First Fiction Fragments

The Barbecue Man

2009-08-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

He is a Zimbabwean. Nothing wrong with that. He lives in Oakland, and that's fine too. He still can be as Zimbabwean as he wants, and attend Berkeley City College, work two jobs, one at a bookstore, another at a grocery store. All those are good things. Perhaps when he finishes his studies at the community college, his undeclared major which he thinks can turn out to be Computer Science or English Literature, he will still be a Zimbabwean and that will continue to be fine. So what's the matter then?

He burns the meat when he barbecues, and Zimbabweans are beginning to dread having him near their grills. Nowadays, they prefer to call him when the meat is almost done; they need him at the gathering, there is not disputing that fact, but to allow him to barbecue would be a crime. He doesn't invite them to his home, they don't know where he lives, but like all the other Zimbabweans who should gather once in a while, sometimes every weekend, he needs to be there too.

At first that bothered him, this rumor that he burned meat. Because before the younger crews began to arrive, the ones driven by the bad economy back home, he used to be one of two Zimbabwean men in Oakland, so they had not choice but to count on him to be the barbecue man. The other man was much older, a veteran immigrant who could not waste his time smelling like smoke. Back then, when he escaped from his marriage to an African American who promised him every other day that she would cut him where it mattered, he would be the one asked by the host woman to barbecue, which he did happily.

Weeping

2009-04-02T00:17:00.000-07:00

When Chinyei finally left, Mako wept. He had thought that he could just marry a woman who owned a house and then bring his first wife to live with her, some sort of polygamous arrangment that disregarded how the neighbors, who were already shocked that a woman had brought a man into her own house, would react. Mako made the rural wife live in a lodger's room in the back of the house while he slept in the master bedroom with the new wife. He carried with his life for three weeks, like everything was fine.

Then one morning, Chinyei told him she was returning to the village.
"You are, really?" he said.

"First thing tomorrow morning," she said, emotionlessly, which surprised Mako.

"What's the hurry?" said Mako. "Next week is your turn. I will leave her and come spend three nights with you in your room. Isn't it nice that you now have your own room here?" He even turned to point at the house with his eyes.

"It's not about any of that. You can sleep where you want. The blanket is yours--you decide whether to cover yourself with it, or to sleep on top of it," she said, ignoring the flirty smile beaming from her husband's face, one of his famous, white-teeth smles women were drawn to. Once, this smile had mean a lot to her too. Now it had the disgusting look of a fly purging on its food.

She looked at him with a face showing a dismissive seriousness, the sense of finality encased in the words she had just said. When she saw that he remained rooted there, his grin turning stupidier by the minute, she added, "You are always free to do what you want; you are a grown man."

"But my question is: what's the rush?"

She wanted to say to him, "Do you even get it?" but she said, "My peanuts. I want to go harvest my peanuts." She was looking on the ground now, like a shy girl.

"And your peanuts can't wait?"

"They can't! You know that." Her words came out so fast she almost choked on them. She took spent a few second clearing her throat and swallowing. Then a wave of anger finally registered on her face, she torched him with her redenning eyes and said, " Now you think because you have a town wife you are not from the village anymore? Is that what you think, Baba B, is that what you think?"

"No yelling. This is the city," he said, raising his palm.

She quivered for a moment, rolled her eyes and said, "I know. I had forgotten we are in the city."

"Exactly what I thought too. So why the yelling? Trying to embarass me or what?"

"Just an ugly voice, I guess," she said, walking away from him and disappearing into her room, which could only be accessed from the back. That room was her bedroom and kitchen. They had bought her a parafin stove and had given her a few plates and pots. This was his idea: she had to be allowed time to get used to her new life as senior wife. "Give her two, three weeks, and she will be okay," he had explained to his junior wife. And now it was week three, perhaps she was ready. Guess what, she was not, and he had seen it in her eyes, that whole exchange; it wasn't like anything he could have imagined her capable of, loyal Chinyei.

Anyone who knew them could say this was an improvement because the last time he had brought a new wife he had been a lodger in one room, so all three of them, and his seventeen-year-old younger brother, had slept in them same room. He had always explained that he would get better accommodation for them, and now here he was, married to a house owner, who had been generous enough to give the senior wife her own room. Had the other woman not left when she found out that he was dating the homeowner, he would be dealing with three wives, which was not too bad because his target was four. For now though, this arrangment should work just fine, so this trip to the village she was telling him about did not make sense to him. She was just being herself, a senior wife who had outlasted many a woman before this new one.

He followed her in the room, aroused by her stubborness. But as he was entering,the new wife arrived and said," Can I talk to you in private?"

"Oh sure!" he said, backing out of the room and signalling to his senior wife that he would be back. He followed the new wife to the master bedroom, where he was kept for more than four hours.

Inside her room, Chinyei briefly sobbed, then started to laugh, and she said, in Shona, "Kuseka nhamo serugare."

And the next day she was gone, without saying good-bye, without asking for bus fare. Gone to the village, where she was not planning to harvest any peanuts. Her plans would plunge Mukoma into month of weeping. But every story has a beginning.

1977. He had just returned from South Africa and was itching for village girls after years of dubious interactions with bar women in Johannesburg. Within a day he had run into a plump and ripe Chinyei who agreed to sleep in his hut and by the second day, the two were instructed by her uncles to get married. He took her happily, saying that as a man he liked to take responsibility. That 1977 hot morning started for the two a childless journey.

Two Writers

2008-12-28T11:28:00.001-08:00

A budding writer from Zimbabwe had a dream that he was important. He was in South Africa,maybe Johannesburg, or Cape Town, but everyone knows you cannot confuse the two, even in dreams. So he settled for Durban, just because he loves KwaZulu-Natal. Come to think of it, he was at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he was a student of literature.

In his dream he was moderating a writer's conference at which a well-known Zimbabwean writer was the keynote speaker. He was certain that it was Chenjerai Hove, but because this is fiction, we cannot mention names of real people. So he introduced the author as a brother, pronouncing it brotha, as in brotha-to-brotha, "this brotha of mine from my country". He didn't want to make a long speech, having learned the hard way the last time he facilitated a budding writers' workshop on campus that long introductions cause people to seek lavatories, find them, use them, then decide that there is something else better to do on a Saturday morning than listen to a budding writer from Zimbabwe introducing another budding writer from Zimbabwe. So he kept his introduction brief this time, then presented the well-known writer to a cheering crowd of students, editors, journalists, and people from all over South Africa. There were Zimbabweans in the crowd too.

The dream started in Harare, this thing of writing, thinking if one sat down and looked at a blank page, one certainly could scribble something. Yes, scribble, because the first time he ever attended a writers' workshop in Harare, he walked up to Mungoshi and said, "I--, I have--."

Mungoshi, he wasn't sure if it was David or Charles, and now he was ashamed because you really can't confuse the two, said, "You scribble?"

He nodded, grateful that the word he had failed to remember had easily escaped the seasoned writer's mouth. Easily, seasoned, peppered.

"I scribble," he said, "and nibble."

Mungoshi laughed. The budding writer laughed.
"Nibbling--that's a new one--is good. Do you nibble everything there is to nibble before you scribble?"

"Marechera, Hove, Dickens, Faulkner," he said, ready to pull out The Sound & the Fury.

Mungoshi (hereafter called Seasoned) raised his hand and opened the palm to signal to the younger writer that exhibits were not necessary. Then he smiled, wisely, and said, "MarecheraHoveDickensFaulkner... that's all?"

"No. I have all the Russians under my belt too."

"Any Marquez?"

"Not yet; have heard the name," said the Bud.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk," said Seasoned, shaking his head. "Okay, let me give you another chance: Have you at least ever touched the covers of Neruda, Borges, Grass?"

" I will one day."

"Then you can come talk to me after that..." said Seasoned, as he turned his head to face another budding writer, who wanted an autograph on his face.

The Bud crept away and walked towards where Marechera was being talked about, thinking, who did I just talk to? Who is this seasoned writer who just told me to come back when I get it together?

That was in 1990, when he was finishing A-level, back when he kept a journal where he scribbled Nietschean fragments and platitudes, decidedly making no sense, but remembering something that D.H. Lawrence had not said, that nonsense, if preserved, will one day yield fruit in the form of novels.

Later he would meet Chinweizu at University of Zimbabwe, and would be forced to decolonize the mind, which meant learning to forget Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, The Mayor of Casterbridge, The Lost Girl. He would dive into Achebe's bile and as he pierced Conrad, but the confusion of it all, this whirlwind grew into hurricanes of confusion which he fought by writing meaningless poetry by day and raving mad in his hostel room by night. He mildly took to drinking, then when that did work, he joined a pentecostal church which mixed the idea of the Holy Ghost and ancestral spirits; that became his secret because no one at the university knew he attended the jumping church--someone would laugh, and those girls in Swinton who invited him to tea, stop....

Now, standing alone on the campus of KwaZulu Natal, after a night of watching Chaka Zulu for the hundredth time, which then led to the workshop in his dream, he doesn't want to go to lectures. This is not a graduate degree he is pursuing here; just something to be in some type of student status which allows him to receive benefits he wouldn't mention even in fiction because it's no one's business. He is studying theatre not because he wants to act, but to be able to direct a movie, several movies, one day. But he doesn't want to go to class today. He wants to think. About a house. A house of hunger. Nothing to do with Marechera, but a house, back in Mazvihwa, where they said his mother sleeps in this open house, and is known to brag about her son who is overseas. Overseas? Let's leave it that way, and let him think about the house....

Mangange Days

2008-12-22T23:32:00.000-08:00

When I was the head master of Goromonzi High I beat up my teachers. I would line them up behind a granite dome near the school and ask each teacher to extend his hand. Then I would cane them as hard as I could. They were all males because females never joined my staff. They had their own school, which they called Munene, and we tried to have them join Goromonzi, but they could not, unless we joined theirs first. One of my teachers, Ranga, who was taller than all of us but let me cane him, said we could not join Munene Mission. If the females wanted, he said, they could join us to form a stronger school. That didn't happen.

Then one of the females said, "We'll see how long your stupid school will last. Soon you will see that our students do better than yours."

That's why I beat my teachers; I wanted them to produce the best students, students who were excellent in both books and soccer. I wanted my school to be the best of them all, to beat Chegato and Munene in sports. Chegato, the third high school in Mototi, was located near Chisiya hill, where its head master, Mako, was the one always beaten by his teachers because they wanted him to be as good as I was in running a school.

I remember when the head masters held a meeting on the summit of Chigorira hill. It was my suggestion to do something, after our teachers had a fist fight at a soccer tournament at Chegato. I had beaten my teachers up after that incident, but I wasn't sure that the other headmasters had done the same. As people of power, we had to do things uniformly.