An Elegy for Easterly (12 page)

Details followed of the competition to be held a fortnight from then, and the main prizes to be won, the most notable of which was one drink on the house once a week for three months.

Mupandawana is a place of few new public pleasures. In the following two weeks, the excitement escalated and reached a pitch on the night itself. In their cheap and cheerful clothes, Mupandawana's highest and lowest gathered in the main room of the Why Leave Guesthouse and poured out into the night: the lone doctor doing penance at the district hospital, the nurses, the teachers, the security guards, the storekeeper from Chawawanaidyanehama Cash and Carry and his two giggling girl assistants, the District Commissioner in all his frowning majesty, the policemen from the camp, a few soldiers, the
people from the nearby and outlying villages.

Tapping feet and impatient twitches and shakes showed that the people were itching to get started, and when Felicitas turned on the music, they needed no further encouragement. The music thumped into the room, the Bhundu Boys, Alick Macheso and the Orchestra Mberikwazvo, Andy Brown and Storm, System Tazvida and the Chazezesa Challengers, Cephas ‘Motomuzhinji' Mashakada and Muddy Face, Hosiah Chipanga and Broadway Sounds, Mai Charamba and the Fishers of Men, Simon ‘Chopper' Chimbetu and the Orchestra Dendera Kings, Tongai ‘Dehwa' Moyo and Utakataka Express, and, as no occasion could be complete without him, Oliver ‘Tuku' Mtukudzi and the Black Spirits. They sang out their celebratory anthems of life gone right; they sang out their woeful, but still danceable, laments of things gone wrong. And to all these danced the Growth Pointers, policeman and teacher, nurse and villager, man and woman, young and old. There was
kongonya
, more
kongonya
, and naturally more
kongonya
– ruling party supporters in Mupandawana are spread as thickly as the rust on the ancient Peugeot 504 that the Honourable's son crashed and abandoned at Sadza Growth Point. Bobojani was in there with the best of them, shuffling a foot away from the District Commissioner, while Jeremiah and I watched from the bar.

The Growth Pointers did themselves proud. The security guard who stood watch outside the Building Society danced the Borrowdale even better than Alick Macheso, its inventor. Dzinganisayi, widely considered to be the Secretary-General of the Mupandawana branch of ZATO (aka the Zimbabwe Association of Thieves' Organisations) proved to be as talented on the dance floor as he was in making both attended and unattended objects vanish. Nyengeterayi from Chawawanaidyanehama Cash and Carry got down on hands and knees and improvised a dance that endangered her fingers, given the stomping, dancing feet around her.

And who knew that the new fashion and fabrics teacher could move her hips like that? As I watched her gyrate to Tuku, a stirring arose in my loins, and I began to reconsider the benefits of long-term companionship.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw M'dhara Vita enter the room.

He was dressed in a suit that declared its vintage as circa 1970s. The trouser legs were flared, while the beltline that must have once hugged his hips and waist was rolled up and tied around his waistline with an old tie. The jacket had two vents at the back. He wore a bright green shirt with the collar covering that of his jacket. On his head was a hat of the kind
worn by men of his age, but his was set at a rakish angle, almost covering one eye. And on his feet were one-third of his pension.

‘
Ko
, Michael Jacksonka,' Jeremiah said as we nudged each other.

M'dhara Vitalis gave us a casual nod as, showing no signs of painful feet, he walked slowly to the dance floor.

And then he danced.

The security guard's Borrowdale became a Mbaresdale. Dzinganisayi's movements proved to be those of a rank amateur. Nyengeterayi's innovations were revealed to be no more than the shallow ambitions of callow youth. M'dhara Vitalis danced them off the floor to the sidelines where they stood to watch with the rest of us. He knew all the latest dances, and the oldest too. We gaped at his reebok and his water pump. He stunned us with his running man. He killed us with his robot. And his snake dance and his break-dance made us stand and say
ho-o
. His moonwalk would have made Michael himself stand and say
ho-o
. The floor cleared, until only he and the fashion and fabrics teacher were dancing.

M'dhara Vitalis was here. The teacher was there.

The teacher was here. M'dhara Vitalis was there.

M'dhara Vitalis moved his hips. The teacher moved her waist.

M'dhara Vitalis moved his neck and head.

The teacher did a complicated twirl with her arms.

M'dhara Vitalis did some fancy footwork,
mapantsula
style.

The teacher lifted her right leg off the ground and shook her right buttock.

And then Felicitas put on Chamunorwa Nebeta and the Glare Express. As the first strains of
Tambai
Mese Mujairirane
filled the room, we saw M'dhara Vitalis transformed. He wriggled his hips. He closed his eyes and whistled. He turned his back to us and used the vent in the back of the jacket to expose his bottom as he said, ‘
Pesu, pesu
,' moving the jacket first to one side and then to the other.

‘Watch that waist,' I said to Jeremiah.

‘
Chovha George!
' said the District Commissioner.

‘If only I was a woman,' said Jeremiah.

That last dance sealed it, the fashion and fabrics teacher conceded the floor. By popular acclaim, M'dhara Vita was crowned Mupandawana Dancing Champion. It was a night that Mupandawana would not forget.

This was just as well because the one-night-only threat of the poster came true in a way that Felicitas had not anticipated. Two days after M'dhara Vita's
triumph, the Governor of our province summoned our Honourable MP to his office in Masvingo. A bright young spark, one of the countless army of men who are paid to get offended on behalf of the ruling party, had taken a careful look at the poster and noticed that the first letters of the words Mupandawana Dancing Champion spelled out the acronym of the opposition party, the unmentionable Movement for Democratic Change. Naturally, this had to be conveyed to the appropriate channels.

‘What business does a ruling party MP have in promoting the opposition, the puppets, those led by tea boys, the detractors who do not understand that the land is the economy and the economy is the land and that the country will never be a colony again, those who seek to reverse the consolidation of the gains of our liberation struggle,' so said the Governor, shaking with rage. I only knew that he shook with rage because Felicitas said he did, and she only knew because the Honourable told her so.

The upshot of this was that there were no more dance competitions, and M'dhara Vita the coffin maker remained the undefeated dancing champion of our growth point. He took his a one-drink-a-week prize for what it was worth, insisting on a half-bottle of undiluted Château brandy every Friday evening. ‘Why can't he drink Chibuku like a normal man his
age?' Felicitas asked, with rather bad grace, to which I responded that if he had been a normal man of his age, he would not have been the dancer he was.

To appreciate his skill is to understand that he was an old man. They had no birth certificates in the days when he was born, or at least none for people born in the rural areas, so that when he trained as a carpenter at Bondolfi and needed a pass to work in the towns, his mother had estimated his age by trying to recall how old he was when the mission school four kilometres from his village had been built. As befitting one who followed in the professional footsteps of the world's most famous carpenter, he had chosen 25 December as his birthday, so that his age was a random selection and he could well have been older than his official years. What was beyond dispute was that he danced in defiance of the wrinkles around his eyes.

Even if he had not got his drinks on the house, many of us would have bought him, if not his favourite brandy, then a less expensive alternative. There were no competitions and no more posters, but we began to gather at the Guesthouse every Friday evening to watch M'dhara Vita. Fuelled on by the bottom-of-the-barrel brandy and the
museve
music, his gymnastics added colour to our grey Fridays.

It was no different on that last Friday.

‘Boys, boys,' he said as he approached the bar where I stood with Bobojani, Jeremiah and a group of other drinkers.

‘
Ndeipi
M'dhara,' Jeremiah greeted him in the casual way that we talked to him; none of that respect-for-the-elders routine with M'dhara Vita. He cracked a joke at our expense, and we gave it right back to him, he knocked back his drink, and proceeded to the dance floor. Felicitas had come to understand that it was the Congolese rumba that demanded agile waists and rubber legs that really got him moving. So on that night, the Lumumbashi Stars blasted out of the stereo as M'dhara Vitalis took centre stage. He stood a while, as though to let the brandy and the music move its way though his ears and mouth to his brain and pelvis. Then he ground his hips in time to the rumba, all the while his eyes closed, and his arms stretched out in front of him.

‘
Ichi chimudhara chirambakusakara
,' whistled Jeremiah, echoing the generally held view that M'dhara Vitalis was in possession of a secret elixir of youth.

‘I am Vitalis, shortcut Vita,
ilizwo lami ngi
Vitalis, danger
basopo. Waya waya waya waya!
' He got down to the ground, rolled and shook. We crowded around him, relishing this new dance that we had not seen
before. He twitched to the right, and to the left. The music was loud as we egged him on. He convulsed in response to our cheering. His face shone, and he looked to us as if to say, ‘Clap harder.'

And we did.

It was only when the song ended and we gave him a rousing ovation and still he did not get up that we realised that he would never get up, and that he had not been dancing, but dying.

As M'dhara Vitalis left Why Leave feet first, it was up to Bobojani, with his usual eloquence, to provide a fitting commentary on the evening's unexpected event.

‘Tight,' he said.

There was not much to add after that.

We buried him in one of the last coffins he ever made. I don't know whether he would have appreciated that particular irony. I am sure, though, that he would have appreciated making the front page of the one and only national daily newspaper.

The story of his death appeared right under the daily picture of the President. If you folded the newspaper three-quarters of the way to hide the story in which was made the sunny prediction that inflation was set to go down to two million, seven hundred
and fifty-seven per cent by year end, all you saw was the story about M'dhara Vita. They wrote his name as Fidelis instead of Vitalis, and called him a pensioner when he hadn't got a pension; unless, of course, you counted those three pairs of shoes.

Still, the headline was correct.

‘Man Dances Self to Death'.

That, after all, is just what he did.

Our Man in Geneva Wins a Million Euros

O
ur man in Geneva sits before his computer and blinks at the messages in his inbox. ‘Brother, size matters,' says a message from K. P. Rimmer. ‘Give her an opportunity to spread rumours about your enormous size. Make her happy by delaying your explosions tonight.'

‘Don't be a two-pump chump,' says Karl Lumsky. ‘Millions of men are facing this issue, and the smartest ones already got an answer. Safe, efficient and covering all aspects, Extra-Time will help you forget the premature nightmare.'

‘Do you realise superfluous body kilos kill more and more people around the world?' asks Joni Corona. ‘We believe that you hate the unattractive look of those people and the social bias against them. Moreover, you've not the will to resist an assault of ruinous eating habits of yours. If it sounds familiar, then we have something for you!'

Our man is the Consular Officer at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Zimbabwe to the United Nations Office in Geneva, which also serves as the country's embassy to Switzerland. At fifty-five and in his first foreign posting, he is a latecomer to the Internet and all its glories.

‘Baba, get email,' his children said back in Harare. There was no need, he always said. Too expensive, too set in his ways.

In Geneva, the connection comes with his telephone line. Night after night finds him enmeshed in the World Wide Web, scrolling through emails spun in places he has never been, emails that are woven into his life and leave him blinking before his computer screen. He types slowly, with two fingers, his tongue between his teeth. ‘Like a policeman typing a report on a burglary', his wife teases him, ‘at the Charge Office in Harare.'

‘See how easy communicating becomes,' says his daughter Susan in England. ‘Don't forget to send the instalment for the next term.' She follows the sentence with several bouncing, bald, yellow, bodiless cartoon heads that open their mouths in toothless smiles as they wink at him.

‘Baba, I need money,' is the echo from his son Robert in Canada.

‘Improve your credit rating,' says Frederick Turk.

He is about to click on this message when he sees the next one.

‘Important communication,' this message says, ‘you are a winner!!' The message is from the European Bank of Luxembourg (EBL), headquarters – Brussels, Belgium. There is an attached letter on the bank's letterhead, signed by Dr E. S. Rose, Department Head (Corporate Affairs). In a circle around the name are twelve gold stars, just like the stars on the flag of the European Union.

‘Greetings,' Dr Rose says, ‘and congratulations. Your email has been entered into the EBL's annual lottery. You have been selected as one of ten winners to win €1,000,000 each. Write back quickly or lose this chance.'

Blood sings from his thumping heart to the rest of his body.

‘Are you sure that it is me?' he types. ‘I did not enter any lottery. Have I really won a million euros?'

‘Your email was automatically entered by your Internet service provider,' says Dr Rose. ‘You really have won a million euros.'

That is the explanation, he thinks, for Rimmer, Lumsky, Corona. And Turk, and Morgan, Shelby, Gordon. They got his email from his Internet service provider.

‘How do I get the money?' he asks.

‘You will hear from Mr George, our Chief of Client Accounts.'

Within an hour, Mr George writes and says, ‘Greetings and congratulations. The million is yours to pick up at our offices in Amsterdam. We will charge you an administration fee of €5,000.'

Five thousand euros is a lot of money to pay in admin fees, he thinks, but it is a piffle compared to a million. In his head he does his sums: one euro is roughly two Swiss francs. He has six thousand francs just sitting in his bank account. It is for Susan's second term, but it is not due for another month. He can get four thousand on his credit card to make ten thousand. Almost exactly five thousand euros. This he sees as a sign of a larger truth: God's hand is in this matter, at the very heart of this good fortune.

For the first time in his life, he uses the Internet to book a flight. The secretary at the embassy recommends easyJet. He does not tell her about his bounty, he has not even told his wife. He wants to surprise her and the children with cold cash evidence of the magnificence of the Lord. His nightly prayers are more fervent than usual. For the Lord has looked upon His servant and found him worthy.

The trip to Amsterdam is his first ever trip out of
Geneva. His only travels are when he goes from home in Petit Saconnex to the embassy in Chambesy, or drives up the gentle incline of the United Nations complex to attend meetings. On Saturdays, he drives his wife across the French border to shop at the Champion hypermarket. On Sundays, they drive to church. Thus he is not so well flown that he is entirely immune to the thrill of taking off from the ground to be enveloped in the clouds.

The last time that he was on an aeroplane was on his way to Geneva from Harare where his brothers saw him off at the airport. He has three brothers, one of whom lives in his old house in Waterfalls in Harare. When he calls his brother to check up on him, his family and the house, his sister-in-law hijacks the conversation with a repetitive litany of woe. Her talk is of power cuts, water cuts and rising bread prices. ‘Not like you in Geneva,' she says. ‘
Vagoni muri ku
Switzer.'

He tries to inject his own miseries into the conversation. ‘Can you believe we live in a flat, an apartment, they call it here,' he says, too loudly, too vehemently. ‘Just a flat,
heh
? A flat, just like single people.' Feeling guilty for such a petty complaint. Knowing that, at least, he has three square meals a day. And electricity that allows him access to the Internet.

It is the grace of God that allowed him to escape the power cuts, the water cuts, the rising bread prices.
He is not a career diplomat. God picked him out of the passport office at Makombe Building in Harare, thrusting him out of the way of approaching penury, just in time to enable his children to go to universities in Canada and England. He reads the newspapers that are flown in every month from Harare. He is the least important member of staff at the embassy, after the secretaries and driver, so he gets them last. The secretaries and driver are local recruits; they do not care about the news from a place they will never call home. The fall in the Zimdollar does not see a corresponding rise in their blood pressure. So the newspapers end up piled up in his office.

Every editorial wages war against inflation. Government ministers treat it like it is something outside of themselves and their policies; they wage war on it, they proclaim it the public enemy number one, they launch offensives on different fronts. Every week, unnamed economists issue sunny predictions on the turnaround of the economy.

Inflation will go down.

From twenty-five million and five hundred thousand per cent.

Any time now.

Any time soon.

The President glowers from every front page.

Like sex shops and pregnant women baring their stomachs in public in the summer, the Internet is a Geneva discovery. He knew of it, of course, but it did not feature much among
his
generation of civil servants. At the passport office in Harare where he was Head of the Department, everything was handwritten. And even here in Geneva, he does not use the computer at work. All typing is done by the secretary. He does not need the Internet for his work.

Then again, there is very little work.

Geneva is not London, or Johannesburg or Gaborone or Dallas, Texas, where there are hordes of Zimbabweans losing themselves or their passports, dying and getting arrested. There is not enough consular work to do, and even if there were, he is only a mailbox, an intermediary.

‘I will send your papers to Harare,' he says to a woman who wants a passport for a newly born Zimbabwean. ‘It will take up to eight months, in fact, it is faster if you go to Harare and apply from there.'

‘So what are you here for?' she asks.

‘It is faster in Harare,' he repeats.

She leaves without saying goodbye.

‘In Zimbabwe, out of Zimbabwe, civil servants are all the same,' she says.

He has learned the hard way that a first-world lifestyle demands a first-world salary. His monthly salary of six thousand two hundred francs a month would be adequate if only it were paid on time. After paying the rent, which is exactly a third of his salary, and paying the bills, and sending money back home, and by living on a diet of Champion value food, he and his wife save enough to put the children through university. Robert is finishing the third year, and Susan only just started.

He has recently been promoted from Full-Time Consular Officer to Part Consular Officer and Delegate. On seeing him wade through the piled-up newspapers, his Ambassador said to him, ‘Attend meetings at WIPO. And take in ITU and OMM if Chinyanga is busy.'

He now spends his days at meeting after meeting at which people talk of compulsory licensing and layout designs and topographies of integrated circuits. They talk of possible amendments to Article 6
quinquies
of the Paris Convention. They talk of the Berne Convention and the Lisbon Convention and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. They laugh at jokes that he has no hope of ever understanding.