Singular Affections
Photo: Taka Sithole
I had never seen a boy struggle so painfully to steal glances at my face. He smiled and retreated so much that I thought he must have been a tortoise in his past life.
Tafirei had brought me to a beautiful, secluded place, yet he could not state his purpose. Not that I did not know it. Everyone in our village knew. He had come from Kuseri, a village a few days from ours, under the pretext of visiting his aunt. But, he was a fine young man of eighteen: tall, lean muscles, youthful dark skin, and a strong visage.
He always walked through our village with the straightness of an arrow, his spear and leather shield ever on his back. He cut the image of a skilled warrior and did not neglect to flash his straight, white teeth and twinkling eyes at the giggling maidens. No, he was not fooling anyone. His purpose was a wife.
Seated as I was beside him on the grass and beneath the shade, I yearned for that deep voice of his, which could send tremors through my skin. But I liked looking at his masculine face and brilliant teeth. I also liked that he was nervous. Unlike Garikai and his flatterers, he was nice and not boastful. Tafirei was always gentle with me, according me the respect due a virtuous maiden.
Admittedly, I did not feel so virtuous then. I looked at his lush lips and imagined them entwined with my own. Whore’s work, mother would have said, to wish for such things. To wish for his body pressed against mine just to feel its warmth. To wish for his hands all over my flesh as if they sought something that could not be found.
So, I pretended I did not notice how near-frightened he was to finally ask for my hand. I looked at the stream that trickled beside us, feeling the little sunlight that came through the canopy of leaves above us. The birds twittered so close that I was sure they could see us where we were hidden. It was a perfect setting to nab the perfect husband.
“Nyasha,” he finally said.
“Hmm,” I cooed like an innocent dove.
He flashed his teeth at me, and I thought I would melt into him. His eyes sparkled like stars. I could tell a lot from someone’s eyes, and his recited a story of kindness and intelligence and honour. Love, too. They had recently adopted that quality. “I have enjoyed my time with you,” he said quietly.
“As have I,” I told him, like any polite girl would have. I had enjoyed the fortnight we had spent together. Although a short time, the heart knows what it wants. And I was sixteen; he knew I would not stay unmarried for long.
“I have been my happiest around you,” he said. His eyes bravely met mine, quivering along their lids. “I have something for you.” He reached into the pelt that covered his chest and took out a bracelet of polished, glistening beads.
My eyes were as large as the moon as he fastened that bracelet on my wrist. It was warm, as if he had plucked it straight out of his heart. He must have traded gold or something valuable to get it. I had heard that the beads came from the Putukezi, those mysterious white beings from another world.
“I looked at the stream that trickled beside us, feeling the little sunlight that came through the canopy of leaves above us. The birds twittered so close that I was sure they could see us where we were hidden.”
Tafirei was not rich, so I looked at that solitary bracelet on my wrist and then at his kind countenance with admiration.
“I would want us to continue as man and—”
He was stopped mid-sentence by the rustle of the bushes that concealed us and the appearance of Garikai’s stern face. I flinched and gasped. I would have been happier with a leopard’s snarling face. How had he found us? He must have just returned from his excursion with his father. Of all days, why had they returned that day! The ancestors must have truly hated me.
His presence mattered not, I decided. Garikai was nothing to me, I reminded myself, whilst I fought to steady my breathing and calm my heart. I did not owe him anything. I raised my chin and stared at him and the glaring sun above him in defiance.
Tafirei frowned at the newcomer. It did not help matters that he and I sat on the ground whilst Garikai towered above us like an elephant intent on squashing us.
“Nyasha,” Garikai said gently to me. “And you,” he said, with a scowl, to Tafirei; he near barked out the words like an accusation.
“Who are you?” Tafirei demanded.
Garikai snorted. “It is I who should be asking you that, stranger that you are.”
“I have been here a fortnight,” said Tafirei.
“And I have lived here my entire life,” said Garikai, glaring at him like a dung beetle he would have rather not noticed. “Is it common practice where you come from to steal other men’s women?”
My eyes widened, and Tafirei gaped at me. I shook my head at him, too bewildered to speak.
“Who are you?” Tafirei repeated.
“Her betrothed, of course,” Garikai snapped.
I gasped. “That is not true!” I looked at Tafirei, imploring him with my eyes. “It is all lies. My parents can attest to it.”
Ignoring my protests, Garikai hunched over and grabbed my upper arm. I flinched at his touch and ejaculated my surprise at his brazenness. Even for him! He was the hyena biting at the lioness’s tail.
“Come on, my dear,” he said in a tone that was not wholly devoid of sarcasm. “I will forgive this lapse.”
I glared at him like a trapped leopardess as my anger burgeoned into full-blown rage.
“Let her go,” Tafirei threatened in a low, growling voice.
Garikai did not even look at him. As he pulled at my arm to get me up, Tafirei launched at him with the ferocity of a black mamba. He punched Garikai on the jaw, and they both fell back into the brush.
I screamed as I jumped and ran after them. They brawled on the ground, rolling and punching and cursing. I could not get close for fear of getting tangled up in the fight. I would have had better luck separating two dogs at each other’s throats than separating those two eighteen-year-old boys.
“Stop,” I screamed. “Stop it!”
But the boys growled as they gave each other bloody noses and lips. It was the strangest thing that a plain girl like me would have two handsome boys fighting over her. Luckily, neither of them had a weapon. But all those rocks close to their heads brought my heart to my throat and made me gasp for air.
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I did the one thing I could think of, I ran to the village for help. They would kill each other, I thought in my panic. They would kill each other, and I would be blamed. The villagers would name me a witch!
I could barely figure out where I was going amidst the trees. Tafirei and I had chosen the Eastern Bush for our little hideout. Now, all the trees looked the same, and they closed around me like angry spirits intent on condemning me. The twittering of birds and the chattering of squirrels became the raucous of demons. The monkeys that stared at me from the trees had the look of ravenous man-eaters. I went around in circles before I found myself out of that bush.
I had scarcely run a hundred steps from the trees when I heard my name in the wind. I slowed and turned to see Garikai swiftly closing the gap between us. He grasped my arm as he reached me.
“Let go of me!” I said, pulling my arm. “You are mad! You are mad! What was all that?”
“I am mad?” he boomed. “I am gone one fortnight and you already replace me? If not for my hunting skill, who knows what you two would have done in those woods.”
“Replace you?” I muttered. “I do not love you. I never have. As for your vile insinuations, you know me better than that.”
He snorted. “You love this stranger now? Is that the way of it? How many days have you even known him?”
“Enough,” I hissed. “He is all the things you are not.”
He let out a hoarse laugh. “That brute who attacks without provocation?”
“You deserved it,” I snarled. “He was defending me.”
He shook his head in exasperation. “That boy would use you and sully your honour. Why else bring you to a secluded place?”
“Spare your lies for some stupid girl. He wants to marry me.”
He gave me a measured look. “Is that so? Well, if you want that boy to live, you will stop seeing him.”
I gasped. “You would not. Tell me you jest.” Sure, Garikai was without limits sometimes, and he was the chief’s nephew, but even he must have feared that infernal curse, ngozi, which came with murder. “Where is Tafirei?” I demanded. “Is he safe?”
When he just stared back at me with impassive eyes, my heart throbbed like rocks fell on my chest. I turned to the Eastern Bush. I could not see past the trees.
Before I could run back, Garikai grabbed my hand. “Of course, he is safe,” he told me. He curled his lips in disdain. “I left him licking his wounds and reflecting on his dishonourable behaviour.”
I turned and slapped him so hard on the cheek that pain pulsed in my entire arm. He gaped at me with large eyes and parted lips before he massaged his cheek. Even I could not believe I had done that.
“Dishonourable,” I spat. “You are the dishonourable one, acting like a mad fool. When were we ever betrothed?”
He fell to his knees whilst gripping my hands and with his gaze cast to the ground. “I am mad,” he said, “madly in love with you. You are my obsession. You know this. You torture me when you see these other boys.”
There was something obscene about such a tall, muscular man grovelling at my feet. I shook my hands and told him to get up. He got up but would not let go of me.
“I must see Tafirei,” I told him, “to know that he is safe.”
“You will not find him,” he said. “He has left by now.”
“To go where?”
“His village, for all I know,” he said harshly. “Is he here with you? Is he here to make sure you are safe? Only I am here. Can we not talk about this anymore? It is getting dark, and you must get back home.”
Just like that, he wanted his rival erased. And he would also have me ignore his outbursts, threats, and violence. We had played this game for too long a time.
I still looked at the Eastern Bush. Could Tafirei have given up on me so easily? A spear could have pierced my heart, and I would not have felt any different. Giving up on him felt like giving up on happiness itself. Had it just been a fantasy? The pain was real enough, though.
Garikai squeezed my hand as I just stood there, and I remembered his threat. I shuddered. Could he really kill the nice boy for getting close to me? I wanted to cry, but that would have been unbecoming and useless. Tafirei had left me, and I was a caged bird again.
“Would you walk back there alone?” he asked me. “To potentially meet up with lions and leopards?”
Rage and fear and despair rattled in my head until I thought it would explode. I glared at the object of my ire, and the helplessness made my knees tremble. “Honour compels you to go back with me.”
He snorted. “Honour compels me to walk you back home, where it is safe. Nowhere else.” He pulled me towards our village. “Come, my dear.”
My gaze lingered in that bush before I reluctantly went with him. I was his creature again. I would never break free.
“I see you do not care at all for my wellbeing,” he said, as if it was not he who had just ruined my life.
I regarded him, trying to remember what it was like when I first knew him as a man of sixteen. He had been truly beautiful. Not regular-featured like Tafirei or with his youth-favoured good looks. He had the kind of beauty untethered to youth, which would not fade with age. But now, I could not tell anymore, not after seeing the ugliness inside.
Ever since I first said no to him two years ago, he had made it his mission to ruin my life. I could not understand it. He was beautiful and rich, yet obsessed with a plain and poor girl like me. At first, I thought it was a long and cruel jape. But I saw how serious he was when my friends slowly fell away from me. The more I refused him, the more he pursued me with a bloodlust I could only imagine in the most vicious lions. Sometimes, he even looked at me as if he wanted to devour me.
“You have hounded my steps for years,” I told him plainly, “yet you know my mind on the matter. I do not love you. You only make it worse by persisting with this impossible scheme of yours.”
“The abundance of my love will fill the deficit in yours. You will certainly find happiness beside me.”
Arguing with him was useless. He was a madman who did as madmen did. I had dared to hope for happiness with Tafirei. Fool that I was, I had imagined the ancestors smiling down at me. Why else take Garikai away on a trip at the same time Tafirei visited his aunt?
As we walked between the rondavels of our village towards my house, people stared. The girls, in particular, threw me ugly looks. They had all prayed for Tafirei to take me away, I knew. The beautiful Paida, with curves that made old men rebuke themselves, twisted her lips in disgust. They all wanted Garikai, but he only had eyes for me. A whole village of girls who wanted him, but he had to torture me instead.
Despite his broken, swollen lip, Garikai had a grin on his face as if he had won me in a competition. And he walked with his muscular chest puffed out. Most men and women covered their shoulders, back, and chest with animal pelts. Not him. He only covered himself with the bare minimum: leather flaps around his waist. With all his boastfulness, he would have walked naked like a toddler, had he been allowed.
As he got me to our hut, my mother made sure to beam at him as he greeted her. She disappeared into our kitchen to give us some privacy.
He smiled at me even as I scowled. “You are safe now,” he said, “and exactly where you should be.” He squeezed my hand before he left.
I peered at him as he walked away, his bluster evident in his strut. I could not have children with such as he, to have them cursed with such arrogance. I turned to get into our kitchen and almost bumped into Rutendo. The simple girl had a grin on her face and the bright eyes of the inebriated.
“You are so lucky,” she squealed at me. “He loves you.”
“He suffocates me.”
“He will marry you.”
“I would be his prisoner.”
She embraced me before covering my hands with kisses. “You will be so happy.”
I left the girl, and she giggled her way to her house. As usual, talking to her had been like talking to myself. After Garikai had chased away all my male friends through violence and threats, she was all I had left.
The moment I entered our kitchen, Mother embraced me. She smelled of smoke. She had been working on the fire in the hearth. “I had not dared to hope before, but now I know Garikai will ask for your hand. Did you make sure to dismiss that other boy, Tafirei?”
“No, Mother,” I said, angry again. “I did not dismiss him. Garikai confronted him. Right in front of me. I hate Garikai. I will never marry him!”
Mother swiftly clasped my mouth with her hand, and her eyes skittered about as if spirits had entered the hut. “Mind what you say,” she scolded. “He might hear.” She slowly removed her hand from my mouth after she thought I had calmed down.
“I do not care if he hears. I told him I do not love him.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Mother looked at me with a severe gaze steeped in disappointment. “I will give you the gift of honesty, daughter. Plain and poor as you are, it is a miracle that he looked at you twice. Be glad that such a match is even possible.”
“I do not care for it,” I said, on the verge of tears. “I want Tafirei. He is kind.”
“Does Garikai beat you?”
I shook my head.
“Has he mistreated you?”
“He chased away all my friends.”
“You mean those boys who clung to you as if you were their mother? Be glad you have someone who so jealously guards your honour. He is kind to do that.”
“He means to own me.”
“What else would you wish for in this life except a husband who claims and cherishes you? So, it is his crime that he loves you too much?”
“Tafirei loves me, and he is gentle and considerate.”
“That boy can offer you nothing except the spear on his back and the labours in his hands.”
“You and father are happy, but he is not rich.”
“I have had to work every day for us to eat. This kitchen, our sleeping hut, and that one field are all the properties to your father’s name. If we do not work the field every rainy season, we starve.” She sighed. “Listen and listen well, child. Poverty is an error. And, it is an error I do not wish to teach my children.”
“I do not care about all that. I only wish for a man who makes me happy.”
She snorted. “You like digging for mice when times are hard?”
“I quite like the taste of mice.”
She curled her lips at my insolence. “And you like picking and cleaning mopane worms?”
I shuddered at the thought of those huge caterpillars that wriggled and gave me nightmares.
“Even now you tremble. Be glad the ancestors have smiled upon you enough to prevent such a fate for yourself and your children.”
She spoke like someone who did not know what I meant, but she knew well enough. Her scheme was for me to conform to her idea of what was good for me. “If Garikai comes here looking for marriage, he will get it,” she said sternly, with a look that did not invite dissent.
Then, maybe you should marry him, I thought, without the death wish to say it out loud.
At night, whilst we ate in the kitchen, I glanced at Father a few times and wondered if I could discuss the matter with him. But, it was impossible. These were not the things daughters could tell their fathers. Munashe and Simukai, my fourteen and twelve-year-old brothers, ate beside him. They usually spent most of the days together doing men’s work. The rainy season was almost upon us, and they tilled our field with borrowed cattle and plough. If my brothers had been older than Garikai’s eighteen years, I could have asked them to threaten him or to give him a good beating.
I had no strength, the proclivity for violence, or understanding parents. I was a cursed little girl.
As I slept in the kitchen on my reed mat opposite Mother’s, I turned this side and then that. The floor was much harder than I remembered. Try as I might, I could not sleep. What was I to do? Find Tafirei and run away with him? My parents would never forgive me. And Tafirei would have never agreed to it. Besides, what kind of girls did that? Only loose girls or silly girls. And I was neither.
When the roosters announced the morning, I had scarcely gotten any sleep. But mother woke me all the same. We cleaned our huts and our yard. Then, we prepared our family breakfast of sorghum porridge. After we had eaten, I used fetching water from the river as a pretext to escape my mother’s watchful eye.
I rushed to Tafirei’s aunt, who lived several houses away. When I asked about her nephew, she said he had left at first light for his village. I did not know how I felt about that: Relieved he was safe? Sad he had left me? Angry he had given me false hope? Or maybe it was a confused mess of all three. I gave his aunt the bracelet to return to him whenever she met him. “He will understand,” I told her calmly, whilst the spearpoint gored my heart.
As I walked to the river, filled my clay pot with water, balanced it atop my head, and walked back home, I cleansed myself of Tafirei. To be sure, my heart ached and dragged me toward despair, but I would not yield. Not for a boy who had abandoned me just after one altercation. He was the past. I would forget him.
I was cleaning the breakfast pots and plates behind our kitchen when Mother came to me, beaming and bright-eyed. “Leave that,” she said. “I will finish up. Garikai has come to see you.”
I pressed my lips as my exhaustion and gloom returned with a vengeance. I thought to refuse, but I knew better than to anger mother in the morning and give her the whole day to complain about it. So, I meekly got up and walked to the front of our kitchen.
Garikai stood close to the door and grinned like the besotted lover he imagined himself to be. He hid his hands behind his back. “How did you sleep?” he asked me.
“I did not,” I told him plainly.
“My poor dear,” he said. “I will make sure that you sleep soundly just a few days from now.”
My breathing became so rapid and laboured that one would have thought it was my funeral he predicted.
“I have delayed our joyous day for too long,” he said cheerfully. “You have become restless.”
He revealed his hands to display the bracelets and necklace he held. They were bigger and finer than what Tafirei had given me, but I did not even blink. I was like a dead girl as he lifted both my hands to fasten the bracelets on my wrists. I did not flinch as he put the necklace over my head to settle around my neck.
He held both my hands. “You will agree to marry me, will you not?”
“Why do you even want to marry me?” I asked him. “What made you choose me?”
“Every girl in this village wants me,” he said, “but not you.”
“So, you just want that which is unattainable?”
He chuckled. “You have misjudged me and still you misconstrue me. You are not like every girl. Where most look at me and only see a wealthy, handsome man who will give them nought but a good life, you see the real me, my faults most of all. Oddly enough, it makes me reveal my true self to you without embellishment. You are honest, and you make me honest. You are not impressed by the kind of trinkets I just gave you. You do not waste your time on gossip or on any of these silly village girls. You are singular.”
I looked at him anew, daring to imagine him capable of real love.
“Your fire and spirit make me feel alive. I know that you are a living, breathing creature with real opinions and you will always speak your mind. Only you truly know me, and I love your sharp sense of morality. I know you will keep me good. You are the only girl worth marrying in this village.”
“I . . . I.” I could not trust myself to respond. Garikai was treacherous at the best of times.
“Just say yes, and I will be the happiest man alive. You know, when I left with my father, we had gone to buy more cattle because I needed them to make you my wife.”
Was it romance or manipulation? “You will never abandon this scheme of marriage?”
“Asking me to abandon you is like asking me to tear out my heart.” He looked at me with glistening eyes steeped in passion. “Just say yes.”
“Yes,” I dared in a whisper.
He embraced me and lifted me clear off the ground. I smiled as much as I could as he laughed and spun me in the air. Had he actually given me a choice? It was either this or daring that alien and despised territory of spinsterhood.
My mother was ecstatic, and my father simply nodded his approval when she told him the good news during lunch. My brothers quietly congratulated me, young as they were.
After eating my lunch, Garikai introduced me to his family as his betrothed. I already knew his family, so I mostly spent time with his two younger sisters, who were around my age. Their homestead was at the western edge of our village. It was a palace comprised of six large buildings of stone. There was even a wall around it. Beyond the wall, they had grazing land for their hundreds of cattle.
I could not get used to such excess, nor was I comfortable around it. It was one of the reasons I had refused Garikai all those years ago. I did not want to feel owned like some goat. And I had always valued working for my food and house. What kind of wife would I be, with my labours not contributing to the success of the family?
When our old chief dies, a new chief would likely be selected from Garikai’s family. It was whispered that Garikai would be selected as the new chief after their extended family’s vote. His already obscene wealth would likely increase, and the villagers’ gaze would fall upon me as much as him. I shuddered at the thought.
His sisters told me how much he always talked about me in excited tones. “He loves you so much,” said Farai with glistening eyes.
“Even as a child, he could never give up on what he loved,” said Sekai, beaming at me.
They were both pretty things who were made prettier by their wealth. And, they were happy, intelligent girls who would make great company should Garikai prove to be an unsuitable husband.
Five days later, the marriage was not a small thing. Garikai and his family came to our modest homestead to pay the roora, the bride price. They were dressed in the richest fabrics, pelts, and jewellery, most of them acquired through trade with the best craftsmen far beyond our lands. The sun shone brightly as if the ancestors themselves smiled upon the day. The light reflected off their necklaces, bracelets, and jewelled headdresses as if the sun envied them.
Even our chief came with Garikai’s family. My father and uncles exchanged looks, unsure if the chief was supposed to respect them as the fathers of the bride or if they were supposed to respect the chief as their leader.
“You poor thing,” said Rutendo cheerfully when she saw me amongst the women of my family. “You could not sleep last night because of all the excitement.”
My eyes were tired and droopy, to be sure. I would commit my whole life to Garikai, to either love him or be miserable.
The roora was usually six to ten cattle, and most men spent their entire lives paying it. But not Garikai. He gave my father twenty-five plump heifers, one handsome bull, and fifteen lively goats. In one stroke, he made my family wealthy. I was almost thrown at him by my aunts and female cousins once the roora ritual was concluded.
“I am now yours,” I whispered to him, “to be your plaything.”
“To be my dear beloved,” he whispered back.
“To be your property.”
“To be my delighted and delightful wife.” Then, he kissed me.
About the Author
Banabas is a writer from Harare, Zimbabwe. His works mostly revolve around speculative fiction. One of his stories has been selected for inclusion in the African Ghost Short Stories anthology by Flame Tree Publishing, UK, which is scheduled to be released in April 2024. In addition, another one of his short stories was longlisted in the Bold 2023 Continental Call: Climate Change and was published in the Ibua Journal (Uganda).
