The Death of Rex Nhongo (8 page)

L
ater that evening, around half past seven, when everyone had gone home, having expressed sufficient horror about the day's central dramatic event, and when he'd finally finished the dishes and been able to dismiss Bessie for what was left of her weekend, Jerry found April cradling Theo on her lap on the couch. Theo was in his pajamas and half asleep, but April was still wearing her swimming costume and the same loose shirt and trousers she'd thrown over it hours earlier. Her hair was similarly unkempt, her eyes still wide with maternal terror.

Jerry said, “Everything OK?”

She took a moment to look at him, and when she did, she shook her head, not so much to answer his question as to signify, as if there could be any doubt, the full extent of her distress. She said, “That's the kind of thing he'll never forget, Jerry, never fucking forget. That's the kind of thing that will stay with him forever.”

Hearing his mother's tone of voice, Theo looked up at her from beneath her chin and sneezed. Jerry made some wordless noise of agreement, but couldn't help thinking that the likelihood of his son remembering this forever was more down to April's reaction than the incident itself. He said, “Good job that guy was watching—the father. What's his name? Shawn?”

Jerry had intended this to be an uncontroversial and incontrovertible observation but, as was generally the case when April was wound like a corkscrew, such observations were hard to come by.

“Fuck, Jerry, fuck,” April breathed. Then, “We've got to be sure we know where Theo is at all times. You do know that, right? You
do know that?
”

Jerry bit his tongue. He did know that; of course he knew it. But he also knew that if he rose to the accusation he was sure was present in the question (and how could it not be? Her brief dalliance with the word “we” was clumsily disingenuous) it would only lead to a fight. And he was either too tired to fight or simply tired of fighting.

Instead, therefore, he made another vague, indecipherable noise and retreated back to the kitchen where he stood, propped against the counter, draining an open bottle of warm, flat beer and reflecting on the day. It had been, he decided, an unequivocal disaster—a party he hadn't wanted to throw, attended by people he didn't much like, pivoting around a public row with his wife and culminating in Theo's near death. As he phrased it like that in his head, he issued a brief, amused snort for the benefit of an imaginary audience.

Jerry's perspective was undoubtedly colored by how things had turned out. Because, though he wouldn't now admit it, he'd enjoyed himself for at least the early part of the afternoon. It was colored, too, by living in a relationship under constant strain, which chafed, frayed and squealed, no matter how much he tried to anaesthetize, bind or lubricate its moving parts. And by the end of every day, a dull, chronic pain had always returned to ensure he felt short-tempered, hard-done-by and misunderstood.

Of course the
braai
had been April's idea. Perhaps because she spent so much time dealing with personnel issues at the embassy, she now seemed to regard herself as some kind of de facto social secretary for the expatriates of Harare; initially just the Brits, but, latterly, all-comers. But if April considered a hosting role part of her professional remit, it was really Jerry who had the social skills to pull it off. Whatever Jerry thought about the motivations, perhaps even the morals, of Harare's expat/diplomatic/NGO population, he also had a kind of impulsive and irrepressible gregariousness that, at least temporarily, swamped his cynicism. Consequently, though he had dreaded the
braai
in advance, he was soon hanging coats, cracking bottles and small-talking vacantly with the woman from US AID and her husband, who looked about eighteen but was some kind of hotshot in governance. After a couple of beers, he even found himself regaling the wide-eyed cultural director of the Alliance Française with the story of his first patient at the Epworth clinic. As she variously winced and exclaimed at every gruesome detail, thereby drawing walk-ups to their conversation, so Jerry began to relish the gruesomeness himself and even to elaborate unnecessarily (and not entirely truthfully) for effect.

Later, in the kitchen, by now feeling short-tempered, hard-done-by and misunderstood, he reflected with shame on his behavior. He considered bitterly that he'd somehow been infected by these people and the peculiar, incongruous, outdated lifestyle that saw two dozen white foreigners gather in a luxury that couldn't have been familiar to them in London, Paris, Rome or wherever they hailed from, but to which they now appeared to feel instinctively entitled. There was even, he decided, something in the way these people behaved that acknowledged the absurd inequity of their situation: their superficial piety a kind of justify­ing token, and the politesse of their conversations reflecting an understanding that, for reasons of taste and, possibly, security, they should not be overheard by the rest of the city, however strong their desire to drive around with windows wide, screaming, “Look at me in my big fucking car.” And, of course, there were very few black people present; just Bessie making potato salad, Tapiwa from the embassy, Tom Givens's trophy girlfriend (Esther? Young, bored, popping bubble-gum like a teenager), and Shawn, the New Yorker April had met at yoga, his silent Zimbabwean wife, Kuda, and their eight-year-old daughter, Rosie, who'd ended up at the center of the dreadful incident.

The afternoon had begun to go wrong with the arrival of Gilbert. Jerry had quite forgotten he'd OKed the visit, not least because he hadn't considered himself in a position to OK it or otherwise. However, while he was being, he thought, no more than appropriately friendly, April had stalked over, dripping from the swimming pool, and he could tell from the jut of her jaw that something was amiss. Ten minutes later, when he had been en route to the
braai
to poke sausages and turn steaks, April, who'd appeared deep in conversation with three or four women, had caught his arm. She'd bombarded him with a loosely strung invective: what did he think he was doing saying it was fine for Bessie's husband to visit when they'd never met him and didn't know anything about him, and, besides, this was Bessie's place of work, and was he really comfortable having a total stranger on the property with their two-year-old son?

Jerry looked from his wife to the other women and saw at once that this was what they'd been talking about and now, if not before, April was utterly confident in her indignation. He found himself staring at her, frozen in something like astonishment. Over recent months, he'd frequently found April's anger, attitude or opinions shocking; so frequently, in fact, that he now wondered whether his shock could really still be blamed on changes in her behavior rather than his own obstinate refusal to acknowledge them.

Jerry attempted a mild remark about how he hadn't known it was his decision as to whom Bessie could or couldn't see in her spare time. He kept his voice calm, slightly jovial, cautiously stripped of any note of irritation. His comment didn't have the placatory effect he'd hoped.

This was partly because April had lately learned to read the absence of irritation in Jerry's voice for precisely the irritation it was intended to mask, and consequently reflected it right back. And it was partly, and more surprisingly, because his comment had provoked forthright opinions from the other women, which, in turn, attracted the attention of most of the rest of the Joneses' guests. In fact, Jerry soon understood that he was more or less alone in thinking that Bessie's husband visiting for the weekend was no big deal. What was more, everyone else seemed to have the personal experience, professional knowledge, cultural legitimacy or plain brass neck to lend weight (if not reason) to their opinions.

The woman from the Alliance, for example, told a horror story of discovering her maid selling the kids' hand-me-downs at the flea-market, which prompted the fresh-faced American governance expert to announce, expertly, that a Zimbabwean domestic worker had familial responsibility for an average of three other adults. Tapiwa, from the embassy, said, “Seriously. You let a stranger on your property?” She shook her head and issued a high-pitched hum of doubt, followed by a relished “Uh-uh!” as if to seal her authenticity. “You are asking for trouble! Did you not read what happened to Rex Nhongo? And he was the former armed-forces chief and his wife is vice president!”

“The problem is,” Tom Givens opined, “they just don't plan long term. You might think, Why would they rip me off? They're on to a good thing with me. But that's not how they are. They don't plan beyond hand to mouth.”

Givens was the embassy's head of legal. Jerry stared at him, bewildered—was this truly how the head of legal spoke? And who was this
they
he was referring to? Domestic workers? Zimbabweans?
Black people?
But if he expected Tapiwa, for one, to jump in and defend her race, nation or at least the working class thereof, he was going to be disappointed. Instead, she just nodded vigorously and said, “You see now?”

April looked at him directly, gave a prim little sniff and said, “It's just common sense, Jerry.”

And now the mildness of her husband's tone didn't even pretend to conceal his growing anger. “I never knew you were such a natural madam,” he observed, and it was a remark that horrified the lot of them to silence.

Jerry was vexed and he was being intentionally insulting. But not until he'd spoken the sentence did he fully comprehend the degree. He'd have been better off if he'd just told his wife to stop being such a cunt. To call an expat the M-word was the lowest of blows, and it offended not just April but the sensibilities of all present, who widened their eyes, looked at one another conspiratorially and regarded Jerry with a mixture of pity and thinly veiled hostility.

The atmosphere was only broken by Shawn, the New Yorker, who, apparently oblivious to the political niceties that had just been recklessly trampled, took a swallow of beer and said, “Where I come from, you find a nigger you don't know on your property? You shoot first and ask questions later, for real.” Then, when nobody responded, he smiled slowly: “My bad. What shock you more, my language or my attitude to gun control?”

The cultural director of the Alliance made a curious shrill noise in the back of her throat. It might have been a laugh. Tom Givens coughed into his hand. He said, “So, where you come from, you'd have shot the maid's husband?”

Shawn shook his head. “Where I come from, Tom, I ain't got no maid.”

He chuckled softly, and now the rest of them were confident, more or less, that Shawn was making a joke, possibly even deliberately defusing the atmosphere, they laughed too, their amusement augmented by both relief and the exhilarating sense that they were with a black guy who felt comfortable enough to use the word “nigger” in their company. Only Jerry and April didn't join in.

S
hawn Appiah had met April the first and last time he went to yoga at the Ubuntu Natural Health Center in Rolf Valley. Shawn wasn't especially surprised to be the only man at the class, but he was taken aback to be the only black person, as he said later to Kuda, “This being Africa and all.”

The Ubuntu Natural Health Center was run by a woman called Toney (“with an
e-y
”), who had a nose ring, a wiry middle-aged frame that spoke of excessive exercise, and a clientele that was exclusively white, apart from Shawn and a light-skinned Indian called Natasha, who turned out to be Canadian Indian and married to a Zimbabwean Indian, who owned the local Mahindra tractor franchise.

At the end of the class, Toney offered around green tea in delicate china tumblers. Shawn and April were the only takers. Shawn had no pressing reason to get home and it seemed April had a pressing reason not to, since her husband had agreed to put their son to bed and she didn't want to interrupt the process.

While the two of them sipped their tea, Toney began a long and elaborate monologue of a kind Shawn recognized as ritual for white Zimbabweans when engaging for the first time with foreigners of any hue. It was a testing of the water, a play for one voice, a sophisticated sonar establishing the shape and substance of nearby obstacles: “No, but this place, it's the lifestyle, hey? You don't get this lifestyle anywhere else, I swear. But it's a beautiful country.

“Of course, it's not like it was before. I mean, killing each other? Even in the government. That general he was, like, right at the top of the whole bloody thing!

“But listen to me. How long have you been here, Shawn? You like it, isn't it? I wondered if you are one of those ones who left after Independence. I mean, there were black ones as well as white ones, hey? I'm telling you.”

Shawn looked at her with amused bewilderment and said he wasn't one of
those ones
. In fact he was from Queens, New York, but his wife was a Zimbabwean. “I'm an American by birth and upbringing, if not ancestry.”

Toney said, “Is it?,” an idiom Shawn thought he'd never get used to (the way it offered the courtesy of a question without any requisite interest in the answer). Then she launched into a convoluted and incongruous recommendation of a trip to the Eastern Cape where she'd spent much of her twenties, only now it was more touristy, but that was no reason not to go, hey? And there were some radical music festivals, and last year she'd taken acid with some trance DJs from Antwerp…

As Toney went to refill the teapot, April made an apologetic face at Shawn. He wasn't sure what she was apologizing for—presumably her race or gender unless she felt particular ownership of (and responsibility for) the yoga class. When she spoke, however, he clocked that she was English, so perhaps she was apologizing for that. It was a familiar, insincere trait he'd noted among English colleagues at Brown Brothers Harriman.

She said, “Have you done much yoga?”

“Never.” Shawn shook his head. “But we moved here and I thought, you know, it's a new start. Let me try out a few things.”

April smiled. “When I saw you, I thought, He's done some yoga. Then I glanced over when we were doing the full boat and I was, like, Maybe not.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“It's a compliment!” April protested. “I mean, people who do yoga look like they're in some kind of shape.”

Shawn raised an eyebrow and the corners of his mouth twitched. “You and me just in the same class? I mean, no dis­respect, but that German lady, Astrid or whatever? What she going to look like if she
don't
do yoga? Man! And I thought the US patented the fat motherfucker!”

April laughed in spite of herself and told Shawn that she was having a
braai
at the weekend and he should bring his family.

He'd mentioned this to Kuda when he got home and she said she didn't want to go—of course she didn't. He might have hoped that bringing his wife back to the city of her birth would relax her, maybe even build a few bridges between them, but the opposite had happened and she'd just retreated further behind those eyes that seemed to speak of nothing but her hurt. However, he'd let news of the “party” slip in their daughter's presence and she'd nagged her mother hard and long enough that she eventually agreed.

Rosie almost burst with excitement. She said, “Can Sasa come? Can Sasa come?”

“Who's Sasa?” Kuda asked.

“You ain't met Sasa, Ku?” Shawn exclaimed, in faux surprise. “He's Rosie's best friend, these days.” And when his wife looked at him blankly, he said, “Just invisible, that's all.”

“An imaginary friend?” Kuda said flatly. Then, with some animation, “I don't want our daughter to have an imaginary friend, Shawn. I don't know who that is. Sasa? What does he want?”

Shawn looked from Kuda to Rosie, who was wide-eyed, confused. Her lip was trembling. He felt his temper rise. He took the little girl by the wrist and led her out of the room, simultaneously calling to Gladys, the maid. When he returned to his wife, she was wearing the familiar look of wronged defiance and he struggled to control his voice as he hissed, “Jesus, Kuda! Jesus! You need help, you know that? You really need some help!”

“
I
need help?” she spat back.

“Yeah, you do,” he said. “The fucking African queen.”

The
braai
was nothing special: the Brits, apart from April and her husband, were kind of dicks. But Shawn enjoyed having a beer with some fellow foreigners and was pleased that they seemed as thrown by Zimbabwe (even if they claimed the oppos­ite) as he was himself. It wasn't like he'd expected his first trip to Africa to be some kind of spiritual homecoming (after all, Kuda's parents and sister had visited them in New York so he'd already experienced the full breadth of the cultural chasm), but he hadn't expected to feel quite this alien either. There was a simplicity in talking to his fellow countrymen, the French woman, that Italian couple, even the British, which made him feel like he was relaxing for the first time in a month. And, of course, it wasn't just a break from Zimbabwe, but a break from his wife too—Kuda just sat on her own, sipped her juice, kept herself to herself and only spoke when spoken to.

Shawn told the other guests about his background at NYU Stern, his time at BBH and his plans now he was branching out on his own with a little seed capital. He said, “There's money to be made here. I know there is. I mean, the mineral potential in this country's just crazy. But the way they got the law set up so you need a local partner—I already had meetings and it's, like, who you going to work with? The trouble is, you never know who's in whose pocket. And everything's so hand to mouth. They make fifty dollars, they not figuring how to turn it into a hundred, they already working out how to spend it.”

The others applied this to their own situations, whether in embassies, NGOs or day-to-day in the supermarket or wherever, and they all enthusiastically agreed. Soon after, the English lawyer (Tom?) even borrowed Shawn's turn of phrase in the midst of a quasi-racist diatribe about his staff.

The lawyer's clueless rant was an unwitting contribution to a bigger argument between April and her husband. Even coming to it cold, Shawn recognized the tension between them at once and couldn't believe it wasn't obvious to everyone. Then again, perhaps for him it was all too familiar and he sympathized with both, even cracking a quasi-racist gag of his own in a futile attempt to defuse the situation. It was a technique he'd learned on Wall Street: dropping a “nigger” onto a white argument was like hosing a dogfight. All parties stopped and stared at you with horror and newfound respect. On this occasion, though it shocked the onlookers, the couple in question remained locked in their anger. Their shit was deep, Shawn thought.