An Elegy for Easterly Read Online Free PDF Page B

chimvuramabwe , hailstones of frozen heat that melted on the laughing tongues of Easterly’s children. The children jabbed fingers at the corpses of the frogs petrified in the stream near the Farm. The water tap burst.
    Mai James and Ba Toby argued over whether this winter was colder than the one in the last year but one of the war. Mai James spoke for the winter of the war, Ba Toby for the present winter. ‘You were nohigher than Toby uyu ,’ Mai James said with no rancour. ‘What can you possibly remember about that last winter but one?’
    It was the government that settled the matter.
    â€˜Our satellite images indicate that a warm front is expected from the Eastern Highlands. The warm weather is expected to hold, so pack away those heaters and jerseys. And a very good night to you from your friendly meteorologist, Stan Mukasa. You are listening to nhepfenyuro yenyu , Radio Zimbabwe. Over to Nathaniel Moyo now, with You and Your Farm .’
    This meant that Ba Toby was right. If the government said inflation would go down, it was sure to rise. If they said there was a bumper harvest, starvation would follow. ‘If the government says the sky is blue, we should all look up to check,’ said Ba Toby.
    That winter brought the threat of more evictions. There had been talk of evictions before, there was nothing new there. They brushed it aside and put more illegal firewood on their fires. Godwills Mabhena who lived next to Mai James burnt his best trousers.

    By the middle of that winter, all of Easterly knew that Martha was expecting a child. The men made ribald comments about where she could have found a manto do the deed. The women worked to convince themselves that it was a matter external to Easterly, to themselves, to their men. ‘You know how she disappears for days on end sometimes,’ said Mai Toby. ‘And you know how wild some of those street kids are.’
    â€˜Street kids? Some of them are men.’
    â€˜My point exactly.’
    â€˜Should someone not do something, I don’t know, call someone, maybe the police?’ asked the female half of the couple whom nobody really knew.
    â€˜Yes, you are very right,’ said Mai James. ‘Someone should do something.’
    â€˜That woman acts like we are in the suburbs,’ Mai James later said to Mai Toby. ‘Police? Easterly? Ho - do! ’ They clapped hands together as they laughed.
    â€˜ Haiwa , even if you call them, would they come? It took what, two days for them to come that time when Titus Zunguza…’
    â€˜ Ndizvo , they will not come if we have a problem, what about for Martha?’
    â€˜And even if they did, what then?’
    The female half of the couple that no one really knew remembered that her brother’s wife attended the same church as a woman who worked in social welfare. ‘You mean Maggie,’ her brother’s wife said. ‘Maggie moved ku South with her husband longback. I am sure by now her husband drives a really good car, mbishi chaiyo .’
    She got the number of the social department from the directory. But the number she dialled was out of service, and after three more attempts, she gave it up. There is time enough to do something , she thought.
    And when the children ran around Martha and laughed, ‘Go and play somewhere else,’ Mai Toby scolded them. ‘Did your mothers not teach you to respect your elders? And as for you, wemazinzeve ,’ she turned to Tobias. ‘Come and wash yourself.’
    The winter of Martha’s baby was the winter of Josephat’s leave from the mine. It was Easterly’s last winter.

    On the night that Martha gave birth, Josephat’s wife walked to Easterly from a praying field near Mabvuku. She did not notice the residents gathered in clusters around their homes. Only when she walked past Martha’s house did the sounds of Easterly reach her. Was that a moan, she wondered. Yes, that sounded