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A Dream Deferred

Austin Kaluba

What Happens to a Dream Deferred?

         Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

(Langston Hughes)

Shingi heard Mrs Johnson talking to her Alsatian dog Tarzan. He had somehow become used to these nocturnal verbal outpourings. When he first came to work for the white family in Eastlea many years ago, he found it strange for a human being to talk to an animal so emotionally. He knew that back home one talked to oxen to make the animal move fast. The kind of verbal exchange he heard between Mrs Johnson and her dog was too intimate. Even when Jackson, the Nyasa gardener who had worked for the family for many years explained to him about the strange ways of the whites towards their animals, he stilll could not understand. He now knew that whites valued their pets more highly than they did their African workers.

Shingi remembered a story he had heard just when he came to Salisbury from Zvimba about a black man who had been shot dead for kicking a white man’s dog. The dog had bitten his five-year-old son, leaving him for dead. The black man had merely kicked the dog to get it off his poor son. The white man got a gun and killed him. The story led to protests by natives and forced authorities to pass the ‘dangerous dog act.’ The white man got away with a fine when a lawyer explained in court how attached he was to his pet. A cold chill ran down his spine as Shingi remembered the story. He could not sleep. He heard cicadas echoing in the distance. There was a faint sound of a police siren. It was a sound that reminded blacks who owned the land that the natives had claimed as their own only a few years ago .

Sweat beads shone on his dark black face. His body felt sticky as if someone had poured glue on it. He opened the wooden window to let fresh air into his one-roomed servant’s quarter. The room was sparsely furnished: a rickety wooden bed and a chair. There were a few old newspapers which he liked reading. Mr Johnson had encouraged him to read and improve his English. The white man’s newspapers were full of stories about parties, fairs, picnics and concerts.

Mrs Johnson’s voice got higher and more emotional. Her bedroom was open, giving Shingi a clear view of his mistress as she poured her heart out to the poor dog. Since the death of her husband, a year ago, she had been acting strangely. She shouted more loudly at her servants and forgot to pay them until she was reminded. She had also become more cruel and quick to anger. Tarzan wagged his bushy tail and barked at some unseen object out of the window, his forelegs pawing at the window pane. Mrs Johnson pulled him back. The dog moved about restless, his ears erect.

Shingi started fanning himself with a folded old newspaper. He suppressed the urge to cough. In the floodlights, Mrs Johnson looked gaunt and pale. The maroon nightdress she was wearing shimmered. Her lanky frame towered over the dog even in a seated position. She was wrinkled in a pleasant way and her face was still attractive despite being in her fifties. She held the head of the restless dog, steadying him and looking into his eyes.

“Oh my good Lord. He is gone. Gone, gone… It looks like yesterday. Do you know how I feel Tarzan?”

The dog gazed at her as if in amazement, reminding Shingi of the dog he had seen on the His Master’s Voice gramophone. She wiped tears from her eyes with a handkerchief and continued.

“I know you understand Tarzan. You know for sure how I feel. Don’t you? I never offended Dave…. No..not one single day.”

The dog jumped on bed and started pawing at his mistress’ leg. Mrs Johnson shook with tears and cried hysterically, burying her head in her sinewy hands. Shingi lit a cigarette and drew at it as if sucking traditional beer from a straw. He saw Mrs Johnson stand up, still muttering, to herself but this time he could not hear what she was saying. Strange woman, he thought. Talking to a dog. Why can’t she find a man to replace her late husband? Shingi remembered Mr Johnson as a remote figure who played a passive role in house maintenance, leaving the task to his wife. Yet whenever he intervened to protect a servant from some offense from his fault-finding wife, he always succeeded in defending them. The servants loved him for this, though he was usually taciturn. He only seldom went out with his shotgun, hunting birds.

He wore khaki shorts and spotlessly white shirts all the time. He would sit in his rocking chair smoking a pipe or reading a newspaper. He spoke a smattering of Shona and Ndebele. He was the only white man Shingi knew who addressed blacks by their names though he pronounced Shingi’s name as Shing. The other whites, including Mrs Johnson, called their servants ‘John’ ‘boy’ or ‘girl’. It was always ‘boy do this’, ‘John don’t do that.,’ ‘John, you are a lazy kaffir’ and ‘boy this’, ‘boy that’.

A mosquito had entered the room and was buzzing around Shingi’s forehead. He struck out at it but missed. Just when he thought he had got rid of the bothersome intruder he felt a sensational pain on his calf. He patted the source of pain but missed only to see the mosquito flying off clumsily, fattened by his blood. He had run out of insect killer. Back home they used a special type of wood to drive away mosquitoes.

Memories of his home came flooding back, filling him with nostalgia. Hot nights always reminded him of home. He remembered his late father, Choso. Shingi had learnt that his father worked for several whites before going home to settle. One white man had only given him a watch for a service of 20 years. The other chased him away, paying him nothing and complaining that he was a lazy and cheeky kaffir. Shingi remembered his father as a man who went to his grave bitter and broken. He walked with a limp and had bloodshot eyes. He ruled his household with an iron hand. It was only Shingi’s late mother Ma Shingi, the oldest wife among cChoso’s, harem who could tame him. She seemed to understand the source of his bitterness. The other maininis – lesser wives- feared him and ran away whenever he lost his temper, which was quite often.

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