to a velvet plate, frame it behind glass and hang it on a wall with the others. Only then could he step back and see the big picture. He stood up and cut off Musadabwe’s spiel by murmuring some vague promises.
‘Fine.’ The doctor clapped his hands once, resignedly. ‘That is velly-fine.’
He led Joseph back through the fluttering white yard with its animal reek and into the dark corridor of the clinic. They shook hands at the front door. Joseph stepped out into the bleeding sunset and the teethgrinding drone of woodsaws at the woodyard next door. When he glanced back at the clinic, the doctor was gone, but Joseph caught a movement behind the window. It was the dark-skinned woman from the waiting room, staring straight at him.
He averted his gaze and turned around. There goes one of Dad’s women, he thought, or rather one of his women of the night. Had they been his lovers or his patients or both? There had been a circle of sickness around Dr Lionel Banda – Salina and Mum and Farai and Sylvia. They all had The Virus. Joseph realised now that to be spared that intimacy was also to be deprived of it.
2016
‘They called him The Black.’
‘The Black?’
‘The Black.’
‘Hm. The Black? Shuwa?’
‘Ya,’ Joseph insisted. ‘The Moor.’
‘More what? More colour?’
‘Moor. It’s an old word for a black man. They spelled it M-O-H-R in German. I read about it online.’
‘But he was black? Shuwa? Did you not tell us he was a Jew?’ Jacob looked annoyed.
‘Mwebantu, Ba Marx started all of the revolutionary movements!’ God exhorted. ‘Marching on the road of history, justice on his side. The black and the brown and the yellow: all of us must rise up!’
There was a pause.
‘So – he was a muntu?’ Jacob asked again.
‘No, he was German. He was what they call swarthy. It was just his friends and family teasing: “The Moor is going underground. The silly old Moor.” They called Engels The General.’
‘What kind of friends talk like that?’
Joseph pulled up a picture on his phone. ‘Just look at his face. It’s definitely brownish. The hair is kinky. Thin lips, yes. But that is what they called a Negroid nose.’
Jacob peered at the phone. ‘Ah you, that is just a tan.’
‘Mwebantu, this is a tired debate!’ said God. ‘Shut your mouths.’
Jacob laughed and clapped God on the shoulder. ‘Yes, bwana.’
* * *
Joseph left the woodyard and walked through Musadabwe’s clinic to the lab in the back. The door was open and he stood at the entrance for a second. The floor of the lab had been scrubbed raw this morning. But the dust would soon return. It had already begun its inevitable drift from the yard. He thought of the old man and the young man next door at RIP Beds & Coffins, smiling at the lazy, hazy arguments they had cultivated over the past few months. Joseph had become a regular, stopping by on his way to and from the lab, smoking a joint or two, drinking a beer or two, chatting about the Marxist ideas he was learning from Gran’s cassette tape.
Joseph washed out the beakers from this morning. He sterilised. A chicken from the crates outside made a popping sound. He sucked his teeth and went to see what was up. Musadabwe’s newest schoolboy secretary was standing outside the door. The boy held the latest results out to Joseph with both hands, the insides of his elbows splayed taut. His uniform was green and stiff.
‘How do you expect me to know you’re there if you don’t say anything?’
The boy shrugged, a smile flickering upward then subsiding into indifference. Joseph took the results and told the boy to change into patapatas before coming into the lab. Joseph spread the results over the workbench. He could just make out the numbers in the tables, flush against the borders, serifs overlapping. The boy was shuffling uneasily by the sink, awaiting instruction.
‘Big results today, eh?’ Joseph said wryly.
The boy stood with his hands clasped in front of him. His shaved head shone under the bare bulb, making him seem smaller.
‘Don’t you want to learn anything?’
The boy shrugged one shoulder.
‘Lesson one. A virus eats its house from the inside. That’s the only way it can survive.’
* * *
I told you about the first trials a couple of emails ago, but I guess I didn’t tell you about the second ones? In the second ones, the nodules burst from the inside. You can imagine the pressure we’re under