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Elliot Ziwira-At the Bookstore
Promises, promises and more promises!
All that humanity needs are promises, or so it appears. In relationships and marriages, individuals promise each other heaven, roses and orchids; at workplaces employees promise and are promised in return.
Whatever is promised, there is an equal promise in return. Citizens are promised a lot for their commitment by equally committing politicians.
Oh, this world of promises!
Were it not for promises, the burdens of this world would be unendurable. Yes, promises make it possible for us to see the silver lining in that dark cloud menacingly crouching, like a monstrous mountain at the horizon of our hopes.
Notwithstanding the numerous hurdles that are strewn our way, we promise even ourselves that all shall be well; that we will live happily ever after.
There is nothing as distant as a couple that promises each other nothing; and there is nothing as ruinous as a marriage that hinges on unfulfilled promises.
There is much more to marriage than just two people brought together by fate or destiny, so much more.
However, to most people the idea of the institution of marriage evokes images of a battlefield where cannons are unleashed on supposed foes.
On the matrimonial base one is reminded of the American playwright and novelist, Thornton Wilder, who writes of promises:
“I didn’t marry you because you were perfect. I didn’t even marry you because I loved you. I married you because you gave me a promise.
“That promise made up for your faults. And the promise I gave you made up for mine. Two imperfect people got married and it was the promise that made the marriage.
“And when our children were growing up, it wasn’t a house that protected them; and it wasn’t our love that protected them—it was that promise.”
Such is the power of a promise.
True, as Thomas Fuller opines, “he is poor indeed that can promise nothing”, for “everyone is a millionaire where promises are concerned” (Ovid).
However, “one must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises that one makes” (Friedrich Nietzsche).
There is a whole gamut of truth in the idea that for whatever one promises, there is an equal measure of joy in the recipient of the promise, regardless of fulfilment.
Fulfilment of the promise only doubles, trebles or multiplies seventy-times-seven times, as Jesus Christ says. Even, the excitement in the heart of the recipient of the promise, plus the honouring of the said promise comes in multiples.
Literature across geographical landscapes and cultures is awash with promises; in the positivity of their presence, the negativity of their lack, and the blight of their non-fulfilment.
It would appear as though the marriage institution is doomed since it pits two individuals with different backgrounds and basically nothing in common, against each other. This would seem that humanity is devoid of multiplicity, tolerance and compromise.
It is against this backdrop that the reading of Shimmer Chinodya’s collection of short stories “Chioniso” (2012), published by Weaver Press, becomes not only intriguing, but also informative and evocative.
The use of the autobiographical mode which pervades the anthology, as is the case in “Chairman of Fools” (2005), “Can We Talk and other Stories” (1998) and “Dew in the Morning” (1983), though somehow limiting creativity through its inclination towards artistic self-justification, lends authenticity to the struggles that the individual endures in an attempt to find base in love, and subsequently marriage, separation and divorce.
A plethora of thematic concerns are explored through the doppelganger, Godfrey.
Chinodya highlights issues like religion and its oppressive and hypocritical nature, as well as its impact on the individual psyche.
He also explores how culture, corruption, individualism, materialism and marriage are limiting on individual and collective aspirations.
The author effectively hoists the reader onto a familiar landscape of deceit, hypocrisy, frustration and despondency, where promises remain just other promises.
The telling familiar story that Chinodya depicts in “Queues”, “Tavonga” and “Indigenous” leaves the reader askance.
The gist of this instalment, however, is the depiction of marriage as claustrophobic, depressing, uncompromising and retrogressive.
Stories that immediately come to mind are “Queues”, “Tavonga”, “The Car” and “Chioniso”.
Having first appeared in “Writing Still” (2003) and “Writing More” (2005), respectively, “Queues” and “Tavonga” have already been exhausted at the Bookstore.
Since “Chioniso” carries the burden of the autobiographical mode, which has already been explored elsewhere, and obtains in the other two stories, the focus is drawn to the story “The Car”.
Told in the third person voice, “The Car” is rich in metonymic and symbolic innuendo. It reminds one of Tennessee Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire”, published in 1947.
It is the story of two teachers, Petros (Baba Lydia) and Mai Lydia, who receive a Christmas gift from their son-in-law, Roderick, through their only child, Lydia, in the form of a car.
The car is described as “a sparkling white VW Golf with sea grey wind deflectors, silver sports wheel covers, black mudflaps, and of course, a blue and white South African number plate.”
As a status symbol, the car immediately nudges Mai Lydia’s heart, as the high density neighbourhood of their abode ogles at the rare beauty.
However, instead of bringing joy, the car undermines the couple’s marriage. Not that it has brought problems, no; it only exposes them.
The fissures have already been there.
The simmering anger within only finds vents through the gift.
Forgetting that a gift horse should never be looked in the mouth, Baba Lydia scrutinises the car. For starters, a car was not his idea of lobola (roora) for his daughter.
Secondly, he does not have a driver’s licence, although his wife has one.
Roderick reneges on his promise to pay lobola.
Now his wife is pregnant with their third child. Instead of making good on his promise, he sends them a secondhand car from his base in South Africa.
As Baba Lydia sees it, “A proper son-in-law pays proper lobola and doesn’t try to evade his dues with flimsy second hand presents.”
The couple’s marriage has always been on the rocks. They constantly fight over individual achievements in their competition against each other.
The promises they made to each other in teachers’ college decades earlier remain unfulfilled. Now in their 50s, they allow a mere car to destroy whatever still remains of the promise.
Petros feels that probably the 18-year-old girl that he got pregnant at college and married because of that was not meant to be his wife.
On the academic front Petros lags behind his wife. She is degreed, and he still has a teaching diploma. Chiding his wife, who teaches Grade 1s, Petros boasts that he teaches Grade 7s, and would soon be promoted.
In turn, she would take him to town for not doing anything to raise the status bar to his favour like a man.
With attention shifting from the husband to the car, Mai Lydia abandons her duties as a wife. So smitten by the car, she becomes a challenge to the marriage in the same way that the jalopy becomes a burden on their pockets.
The jalopy needs a guard, alarm, high precast security wall, secure garage and a guard dog, which they cannot afford.
As Mai Lydia acquires new friends, money to run the household becomes a rare visitor. Hence, the car, like their marriage, is exposed to the vagaries of Man and their own foibles.
To her, the car becomes a vent of escape from the restrictive and competitive nature of their marriage. On the other hand, her husband finds the elixir in alcohol and women of questionable morals.
As discord plays havoc on the matrimonial base, thieves pounce on the controversial gift, stripping it of its wind deflectors, wheel covers, mudflaps and wipers.
When Baba Trevor, the deputy headmaster at the school they both teach, who lived up their street, offered them his unused garage, Baba Lydia begrudgingly allows his wife to accept the offer.
However, despite the seemingly tight security offered by the garage, high precast wall and guard dog at the good man’s disposal, thieves broke in, and stripped the car to its shell, relegating it to the scrapyard. The neighbourhood is awed.
Realising that no form of security beats the inner security shared by two individuals brought together by a promise to protect each other and fight from the same corner, the couple is reunited in the dawn of their loss.
Mai Lydia remembers to fall back into her husband’s hands as she sobs and hiccups “against the wall of his chest”.
Indeed, as Zig Zigler avers, “many marriages would be better if the husband and the wife clearly understood that they are on the same side”, and not antagonists thrown onto a battlefield where the stronger part emerges bruised and triumphant, though not victorious.
Shimmer Chinodya is a grandmaster in this kind of story, as he adeptly examines both the literal and metaphorical perils of individualism on the institution of marriage, which makes it claustrophobic and oppressive on the individual psyche.
Online Reporter