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4 4 W WA AB BE EN NZ ZI I On his way home, George decided to buy some nanyute from C. Gauche (PVT) Ltd. His hen, Harriet, loved the shiny little seeds, which sounded like rain when you poured them into an enamel dish. He parked outside the shop, bought the seeds (plus a packet of moringa powder for himself… why, George?) completely unaware that in sixty seconds, his life would be changed utterly. No terrible beauty for George J. George, though he was wearing his green shirt with matching green socks, and though the shadows of clouds on Robert Mugabe Way were changing by the minute. He started his Ford, and reversed straight into the left front headlight of a brand new, custom-built Mercedes Benz, which then swerved out of control and crashed into a shop wall, thus damaging its other headlight and its fender. Now George, like all teachers who didn’t sell black market products on the side, could not afford to take out fully comprehensive car insurance; he had to settle for the minimum requirement, which was called, somewhat mysteriously, Third Party. What if four, or five, or six uninsured ‘parties’ are involved in the accident? It didn’t apply in George’s case because there wasn’t even a third party; there were just George and a mistress of none other than the Minister of Child Welfare, Sweets and Biscuits, Comrade Pontius Gonzo. Things might have been a lot worse – for the vehicles, if not the drivers – if it wasn’t for a peculiarity of mistresses of chefs. Here, we have a breed who’ve been given expensive new cars in exchange for hankypanky – a peculiarity that has not gone unnoticed by the majority of dirtpoor Zimbabweans, who have to walk or crawl to their destinations – and, whether turning out of their driveways (dangerously fast) or cruising on the open road (dangerously slow), they maintain a speed of not less and not more than 40 kilometres per hour. When George crashed into Mrs Nyamayakanuna’s Merc, the damage 27 would have been considerably more if she had been going any faster than 40 kilometres per hour. So it was that they managed to settle, quite amicably , out of court, as the saying goes. George got to keep what was left of the Ford, Beauticious (for that was the complainant’s name), got everything else including George’s labour – for the rest of his life. He needed the job anyway, because, hadn’t he been asked to leave Girls and Boys Come Out to Play Secondary School after Speech Night, the school’s most prestigious occasion? What had got into him, sitting there on the stage, resplendent, like the other teachers, in his robe and gown, sipping neat Skipper cane spirit from one of those plastic straws, which, owing to a concertinaed section in the middle, could bend in any direction without blocking the searing outflow. He’d managed to conceal the bottle in the folds of his academic gown, but the straw was conspicuous, and so were his efforts to reach it. His Worship the Mayor, distinguished guests, parents and pupils thought he was having a stroke. One of his Form 3 Remove pupils who appeared to be a girl but who bore the ambiguous name of City Lights, actually cried out for all to hear – it was during the headmaster’s speech – that Mr George was dying. Mr George wasn’t dying – not quite yet – he was breaking the rules, embarrassing the school, shocking his more sensitive colleagues, sending the entire pupil body into paroxysms of laughter – worst of all, infuriating the Chairman of the Board, a patriotic old boy of the school who had earned colours for rugby and water polo (wasn’t his name on one of the boards in the hall – in gold lettering?): R.S.V.P. Labrador-Crack, CEO Sell-Buy (PVT) Ltd. The following day George had been summoned to the headmaster’s office where the entire board of governors was waiting to admonish and then dismiss him. They allowed him to serve out the term because they were not then in a position to replace him – A-Level English teachers were no longer falling out of trees in beleaguered Zimbabwe. It was while serving his term’s notice that the switching of portraits had occurred, followed shortly by his encounter with a motor car so expensive that a few spare parts were worth more than...

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