breast or a bare leg in the world outside Loyola. In return for their civilising influence, the girls got the best Jesuit education that the country could give. The Loreto nuns’ passion for education was matched only by the Jesuits’. The Merrywards also got the guarantee, for even the least attractive of them, of at least one besotted boyfriend in their lifetimes.

  Only the Senior House boys who shared A level classes with the Merrywards saw them at close range. They even touched them. For one hour every week, at the Social Dance after Mass and Sunday breakfast, with the smiling approval of Father Rector and Sister Hedwig, the Seniors and Merrywards waltzed, mamboed and cha-cha-cha-ed to records on a scratchy gramophone. When we heard Dobie Gray longing plaintively for the freedom of his chains, we knew that some lucky Senior had a Merryward in his undeserving clutches for the three and a half minutes that the song lasted.

  As for the rest of us, we watched them as they moved in small groups, neat and trim in their white blouses, grey skirts and shining legs. We strained to hear their voices above the drums and rattles at Mass, and to catch their perfumes above the incense at Benediction. Only their weekly swimming lesson allowed us to see them at something approaching close range, and to see them too with only the thinnest, wettest Lycra hiding the best things about them from our eager eyes. Zaka’s officiousness ended it all for us.

  Watching the girls swim had been one of the few activities that brought together Junior and Middle Houses. In the hour in which we watched the Merrywards crawling, butterflying, back- and breast-stroking, we were of one mind. The Juniors jostled on the benches in their common room, pushing and shoving and whistling while from our balconies in Middle House, we clutched our crotches in mock agony. We paid no regard to Brother Peter, our housemaster, who lectured that, for our own good, we had to sublimate to the superior governance of our minds the fleshly wants of our bodies. Recovery from the state of simulation could cause such permanent damage, he said, that it was always to be avoided, unless there was the possibility of consummating the act. But this could only happen, he stressed, within the sacrament of a fully blessed Catholic marriage.

  The Senior Boys were abject hypocrites. They pretended that their strolls from their dorm to the balcony were for no other reason than to hang up clothes, which, curiously, only ever seemed to want hanging up during the Merrywards’ swimming hour, or to admire the view of the kopje in the distance. The best view of the swimming Merrywards was from the Prefects’ Room, which was at pool level. You could see almost every pore from that close range, but the prefects, rare beings in their cream blazers with sleeves striped red with sporting colours and academic honours, pretended to be too sophisticated for this. They made it a point of honour not to go into their own room when the Merrywards were swimming.

  The rumour at the time of the Swimming Decree was that Zaka had become the boyfriend of the curviest of the Merrywards. He had instituted the ban because he did not want the junior boys to see her in her glistening glory. It turned out to be untrue. The curvy Merryward had the good taste to involve herself with a different Senior. The ban was, as a consequence, attributed to his general joylessness, to his ZakatheZuluness.

  We boys may have disliked Zaka but Father Rector and the Fathers considered the doctrine of Zakal infallibility almost as important as the Papal one. They approved him as a model for us all, particularly when it came to spiritual life. He took seriously the Jesuit philosophy that even our most mundane tasks were for the greater glory of God. He wrote ‘AMDG’, for Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, in the upper right-hand corner of all his schoolbooks. He was one of a handful of boys to take communion twice a week, at Mass on Sundays and again at Benediction on Thursdays.

  In the two years before he became a prefect, when he could have been a hooligan denizen of Middle House like his fellow form-mates, he was an altar boy. He was even more solemn than Father Rector as he swung the thurible to waft the incense over us at Benediction and rang the bell at the Elevation of the Host. We knew better than to stand in line behind him at confession because it took him at least twenty minutes to confess. Yet he did not break a single school rule in the entire six years that he was at Loyola.

  The only thing he enjoyed outside the classroom and the chapel, the only thing he did with anything approaching passion, was chess. On the evenings that he chose not to be in the Prefects’ Room or out swooping on smoking boys outside the library, he would sit in the main common room, frowning over a set with a headless queen and two missing pawns that were replaced with fifty-cent coins.

  Until he stopped playing chess after he struck up that curious friendship with Nicodemus, he had become so good that there were only two people in the entire school who could give him any sort of challenge, Father Rector himself, and a small Junior with a photographic memory who had at birth been burdened with the unfortunate moniker of Kissmore Mateko. Mercifully, he lost his natal name and was forever after known as Kasparov.

  Zaka played sport only because he had to. Chess aside, he had a cold, bloodless discipline that made him pursue only those things that directly related to his academic success and spiritual purity. He even begrudged the literature set books that he had to read. He saw them as frivolous, unnecessary and entirely unworthy of his attention. ‘Such petty things as novels, plays and poetry,’ he said in his strong accent, ‘are an abject waste of time for those of us who have aspirations to higher, scientific ambitions.’

  From that accent came our nickname for him. We called him Zaka, after the village in Mas
vingo Province, because he had the thickest Karanga accent that any of us had ever heard. We could just have named him Masvingo, but that name was already allocated. And we could have called him Gutu which is where he was actually from in Masvingo, but as his real name was Zacharias, we thought it rather clever to pun on his name in this way. The junior boys added the rest. When a group of Form Twos did a history lesson on Shaka Zulu’s cruelty to his subjects in the same week that Zaka not only banned us from watching the girls but also made all of Junior House clean every toilet in the school because he had caught two of them measuring their erections with the blackboard ruler, they started to call him ‘the Zulu.’ The name met with the approbation of the whole school.

  If he knew that he was universally loathed, Zaka did not show it. Having achieved all As for his O levels and the slight blemish of a B in English literature, Zaka had chosen for his A levels the killer combination of maths, physics and chemistry. As expected, he got the top fifteen points at the end of the school year, clearing his path to reading engineering at university and to a secure and certain future.

  So you can imagine our surprise when we heard that he had not only flunked out of Engines in his first year, but had taken up a job as a temporary maths teacher at St Peter Claver, the upper-top secondary school in the valley. And you can imagine our even greater shock when we read, fifteen years later, that he had been not only accused of but also found guilty of murdering Nicodemus, the boy who had been his best friend at school.

  *

  The friendship between Zaka and Nicodemus was unusual because Nicodemus was two years younger. Even if those two years had not proved an impassable gulf, there was Nicodemus’s Middle House status.

  It was not uncommon for a Senior House boy to make something of a pet of a boy in Junior House, or for a Junior to follow a Senior about in worshipful admiration as Kasparov did with Zaka, but there was a longstanding enmity between the Middle and Senior Houses.