Harvest of Thorns

Shimmer Chinodya

Description

The 1990 Commonwealth Writers Regional Prize voted Harvest of Thorns the winner in the Best Book category. Harvest of Thorns tells the story of Benjamin Tichafa who grows up in Rhodesia in the 1960s. From a conservative, religious family, but exposed to the heady ideas of the black nationalist movements, the young student is pulled in different directions. Isolated and troubled at boarding school, he is provoked into leaving, making his way to Mozambique, and joining the freedom fighters. There, in the crucible of a bitter civil war of liberation, the young man develops into manhood. Returning, hardened, at independence, he feels that little has changed, not least within his own family circumstances, and asks himself what it means to be free in the new Zimbabwe.

Informations

• Publié par: Weaver Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 56
• EAN13: 9781779223289
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Harvest of Thorns

Published by Weaver Press, Box A1922, Avondale, Harare. 2018
< www.weaverpresszimbabwe.com >
First published by Baobab Books, Harare, 1989, reprinted 2018
Shimmer Chinodya, 1989, 2018
Photograph of Shimmer Chinodya, Weaver Press,
Typeset by Weaver Press
Cover Design: Farai Wallace, Harare.
Printed by: Bidvest, SA
All rights reserved. No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without the express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-77922-327-2 (p/b)
ISBN: 978-1-77922-328-9 (e-pub)
Shimmer Chinodya was born in 1957 in Gweru, the second child in a large, happy family. He studied English Literature and Education at the University of Zimbabwe. After a spell teaching and with curriculum development, he earned an MA in Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (USA).
His first novel, Dew in the Morning, was published in 1982. This was followed by Farai’s Girls (1984), Child of War (under the pen name B.Chirasha, 1986), Harvest of Thorns (1989), Can We Talk and other stories (1998), Tale of Tamari (2004), Chairman of Fools (2005), Strife (2006), Tindo’s Quest (2011), Chioniso and other stories (2012) and Harvest of Thorns Classic: A Play (2016). His work appears in numerous anthologies. He has also written educational texts, training manuals, radio and film scripts, including the script for the feature film, Everyone’s Child. He has won many awards for his work, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region) for Harvest of Thorns, a Caine Prize shortlist for Can we Talk and the NOMA award for publishing in Africa for Strife. He has won awards on many occasions from ZIWU, ZBPA and NAMA. He has also received many fellowships abroad and from 1995 to 1997 was Distinguished Dana Professor in Creative Writing and African Literature at the University of St Lawrence in upstate New York.
Part One
1
T he day he came back, and she walked in obliviously from the shower-room with soapsuds on her hands and found him sitting in his big brown boots on the sofa, she cried so much the neighbours rushed in thinking she had received news of death; after they had gone and she could talk she looked at the ropes of dried meat hung on a strip of newspaper and fished into her long skirts to send Peter to the butcher.
And on that same morning of the day he came back he fixed a plate on the stove she said she had paid an electrician to repair and he said ‘You shouldn’t throw money to the sharks’ and went out to help Peter water the cabbages in the garden while she watched them from the window trying to reclaim from the shaggy-haired man in brown boots the Benjamin she once knew who had repaired a burnt-out pressing iron element with a piece of tin foil and operated the old gramophone on a car battery and disused transformer until his father took it away to sell it.
The afternoon of the day he came back he went out with Peter to the shops and she stood at the window watching them; Peter hobbling on his crutch beside him, the stump of his leg jiggling in his shorts, his face flashing and him striding on and she thought how tall he had grown, how broad now his shoulders, how sunburnt his face.
And on the night of the day he came back he knocked on the cracked green door and it opened and she let him in and he blinked in the light and said, ‘Manheru.’
She bolted the door and brought him his food and a bowl of water and sat on the sofa opposite him.
‘You shouldn’t have waited for me,’ he said, glancing at the little yellow clock on the display cabinet that ticked three.
‘I just thought you’d want to talk,’ she said. His hands and mouth worked nimbly at the sadza and meat. The last time he ate so fast he was seven, she reminded herself, he was seven and he was rushing off to school for the first time...
His eyes skimmed over the cracked glass picture frame on the wall and the shelf where the Bibles stood. He grabbed the mug of water and slurped down a mouthful.
‘We’re all fine here,’ he heard her say. ‘I’m so glad you came back alive, Benjamin.’
He braced his hands on the table to cut off a belch. He looked up and saw her face watching him, waiting.
Suddenly seized by a panic of bright lights he stood up and said, slowly, carefully mouthing each syllable, ‘Good night.’
Hardly hearing her reply, he stepped into the spare bedroom. For a moment he swayed in the sleep-suffused dark. He groped for the switch. In the yellow neon burst, Peter sprawled in pyjama shorts on the bed, his chubby face half buried in a pillow. Benjamin planted himself carefully on the edge the bed and, pushing the door back, began to undress. He took Peter’s full leg in his hand and moved him to one side, brushed down the switch and pulled the thin blanket over his chest.
He thought he heard Peter chuckle in his sleep, dreaming perhaps. He turned his head from the roof where the light from the main bedroom formed little crosses on the corrugated asbestos. On the other side of the wall a bed creaked, a voice coughed. He heard another sound, the neighbour’s toilet flushing or a car washing through a puddle in the street perhaps; his mind plunged swiftly to sleep.
2
W hen he woke up the sun was already three hours old, blazing on the township scene. He whipped open the thin curtains and looked outside. A group of young boys were playing football in the street. An ice-cream man and a firewood vendor were jangling their bells from opposite ends of the road. Young girls sauntered from the grocers with loaves of bread or packets of milk, neat little green packages of meat and bottles of paraffin, frugal tots of cooking oil and bunches of choumoellier. A mother with a blanket around her waist was slapping a naked child playing with a garden tap. The child was screaming wildly and stamping her feet.
He yawned, got up and put on his clothes. Peter came in.
‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ he said. ‘I’ll make the bed.’
‘I still can, and will,’ Benjamin replied.
‘There’s a visitor with mother in the kitchen. She came on the early morning train. A young woman.’
‘A relative of ours?’
‘I don’t think so. Mother doesn’t seem to know her either. She’s young and dark, kind of pretty. Judging by her looks and her luggage she’s coming from the country. She brought an old suitcase with her. Mother has been trying to make her talk but she’s been very quiet.’ Benjamin shrugged and went out to the kitchen. Peter followed him. The young woman sat on the floor in the kitchen. She looked up briefly as Benjamin came in, shook his hand when he offered it and turned her eyes to the wall. Benjamin said ‘Good morning’ to his mother and went out with Peter to clean the chicken coop.
There were eight hens in the coop. They cleaned and replenished the food troughs, and cleared the droppings.
‘Do you know her?’
‘No,’ Benjamin grinned. ‘Do you?’
‘Not a clue,’ said Peter, the flash in his brother’s eye puzzling him. Slowly, his face too broke into a grin.
Benjamin went to take a shower, changed his clothes and sat in the kitchen for breakfast. The young woman was still sitting on the floor. Mrs Tichafa poured out the tea and Peter sat on the stoep.
‘So,’ said Benjamin by and by, ‘have you introduced each other?’
Mrs Tichafa’s eyes widened in disbelief, her immediate suspicions confirmed. But she controlled herself and let him play his game.
‘Mother, this is my wife. Her name is Nkazana. Nkazana, this is my mother. And that is my brother Peter.’
The two women shook hands again and said, at the same time, ‘I’m very happy to meet you.’ Benjamin grinned the grin of one who enjoys a novel situation he has created. Suddenly his mother laughed, the quick short laughter that dispels nervousness and incredulity without removing the shock. On the stoep, Peter sat and watched. The bride looked up and smiled.
As usual, the afternoon omnibus was full – there never seemed to be enough buses in the townships. Had it not been for the one-legged boy waving frantically at the side of the road, the driver might have shot past without stopping, gaining a minute on his ailing schedule. Peter and Nkazana found seats at the front and for a while Benjamin stood in the crowded aisle, braving the sharp turns as the bus swept round corners.
At the fourth stop, several people got off. Benjamin eased himself on to a seat, lit a cigarette and opened the window to look outside.
A lot of the small four-roomed houses were being extended. Everywhere there were mountains of brick and sand on the side of the roads. Some of the houses had been finished – these had a sprawling, squashed look even where the extensions were newly painted. He noticed TV aerials perched on the roofs of several houses – symbols of the new progress – contrasting starkly with the billowing smoke from chimneys and the gravel roads that erupted into clouds of dust behind them. Looking at the aerials he remembered the excitement that had swept through the township when the first television sets appeared a decade earlier. He smiled at how, thinking the aerial was all there was to a television, he had wondered how it was possible to watch pictures on those thin sticks of metal.
He saw the grounds where he had played football with his mates as a young man, now bared of grass. Before water restrictions, the place had been green and he and his friends had run about and rolled in shirtless, sweat-glazed glee, shouting ‘Sticken!’ or ‘Handsball!’ or ‘Penelet!’ or ‘Rough!’ They had their own teams then – their Dynamos and Caps United. One Saturday morning he had scored seven goals and the members of his team had li