another car, a Peugeot 406, pulls in from the other direction and turns into his driveway. For a moment he is dazed by the bright headlights and when he steps out a familiar voice calls cheerily, ‘Hes, Farai!’
‘Mainini Goto!’
It’s his aunt, his late mother’s cousin and a much younger woman, her niece.
‘Come in, come in, Mainini. Hello, Faith. What a surprise.’
As soon as the two women step out of the car he gives them each an exuberant hug.
Mainini Goto sits resplendent with middle-aged matriarchal ease while Cousin Faith, barely nineteen and decked out in purple, pierces the air in the lounge with her exotic perfumes.
‘We heard you were back. We were just passing by and came to check on you. Are you all right?’
‘Yes, Mainini!’
‘How was the States? What did you bring us? Did you meet your cousin Lemi?’
‘I talked to him on the phone.’
‘Where’s Veronica? Gone to church with the kids for the evening service, I suppose?’
‘You know these Pentecostals. Mainini!’ he says, shaking his head. ... ‘Mainini!’
‘What?’
‘Come. Come and see.’
He leads them to the main bedroom, his bedroom, and pulls back the blankets right down to the carpet. Cousin Faith leans forward staring, as if expecting a cat or a baby viper to leap up from between the sheets.
‘What is this, Mainini?’ he asks, pointing to the logos printed on the sheets and the bedspread.
‘That’s the same material for the uniforms which the women at Veronica’s company wear.’
‘Logos, logos, logos, Mainini! Veronica’s logos. That’s what this house is all about, Mainini. This is what I have to put up with every day.’
Mainini Goto thoughtfully chews on a fingernail and leads the way out of the bedroom, back to the lounge. She looks at the logos, wondering if Farai is not becoming somewhat obsessed, after all she knows what fabric costs, and the chance of a cut-price deal …
‘I know,’ she says, ‘Let’s talk. Maybe you can tell me tomorrow, after you have had some rest. Have you had anything to eat?’
‘No.’
‘You can always come to my house if you are hungry or need anything. Remember I am your mother.’
‘All right.’
‘Nobody can stop you drinking, or say drinking is bad, but you must try to cut down a bit. Veronica says you’ve been back three days but most of that time you’ve been out.’
‘Did she call you?’
‘Never mind. That’s not why we came. We’ve just come to make sure you’re OK. Let’s talk tomorrow, when you’ve had some rest. Look, we have to go now or we will find Mkoma Willie waiting.’
‘Is Willie still with you, Mainini? That man must have worked for decades for you now.’
‘Twenty-seven years. He was eighteen when we first employed him, and he didn’t even leave after your uncle died.’
Mainini is good at talking about domestic matters – gardeners, maids, loyalty, security, saving, and education. Using time wisely. A clothes designer, she believes in flowers, rockeries, beautiful driveways, gazebos and women’s organisations. She would be the first to tell your gardener to climb onto the roof and sweep off the leaves, or trim the hedge. She makes you want to get on in life and be somebody she can take pride in. Somebody whose house she could drive past and boast to her church friends, ‘My nephew lives here.’ In this her principles intersected with those of his late father, which was why the latter, just before he died, had written her a long, prophetic letter about his children, somehow entrusting them into her care.
As Mainini drives off who should stop by but Mai Tapiwa, their neighbour. She lives two houses down the road and sometimes comes with her husband to talk, laugh and drink beers with him on an occasional Saturday evening, while Veronica sulks and sips Fanta in the kitchen. Mai Tapiwa of plum lips, long slit denim skirts and forbidden sideways eyes. Tonight she wears lipstick and eye-shadow.‘I just came to check on you’, she says, ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be all OK as long as I’m here.’ Mai Tapiwa takes his hands in her warm manicured ones and leads him back into the house …
Mai Tapiwa has left. She came into the house and sat with him, next to him. He played her music from his collection and talked to her about himself. She asked him gently about his trip to the States. She kissed him on the lips before she left, saying her husband was waiting at the gate.
He plays jazz and traditional music. He steps out to the pantry and opens the fridge. It is nearly empty. Or is it? Did Veronica remove the food? There are two or three tiny packets of meat. He picks one of them up and examines it. The meat is red, very red, red pork and it has yellowish pockmarks like little swollen eyes, staring at him. ‘Pork is bad,’ Fatima had said. He hastily throws the packet down. In the pantry the shelves are bare; large, brown nauseous bugs conglomerate over little crumbs of food.
He goes into the bedroom, and plays more music on the hi-fi at the headboard. The music makes him feel expansive and he wants to hug the walls and the curtains of the bedroom but he lies still on top of the blankets, with his eyes closed. A slow inertia grips his body; he lies like that until the hi-fi switches itself to the radio. In the early morning, he vaguely hears the wake-up church service programme, Reverend Mwaita, still going strong, is preaching a sermon about faith. He is a well-known multi-denominational evangelist. Once upon a time, at the age of thirteen, Farai had attended his service in a huge tent outside the township and accepted the Lord. But his new faith, prompted by fears of hell and brimstone, had worn off in a welter of pubescent sin.
The sermon is broken by songs from the choir. Farai knows them well but when he tries to hum the tunes his voice dries up. Before the end of the sermon there is a pause, then Father Mwaita speaks again. The urgency in his voice rises to a pitch.
‘Somebody out there, a child of the Lord, is having problems and he knows himself,’ says Father Mwaita. ‘This person is a well-meaning man but engulfed in sin. He is like an uprooted sapling drowning in a fast-flowing river. He has lost his faith. Yes, it is you my child and I shall not say your name on the air because that would break your frail heart. You know yourself. You have not slept or eaten for days, my child. The problems you are trying to solve need a clear mind and you cannot achieve this without sleep. Why don’t you try to catch a little sleep before you begin another day? Why don’t you try to start afresh?’
Farai yanks the hi-fi cord out of its socket and sits up, his heart beating fast and his hands shaking. The voice injects him with a sudden energy and he staggers to the bathroom to soak himself in hot water. The sun is rising, sketching wry images of faces and figures on the bathroom walls, just like a movie. Outside, next door, the voice of a little girl laughs, and his neighbour chides his dogs.
He carefully chooses his clothes for the day, brushes his teeth, oils his locks and, deodorized, goes out and locks the house. He must go out.
He is late.
He marches along the path at the edge of the road. All the vehicles are going there, roaring up from behind him, very few going the other way.
The drivers of the cars and trucks and combis are stern with the importance of their mission, they don’t turn to acknowledge him, or each other; only the big green truck hoots as it flies past him and the grim-faced driver