The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician. Tendai Huchu
mosque, a gift from the Saudis, is a blocky solid building, fusing Islamic architecture with a baronial style that blends in with the stocky, gothic architecture of the rest of the city. Farai walks round it to Potterow where the minaret stands.
He crosses the road and walks through the university buildings, on to Bristo Square, and from there down to George IV Bridge. This takes him past Medina, Doctors, Frankenstein’s and a number of other pubs and clubs he’s trawled through on wild nights with his boys. A car hoots as he crosses the next street. He doesn’t look. It’s a reckless stunt and, reaching the other side, he congratulates himself on being the first black man to cross over Candlemaker Row against such odds. He thinks, It’s so easy to make yourself the first black man at anything. The first black man at this university, the first black doctor in such a hospital, the first black person to take a dump in a formerly all-white toilet in Joburg. To his mind, there’s something silly about the cult of ‘the first black ___’ and anyone who calls themself that deserves to be patted on the head and given a biscuit. Perhaps it served a purpose in the colonial era, but for Farai, a child of the revolution who comes from a dominant majority, it’s just bullshit.
He walks into the Elephant House where he’s the first black man to buy coffee that morning.
‘The usual?’ the girl at the counter asks. She wears a little apron that turns Farai on.
‘Quadruple espresso every time,’ he replies with a smile. She lingers, holds his gaze, as if she wants him to say something else.
Every Monday morning he frequents this rather quaint café – of which there are many in Edinburgh – which became famous when some woman wrote a children’s book about wizards and inexplicably became a billionaire. In reality, there is nothing particularly special about the venue except for its bizarre collection of elephant statuettes. It’s not particularly clean and has rather dreary terracotta walls.
He avoids the empty tables and goes to the one by the window, where an old man wearing a trilby is sitting alone, sipping green tea, a copy of the Telegraph on the table.
‘It seems rather busy today. I hope you don’t mind if I sit with you?’ Farai pulls up a chair.
The old man offers a brief incredulous look. A ‘humph’ that escapes from his throat is his only sound of protest. Eyeing Farai warily, he takes a sip of tea.
He has a sharp, beak-like nose and bright eyes behind a pair of spectacles. He maintains an aggrieved air under Farai’s glare. The waitron serves Farai’s espresso in a medium sized mug, placing it carefully on the table.
‘Will that be all? The muffins are great today,’ she says.
‘Thank you, but I have to watch my figure,’ Farai replies, his eyes never leaving the old man.
He smells the bitter aroma coming from his black brew. It almost knocks him back, the true sign of a good, strong coffee. 2 middle-aged professional women sit at a nearby table. A bony woman, with a pale face and dark rings around her eyes, stares into space, looking down periodically to jot something in a ring binder notebook. A man with a backpack on the table listens to his iPod. Farai’s attention remains intensely focused on the old man.
At last the old man breaks.
‘Miserable weather we’re having, don’t you think?’ the old man remarks in a thin voice.
Farai shrugs. He could have given a few stock responses; it’s not as if he doesn’t know the ritual exchanges about the weather.
‘When you reach a certain age,’ the old man sips his tea and continues, ‘and you have a bit of arthritis in the joints, and you wake up in the middle of the night, 10 maybe 20 times just to spend a penny, then yes, the rain can make you a little miserable.’
‘I think you should stop drinking so much tea. It’s a diuretic. The upside is the anti-oxidants will get rid of those pesky free radicals, which are eating you up as we speak. But, no, honestly, I don’t have to worry about old age. There’s a short life expectancy where I’m from.’
‘Then I feel sorry for you. There’s nothing better than hearing the sound of your grandchildren playing in the garden. What’s your name by the way?’
‘Rumplestilskin,’ Farai says, and the old man laughs. They are two strangers and meet here every Monday morning, following the same ritual, staring each other down until one of them speaks. Last winter, they had an epic encounter lasting 2 hours. Finally it was Farai who broke. It’s a pointless exercise, but 1 they enjoy. And they still don’t know each other’s names.
Farai takes a sip of his coffee, which tastes like tar and is therefore exquisite. He sighs and feels sleepy.
‘Are you teaching today?’
‘The uni uses its postgrads like slave labor. The first-years are spoilt, clueless little twats. How on earth did they pass their Highers if they haven’t mastered basic stats? And so, I wind up with them, on zero pay.’
‘In my day you just went to work and made your way up the ranks. Today, graduates who don’t know anything are given all the top jobs. Nothing beats experience, if you ask me.’
Farai begins to enjoy himself. They are moaning now. Moaning is an essential ritual here, and a learnt art. One must find at least half a dozen things to complain about before breakfast.
He takes in the view of the castle and the rooftops over the Grassmarket through the smudged windows of the café. 2 blonde girls wearing identical pink jumpers walk in, giggling. Their loud voices pierce the tranquillity of the room. The statues of the elephants that line the café, in the corners and on the banisters, give them frozen, reproving stares. The younger of the 2 fidgets as if she’s on a sugar rush.
‘I once saw Alexander McCall Smith here.’ Her voice carries across the room.
‘Isn’t that him over there?’ Blondie2 speaks in a staged whisper.
The pale writer in the corner puts down her pad and looks at Farai and his companion. There’s a sly smile on the old man’s face. He seems amused at being mistaken for a celebrity, even more so when everyone in the room is stealing glances their way. Farai scowls at the blondes whose conversation stops. He leans forward.
‘Are you some type of pervert, picking up young girls under the pretense of being someone you are not?’ he asks. That’d make sense in a café in which the male toilets are full of graffiti from Harry Potter fans expressing their love for the author.
‘What’s it to you if I am?’
‘Aren’t you giving them a raw deal? No offense, but old folks all look the same, and if they’re gonna roll with an old guy then they’ll want the genuine article.’
‘In our heads, we’re all celebrities.’
‘The way I see it–’
‘Have you ever read his novels?’
‘I’m a serious man. I don’t read novels. They’re a waste of time. The last one I tried was Don Quixote, which was forced on me in my lit class in high school. I didn’t even bother; I just bought the video and even that was boring. I thought, sod this for a game of marbles. In the end, I dropped the subject. Give me numbers, $, £, symbols.’
The old man rises up slowly, deliberately adjusts his tweed jacket, allowing everyone in the room to take a nice long look at him. He places a £2 coin on the table, which Farai pockets.
‘Oh, you are a rascal. See you same time next week,’ he says as he leaves.
Farai watches a woman near the counter ask if she may have a photograph taken with his erstwhile companion and grins as the old man obliges. He picks up the Telegraph, scans the familiar diet of war stories, crime and scandals. He notices an article in the sports pages passionately advocating an international boycott of Zimbabwean cricket. Farai considers making a scene and accusing the waitron of watering down his espresso, but decides he doesn’t have the energy, and so takes