stares into space, looking down periodically to jot something in a ring binder notebook. A man with a backpack on the table listens to his iPod. Farai’s attention remains intensely focused on the old man.
At last the old man breaks.
‘Miserable weather we’re having, don’t you think?’ the old man remarks in a thin voice.
Farai shrugs. He could have given a few stock responses; it’s not as if he doesn’t know the ritual exchanges about the weather.
‘When you reach a certain age,’ the old man sips his tea and continues, ‘and you have a bit of arthritis in the joints, and you wake up in the middle of the night, 10 maybe 20 times just to spend a penny, then yes, the rain can make you a little miserable.’
‘I think you should stop drinking so much tea. It’s a diuretic. The upside is the anti-oxidants will get rid of those pesky free radicals, which are eating you up as we speak. But, no, honestly, I don’t have to worry about old age. There’s a short life expectancy where I’m from.’
‘Then I feel sorry for you. There’s nothing better than hearing the sound of your grandchildren playing in the garden. What’s your name by the way?’
‘Rumplestilskin,’ Farai says, and the old man laughs. They are two strangers and meet here every Monday morning, following the same ritual, staring each other down until one of them speaks. Last winter, they had an epic encounter lasting 2 hours. Finally it was Farai who broke. It’s a pointless exercise, but 1 they enjoy. And they still don’t know each other’s names.
Farai takes a sip of his coffee, which tastes like tar and is therefore exquisite. He sighs and feels sleepy.
‘Are you teaching today?’
‘The uni uses its postgrads like slave labor. The first-years are spoilt, clueless little twats. How on earth did they pass their Highers if they haven’t mastered basic stats? And so, I wind up with them, on zero pay.’
‘In my day you just went to work and made your way up the ranks. Today, graduates who don’t know anything are given all the top jobs. Nothing beats experience, if you ask me.’
Farai begins to enjoy himself. They are moaning now. Moaning is an essential ritual here, and a learnt art. One must find at least half a dozen things to complain about before breakfast.
He takes in the view of the castle and the rooftops over the Grassmarket through the smudged windows of the café. 2 blonde girls wearing identical pink jumpers walk in, giggling. Their loud voices pierce the tranquillity of the room. The statues of the elephants that line the café, in the corners and on the banisters, give them frozen, reproving stares. The younger of the 2 fidgets as if she’s on a sugar rush.
‘I once saw Alexander McCall Smith here.’ Her voice carries across the room.
‘Isn’t that him over there?’ Blondie2 speaks in a staged whisper.
The pale writer in the corner puts down her pad and looks at Farai and his companion. There’s a sly smile on the old man’s face. He seems amused at being mistaken for a celebrity, even more so when everyone in the room is stealing glances their way. Farai scowls at the blondes whose conversation stops. He leans forward.
‘Are you some type of pervert, picking up young girls under the pretense of being someone you are not?’ he asks. That’d make sense in a café in which the male toilets are full of graffiti from Harry Potter fans expressing their love for the author.
‘What’s it to you if I am?’
‘Aren’t you giving them a raw deal? No offense, but old folks all look the same, and if they’re gonna roll with an old guy then they’ll want the genuine article.’
‘In our heads, we’re all celebrities.’
‘The way I see it–’
‘Have you ever read his novels?’
‘I’m a serious man. I don’t read novels. They’re a waste of time. The last one I tried was Don Quixote, which was forced on me in my lit class in high school. I didn’t even bother; I just bought the video and even that was boring. I thought, sod this for a game of marbles. In the end, I dropped the subject. Give me numbers, $, £, symbols.’
The old man rises up slowly, deliberately adjusts his tweed jacket, allowing everyone in the room to take a nice long look at him. He places a £2 coin on the table, which Farai pockets.
‘Oh, you are a rascal. See you same time next week,’ he says as he leaves.
Farai watches a woman near the counter ask if she may have a photograph taken with his erstwhile companion and grins as the old man obliges. He picks up the Telegraph, scans the familiar diet of war stories, crime and scandals. He notices an article in the sports pages passionately advocating an international boycott of Zimbabwean cricket. Farai considers making a scene and accusing the waitron of watering down his espresso, but decides he doesn’t have the energy, and so takes out his wallet and retrieves a £5 note that he leaves under the mug. He winks at the waitron as he makes his way out to class.
The Magistrate
The bin men came on Tuesday mornings. The Magistrate was at the back of the house, forcing an extra black bag into the wheelie bin. He pushed with all his might, but the damn thing kept popping back up – to think that a household of three could generate so much waste. The bags were full of wrapping, plastic bags, containers, food. Everything was disposable. He wheeled the bin to the front and went back inside. There was so much to do. No sooner had he cleaned the house than it needed cleaning again.
He went for his daily walk around Arthur’s Seat. When he returned it was time to work. He started on the glass coffee table in the living room stained by cup marks. Then he picked up the junk lying on the carpet, the cups hidden at the foot of the sofa, the random socks – never a pair. Where did it all come from? He’d have gladly traded anything for a maid a few hours each day.
The news played in the background. A twenty-four hour depressing feed of the world’s ills. The Magistrate flicked from Sky, to the BBC, to ITV and the American channels, only to find they were all talking about the same thing – spectacular night vision footage, an eerie green, targets lit up in one Middle Eastern country or another. The reporters stressed that all efforts were being made to minimize collateral damage. The Western troops looked heroic, larger than life, liberators, not conquerors. The footage was a hypnotic stream of live action, dazzling explosions, dramatic commentary. But it wasn’t what the Magistrate wanted to see. He waited for the story to change, hoping there might be a piece about Zimbabwe, but the country never featured when there was real news. It seemed to him that Zimbabwe was a filler used when something about dystopian Africa was needed for comic relief. Still, he needed to keep abreast of what was happening back home. He longed for a sudden change so men like him might be called upon once more to rebuild the country. He kept this hope alive in his heart, a warm ember cocooned by despair, weighed down with each report that things were in fact getting worse. His country ticked all the boxes for a sensational African story: add one dictator, a dash of starving kids, a dollop of disease, sprinkle a little corruption, stir in a pot of random, incomprehensible violence, and voilà, the stereotypical African dish – all served out daily for the Western reporter, speaking in a low conspiratorial voice in front of the cameras, hoping to make a name for himself, a white saviour in Africa.
He kept his music collection near the TV, a tower of jazz CDs: Miles Davis,
