Links

By Dee Kuziwa

Milali is dead. His family is in turmoil. The eldest son and his wife wrecked by secrets. The second son will not settle down and marry. And the village elder has come to claim the daughter promised to him in marriage eighteen years ago for the price of two bags of maize and one bag of wheat meal.

As read through the "writer", Ida Silverstone, Links weaves a story of five family members entangled in unending drama. A budding author herself, Ida Silverstone finds herself at her final location on a book tour, delivering a reading in the local library.

She delivers a unique cocktail of typical African cultural dilemmas, touching on marriage, race stereotypes, multiple betrayals, secrets, deception and the continuous push and pull of civilization.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dee Kuziwa
• Release date: Apr 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386135043

Book preview

Chapter 1

She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t done it. But she’d achieved five cities on the itinerary, two countries and seven hotels all in eight days. Thankfully - and she would be forever grateful for this little blessing - the weather had been pleasant. No sleet or snow had marred her trip and she had her agent to thank as well for organising the book signing in the middle of summer. She wouldn’t miss room service, the bland hotel restaurant food or plenty of bottled water to stay hydrated. She’d ingested too much coffee to try and stay awake. But coffee didn’t work for her; it never had. Instead, it had the opposite effect. That’s why she knew that for her to stay awake on her almost last day in Hollow, her body had to be a caffeine-free zone.

Ida waited patiently while her audience filed in. One by one, they sat in the chairs arranged cinema style in the designated library space and watched each other. Her study of human behaviour told her of the varying levels of interest. In one part of the room some attention was already waning and she hadn’t yet opened her mouth to speak. In another, avid conversation was abuzz. This was a good crowd, she thought, as she mentally calculated how many had turned up for the reading. It shouldn’t be too hard; Ida attempted to calm her strained nerves. She needed to find a place to start and the rest would follow.

Thirty people in a clapboard town called Hollow; population less than a hundred thousand, was a decent slice of a turnout. In the two days she’d spent already, she’d decided she liked the simplistic, shrub-lined lanes, its three mostly empty one-way streets in a central business district comprising a handful of offices, diners, public laundromats and one library. And had it not been smack in the throes of civilization, she’d have stayed longer. It seemed like a cosy hub where everyone knew their neighbour and patronized the local eateries for a spot of food and the latest gossip. Births were celebrated communally, in much the same way she expected everyone to bring a plate of food to a funeral.

But she’d been a business tourist for two days too long. She was horribly homesick and all she could think was one more reading and one more signing and soon Hollow would be a distant memory.

‘It’s nearly time.’ The librarian walked up to Ida and whispered in her ear. ‘Are you ready?’

Ida nodded, contrary to her true feelings. Yes she was ready to leave this quaint town but no, she wasn’t really too thrilled to be reading. Her next book would be a silent release – absolutely no pomp and fanfare, she vowed. But now it was time to get started.

As the last couple of people founds seats, Ida found herself caught up in a childhood memory. Ida remembered their last Christmas where the joy of opening presents and emptying socks was soon overshadowed by extremely harsh words which climaxed to the onset of a nasty divorce. She’d been twelve. It wasn’t a pleasant memory but it gave her the beginnings of an escape hatch. Ida started with one episode of imaginary characters and a highly random but thick plot to help block out the loud and abusive language.

Before long, she quickly learnt to turn the page in her head and find easier relationship dynamics in a parallel universe of her own creation, mostly to drown out the mounting accusations and threats between her parents prefixed with imaginative profanity.

Ida’s mother won sole custody on a coin toss. Her father hadn’t exactly put up a solid fight. If Ida had been asked to choose, she would have still gone with her mother anyway. She was worlds better at leaving her alone than her father was. When she turned fourteen, Ida experimented with a creative writing competition, made three submissions; a poem, a narrative and an essay, and used her winnings to buy a comprehensive dictionary and two novels. By the time she turned twenty Ida had completed four manuscripts. Links was her fifteenth at age thirty-eight.

Her life now also included a small mansion in an affluent neighbourhood, three children, a doting husband and four pets; a hamster named Sir Alan, a cat named Spence, a cockatoo named Silver and a German Shepherd named Skittles. She offered a fleeting smile. She missed home. She couldn’t wait to return to simplicity.

‘Ladies and gentlemen welcome and thank you for coming out tonight.’ Ellen, the librarian started, causing mouths to shut and various murmured conversations to end. About sixty pairs of eyes watched her and held a collective breath.

‘May I introduce, Ida Silverstone and her new book Links. We all know her to be both an accomplished writer and an eloquent storyteller.’

Ida paused her reverie long enough to hear the last of a very brief introduction. Ellen softened the ice with a snippet of history and a bold joke. She rounded off and handed over to Ida then slunk back into the shadows.

‘Thank you Ellen. It’s always humbling how many people turn up – awe-inspiring to see how far a novel reaches a shelf in a bookstore. Even in a town so remote; so hidden as Hollow.’ Ida smiled for effect and drew some confidence from the chuckles around the room. ‘Thank you for buying my book.’

She scanned the faces for any familiarity but found none. This was a truly fresh audience; none were brave enough for a repeat reading.

‘This was supposed to be a work of fiction; just my wild imagination on paper, but it became strange then ridiculous. I love it because it remained strange enough to be fiction. I shared the idea and basic plot with my husband who seemed either genuinely intrigued or masterfully sceptical. I tried to read the first draft to my children and found I was competing with their combined attention span of a blink. The youngest just said, We love it mummy, sell it..., and here I am, a few hundred thousand copies sold already.

‘Links, as you know, is made up of ten main characters. I created them rather innocently, all the while unaware of their ability to be stubborn enough to demand their own way as the plot thickened and the theme sprang to life. It’s a story within a story, within a story. A story of dysfunctional families and layer upon layer of betrayal and drama. A story of prejudice and pride and stubborn love. It is a story of a desperate father and a conniving old man, a despairing mother and her reckless sons and the innocent embattled. It is a story that draws on your sympathies because the thread that runs through it; that sort of holds everything together, is a slice of humanity that we can identify with.’

Ida scanned the crowd again and offered a slight nod.

‘Without wasting a minute more, I believe we may start...’ she shifted in her chair for comfort and turned the page. ‘"The story is told of a young man named Milalai...’

MILALAI

There is a story told of a young and enthusiastic man named Milalai. During the time of his birth, one name, and not two, sufficed. He was young in manner and in mind; not yet used to the ways of the world but not too naïve to be considered a child. He was enthusiastic in the way a man is when he is born the son of a village Chief. He married young, at his father’s command a woman - no, it was a girl, though old by his standards. She came from a nearby village in the tribe of Matshemueni, handpicked by his mother. Neither knew much about the other from a jar of water but their custom didn’t demand it of them. Theirs was to take orders.

And take them they did. Milalai aged twenty-four took the nervously eager young girl of seventeen years as his bride one dreadful but memorable day many years ago. Marriage was both an adventure and the abrupt introduction to adulthood. Love and romance hardly crossed their minds. After all, that was not the custom of their ancestors. Culture rendered marriage an opportunistic transaction without the fancifulness of emotion and passion. His responsibility was to provide for, protect and prosper his new family as head of the household. She was destined to hearken to his disposal and bear him many children.

She answered to the name Merabo, a fresh breeze on a scorching afternoon. Her name, translated, meant wild flower, a tenacious sort but yielded excellently to her husband. She was all his and ripe with potential at her tender age, Milalai determined in his head. They entered into marriage with as much anticipation and delight as a hen to the slaughterhouse and raised a family in the following five years of their union. She sired him three children, the first to break her womb, a son she named Amariah – a sigh of relief. For the womb withheld the nature of its fruit until the most final hour. Culture demanded that the first child be a son, for to bear a daughter would be a direct insult to her husband. Why, by the end of her first three months, Milalai already regaled her with stories of his exploits with the son he knew she would bear– farming and hunting together. He would train his son to be a man just like he was; a man of honour and worth. A man who would never beg bread and bring disgrace to their esteemed name.

When she finally held him in her arms, Merabo quickly forgot the past episodes of anxiety that could have easily escalated to panic had the first fruits of her womb been female. Forgotten too were the harsh labour pains that stretched for hours, when at last the midwife placed the screaming boy into her tired arms. Merabo cooed and chimed a soft lullaby until he fell silent and nestled in the crook of her arm completely at her mercy. She did not know then, that Milalai would damage this one beyond repair.

The second child was a son too, a bright but quiet one, hardly a whimper to herald his arrival. Merabo gained a little experience with Amariah that delivering Jael Kish Milalai equated to extracting flesh from the inside of a watermelon. There was some effort but not as much as pulling a tooth. The last gift of nature was Keilah, the diamond that sparkled in Merabo’s heart. Her avid eyes took everything in, in one sweep. Her determination, auspiciousness and strength were qualities no one knew she would need much later in life.

Three children and many years on, Milalai’s name became synonymous with misfortune. Debt hounded him but his stubborn pride refused him the sanity to declare defeat when he saw it. He managed to fulfil his three-fold vow to provide, protect and prosper his family but as his nest expanded so his creativity and means waned. Rather than stoop so low as to work the fields of other farmers surrounding his meagre property, he chose instead to dance to the beggar’s flute. After all, the music was sweet; the melody all but repulsive. He despised the feel of a hoe in his hand; the act of bending over to till the land, and so failed to yield the pleasures of reaping one hundred-fold the sweat of honest hard work. He was bound in debt the first time he bought grain on credit from a man he called ‘friend’. He borrowed from a stranger to pay off the last account until he earned the scorn of all his neighbours.

He was now a world-worn, forty year old ageing man pulling on a freshly ignited pipe that hung in the corner of his mouth. He puffed slowly, the ancient crushed tobacco burning leisurely. Its smoke coursed through his body and warmed him. He closed his eyes and captured years of memories – bittersweet yesterdays that had brought him to this sudden present. He was Milalai, he reminded himself sharply; a strapping man somewhat advanced in years yet strong as an ox. He sported a greying beard he intended to grow longer. His body was still fit, save for a potbelly – a sign of his wealth; never mind that it disgusted his wife. It defined him now. His brown eyes displayed contentment intermingled with sorrow, a deep haunting sadness that he’d given up masking. He considered all he ever wanted from life: a beautiful wife, a few children, some hope; however bleak, and a roof over his head. That was important, together with a piece of land.

His plot of land was small, its barrenness conspicuously spread between his neighbours’ lush fields. His wife and two sons; the eldest now fifteen and the younger one thirteen, frequented the land to see what could be sown or tend to the sparse crop. Not surprisingly the gods never so much looked upon his field with pity even. Seasons descended and departed, but Milalai was yet to yield anything that would sustain his family. He consulted any man who would listen and when sobriety found him for a moment, he took to his land and attempted to plough or plant, weeding where his eyes saw unwanted growth. Needless to say, his interest lasted just as long. As soon as the sun rose, peaking and scorching his fontanel, his strength escaped and he would be thirsty again, his mind already imagining the cool taste of alcohol bringing delicious refreshment to his parched throat. His favourite was malt beer, a highly potent beverage manufactured underground; specially brewed for an exclusive market of loyal alcoholics such as himself. He knew nothing akin to the acquired appetite for such type of beverage, but since making introductions and initiating a relationship, nothing else tasted sweeter.

Milalai turned his head eastwards, shielding it from the glaring sun as it completed its daily revolution. He sat enjoying the warmth of the rays while time wasted away as he sat idly on a tattered reed mat in the middle of the courtyard. After all these years, not even a house to provide him shelter. His misery was overwhelming. He did not own cattle, no livestock, rather. The clothes he wore barely covered his back and the food they occasionally fed him gradually grew smaller in quantity. But you are the man here; his better conscience taunted him. You and my wife both, he retorted, still holding the conversation in his mind. What he suffered was not for public consumption. His heart burned already from the consequences of his rash promises.

Just then, an idea formed in his head.

As words formed in the back of his throat, his bride appeared carrying water for him to wash. It was time for the evening meal. The sun was already setting in the horizon behind her. It only served to confirm the grumble in his stomach. His last meal was now a distant midday memory. He recalled the pains he took to secure the food they enjoyed now. His earlier idea made room for the imminent memory of his wife’s nagging that fateful day, now six months ago.

He was the head of the house, she argued. And rightly so he should find the means to provide for his family. Her accusations of his inaction nagged him beyond guilt. For Merabo conveyed his uselessness and failure without expending many words. Yet, his mind defended in silence, when the means were apparent he never failed his family. Thus, short of asking how she expected him to provide in such devastating throes of poverty, Milalai headed towards the man the whole town knew to have surplus every season, to do as his wife bid: to beg. He permitted the memory a chuckle for his ridiculous plan to be eloquent with words; to be heartily persuasive and to emerge with some semblance of dignity. He was still the Chief’s son.

Suddenly he laughed aloud at his memory. He should have known to limit his expectations only to matters within his control.

Okouri was a notorious man of high standing. Everything he did, he did in excess. His wealth was enviably vast, his fields large and bursting with plenty. He was also a man of not one but three wives. He was an extreme man and such a man not approached for favours lightly. His notoriety lay in his dealings. Okouri loaned only on his terms and his terms were ruthless. They broke a family limb from limb. He gave almost willingly but was vicious in collecting on his debt. Suffice it to say his reputation preceded him. His dark brooding eyes beheld the sight of the slightly hunched Milalai in the distance. Okouri licked his lips thinking, A customer, so early in the day; how delightful.

Milalai skipped pleasantries, deciding instead to jump straight to business.

‘I would like to buy grain from you Okouri. It is no secret that this year you have yet another surplus.’

‘I cannot deny the favour of the gods. You would do well to appease them.’

‘Does a man appease the spirits without the implements from bountiful harvest? Only those with plenty have much to give as sacrifice.’

‘Perhaps if you offered your sacrifices sooner you would not be here now.’

Milalai shrugged. ‘Perhaps,’ he muttered, absorbing the common mockery.

‘Come and sit here with me in the shade.’ Okouri chose the largest tree in the yard and sat on a reed mat that he’d carried from the house. Okouri took great pride in dining his clients. Afterwards, at the time of his choosing they would construct and execute a deal, but never on an empty stomach. He was a strong, solid man closer to fifty than he desired. He boasted too much youth in his veins to start worrying about ageing. He also never intentionally intimidated his fellow villagers but the man before him now carried the strong stench of inferiority that Okouri could not resist the urge to demean him further. Few of Milalai’s visits were ever social and Okouri took the opportunity of this fresh trespass to make the younger man’s begging spree enticingly uncomfortable.

Milalai despised Okouri’s delaying tactic. He came only to seek what he must find and return to his humble abode, escaping hopefully unscathed. He knew the wisdom of escaping before the harsh aftermath of their transaction bit him where it would hurt most. Instead, this large burly man of immense wealth and power instructed him against logic to partake of idle chatter, if only to increase Milalai’s anxiety. Milalai took a second to collect himself before joining his host on the ground.

‘When you come to do business with Okouri you must understand the terms.’ Okouri spoke first, revelling in Milalai’s distress.

‘I hope I will be able to meet your price.’ Milalai licked his parched lips. The longer this deal dragged the worse the condition of his nerves.

‘After we have sealed the contract you will have no other option than to pay.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good.’ Okouri watched him. ‘Good,’ he repeated then directed his attention towards the house, ‘but first we must eat.’

‘No - .’ Milalai started to protest but bit his tongue. Noné usungue sungue - whatever will be, will be, he chanted in his native tongue.

It took all of five minutes to get the attention of his first wife, the most efficient and erstwhile favourite. He gave his orders, which she faithfully carried out in twenty minutes. Okouri loved all his wives; yes he was wealthy enough to acquire more than one, but he reserved a soft spot for his first. He could always trust her not to disappoint him when it came to observing the value of time. A minute made or broke a business deal and she understood this to his utter satisfaction. The men partook of their meal in silence, Okouri enjoying his food; yet Milalai’s sole motive to drive away hunger. It amused Okouri how his guest hardly tasted the fufu and thick okra. The pure urgency in clearing his plate brought an evil smile to Okouri’s lips. He could already see the benefits of the payment he would demand from his buyer. The meal done and dishes cleared, Okouri spoke up first.

‘How much grain Milalai?’

‘Two bags of maize meal and one bag of wheat for flour to make bread.’

‘And your offer?’

‘What’s your going price, Okouri?’

Waka neuru risi esedi makemiri neneso! This bewitched imbecile must rot in hell! Okouri spun a string of curses in the native tongue which he strained against blurting aloud. Milalai had sharp nerve to insult a powerful man with stupid enquiry. The custom of the land dictated that he who peddled his begging bowl divulged his bid first. It was never the other way round and Okouri’s full awareness of Milalai’s dire poverty did not warrant a change in the rules.

Okouri shook his head; using the opportunity to harness his burning temper. ‘I never do business that way Milalai. You know in your mind the price you are willing to pay for your requirements. You should have prepared it on your way to my house.’

Milalai stumbled in his head as any pre-meditated anticipation fled his mind. What he had arranged for was Okouri stating his price and Milalai would find a way to negotiate downwards. He