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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781947548558 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Regal House Publishing |
| Publication date: | 09/06/2019 |
| Pages: | 206 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d) |
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CHAPTER 1
Pema peponi
Mukabwa, sitting atop the cracked cement stairs and leisurely smoking a cigarette, was sick of the pestering village women. He glared at them through reddened eyes, tempted to kick them out of his office and to tell them never to come back. There were four who he found particularly irritating; thin bird-like peasant women, toughened in the open sun of the farms, were fronting the bargaining, and had the pointed stares of street mongrels eyeing rock-wielding kids. They kept moving to and from the spot in the parking lot where the rest of the group were bunched, waiting resignedly. He gave them all an acid stare as they came back to crowd at the foot of the stairs, blocking other business that might have been more lucrative.
Mukabwa took a long puff of his cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly so it formed a long column-like jet. Then, feeling his nerves begin to fray, he spat angrily in the shriveled flowers at the foot of the stairs. He needed a drink.
One of the women, named Hannah, started walking in Mukabwa's direction, adjusting the knot in her tightly wound cloth belt. The rest stood wailing demonstratively, flinging their arms up above their heads and beating their chests as tears streamed down their cheeks.
The women clustered around the beat-up Datsun. The pickup leaned precariously on its hind wheels, the metal railings poking through the patched-up tarpaulin like the ribs of a starving mongrel. The vehicle was swathed in broken branches and red ribbons, a grim indication of the job for which it had been hired.
The men stood in a somber bunch a little distance from the truck, having resigned themselves to the long wait when it became apparent their attempts at bargaining were fruitless. Leaning against the twisted trunk of a guava tree, the driver finished his cigarette and lit another from the stub. He was in a sour mood and had argued bitterly with the party about the time they were taking to settle the matter. It was a long drive to the village where the burial would be held, and dark clouds gathered ominously overhead. The last thing he needed was to get stuck in the rut-marked cattle-track of a road leading from the village after a downpour.
Hannah approached Mukabwa, her wide nostrils flared with emotion, her tear-filled eyes fixed beseechingly on his face, a bright nylon scarf wound tightly around her head, pulling the skin tautly across pronounced bones and sunken cheeks.
"Mukabwa, listen to me. I plead with you," she cried piteously, her gaze fixed on him. "I am an old woman, and I am begging you. Give us our John so that we can get on our way before the rain starts. Please soften your heart, Mukabwa, and listen to us. Remember you are also of the clan, and that your day will come too."
"Listen, woman," said Mukabwa gruffly, shaking off her clinging hand. "I have told you what needs to be done. I won't repeat myself. And don't you imagine that you can make me change my mind with your useless tears."
"But you surely can't be —"
"You can save your words for another occasion, woman. I am not here to bandy words with anyone. Either you do as I say or you get out of here. You are blocking the way for other customers, you know. Or do you imagine that you are the only ones I have to attend to?"
"My son, Mukabwa," pleaded the distraught woman. "Mind the words you say to people who are in mourning. Remember I am the age of your mother, and that I —"
"Ha! Are you now threatening me with a curse, woman?" asked Mukabwa with a snide laugh. "Is that what you are saying? Well, you can try it on someone else," he said rising. "This one here is way beyond such old-woman nonsense. Now I think I'll go off for a drink. You people are making my head spin with your empty words that go round and round like a cobweb. As if a man can live on words. Or is it that you want me to give you the body as it is? Is that what you want, woman? If that is the case, then go right ahead and collect it!" He gestured irritably at the open door. "The door is wide open, as you can see. Go right in!"
"I am begging you, Mukabwa," said the woman, gazing at him reverently.
"Now, get out of my office," he ordered, shaking a thick finger in the woman's face. "Go on and join your other clanspeople over there!" With that he swung the door closed, descended the stairs, and strode down the narrow path that snaked through the overgrown hospital grounds toward the kiosk. He didn't bother to lock the door. His was perhaps the only office in the world that one could leave unattended and go away on a long vacation without fear of vandalism.
Mukabwa whistled softly to himself as he went, his feet squelching in the muck that had spilled inside his oversize, standard-issue white Wellingtons. As he neared the kiosk he dipped his hands into his roomy pockets to take stock of his takings for the morning. The mostly low-denomination notes were grubby and crumpled in the manner of illegal earnings hastily stuffed away; the coins, grime-coated and nicked, like loose change that even a beggar might disdain. As soiled as the money might be, there was a marvelous sense of power in having a full pocket; and as aggravating as his customers might be, he wouldn't be quitting his job any time soon, Mukabwa determined. The hospital cashier might as well use the miserly salary he doled out at the end of the month to buy himself lunch, for all he cared.
"You are early today, Mukabwa," said Rhoda, the kiosk owner. She was a short thick-set woman whose shiny eyes were constantly shifting. Rhoda knew all the subordinate staff of the hospital because almost all of them maintained accounts with her, whether for vegetables, sugar, or other groceries that they paid for at the end of the month. All the men, too, held accounts for the moonshine Rhoda sold under the counter, which provided her main source of income. Her customers had to place their orders through a tiny hole cut into the rusty mesh wire in the shop window, which protected her wares from petty shoplifters and the prying eyes of any unfamiliar hospital official who might chance to pass by. Rhoda passed a plastic bottle through the hole before Mukabwa had the opportunity to order his usual. "Business must be good today."
Mukabwa grunted in reply and settled down on the bench by the kiosk, stretching his legs out before him. He rammed the base of the bottle twice against the heel of his hand, watching keenly as the bubbles rose from the base to the top of the clear liquid. It was a practice he had picked up in the town shebeens, one intended to verify the potency of the contents. Satisfied he hadn't been cheated, Mukabwa snapped the seal with his thumb, twisted the plastic cap, and took a long leisurely swig, his protruding Adam's apple jerking up and down as he swallowed.
"Aaaah!" he sighed, rubbing the back of his hand over his wet lips.
"How does it feel today?" Rhoda always asked him that, as if she had given him a slow-acting poison and was eager to know if it was taking effect. Mukabwa nodded and raised the bottle to his lips again. He was not in the mood for small talk this morning.
"Someone must have given you a rough time," she remarked at length, arranging bunches of sukuma-wiki and pyramids of cherry-red tomatoes on her tray beside the counter.
Mukabwa nodded and tossed back the last of his drink. Grimacing, he held up the empty bottle and eyed it malevolently before tossing it on the trash pile next to the kiosk. He snapped his finger and Rhoda handed him another bottle through the hole, which he similarly inspected and opened.
When Mukabwa rose to leave a short while later, the whites of his eyes had reddened. His steps were a little unsteady as he cut across the weedy field back to his office, the tails of his worn overcoat flapping against his wet Wellingtons.
Halfway across the field Mukabwa paused to regard the expansive hospital and the doctors within, busy applying their book knowledge to treat the various ailments of their patients. After six years of hospital employment, he well understood the process. Usually patients arrived at the main entrance, where their details were taken before they were ushered in to see the doctor. If they were lucky, the sick would be sent to the pharmacy for drugs before being discharged; otherwise, patients were sent to the wards where their ordeal would begin. More often than not, their trials would encompass a fateful trip to the X-ray room at the farthest end of the hallway. And too bad for them if the doctor determined that a trip to surgery was in store, the dreaded room where shiny sterilized blades would be put to work.
But it was the unfortunate lot who failed to survive this complex chain who were of particular interest to Mukabwa. Their journey would finally end at his little office. After all their knowledge had failed them, the doctors, with an air of washing their hands of dust and grime, delivered the patient to a village fellow who had hardly mastered elementary school. Now that was something to think about, Mukabwa mused. Despite the important role he played in hospital affairs, his office was cramped and muggy, set aside from the spacious rest in a corner overgrown with weeds and crumbling with neglect. And yet it was him, Mukabwa, who drove the last nail into the casket, who was the final caretaker for the patients in this convoluted process of pain and medication.
Hannah, together with three other women, waited for him by the chipped cement stairs. She tugged at his arm with her spidery fingers as he climbed the stairs. "You really are not going to change your mind about this, are you, Mukabwa?"
Mukabwa paused, his hand on the steel handle of his office door, before slowly turning and leveling his gaze on the women who clustered behind him like a flock of frightened hens. As one, the women retreated, surprised at the coldness in the depths of his now bloodshot eyes.
"Go away," he said simply, but with a sinking finality. "I told you I do not eat grass. Do not make me repeat myself. I need money."
Without another word, Mukabwa strode into his office, collected the full slop bucket he had left in the corridor, and threw the noxious smelling contents down the length of the room toward the women, who shrieked and sprang backward.
When the women returned to the pickup truck, crestfallen and empty-handed, the driver gave the spokesman of the little party a piece of his mind, gesticulating angrily at the thick grey cloud slouching steadily across the sky from the distant line of hills. Thereafter, the driver climbed into the cab and, with vehement finality, slammed the door shut.
There was only one choice left to the mourning women. One of the group unwound her headscarf and spread it out upon the ground. She reached into the neckline of her white dress and drew out the little money-pouch that rested next to her breast at the end of a string. From within the pouch, she withdrew a few coins, counting them carefully against the sunlight before tossing them on the scarf. The others similarly gathered around the scarf, each reaching for their own money pouches.
* * *
The hospital had suffered a simultaneous cut to both power and water supplies that morning and Mr. Karani, the administrator, was more than ready for his lunch hour. He had had to spend hours on the phone pleading with the power and water companies to reinstate their services, to give him a little more time to settle the hospital's massive debts. And the circulating rumors of an impending strike by the hospital staff — who were owed three months of salary payments — had not made his morning any easier. These upheavals, he knew, were instigated by the much-publicized inspection visit this coming Friday by a high-powered team from the Ministry headquarters.
As Mr. Karani circled the back of the administration block toward the staff parking, he saw the little party clustered in the yard outside the morgue. He watched as one of the women gathered the edges of the scarf into a bundle and made her way toward the little stone building at the edge of the compound, the others following behind.
* * *
Mukabwa counted the money a second time and then tucked it away inside his pocket. He grinned at the women, revealing massive brown teeth. "I'll have him ready in five minutes' time," he assured the women, even as he ushered them all out and locked the door behind them.
Unbeknownst to Mukabwa, the hospital administrator had intercepted the women as they left the morgue. He spoke briefly with them before summoning one of the men to fetch the hospital guards.
Mukabwa, meanwhile, was turning his customer over on the wet stone slab, preparing to hose him down. "And you will be needing this bath badly, you fat oaf," he remarked to the body on the table. "It's going to be a real long while down there with the maggots and ants."
It was always a source of amusement for Mukabwa that he was the last one for whom these men and women stripped — coming, as he did, after their mother, their circumciser, their doctor, their spouses, and their mistresses. And the beauty with it was that there were absolutely no qualms by the time they reached his office, be it with the minnows of the fields, or the very President of the land.
It had been quite a struggle dragging this particularly well-fed client off the trolley and onto the slab; he was short but rotund, a midget who must have worked his way through quite a number of granaries in his lifetime — Oh, won't the grubs have a feast here! Mukabwa thought with some delight. As he adjusted his rubber gloves and reached for the hand-held shower, Mukabwa heard a strident banging on the door.
"I said, you give me five minutes, didn't you people hear me?" Mukabwa hollered furiously, preparing himself to give these impertinent women another sharp tongue lashing. The one thing he could never tolerate was someone interrupting his private moment with his clients after he had collected his bribe. But as he turned toward the door he froze still. Through the opaque glass window inset in his door he could clearly make out the figures of the hospital administrator and the beefy guards, the villagers crowded behind them. In an instant, he knew precisely why they were there.
"Open up inside there!" ordered Mukabwa's boss, rattling the heavy door on its hinges.
Mukabwa knew that the administrator could not see within the room, which accorded the mortician just the slightest of opportunities — he needed to find somewhere to hide the money, and quick. When the guards shoved against that old door with their shoulders, it would come crashing in before long.
"Hey, I'm coming ... give me a minute!" cried Mukabwa, his mind racing frantically, like a mouse cornered by a cat. The door rattled in its unsteady frame and the calls continued to sound from the hallway, instilling in Mukabwa a growing panic. Suddenly, a brilliant idea occurred to him. At the work table, where the corpse was stripped for his last bath, he found just the hiding spot he was looking for. Mahali pema peponi. A nice cozy place that even the flies couldn't find.
Just after Mukabwa had emptied his pockets, the door crashed inward, the guards stumbling into room behind it. Mukabwa turned, as if surprised, his hands raised in the manner of one who had just been interrupted in a task that required the utmost concentration.
"What ...?" Mukabwa began, a puzzled expression on his face. The guards, ignoring his apparent confusion — and despite the after-work drinks they had frequently shared with the mortician in the town shebeens — seized Mukabwa by the arms and pinned him to the wall.
"What's going on?" Mukabwa demanded.
"You know what's going on," the hospital administrator stated in the calm, measured tones he reserved for agitated staff. "I've heard a lot of complaints about you, Mukabwa." The administrator gazed steadily into Mukabwa's bloodshot eyes. "Thought you were too smart, eh? Well, your forty days are here. Where's the money these people just gave you?"
"What money, sir? I do not know what you are talking about."
"Don't give me that act, Mukabwa. You either produce the money or we get it from you. Now, which do you prefer?" From the wet table the still customer, who was at the center of all the drama, gazed unblinkingly at the ceiling. He was a sufficiently frightening sight for those not accustomed to death, with his bloated belly and puffed-up cheeks. The guards were nervous, Mukabwa could see, shifting uneasily in their boots and looking anywhere but at the cold body that lay immobile on the table. The villagers crowded, horrified, in the doorway.
"One last time — where is the money, Mukabwa?" demanded the administrator, increasingly agitated.
"I don't know what you are talking about, sir," replied Mukabwa coolly.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Dogmeat Samosa"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Stanley Gazemba.
Excerpted by permission of Regal House Publishing, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Pema peponi 1
Small Change 14
The Stronger Hand 29
Shikwe and Andati's Assignment 51
Chinese cuisine 66
Tommy Hilfiger 82
King of the Night 94
A Call from Down Under 103
Hearse for Hire 113
The Swindle 130
Vending 144
Crucifixion 151
Mercedes 160
Acknowledgements 202