The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician. Tendai Huchu
as he makes his way out to class.
The Magistrate
The bin men came on Tuesday mornings. The Magistrate was at the back of the house, forcing an extra black bag into the wheelie bin. He pushed with all his might, but the damn thing kept popping back up – to think that a household of three could generate so much waste. The bags were full of wrapping, plastic bags, containers, food. Everything was disposable. He wheeled the bin to the front and went back inside. There was so much to do. No sooner had he cleaned the house than it needed cleaning again.
He went for his daily walk around Arthur’s Seat. When he returned it was time to work. He started on the glass coffee table in the living room stained by cup marks. Then he picked up the junk lying on the carpet, the cups hidden at the foot of the sofa, the random socks – never a pair. Where did it all come from? He’d have gladly traded anything for a maid a few hours each day.
The news played in the background. A twenty-four hour depressing feed of the world’s ills. The Magistrate flicked from Sky, to the BBC, to ITV and the American channels, only to find they were all talking about the same thing – spectacular night vision footage, an eerie green, targets lit up in one Middle Eastern country or another. The reporters stressed that all efforts were being made to minimize collateral damage. The Western troops looked heroic, larger than life, liberators, not conquerors. The footage was a hypnotic stream of live action, dazzling explosions, dramatic commentary. But it wasn’t what the Magistrate wanted to see. He waited for the story to change, hoping there might be a piece about Zimbabwe, but the country never featured when there was real news. It seemed to him that Zimbabwe was a filler used when something about dystopian Africa was needed for comic relief. Still, he needed to keep abreast of what was happening back home. He longed for a sudden change so men like him might be called upon once more to rebuild the country. He kept this hope alive in his heart, a warm ember cocooned by despair, weighed down with each report that things were in fact getting worse. His country ticked all the boxes for a sensational African story: add one dictator, a dash of starving kids, a dollop of disease, sprinkle a little corruption, stir in a pot of random, incomprehensible violence, and voilà, the stereotypical African dish – all served out daily for the Western reporter, speaking in a low conspiratorial voice in front of the cameras, hoping to make a name for himself, a white saviour in Africa.
He kept his music collection near the TV, a tower of jazz CDs: Miles Davis, Chuck Mangione, Billy Cobham, Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin. They reminded him of his days at the country club, listening to music and drinking with friends after a round of golf. Beside the CDs was a smaller collection of tapes, which Alfonso had given him. At first he only listened out of politeness. Sungura wasn’t his style, rather something in the background of the culture that could not be avoided, but after a while this peasant music with its whiny guitars and hard drums had grown on him. He picked a cassette labelled Marshall Munhumumwe and the Four Brothers’ Greatest Hits – a pirate copy from a decade ago, which felt as if it might as well have been a century ago.
He switched the TV off; the static from the blank part of the tape began to play, followed by the lead guitar with a dull twang, monotone and repetitive. It sounded like a mbira being plucked. Then the electric guitars joined in, a vibrant contrast of the old and new. The drums entered the fray, all the instruments looping around the lead guitar, which ignored them and continued its monologue, the sounds slow and melodious, the whole mixing and riffing until Munhumumwe’s voice came through, calm and flat.
The Magistrate had long realised that Sungura was the polar opposite of the jazz he so loved. The music was seldom abstract and the lyrics were central, the artist spoke directly to the listener. The song, Ndibvumbamireiwo, was slow, music as prayer, something the Magistrate needed. His troubles merged with those of the singer, as though Munhumumwe was sharing the load. He thought it was interesting that Munhumumwe’s prayer was not directed at the Christian God, rather it was communing with the ancestors. But Munhumumwe had also sung Vatendi, more Christian gospel than Sungura, displaying the easy syncretism of his pre-Pentecostal generation, though Vatendi lacked the same heartfelt emotional depth as Ndibvumbamireiwo.
The Magistrate remembered seeing Munhumumwe and the Four Brothers perform at the Kimberly Reef in the nineties, on a night out with his workmates. At the time he didn’t rate the group, now he’d changed his mind. The lyrics of the song were repetitive, every word enunciated, something essential in an oral culture for the listener not only to hear, but to remember, for only through remembering could the meme pass on from mouth to ear, person to person. And this was aided by a two-minute instrumental section in the middle of the song, which gave the listener time for introspection before the song started up and repeated again.
The first time the Magistrate listened to Ndibvumbamireiwo, he knew it was a work of beauty and compassion, something equivalent to St Francis’ Prayer. He felt a shiver up his spine as the song drew to a close. He was astonished by how Munhumumwe captured something so essential about the human spirit in such a short song.
The Magistrate was so lost in the moment, drifting in the interstices between the chords, that he did not see Mai Chenai standing in her dressing gown by the doorway.
“Nhai, Baba Chenai,” she said, startling him. Her eyes were red. She was tired from her shift.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”
“Turn that stupid music off. Some of us have to work, you know.” She turned her back on him without waiting for a reply and went back up the stairs. The house fell back into silence. He knew her words would play over in his mind all day. He picked up his keys and left the house, slamming the door on his way out.
The Magistrate walked up and down Niddrie Mains several times. His pulse was racing. He walked right to the Thistle and back again. I don’t want to do this, he told himself. He was running out of options, getting desperate. He walked past Londis, going towards the robots.
“I never wanted to come here in the first place,” he muttered angrily. A kid wearing a hoodie bumped into him, apologised and walked away. The Magistrate barely noticed.
He stood in front of a white door, next to the newsagent’s. This was not how he’d wanted things to pan out. Life was hard enough without resorting to this. He opened the door and walked into a little office. A woman, a telephone receiver tucked between her shoulder and ear, was sitting behind a desk, filing her nails. She pointed to an empty chair.
“Didn’t I tell you he’s a cheating bastard, you have to leave him.” Her voice had an emphatic rasp. A mist of nail dust floated up to the ceiling as she blew on her fingers.
The Magistrate waited, listening to her strident advice, while she did not even look in his direction. He felt small, a gnat, intruding on her space. The office had two desks placed together in an L shape. The other desk was empty. Both were untidy with paperwork chaotically stacked, a scattering of empty mugs with dried lipstick stains around the edges. The Magistrate remembered a time when he walked into places and people rushed to serve him. Mwana wamambo muranda kumwe. The wastepaper basket between the two desks was overflowing. The windows were grimy.
The bench was a lifetime ago. It pained him to think of his past, to recall memories of what once had been. If only he had no memory, no sense of his old successful self, then it would be easier to accept his new circumstances.
“Men like that need to be taught a lesson. If my boyfriend did that I would chop his thing off . . . Yeah, he knows it.” The woman on the phone was explaining her philosophy for a stable relationship. The Magistrate involuntarily crossed his legs. Attempted murder? Grievous bodily harm? A crime of passion? The most popular one with aggrieved women back home was to pour boiling cooking oil over the philanderer’s face, though none of those had ever reached his court. He’d dealt with a lot of domestic violence. But then again crime feels common if it’s all you deal with day in day out. In his line of work it was natural to assume society was sick. The law was rather mute on couples that actually loved one another, except, that is, for marriage, a ceremony he disliked presiding over.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“Can’t you see I’m on the phone?”