Short Writings from Bulawayo III

The Rhythm of Life

7 The Rhythm of Life Bryony Rheam The day the rains started, Pattie’s son died. It was the fifteenth of November. Craig swore they’d start that day. ‘Half way through November’ was what he always said; the fifteenth was his chosen date. “Told you so,” he said, as we sat on the kitchen step and watched the first swollen plops smatter violently on the ground. I rolled my eyes in jest. Then Pattie arrived and told us her son was dead. “It is better,” said Craig, for Garikayi had been ill for a long time. “No, it is not better!” she wailed. “He was my son and now he is dead!” She held her stomach and leaned against the wall. I put my arm around her. He was buried the next day. I was glad of the rain, of the relief from the heat, until I thought of the funeral. That morning I had given her money and a ten kilogram packet of mealie meal to help feed the mourners who had gathered. I knew it would not be enough. In the afternoon, I sat on the verandah reading. Dylan Thomas. How apt was the soft rain falling just beyond the steps, the gurgle of water in the drainpipe, the gentle plash, plash of it onto the grass and nearby pot plants. A wet woody smell rose from the woven grass carpets on the floor, but it was comforting, as was the cool of the cushion behind my back. I read: Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Getting up to fetch a glass of water, I caught sight of the hanging baskets Garikayi had made. The fuchsia leant lazily out as the baskets turned slowly in the wet breeze. He had also made the carved wooden elephant that acted as a pot stand near the door. Its trunk was too large so it always gave the impression it was about to fall over, but it never had. Somehow it had always managed to maintain its balance and stand, if not completely upright, at a slightly tilting angle, as though it were about to charge. It was this that gave it an element of unusual dignity. There were other things Garikayi had made: the pots I had my hydrangea in, a rough garden table and a birdbath. He had also established our vegetable garden that now thrived full of beans, butternut, gem squash, spinach, carrots and onions. That was before he 8 became too thin and ill to work, although even then he would turn up at least two days a week and wander slowly round the garden, cutting off a dead flower head here and there, or occasionally poking his finger into the soil as though it would yield something of interest. “I don’t know why he bothers,” Craig said once. He was sitting outside one lunchtime, smoking and blowing blue clouds of bitterness into the air. “Don’t say that,” I said and he looked at me, eyes half closed and laughed, a short cynical ‘ha’. I turned away and felt my stomach contract. The last few times we saw Garikayi, he just sat and stared. That was in September and now he was dead. It rained all through December and January and the garden flourished. One day in February, Pattie came to work with her arms full of St. Joseph Lilies. They grew under the blue gums along the railway line, hundreds of bobbing white bonnets, like a crowd of excited debutantes, whispering and giggling before their first dance. I filled two vases and still had more left over. She started to bring them twice a week and I had to give them away. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to stop. Garikayi used to bring them before, though never as many. It was as though our smiled thanks and expressions of delight were really an acknowledgement of him and she needed him to live on. In the autumn, we planted sweet peas. I was afraid that the frost of the approaching winter might kill them off, but it didn’t. By June, they were already pushing their way upwards and, in August, they were half way up the trellis we had tied them to. The warm, dry wind of August blew the flames of veldt fires through the bush. One reached our...