Do not take me at all. I don’t want to be in your stupid wedding,’ I wanted to shout. Instead I said quietly and politely, “Very well, Babamukuru. That will make things much easier for everybody.’ . There was definitely something wrong with me, otherwise I would have had something to say for myself. I knew I had not taken a stand on many issues since coming to the mission, but all along I had been thinking that it was because there had been no reason to, that when the time came I would be able to do it.

Nyasha talked to me. She tried hard to coax me out of bed, but I was slipping further and further away from her, until in the end I appeared to have slipped out of my body and was standing sothewhere near the foot of the bed, watching her efforts to persuade me to get up and myself ignoring her. I observed with interest and wondered what would happen next. It was quite exciting. Maiguru came in and mentioned Babamukuru. That was a bit of a shock and I nearly did get up, but in the end decided to stay at the foot of the bed and watch more of this extraordinary drama. The next thing that happened was that Babamukuru walked into the room, without knocking and looking dangerously annoyed. The body on the bed didn’t even twitch. Meanwhile the mobile, alert me, the one at the foot of the bed, smiled smugly, thinking that I had gone somewhere where he could not reach me, and I congratujated myself for being so clever.

But I did not sneer at you,’ I protested, speaking in Shona. Our conversation was laboured and clumsy because when Nyasha spoke seriously her thoughts came in English, whereas with me, the little English I had disappeared when I dropped my vigilance to speak of things that mattered.

What are you doing, Nyasha?’ Babamukuru asked, withoutlooking at her, so that one wondered how he had noticed. ‘I thought you had finished with the rice,’ Nyasha replied, ladling meat and gravy on to her rice. ‘What about your mother, here?’ Babamukuru asked conver- sationally. ‘Do you think she doesn’t know what she’s doing, waiting on me like this?’ ‘I don’t like cold food,’ Nyasha pointed out, as willing as her father to engage in dialogue.