Versione Italiana | Nota biografica | Versione lettura |
‘No, Baba! You’re going in the wrong direction. Southbound, take the southbound train to Stratfo … Hello! Babamukuru murikundinzwa here? Hello! Bloody …’
Tendai slid his cellphone shut with a force unbefitting of such a delicate object. His neck was aching and his throat was dry. He didn’t want to go back in. It was supposed to be a happy occasion, but he wasn’t really interested in the people eating and drinking, squashed in the two-bedroom council flat.
However, he knew he couldn’t stay outside forever. His fingers were already throbbing from the cold and his ears were ringing as they did every time he stayed out too long. He paced back and forth then leaned over the railing to get a good look of the sky. If it snowed, he thought, London might just get a bit warmer and that would be nice. He jumped up and down a few times to keep his circulation going before re-dialling his uncle’s number.
The number you have dialled is currently unavailable. Please try again later.
‘Shit!’
He slid his phone shut even harder and banged his fist against the wall as the front door swung open.
‘What the hell are you doing out here. It must be minus 2!’ Chipo looked at him worriedly as she rubbed her arms briskly. ‘Come inside. I was wondering where you were. I don’t know anybody in there.’
He looked at his girlfriend thoughtfully, grateful to see a friendly face. He gestured for her to wait, then dialled his uncle’s number one last time.
Chipo spoke more persistently, ‘I prepared a plate for you.’
The number you have dialed …
‘Oh shut up, bitch!’ Tendai barked.
‘You what?’
‘No, not you babe. It’s just, I can’t get through to my uncle. He’s been on the train for over an hour. I think he’s lost.’
‘Don’t worry. He’ll make it. After all he’s lived in London for nearly fifteen years, right?’
‘He has to be here.’
‘Tendai, he’ll be here. Come inside. Please. I’m freezing.’
Chipo took Tendai’s cellphone in one hand and his frozen hand in the other. She led him into the flat as a wave of screams rose from the kitchen. Someone had just put on a Sean Kingston CD.
A couple of women danced with reckless abandon, rubbing their thighs together. He recognised them as his brother’s fiancée Lois and her friend Sandirai. They were doing a performance for his brother who sat licking his lips as he leaned against the kitchen counter, quietly nursing a beer.
In the lounge, a motley group of men sat huddled in front of a widescreen TV that nearly covered the entire wall. Four women in their thirties and forties sat on couches and the floor nibbling on chicken bones from their plates full of sadza, stew and roast chicken. Two of them, Auntie Mable and her friend Stella, had overnight shifts at the local nursing home beginning at 8 p.m. and wanted this ceremony to get started as soon as possible.
Mable complained to her brother about the delay but he seemed not to hear anything more than the commentary hissing from the TV that dominated the small room. He was amongst three older men and two twenty-somethings sitting in feverish anticipation of a possible goal by Wayne Rooney. Maybe Christiano Ronaldo would have the golden boot this afternoon. After all, the boy was on fire this season.
Tendai and Chipo nearly bumped into Auntie Mable as they all reached the kitchen door at the same time. Mable was a nervous woman who seldom looked anyone in the face. She passed the couple as if they were as inanimate as the furniture around them.
‘Lolo, we need to start this ceremony now. Some of us have got shifts,’ she told her young niece who was now bum-jiving with Sandirai while her fiancé Sam looked on.
‘OK Auntie,’ she chimed happily, ‘Where’s Mummy?’
‘Varimu lounge,’ she answered impatiently.
Lolo was about to leave when she saw Chipo giving Tendai a heaped plate of food.
‘Sam, you’d better tell your brother to eat fast because we’re about to start.’
Tendai ignored Lolo as he often did. He despised her vulgarity and lack of respect. He looked at his brother who was blankly admiring a fridge magnet and willing the tension in the air to disappear.
‘You can’t start yet,’ Tendai said to him, ‘Babamukuru hasn’t arrived.’
Lolo stood to her full height of 170 cm and wrapped an arm around Sam as if to taunt Tendai. She liked the drama. She wanted the attention. She lived for it. ‘You know, Tendai,’ she spoke with a hint of a smile, ‘Ever since Sam and I started going out you never wanted us to be together, and now you’re trying to stop this ceremony again. But you know what – you’re not going to succeed. Today is my day. Got it?’
Tendai laughed incredulously shaking his head as he kept his eyes locked on his brother.
‘Sam, this is not how it’s done. We wait for Babamukuru.’
‘You know what, to hell with your little traditions,’ Lolo pointed at Tendai for emphasis. ‘My family’s here and Sam is here. This is going to happen whether you like it or not.’
Chipo took the plate away from him and set it down on the counter, worried that it could be dropped to the floor, food and all. She knew her man. Situations like this could set him off in a rage.
Auntie Mable, who was closely monitoring the exchange, decided it was now time for her to join her niece in the pointing game, ‘Nhai iwe, Tendai, chii chirikumbokunetsa? This is England, things are different here, things don’t have to be like they are at home.’
Sam looked at the women who blocked him from his cowering brother.
Tendai’s breathing quickened and Chipo held onto his arm, keeping him steady, keeping him next to her. She’d seen that look in his eyes before and knew this was not the time and place for him to lose his temper. He’d lost his last job for punching his boss. He said the man had referred to him as ‘You Nigerians’ just one time too many.
‘Tendai,’ Chipo spoke to him softly in the crammed kitchen, ‘take it easy. It’s OK.’
‘No it’s not! Keep out of this,’ he hissed at her before turning back to his brother. ‘Sam, is this what you want? You want to have some Mickey Mouse ceremony without your family … without an elder to stand with you, to show that you also came from somewhere. I can’t believe you would go into a family holding onto a bunch of women’s skirts.’
‘Oh no, you didn’t! You’re such a sexist pig!’ Lolo bellowed.
‘Stop it! All of you! It’s enough!’ Sam’s voice resonated in the small space, even surprising Sam for a split second.
There was a loud roaring cheer that filtered in from the lounge like a tidal wave. The odd cry of ‘Ronaldo’ could be heard above the din.
Auntie Mable stood perfectly still, looking at her niece, silently willing her on.
‘Tendai, come on,’ Sam pleaded with his older brother, ‘My boys are here. You’re here. We should just go ahead.’
‘Since when do we get married with – the boys?’ Tendai spoke slowly as he tried to maintain his cool, ‘I didn’t pay for your flight here and for your college fees so you could forget your family and our traditions. You weren’t born in the London Zoo!’
‘But Tendai, we’re in the UK! What does it matter?’
‘Samson unopenga here – are you crazy? Everything matters. We’re family, and we have to stick together. You can’t listen to the rantings of some woman. When the ceremony’s over, and all these people have gone home, and your wife finds some other little boy with cash and decides she doesn’t need you – what you have left is family.’
‘You gonna let him talk about me like that?’ Lolo looked at Sam in fury as she flicked her long straight weave behind her back. ‘Well, are you? Because I thought you were on my side.’
Sam looked from his brother to Lolo and turned back to the magnet for guidance before facing his brother again. Ever since their father passed away when Tendai was in Form 4 and Sam was in Grade 7, Tendai always took it upon himself to be Sam’s father figure, but in Sam’s opinion, he just came off as a bully.
The CD had stopped and the only sound that could be heard in the flat was the steady commentary from the football match emanating from the lounge.
Sam was about to speak when a phone started to ring. Everyone checked their pockets, but Chipo was already holding the offending cellphone towards Tendai.
‘It’s your uncle’s number.’
He saw the familiar caller ID on his handset and answered it eagerly holding up his free hand to prevent anyone from speaking.
‘Hello Babamukuru!’
‘Hello, this is Inspector Watley with the Southwark Police, who am I speaking with?’
‘This is Tendai Zireva. What are you doing with my uncle’s phone?’
‘We called because your number was the last dialled by the person with this phone.’
‘What’s happened? Where is he?’
‘Sir, I’m afraid there’s been an accident. Do you know where I can find his wife?’
‘He has no wife. He’s a widower … he lives alone.’
‘Well, can you or another close relative come down to the King’s College Hospital immediately.’
Tendai wasn’t sure he’d heard right. He looked at Chipo hoping it was all just a dream.
‘What is it?’ she asked, ‘What’s happened?’
The Inspector interjected, ‘Hullo … Sir, can you come down now?’
‘Is he all right? Can I speak to him?’
‘Sir, we would rather that you came to the hospital. How soon can you be here?’
‘Yes, I … umm ... I mean, right away … an hour.’ Click. ‘Hello?’ The Inspector had cut the phone. Tendai closed his cellphone carefully and slid it back in his pocket.
Chipo looked at him concerned, ‘Where is he?’
‘King’s College Hospital. There’s been an accident. They wouldn’t give me details.’
Tendai looked up at Sam, still shaken, ‘We have to go there now.’
‘Now?!’ Lolo piped in, ‘Puh-leeze. This is probably just another one of your ploys to stop us from …’
‘Shut up!’ Tendai snarled at Lois poking her cheek twice with his index finger.
Lois froze in fear as Sam and Chipo dived for Tendai. Mable and Sandi screamed, but their terror was drowned out by another uproarious cheer from the lounge.
‘Tendai,’ Chipo said as calmly as she could, ‘Come on. We have to get to Babamukuru.’
The venom in Tendai’s eyes pierced like a knife through the kitchen air and into Lois. Chipo took both his hands in hers as Sam released his brother who he’d grabbed by the shoulders in the melée.
No one moved, for fear that Tendai would explode again. Chipo kept a firm hold on him while she turned to Sam and said, ‘We should go. Your uncle needs you.’
For the first time that evening, Sam looked straight into his brother’s eyes. For the first time since their father’s death, he thought he saw vulnerability in his older sibling’s face, but he was distracted by Lolo, who buried her tear-streaked face in his shoulder and whimpered something about Tendai trying to kill her.
‘Handisati ndaboona zvakadai – I’ve never seen such nonsense,’ Auntie Mable piped in, ‘Ndozvamunoita kumusha kwenyu here?’
‘Haiwa Tete, muregererei – please forgive him,’ Chipo tried to pacify her while keeping a firm hold on Tendai. ‘He didn’t mean it.’
‘It’s OK, Tete. Lolo, we can start,’ Sam’s voice was distant, disinterested. He took his fiancée’s hand and walked past his brother and out of the kitchen closely followed by Sandi and an equally frightened Auntie Mable who mumbled the word ‘Satan’ under her breath as she left.
Tendai swallowed hard and looked to the floor as Chipo led him out of the flat. Without a word, they bundled up in their winter jackets accessorised with scarves, gloves and hats.
The cold air assaulted them from the moment they stepped outside. Mist floated out of their mouths into the cold London air as they made their way to the bus-stop. The sign said their bus wasn’t due for another six minutes, so Chipo huddled on the corner of a bench leaving Tendai outside the small bus shelter.
‘Are you all right?’ Tendai finally asked Chipo.
‘I’m fine,’ she said.
‘When a woman says she’s fine, she’s never fine,’ Tendai quipped.
‘You seem to know so much about women today.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She shrugged as she crossed her arms. ‘Tendai, I disagree with what you’re brother is doing about as much as you do. But I’ve also a problem with what you said to him about women. As far as I could see there was only one person on the battlefield with you tonight – and it wasn’t a man.’
A small Mini-Cooper drove by adorned with Manchester United flags. As it passed the driver honked loudly and his passengers screamed joyously waving at the couple in the bus shelter.
Tendai watched the car disappear in the distance and then turned back to Chipo. He hated the way she constantly managed to make him feel small. What did she know? She was on some cushy scholarship while he had to work nearly seventy hours a week to support his family back home. Home. Home.
The first snowflakes of winter began to fall all around them, beautiful and soft like the flower petals of spring. He watched them fall and longed for Zimbabwe, longed to feel the warmth of the sun on his face, to see his mother and two younger sisters. He longed to be the carefree young man he once was before family responsibilities and unending work shifts became his reality.
His thoughts drifted to the day he first arrived in England after high school. Leaving the airport with Babamukuru nine years earlier he had stuck his tongue out to taste this beautiful winter drop of God’s greatness in action. There was great comfort in those first snowflakes, as his uncle took him under his wing and became his guide, his pillar of sanity.
Now, nearly a decade later, the snowflakes had a different meaning. They were hostile, cold, foreign. He shook uncontrollably as they began to settle on his shoulders and tried to hold back a sob. He had failed his uncle. He had failed his father. He had failed.
‘What’s wrong?’ Chipo took a deep breath before going to stand beside him, ‘Don’t worry. Babamukuru will be all right.’
He nodded his head, knowing full and well that she was wrong. As the bus rolled up to them, he fumbled in his pockets for his bus pass. He opened his mouth and let a lone snowflake land on his tongue before following Chipo into the bus and onto a double seat. She took his hand thoughtfully and looked out the window as she noticed something in the corner of her eye.
The bus was about to pull away from the curb when the bus driver came to a grinding halt and opened the doors again.
‘Thanks mate,’ a breathless Sam said to the driver as he rushed in and flashed his bus pass, ‘My family’s on this bus.’