Short Writings from Bulawayo III

id i

63 id i (id - the Freudian dark inaccessible part of the mind) Christopher Mlalazi A thick cloud of dust creeps over the houses. From under the barber’s thorn tree, one can see the green finger of a pine pointing accusingly at the afternoon sky above the corrugated asbestos roofs. The township resounds to the new language of the beleaguered government, sunk to gutter tricks - vindictive four-pound hammers on backyard shacks. The barber, Qaphela, is Hitlering his moustache with a generator powered electric shaver, looking into a cracked mirror, one eye on a group of young girls walking past the tree with water pails balanced on their heads, which are splashing water on their dress fronts, making them cling to their breasts. “The next to go are condoms,” Qaphela is saying above the bzeee of the shaver. “And how then are we going to screw all these nice girls – eiish! just look at those tits Fa!” He makes a sucking sound with his lips at the girls, who completely ignore him. The township hasn’t had tap water for almost five months now with all the supply dams empty because of drought. Supplies, though erratic, are delivered by bowser by the desperate opposition party city council. “That is impossible.” I reply. “What about the disease?” A pungent smell pervades the township from unflushed toilets. “Nx!” his tongue clicks in disgust, and he points with the mirror. “What is this?” A convoy of pushcarts appear from the dust mist, laden with cheap household property, with families and their pets behind each pushcart in an orderly cavalcade – only lacking outriders, so I think. My mind flashes to my walk last night. There is something magical about walking under orange streetlights at night, facing the oncoming traffic, cars zipping past, their headlights shining brightly, leaving one half blinded, and realising that, after all, one can freely walk in the opposite direction, that a strong will can shatter any shackles, shrugging off all the excess baggage of the past. Like injustice armed. 64 In mid stride, and frowning, I had turned around, and caught the tail also casually turning around. He walked away from me, retracing the direction that had brought me here from home after supper. I looked over my shoulder - the other one had also turned around, and was now following me, silhouetted against the car headlights behind him. He was speaking into a radio. I quickened my pace, dry sand in my mouth. The man in front quickened his too, for the distance between us did not close. And neither did that of the other behind me. A shiny black Benz suddenly slid to a stop beside me on the road, a convoy of identical cars winding behind it as far as the eye could see. Outriders, all in camouflage and with AK’s strapped across their backs, lounged on motorbikes on either side of each car, faces concealed by visored helmets that bounced off the orange of the street lights. The back passenger window electrically slid down, the interior light flicked on, and my heart skipped as he looked out at me. An old woman sat beside him, mouth and cheeks sunken, as if she was sucking something in the far away mountains of time, something dimly remembered, that would, had it decided to yield, have blown out her cheeks with the cherubic bloom of youth. “You are now famous,” he said to me, slowly, softly. “Just like your brother, but for the wrong reasons.” I killed my brother and buried him in a shallow unmarked grave. He was insane. I get home, and the yard in front is thick with onlookers. They are all silently looking in the direction of the matchbox size house. A tense aura hovers over them, so thick that it is almost a wall, as if any moment it would snap into unimaginable maggoty terror, and they would all flee away screaming. I feel my crotch hairs coil. What could it be this time? I bulldoze through them, and on the other side run into the arms of a stupidly pot bellied policeman. “Get back” he growls menacingly, raising a baton stick, so that it neatly slices the crimson setting sun behind him right in the middle. “He lives here!” the crowd cries out. A radio in the distance drums the prelude to the now sickening daily shovel full of six pm propaganda, buttered on both sides, to the discerning ear, with insincerity. The...