In The Silence After Sunset By Florence Awino
The New Year’s yield was abundant and so was the laughter
emanating from the dense farm as people traded jabs while wrestling with copious
weeds that had flourished just as well as the crop did. It was tiring yet fulfilling
and the laboring went on till the sun gave way to a timid dusk. All the chatter
ceased as the day’s labor was shoved onto backs and hauled back home with
people bent under it at various degrees like figurines.
There are different struggles that accost one after the sun
sets. The indulgence in the memory of a ridiculously gigantic smile that gave
way to a generous view of both gums on the lower and upper jaws with a curios
dentition and the rebellious manner in which the lower lip curled away from the
main arch of the big smile into an arch of its own, and so oddly beautiful to
look at.
Each time such thoughts creep in, interrupting the present, you quickly swat them away
before a plethora of stale memories shoved hurriedly into a shallow grave and
hastily concealed with scant and pretentious malevolence find their way back to
life. You pick up the broom that dropped from your hand in that brief moment of
reverie and continue sending the maize chaff flying away from the verandah.
Sometimes you will look into the mirror appreciatively, wrapping
the towel tighter around your cleavage and torso, admiring the gently parting
of your behind, feeling grateful for the weight gain that came from that brief
influx of endocrines that day you held hands, meandering across the town
occasionally rubbing shoulders gleefully and exchanging bold glances.
He approaches the cashier and pays the fee and asks if he can be
allowed to accompany you to the doctor’s room. No problem a nurse says and you walk
in, take seats, he at one end of the room and you at the other and wait for the
doctor who is in another room deliberately assembling a needle and a syringe.
He has a chronic phobia for needles and their prickling and he is
carefully monitoring your face; looking for what kind of reaction I’m not sure.
So you decide to drop your bravery for a while and pretend to squirm as the
bulbous doctor come in brandishing the syringe and its contents menacingly over
his head. He wasn’t the only one with needle issues.
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The needle dives into the flesh, quick and painless then blurts
its contents just as fast and pulls out. He glides across the room in alarm to
examine if any extensive damages resulted from the swift puncture. Just a spurt
of blood, which he asks the doctor to cover up.
At the end of the mercifully brief ordeal, you hold hands again and
he keeps cooing over the poor arm turning it this way and that, murmuring
incoherencies and asking if it felt too sore. Just a little. I notice there is
an extra spring in his steps this time then I remember he asked the nurse if
the results would be instantaneous.
Days pass, you spend some of the time whipping up decent meals
at your place which mostly consists of cow meat and some days drinking black
coffee at his. Most of the time he will be engrossed in a laptop from which
emanates eerie instrumentals, intriguing jazz or sometimes just music laced with
drum beats and gleefully chanted in some Afrikaans that you cannot decipher.
Experimental music, he explains. You nod briefly and flash a
smile then turn back to weeping profusely at the onions. The rest of the cooking
proceeds in silence with the same music in the background. You will dish out
the contents of the sufurias into two
portions. His, the largest plate and the most piled. Yours is a decent portion
but, he needs that energy more and he paid for the cow. The exultance of your culinary skills forms
the precedence for some foreplay interrupting the Andy Warhol documentary that
accompanied the silent feeding.
Then one day as if a bad wind blew, head-splitting arguments
erupt, brutal truths, gross dissatisfaction and messages full of acerbic sarcasm
flying back and forth. He eventually grows horns and gives you no heed anymore.
Your phone ceases vibrating every second and that singes you till everything is
coal black, hard and ugly.
After a week of combating and tearing at each other you both realize
that you have nagging needs to attend to and your senses return. You tenderly apologize
to each other, and make up over pocket friendly wine from the liquor store. You
get tipsy, he not, of war is forgotten and a different kind of entanglement
ensues.
The truce doesn’t last long and sometimes torrents of tears get
imbued into a pillow and dark clouds of depression hover threateningly over
your head like flies over a rotten carcass. Anhedonia sets in you don’t easily recall
when last a genuinely good time happened to you, or a deep belly laugh without
the anticipation of fucking as an incentive.
Alas! It’s too late for the better pictures promised, ones you
don’t have your mouth gaping while straining to snap a picture of you two with
the back camera of a Smartphone; sandwich picnics by a waterfall or the solemn
oaths that you’d still be fondly calling each other my husband and my wife come
ten years. So you just pack your bags and call home, you’ll be around for
supper.
You are relieved that the whole mish mash has blown over but
suddenly you are fearful and apprehensive. You wonder if he has already met any
hot blondes. But there aren’t any hot blondes in the country. A tad relieved, you
scour through the literary magazines and books that were beginning to gather
thick films of dust. How much you missed! You realize that and begin to ponder
over Tendai Huchu’s story on the Second Coming of Dambudzo Marechera. It is
more liberating than pondering whether he is screwing anyone out of stress.
Perhaps over the years you will come across each other at a
shopping mall. Him, face riddled with hair that wasn’t there before and voice
subdued as if by a bad cold but you will suspect otherwise. You, a crown of glorious
afro dotting the head that you meticulously tended with virgin olive oil, eggs
and avocadoes on some long and silent weekends when you had to ward off the
impending bursts of nostalgia.
Or he will have grown eccentric and cultivated hair to the
length of his butt crack, smoking blunts and listening to Bob Marley while taking
a fat Alsatian on a leash for a walk in the park. Maybe he will become a vocal
gay rights activist earning him one slot for appearance in the local TV and
several in CNN and Aljazeera.
Then he will notice that there’s no ring on your finger and ask about
a boyfriend. You say nada, after you left; you spent the time just reading
novels and tending to your hair. At that point the bitch who you hadn’t noticed
scowling at you behind his back will ferociously leap at you. Fortunately, she
is restrained and you run away shrieking into the mall.
