The Death of Rex Nhongo (21 page)

M
andiveyi had seen the Englishman enter the Jameson public bar ten minutes before, but he felt no inclination to move. He took out his hip flask and swigged whisky. Just now, in a moment of reflection, he had concluded that his life was falling apart. And a moment like that requires acknowledgment, does it not?

Men are liars, Mandiveyi thought, and all lies tumble like a house of cards, but my lies, my lies…

Men lie to their wives, to their bosses, to the other woman, to other women; to friends, colleagues, children, wider family. Men lie about three things—their success, their loyalty and their lies. But most men? When the cards tumble, they find solace in truth—with their wife, their boss, the other woman, whoever. Mandiveyi knew he had no truth. He was barely a man at all, but an ephemeral fabrication, a chimera of flesh and falsehood. He was not lying with purpose, only to maintain other lies. He was not lying to maintain his marriage, but the lie of it; not to maintain his job, but the lie of it; not to maintain himself, but the lie that he existed beyond a sagging sack of flesh and bone.

Two days ago, he had broken it off with Nature. It had been an easy decision. His feelings for her remained largely unchanged (though the attraction had undeniably dimmed and that was, perhaps, the extent of his feelings). However, he knew that such relationships were necessarily temporary: maintain them too long and the woman inevitably became comfortable, possessive, demanding, indiscreet. This was intolerable for someone in his position.

He knew the process well. He had been through it more times than he cared to remember. You told the woman. You accepted her anger and grief with some degree of penitence, but remained steadfast in your conviction and, importantly, authority. You allowed the storm to blow itself out and carefully made a token offer of monetary recompense for her time and trouble. And if she still resisted? You pointed out the lies she'd told—about her hopes, her expectations, that which she was prepared to accept. Finally, you told her that she'd be better off without you. And you were able to do this with complete and irresistible conviction because it was most likely the first true thing you had ever said to her.

Of course, there were always repercussions. You might have to ignore text messages and phone calls, perhaps even avoid your usual watering holes for a month or two in case the woman was lurking to publicize her grievances. But Mandiveyi had never known a woman to react like Nature. Of course he had heard stories…but such things should never have happened to some­one like him.

Maybe he should have expected it, considering the range and duration of her fury. She had flown at him like a harpy, raked his neck with her fingernails and spat in his face. He had been forced to slap her several times, just to make her sit down. Flustered, he'd stumbled over his prepared speech in his rush to reach the knockout blow: “You will be better off without me.”

She didn't appear to hear it. She said, “Fuck you, big fucking man! You think you're a big fucking man! We'll see. We'll see I don't fuck you up!”

Yesterday Mandiveyi had gone to his son's school. As he grew, Tendai was finding it ever harder to walk, even with his frame, and was increasingly forced to use the wheelchair. He was now struggling to get from lesson to lesson and, though he said the other boys were generally supportive, his studies were suffering. Mandiveyi had made an appointment with the headmaster to raise the problem.

The headmaster was sympathetic. He leaned forward and clasped his hands in front of him on the desk. He said he would assign two pupils in each class to help Tendai get around. Mandiveyi expressed his thanks. The headmaster said, “Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about the school's physical geography.”

Mandiveyi nodded—
Of course not
. The headmaster nodded, too, then sat back in his chair. He weighed his words carefully. He asked Mandiveyi if he and his wife had considered what they might do should Tendai's condition continue to deteriorate. In such circumstances, would there come a point when a mainstream school would no longer be appropriate?

Mandiveyi simply stared at him. He didn't know what to say. There were no lies to tell.

The headmaster made a point of stressing the admiration that he and the other staff had for Tendai. He described the boy as a fighter; he described his generous spirit and popularity, not the brightest kid but certainly one of the most hard-working. Tendai was, he said, a credit to his parents: as honest as the day was long.

Mandiveyi returned home downhearted. His son, the cripple: it was impossible for him not to consider the boy's disability somehow his fault; not genetically so much as spiritually, as if the child were the receptacle of his father's sin. And the more he tried to shake this feeling loose—tell himself that it was just an expression of the superstition he'd dismissed long before but must be latent somewhere within him—the more the idea took grip. And he had no idea how he might tell his wife, Plaxedes, the details of his conversation with the headmaster. She already considered their son twice the man his father was.

As it transpired, he didn't get the chance to find out. He met his wife in the living room, sitting forward on the large gray leather lounge suite, holding a pair of his underpants in either shaking fist.

Nature had not ambushed Mandiveyi in a favorite bar. Instead she'd ambushed Plaxedes in the dairy aisle of Bon Marché, depositing his underwear in his wife's shopping trolley and leaving no doubt about its recent provenance. “Your fucking big man!” she'd spat. “Your fucking big man!”

Mandiveyi felt little option but to retreat immediately to his last line of justification. He told his wife that she knew the character of his job (which she didn't—he'd made sure of that) and that he couldn't possibly discuss the nefarious activities in which he was involved for the sake of the nation. All he could tell her was that the woman was implicated in a case he was working on, a matter of life or death, and that he had done nothing that was not in his line of duty.

At this point, Mandiveyi had twin realizations that yawned in front of him, like gaping mouths, either of which could swallow him whole. The first was that his wife hated him. More than that, she didn't care whether he was telling the truth. It wasn't the infidelity that bothered her, but the shame of public humiliation. And, while his sexual activity might be swept beneath a façade of normality, the shame could not: there was no coming back from the shame. The second was that he was indeed working on a case that was a matter of life or death, quite possibly his own, and he had lost control: he was not going to find the taxi driver, he was not going to find the gun and he would pay the price. The house of cards was already tumbling.

Mandiveyi got out of the car and entered the Jameson public bar. He affected the affectations he affected on such occasions—each designed to project a kind of earnest mateyness—and approached Jerry Jones, the English nurse.

He bought Jerry a drink. They shot the shit. He asked after Jerry's family (did he have a family? Mandiveyi couldn't remem­ber) and Jones shrugged. “You know.”

He laughed. He said, “I do. Of course. What man doesn't know?”

He asked about Jerry's work, a question that elicited an elaborate and effusive response that the Englishman punctuated with expressions of incredulity and occasional bursts of bitter laughter. It concluded with a shake of the head and a heartfelt “This fucking country!”

Mandiveyi raised his glass to toast: “This fucking country!” Because he knew there was no stronger bond than one forged in self-righteousness.

Mandiveyi allowed the bonhomie to settle. Then he said, “You know I saw you? The other day. That's what made me think to call you. Outside Corporate Health. You were with that guy: Appiah.”

“Shawn?” Jerry swigged his drink. “Yeah. That's a tough one.” Then, “You know Shawn?”

“Not really,” Mandiveyi said. “He is Ghanaian?”

“Ghanaian? No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't know his heritage, but he's an American. At least, that's what's on his passport. Shawn Appiah? The gold dealer?”

“Exactly.”

“American. Poor fucker. I mean, that's some fucked-up situ­ation, I tell you.”

Jerry began to tell another elaborate story. But Mandiveyi was barely listening. His mind, trained to an unusual facility for the machinations of power, deception and the negotiation implicit therein, was double timing on one word:
American
.

He had thought he would stand or fall on his capacity to find the gun—and he would not find the gun. But what if he brought in an American for dealing gold illegally? An
American
. It would be the biggest coup for the Organization since the arrest of Simon Mann and the whole hilarious debacle of the “Wonga Coup.” Phiri, and more importantly
Iganyana,
would be forced to acknowledge his worth. Jones was still talking, but Mandiveyi took a second to switch off his senses and revel in his remarkable resilience. The house of cards was still standing for the moment. Mandiveyi was invigorated. Why had he ever doubted himself?

Mandiveyi allowed Jerry's story to play out. He made the appropriate noises. He glanced at his phone. He pretended he'd just got a message. He said, “Something's come up.” He drained his drink. “I have to go.” He shook Jerry's hand and smiled, gummy and piscine.

The Englishman showed no sign of moving. Mandiveyi said, “You're staying?” Then, to the barman, “One more for my friend here.” He dropped a ten on the counter. Jerry demurred. Mandiveyi insisted. He said, “It's good to see you again, Jerry. We must do this regularly.” He clapped Jerry on the shoulder. He said, “Remember what I told you: you need friends in a town like this. Anything you need. Anything at all.”

Jerry laughed. He said, “I can't think.”

“You never know,” Mandiveyi said. “You have my number, isn't it?”

“I have your number,” Jerry confirmed.

K
uda was released from hospital, not into Shawn's care but that of her parents.

When the consulting psychiatrist first raised the possibility of her discharge, Shawn was dismayed. He pointed out that his wife was barely speaking: she was listless and unresponsive. What if she were a danger to herself?

The psychiatrist, an aging white guy with bad skin and extensive mustache, said, “Do you
think
she's a danger to herself?” He paused. He said, “Her current state is not untypical: a combination of the shock of the event and the drugs I have prescribed. It will change in time. Besides, Mr. Appiah, the risk in a situation like this is that she becomes institutionalized. How can I explain it? That she comes to see these four walls as her only safe place, and the longer she stays, the harder it becomes to leave.”

Shawn thought for a moment. He said, “My work takes me around the country. Days at a time.”

“Somewhere else, then? Other family?” The psychiatrist smiled weakly and twisted a fleck of saliva into his whisker, a habitual tic that turned Shawn's stomach. “The other thing I am obliged to raise, Mr. Appiah, is that your insurance places certain financial limits for psychiatric care. We are approaching those limits. Wouldn't it be preferable to save on her bed and so forth and allow me to continue to treat Kudakwashe as an outpatient? More bang for your buck, so to speak.”

Shawn glared at the man. “It's not about money,” he said. “We don't even know what happened. She has hardly said two words to me.”

The psychiatrist looked uncomfortable. “Perhaps we will never know exactly what happened,” he said. “But I think we know enough.”

Shawn raised an eyebrow—
And?

“You are putting me in an invidious position, Mr. Appiah. Of course there are issues of confidentiality.” Then, before Shawn could protest, “But you are her husband. Kudakwashe has talked to me a little and I believe we're looking at a brief psychotic episode, hallucinatory in nature. The question is whether it was an isolated incident or something that may repeat.” Again, he smiled uncomfortably. “Sadly, psychiatric diagnosis can never describe a problem, merely the manifestation thereof. But I am confident that the medication I've prescribed will ensure no further episodes for now. After that, it's a question of trial and error, of wait and see.”

When Shawn left the hospital, he drove straight round to see Kuda's mum and dad. Mr. and Mrs. Gorekore lived in the decaying grandeur of a large but crumbling house off Twickenham Drive. Kuda's father had been something big in the NRZ, Zimbabwe's railway, but, long since retired, he'd seen his pension and savings decimated in the meltdown of 2007. All he'd been left with was the house and he couldn't afford its upkeep.

Shawn considered it a depressing place of cracked driveway and dying lawn. Of course, Shawn's own home bore similar scars, but he was renting, wasn't he? Besides, the Newlands house was a stepping-stone on his way up to something better, not down to the grave.

The interior of the Gorekores' got no sun. It felt unnaturally cold and Shawn was always picking his way through its dim rooms, fearful of banging his shins on some piece of thirty-year-old teak furniture, as indestructible as it was threadbare. Even if you turned on a light, the bulbs seemed half-hearted, as if they were reluctant to illuminate shabby paintwork, broken skirting and cracked tiles.

Nonetheless Mr. and Mrs. Gorekore were a sprightly couple: he, stick-thin with flint eyes behind reading spectacles, a three-piece suit swallowed in the armchair from which he rarely moved; she, a large, cushiony woman in a state of perpetual motion, despite the crippling effect of two arthritic hips that undoubtedly needed replacing. They were engaged and enthusiastic. The mother did most of the talking, but Gorekore would occasionally interject some wry aside, which invariably reduced his wife to giggles that wouldn't have sounded out of place from a ten-year-old. They never complained. They seemed to personify the possibilities of happy marriage. Shawn had observed to Kudakwashe more than once that she had learned little from them.

The Gorekores lived alone, but their house was a teeming hub for the extended family, especially at weekends when relatives whose connection Shawn couldn't fathom descended in droves. There were uncountable kids, who tore around the garden in unstoppable high spirits and, much to Shawn's irritation, showed no particular affection for Rosie, whom they called “American”:
American—come and run! American—come and climb!

Back in New York, before he left, Shawn had told his boys that this was something he looked forward to: “The wider family. It's not like it is here, yo. It's more like
mi casa, su casa,
you know? Like, over here? We become so
white,
bro: you got to call before you visit, you got to plan this and plan that. And you think a black man these days ever going to take responsibility for his own blood in trouble? No way. But that's our true selves.”

“Deep shit,” Malik had said. “Deep shit, for real.”

Deep it may have been; shit most certainly. Because Shawn now had more relatives than he'd ever wanted, with more troubles than he'd imagined possible, and he was fucked if he was going to take responsibility for any of them.
That
shit? It may have been African or Zimbabwean or whatever, but there was a reason it hadn't stuck in the development of the black man.

Shawn presented his dilemma about Kuda's discharge to the Gorekores. The conversation went better than he'd dared hope. He addressed the problem to his mother-in-law and the only awkward moment came when she said, “A wife looks after her husband, a husband looks after his wife. In sickness and in health. That's what marriage is.”

There was a moment's silence. Shawn didn't know how to respond but, before he could try, Gorekore leaned forward and said definitively, “Shawn has to earn a living. That
is
looking after his wife.” For once, Shawn's mother-in-law found nothing to giggle about.

Gorekore picked up Kuda from the hospital. They'd agreed that Shawn would bring Rosie over to meet them at the Mount Pleasant home. She hadn't seen her mum since “her accident” (as they had all come to refer to it, encompassing acknowledgment of haphazard misfortune, qualified with that possessive pronoun). It hadn't seemed appropriate when Kuda was unconscious, or when she'd recovered only to a state of torpid detachment. But perhaps it would be easier in the family house where she'd grown up.

At first it had all gone well. Kuda appeared delighted to see her daughter, momentarily snapping out of lethargy to embrace her and whisper, “My little bird! My little bird!” However, a second later, the relieved smile froze on Shawn's face as Kuda thrust out her arms and pushed Rosie away, fear written deep into her features. “He's here! He's here!” Kuda said. Then, directly to her mother, “He's here, Mummy! He's here!”

Mrs. Gorekore led Kuda, protesting, to her bedroom. Rosie, remarkably, retained her equilibrium. She turned to Shawn: “Is Momma sick, Daddy?”

“Yes, baby,” Shawn said. He looked at his father-in-law, whose face shone horror through its mask of habitual implacability. “I gotta look after my daughter.”

“Yes,” the old man said. “Of course.”

Shawn knew that his parents-in-law didn't like him. He knew that Kuda had told them sketchy details of the sketchy details she knew of his serial infidelity. But as he sat Rosie on her booster and strapped her into the cab of the Isuzu and Gorekore waved them away, he also knew that they agreed he was doing the right thing. And the fact that what was best for Rosie coincided with what he wanted? That was just his good fortune.