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 .]