The interview in Borrowdale

The dog growls.

"If only you would just walk on," the woman says. "Because this dog is mad. Every dog Madam Mbuya has had has been like that, ever since the war. And Mbuya Riley up there is just like the dog here, if not even madder. So now, be walking!"

Snakes, the ones your grandmother used to tell you about when you were small and asked her the things you could not ask your mother, the snakes that hold your womb inside you open their jaws at the mention of war. The contents of your abdomen slide toward the ground, as though the snakes let everything loose when their mouths opened. Your womb dissolves to water. You stand there and your strength is finished. 

A hole opens in a mesh of ivy vines that strangle the building at the top of the drive. The woman who is talking to you takes a step forward. She grips the fence rails tightly. Anxiety seeps out of her, as strong as an ancestor's spirit.

Widow Riley, the woman you have come to meet, approaches. Her back is humped. Both skin and bone are fragile, brittle and translucent as shells. She totters over the uneven brick paving.

The dog gives a yelp and bounds to meet its mistress.

"Now what will I say to the madam?" the woman before you whispers. She speaks intimately now, as though to a friend. 

"See! She's already thinking you're a relative. One of mine. We're not allowed, not at all, not even when we've gone off. And now is the worst time because my off isn't until this weekend."

"An interview. For accommodation," you whisper back. "Somewhere to live." You are so desperate your voice climbs high into the back of your throat. 

"She'll cry," Mbuya Riley's help hisses. "She'll say I'm bringing my relatives here to kill her. When her daughter comes they talk like that. It's been like that since the war. That is the one thing they agree on."

"There is a cottage," you say. "The matron said she fixed something. It is not expensive."

"Are you hearing what I am saying?" Mbuya Riley's help goes on. "It's impossible when she cries. I have to feed her or else she shuts her mouth and won't take the food. Just like a baby! You go now."

The dog yelps up at the top of the drive. The frail white woman sinks to the ground. Her head, with its halo of soft white hair, rests on the paving like a giant dandelion. She stretches her arms out toward you and the woman in uniform. 

"There!" complains the maid. "Now I'm going to have to be bending over and carrying her, even when my own back is breaking."

She hurries up the path, throwing accusations back at you over her shoulder. 

"Go away from this number 9. Because if you don't, I'll open the gate and if you manage to shake this one off it won't help because I'll unlock the big one."

The woman bends down to her mistress. The little terrier whimpers, licks the widow's arm.

(From Tsitsi Dangarembga's This Mournable Body (2018), end of Ch 1.)

So Tambudzai's visit to the affluent suburb of Borrowdale in NE Harare is a fiasco. 

She tells young Gertrude and Isabel that she has an aunt who lives there. It's a measure of Tambudzai's terrible mental state that she actually obtains some gratification from this pathetic pretence.

She's being pressured to move out of the women's hostel because she's too old (38, approximately). Mrs May, the matron, has organized this interview with Mrs Riley's daughter. "Remember to mention me to Mabel Riley," she says. "I haven't seen her properly since she left school .... Mabs Riley was a wonderful head-girl. I was just a little junior but she was absolutely lovely." Alas, pink Mrs May's fond memories bear no resemblance to the terrified frail ghost of today. 

This Mournable Body deploys the shapes of comedy to deeply un-comic effect. It's as if Tambudzai, if she weren't at such a low ebb, would really be wickedly funny ... but it would require a much warmer heart than hers has turned. Instead Tambudzai feels threatened by everyone so despises everyone, feels judged so judges. 

The day turns out even worse for Gertrude, who's been shopping the sales at Sam Levy's. At the combi rank in Market Square, far too glamorously undressy, she's taunted, jostled, thrown down, her skirt ripped off..... and then she spots her elder hostel-mate conspicuously not rushing to her assistance, in fact with a stone in her raised hand.... Tambudzai's life is slipping out of control faster than she herself can understand. 

"Is that what you do," you say, stopping outside your room.

You don't bother to put a question mark into your voice. Why should you put a question mark anywhere? So many things have happened today and no one has asked you anything. Besides, what you know is this: you did not want to do what you did at the market. You did not want all that to happen, nor did anyone else. No one wanted it. It is just something that took place like that, like a moment of madness. 

(Ch 3)

What happened to the bright university-trained girl who, not so long ago, was smoothly turning out tourist brochure fibs about the villagers of Zimbabwe scrubbing cowpat floors till they shone?

*

"I can give you a bigger dose," the nurse says when she comes to give you your injection. "To make the effect stronger. And work faster."

Observing the flow of tears that began at lunchtime, she leans in closer and continues, "I want to ask you some questions. I need your help. I am doing my degree. There is a dissertation. I must have an interesting subject. You know, talking to me is good for you. We are the same, you and I! We are not like these European doctors. You know, so you mustn't worry about anything, my sister, Tambu. You can just answer what I am asking."

She inquires in a low, furtive voice, whether you are satisfied with your partner, how often you have sexual relations with him, and whether you feel that this part of your life has any bearing on your situation. As she puts these questions to you, she stares as though you are a book in which she has marked the most important chapter.

"Do you mind if I write the answers down?" she asks, more at ease now that the interview has begun.

You do not have the strength to do anything but gaze at this student nurse, the front of your linen robe wet with tears. At first her expression is expectant. It transforms to a disappointed glare. Eventually she slips her pen and small notebook into her uniform pocket as she walks away, leaving you once again feeling ashamed for reasons you cannot fathom.

(Ch 9)

Tambudzai is alienated from sisterhood throughout the novel. It makes her eye all the more merciless when someone like the student nurse plays the sisterhood card, transparently for her own ends. Here's institutional care in its full mythical aspect: a drug factory characterized by stupidity, insensitivity, blind pursuit of numbers and real indifference to individuals (Tambudzai has no "partner", by the way.) 

Meanwhile Tambudzai in the asylum receives no help or understanding. Couldn't we see this scene completely differently, as one of many clumsily well-meaning attempts to push ajar the door that Tambudzai herself has bolted on the inside?

*

This Mournable Body (2018) completes a trilogy of novels featuring Tambudzai as protagonist. It's set in Zimbabwe in the late 1990s to early 2000s.

The earlier novels are 

Nervous Conditions (1988) set in the 1960s (when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia)

The Book of Not (2006) set in the 1970s during the war of independence. 

There's plenty out there about Tsitsi Dangarembga and her books. Some of it is behind paywalls, but here's a few pieces I managed to read and found illuminating:

Helon Habila on The Book of Not in the Guardian (4 November 2006):

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/nov/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview20 .

Interview with Sacha Pfeiffer for NPR (22 September, 2022):

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/22/915749222/this-mournable-body-a-novel-about-life-in-independent-zimbabwe .

Interview with Alex Russell in the Financial Times (18 August 2023):

https://www.ft.com/content/944f8e24-84e2-4386-af0e-80c5e8d1e1ca .

Blake Morrison's introduction to This Mournable Body (and its predecessors) in the LRB (7 May 2020): 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n09/blake-morrison/you-and-non-you .

Sam Levy's Village, shopping mall off Borrowdale Road, Harare.

[Image source: https://www.tripadvisor.se/Attraction_Review-g293760-d7296987-Reviews-Sam_Levy_s_Village-Harare_Harare_Province.html .]

Tre trallande jäntor / Three carolling maidens

Tre trallande jäntor, painting by Åke Skoghäll.

[Image source: https://www.fyndgren.se/begagnat/vykort/vykort-ake-skoghall-tre-trallande-jantor . The only thing I could find out about Åke Skoghäll is that he taught art at Hagaskolen in Kumla (south of Örebro), approximately in the 1980s.]

Tre trallande jäntor 

Där gingo tre jäntor i solen
på vägen vid Lindane Le,
de svängde, de svepte med kjolen,
de trallade, alla de tre.

Och gingo i takt som soldater
och sedan så valsade de,
och "Udden är så later"
de trallade, alla de tre.

Men när som de kommo till kröken
av vägen vid Lindane Le,
de ropade alla: "Hör göken!"
sen skvätte och tystnade de.

Och tego så tyst som de döda
och rodnade, alla de tre.
Men varföre blevo de röda
och varföre tystnade de?

Jo!

Det stod tre studenter vid grinden,
och därför så tystnade de
och blevo så röda om kinden,
de trallande jäntorna tre.

Det stod tre studenter vid kröken
och flinade, alla de tre,
och härmde och skreko: "Hör göken!"
och alla så trallade de.

Poem by Gustaf Fröding (1860 - 1911), published in Nya dikter (1894) . 

Three carolling maidens

There walked three girls in the sunshine

On the way to Lindane Le,

They swung, they swept their skirts,

And they carolled all three.

And first they marched like soldiers

Then waltzing about went they,

And "Udden is so lazy!"

Thus they carolled all three.

But when they got to the turning

Of the road to Lindane Le

They all cried "Hear the cuckoo!"

Then suddenly quietened they.

And they stood still as the dead

And they blushed, all three.

But why did they turn so red

And why so quiet fell they?

Aha!

Three students stood at the gate

And hence so quiet fell they

And their cheeks became so red,

The carolling maidens three.

Three students stood at the turning

And they were grinning, all three,

And mockingly cried "Hear the cuckoo!"

And so they carolled all they.

The poem is supposed to have been based on a real event, as reported by Siri Fröding-Torgny in her 1953 book Min kusin Gustaf Fröding. She herself was one of the three girls, along with her cousins Ulla and Fina Warodell. They were on their way from Mangskog rectory to the local shop. The three students were Gustaf and Rudolf Warodell and Gustaf Fröding. 

Fröding, who grew up in Karlstad and Kristinehamn, was a regular visitor to rural Mangskog (north of Arvika, in inner Värmland). Some sources say he lived there for about a year in 1880-1881, when he was twenty. (https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tre_trallande_j%C3%A4ntor .) 

Gustaf Fröding is one of those writers who is basically only available to Swedish speakers. I didn't put a lot of effort into my English version, because, what's the point? How can you ever do justice to even such a commonplace line as "de trallade, alla de tre," where every syllable rhymes?

But if you want to read more Fröding in English, then I expect Charles Wharton Stork's 1916 selection is the place to go: 

https://archive.org/details/selectedpoems00storgoog/mode/2up .

Trallande. Singing happily e.g while walking along, typically with a few remembered words and lots of tra-la-la-ing.

Lindane Le. It isn't the "Linden Lea" of William Barnes (and Vaughan Williams' beautiful setting), though Charles Wharton Stork couldn't resist the happy coincidence. 

I think it's said to be an actual spot in Mangskog, perhaps where a fence-opening (SAOB led sb 3, see illustration!) leads to a lime-tree avenue (lindallé). But descriptions are a bit vague: if you happen to visit Mangskog yourself, post a photo online!  

https://varmlandsbygden.se/arvika/froding-blickade-mot-lindane-le/

https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC4KN9V

https://filer.hembygd.se/karlstads-hembygdsf-rening/uploads/files/2021/08/05/Bladet2000_2.pdf [PDF]

"Udden är så later" . The quote comes from a semi-nonsensical game-in-a-ring or children's chant. See the discussion in the comments here: https://tidenstecken.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/hagenbecks/ . It seems to mean "Udden is so lazy" (SAOB lat adj. 1). "Udden" normally means "the point", e.g a projecting piece of land, or the point of a knife, but here it seems to be someone's name, though I have never heard of any such name. 

skvätte. Dialect word. It means they got scared, had a fright. Discussed here: https://www.flashback.org/t752147p2 .

*

The catchy music everyone knows is by Felix Körling (1864 - 1937) who added the "Tralalalalala" choruses. 

The version in Sjung Svenska Folk! omits stanza 5. On the other hand, pop renderings by the Delta Rhythm Boys (1951) Sven Ingvars (1971) and the Hebbe Sisters (2022) omit stanza 2. 

Here's the version by Sven Ingvars:

Körling's tune became very popular and in 1909 it was heard by the Turkish educator Selim Sırrı Tarcan while studying physical education in Sweden. With new words by Ali Ulvi Elöve it became "Gençlik Marşı" (The March of the Youth), a patriotic song of the Atatürk era, as in the clip below:

Jean Sibelius also wrote music for Tre trallande jäntor in 1915 but it's lost; maybe he didn't think much of it. 

Alexander the Great

Alexander now turned his mind to the expedition to Egypt. Most of what is called Palestinian Syria had already come over to him, but there was resistance from a eunuch called Batis who governed the city of Gaza. He had brought in a force of Arab mercenaries and for some time had been stockpiling enough food to withstand a long siege.

Gaza stands a little over two miles from the sea. The approach to it is over deep sand, and the sea fronting it offers nothing but shallows. Gaza was a large city, built on a high mound with a strong surrounding wall, and it was the last centre of population at the edge of the desert on the route from Phoenicia to Egypt.

When Alexander came up to the city, he made camp that first day on the side where he judged the wall most vulnerable,  and ordered the construction of siege-engines. His engineers gave it as their opinion that the height of the base mound made a mechanical assault on the wall impracticable. Alexander took the view that this very impracticality made it all the more important to capture the place: success against the odds would have huge deterrent impact on his enemies, and his reputation would suffer if reports of failure reached the Greeks and Darius. So he decided to build a mound all round the city, piling it to a height which would enable the engines to be brought up level with the wall. Construction was concentrated at the south wall of the city, where there seemed the best prospect of a successful assault. When they judged that the mound had reached the appropriate height, the Macedonians positioned siege-engines on it and brought them to bear against the wall of Gaza.

As this began, Alexander made sacrifice. He had put on a garland and was just about to perform the ritual dedication of the first victim when a carrion bird flew over the altar holding a stone in its talons and dropped the stone on Alexander's head. He asked Aristander the seer what this omen signified. Aristander answered: 'Sir, you will take the city: but today you must look out for yourself.'

Thus warned, for a while Alexander kept back by the engines, out of range. But then there was a sally in force by the Arabs in the city, who were attempting to set light to the engines and, with constant fire from their superior position, while the Macedonians had to fight back from below, began driving them down the artificial mound. At this point Alexander either deliberately ignored the seer or forgot his warning in the heat of the emergency: at any rate he brought up the foot guards and went to the support of his men where they were under the greatest pressure. He did succeed in preventing the ignominy of a forced retreat down the mound, but was hit by a catapult-shot which went straight through his shield and breastplate into his shoulder. The realization that Aristander had been right about the wound encouraged him to think that, by the same token, he would go on to take the city. 

In fact Alexander's wound did not heal easily. But meanwhile the siege-engines used in the capture of Tyre arrived by sea (he had sent for them). He now ordered the construction of a ramp all the way round the city, four hundred yards deep and two hundred and fifty feet high. When the engines had been reassembled and brought up the ramp into action they demolished a large section of wall; at various other points tunnels were dug and the subsoil removed without detection, and this excavation caused subsidence and the collapse of the wall in several places; and the Macedonians kept up an overwhelming barrage of missiles over a wide front, driving back the defenders on the towers. Through all this, despite losing large numbers killed or wounded, the forces in the city held out against three successive attacks. But in the fourth assault Alexander brought up the Macedonian phalanx to ring the city on all sides, and broke down long stretches of the wall, some collapsed by undermining and others battered to pieces by his siege-engines: the result was to open a relatively easy route of attack by means of ladders placed over the rubble. So the ladders were brought up to the wall, and there was intense rivalry for first claim to its capture among the Macedonians who prided themselves on their courage. The first to scale the wall was Neoptolemus, one of the Companions and a member of the Aeacid family: following his lead brigade after brigade climbed up with their officers. Once some of the Macedonians had got inside the wall they split into groups and forced open every gate they came to, so giving access to the whole army. As for the Gazaeans, even though their city was now overrun by the enemy, they closed ranks and fought on: and they all died where they were, each man fighting at his post. Alexander sold their children and women into slavery, and repopulated the city from the surrounding area: it then served as a garrison town in his prosecution of the war.

(Arrian's Anabasis, II.25.4-27.7, translated by Martin Hammond.)

*

For the cities that Alexander's armies visited, the choice was simple: they could submit or resist. Submission was rewarded; resistance was punished. 

Shakespeare's Henry V spelled it out for the citizens of Harfleur:

The gates of mercy shall be all shut up, 
And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand, shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants.
What is it then to me if impious war,
Arrayed in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do with his smirched complexion all fell feats
Enlinked to waste and desolation?
What is ’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon th’ enragèd soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the Leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command,
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O’erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil, and villainy.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Desire the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters,
Your fathers taken by the silver beards
And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen.
What say you? Will you yield and this avoid
Or, guilty in defense, be thus destroyed?

(Henry V, Act III Scene 3)

Henry V is much preoccupied with "Alexander the pig" (as Fluellen calls him). In 1599 Shakespeare was deep in his Plutarch, where the parallel life to Julius Caesar's was Alexander's, and most of the ethical horrors of Alexander's career are exposed and debated here in fifteenth-century Normandy. Shakespeare's Henry, ruthless and fresh-faced and clumsy and winning, has a way of shifting responsibility for the consequences onto the shoulders of other people; something, I suppose, that every soldier needs. 

On the other hand Julius Caesar didn't use the excuse of being unable to control his army when he put the town of Gomphi into the hands of the soldiery (The Civil War, III.8). It was a calculated decision: Caesar wanted the other Thessalian towns to understand the consequences of resistance. 

*

Arrian's account of the siege of Gaza is the more terrible for its understatement. Unlike Curtius he doesn't tell us how many Gazans were massacred (10,000), and he doesn't even mention the story of the barbarous execution of Batis. 

Arrian's admiration for Alexander was not blind, but his emphasis was on compiling a sober history, drawn from eyewitness accounts. This much happened at least, we can say. 

Gaza had been preceded by Tyre, and even before leaving Greece Alexander had razed Thebes to the ground. There were many other atrocities to come; so many, that in Sogdiana and the country of the Mallians the sacked cities don't always have names. If a city's defenders had the temerity to keep the Macedonians waiting, or to wound their leader, the retribution was (as Dryden puts it) "the last extremities of war".