and Godfrey didn’t have much sex or even much conversation. She felt obliged to feed him and give him a bit of money for beer. He mostly just sat on her stoop, drinking it and smoking mbanji, the rain leaving spiky splotches on his feet.
His grey dreadlocks, his laziness, his drinkardliness, made him seem like a dead man, even if that certificate he carried with him was in error. The rain had run the ink but Matha could see that it had been issued at a hospital in Mazabuka. Why had he been there? Why had he come back? Where did you go? Where did you go? Where did you go? Maybe, she thought as she stared at his back in the door frame of No. 74, he had just been away too long. Maybe their love had run all the way through the season allotted to it. Maybe even heartbreak breaks if you give it enough time.
* * *
‘Iwe, Engineer!’ Pepa shouted. ‘Do not kawayawaya, just choose. This is not Pick-andi-Pay!’
She was standing on the highest summit of an E-Dump near Town Market, glancing over her shoulder in a halting rhythm like a stuck pedestal fan. She glowed like a beacon with her pale hair and pale skin, and she had the worst eyesight between them, but she was the only one responsible enough to be lookout. She didn’t trust the guard they had bribed with a bottle of gin. And there were other gangs of techno-poachers too, some of whom carried big, heavy ibende – those wooden sticks for grinding grain could just as easily grind bones.
Solo raced up to her, holding a dusty black oblong over his head in triumph. He circled his hips, raised a foot, popped his hips twice.
‘Chongo iwe!’ Pepa whispershouted, squinting at her brother.
Solo hadn’t said a word but he quieted his hips and brought the DVD player he had scored over to her, crunching broken glass, jumping nests of cables and skirting two PC monitors kissing screens along the way.
‘Nice…one…’ Pepa said, turning it over, caught up in admiration and calculation. They could easily resell it in Bauleni if Jacob could fix it. She called out to him again: ‘Engineer!’
Jacob, crouched behind a leaning tower of keyboards a few yards away, ignored her. Pepa sucked her teeth and glanced anxiously over the concrete perimeter wall of the E-Dump, which was topped with broken glass.
‘Jacob! Tiye, iwe!’ she shouted. ‘It’s time to book! Solo—’
Her brother was already skittering down the spiky hill of plastic and glass towards Jacob.
‘It is a toy. A choppa,’ Jacob explained as Solo knelt beside him. Jacob turned it in his hands to show it off. It was white and spindly, about the size of a dove. He had found a shell-like controller nearby. Solo shrugged. It wouldn’t bring much money on resale. Jacob glared at his friend. Of course a thief wouldn’t understand. Once upon a time, Jacob too had been a mere thief. But machines had become more than money to him.
Jacob had been the driving force behind the reconnaissance mission to this gentrified wasteland. Ever since he had learned about the Zambian Space Programme, about how brilliant a cadet his gogo had been, he had become obsessed. Who knew technology was a family tradition – in his very blood! For the first time, Jacob could see a connection between his hands and his mind, and it was precious. He turned from Solo with disgust.
Just then, they both heard a commotion at the gate – the guard they had bribed was loudly blubbering excuses in Nyanja. The boys looked around for Pepa. She was already squatting behind a flat-screen TV, clutching her knees, her silver eyes flashing with fury and fear.
* * *
Sometimes Matha eavesdropped on Godfrey and Jacob. The two males in her life often sat on the stoop together, Godfrey answering his grandson’s questions between sips of beer. Matha would scrape salt from her ears with a matchstick, position herself at her table under the window and listen. Godfrey spoke like a living man when he reminisced – Zamrock songs on the radio, A luta continua! in the streets, miniskirts and bell bontons squeezing everyone’s bums.
His talk often drifted to the Zambia National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy. He hinted at the Academy’s revolutionary underpinnings but never admitted outright to the espionage or the bombs. Instead, he told stories about Matha’s cats – ‘named after the disciples! I asked her, “And