^{Andrew Dakalira}

It was eerily quiet, as would be expected in a room with more dead people than the living. The mortuary seemed rather small for the entire district hospital; just ten little drawers to keep the dead, three sinks and two steel tables in the middle of the room. Four others stood with me, none of whom spoke. The atmosphere was chilly, but I knew that my shivers were caused by something entirely different.

Maziko lay on the cold metal table in front of me, clean-shaven and well-dressed. I knew I had to help the others get him in the elegant coffin that was in contrast with the dull grey setting, but I knew I couldn’t; he was so lifelike. His smooth, brown face had a hint of a smile on it, almost as if he were glad he had left me. A little proof of my melancholy dripped from my eye and onto his navy blue slim-fit suit. I quickly thumbed it dry.

“We could do it now, you know,” Wilson whispered to me. “Before we get back to the village. There aren’t that many people here.”

“No, we can’t,” I hissed back. “You aren’t the one driving us back to the village. Stick to the original plan.”

The three-ton lorry laboured along the potholed road to Maziko’s parents’ compound, dodging a few boulders and oversized tree branches. I sat in the back with a few men, buttocks perched on the dropside body’s edges. The women who were with us sat on the floor of the truck bed, singing hymns. Behind us, Wilson’s little pickup followed.

I ignored Wilson and the people he was carrying. I paid no attention to the religious women, who sang heartily despite the fact that Maziko had not set foot inside their church, or any other church, in over eight years. I did not attempt to join in while the men chatted along excitedly, pausing to firmly grab the lorry’s sides every time it hit a bump. Instead, I looked at the coffin in front of me, my eyes boring past the varnished wood and gold-plated handles.

Maziko and I had known each other since the first day of college and had been inseparable ever since. He had died in his mid-thirties, but he had always had a face that looked hardly over twenty. Maziko had a natural magnetism that had everyone eating out of his well-contoured hands. I fell in love with him the first moment we spoke.

Of the four houses within his parents’ compound, Maziko’s was the biggest. The most successful of three siblings, he told me his parents had insisted that every child build a house in the village. In case you die, and your bourgeois friends from town think you never cared about your village when they come to bury you, they said. As we drove past the reed perimeter fence and into the compound, I remembered how Maziko had laughed when telling me that story. “They really mean well,” he said. “But, as is the case with many a parent, they had a ready-made plan of how my life was to turn out, without me having a say in it.”

The first time Maziko had kissed me, it had been unexpected. He had planted his full, dark lips on mine for what seemed like an eternity, then drew back just as quickly as he had come. I stood there stone-faced, unsure of what had just happened. The boyish grin had made me think he was testing me. Turns out he was. “I had to make sure,” he said. “I just had to.”

“I said grab the corner, iwe munthu!”

That little jolt did the trick. I grabbed the little golden handle and helped ease my departed lover from the lorry. He felt heavier than usual, in that varnished piece of hardwood. I took a close look around the compound, filled with people who had probably never seen Maziko alive. The wails were familiar enough. Whether they had sincerity in them was debatable, at least to me.

The sound of Wilson’s voice nearly made me jump. “This is going to be more difficult than we thought,” he said. I knew he was right, but tried not to show it. “Just tell the guys to be ready,” I replied. “I must meet the chief.”

The chief was in a gloomy little room, which was in sharp contrast to the jokes and off-key singing I had left outside. The five men and women sitting on worn-out dining chairs spoke softly, almost as if they were afraid that the mfumu would admonish them if they went a decibel higher. The man himself, clad in a three-piece suit, scowled as I greeted his nduna and then knelt on the cement floor in front of him.

“You wish to speak to me, young man?”

“Yes, mfumu,” I replied, surprised by the friendly tone in his voice. “It’s about Maziko.”

“Well, tell me what it is. We have a funeral ceremony to attend to.” Just as he spoke, three women in black wrappers shuffled into the room, carrying plastic basins. In one of them, I could see a mountain of nsima that could have fed our entire hostel back when I was in college. In the other basins, I could tell that at least three chickens had accompanied Maziko on his journey. Oily cabbages glistened in the slightly-darkened room, and the extra dish of beans was heavily garnished by tomatoes and onions. The chief looked at the spectacle rather happily, then turned his attention back to me.

“I hate repeating myself, munthu. Say your piece, or leave this room and let us eat.”

I hesitated. I was quite sure that the chief’s monumental frame could crumple me into a football and throw me in Maziko’s coffin. If he didn’t, he most certainly could order his nduna to do it.

“Mfumu, Maziko talked about his death at great lengths before he died. One particular request of his, and he was quite insistent, was that he be cremated.”

The chief did not seem to comprehend, even though a few of his nduna obviously had, judging by the murmurs.

“Cremated?”

“He means he wanted his body to be burnt, my chief” one of the ndunas spoke. “Like the amwenye from India.”

“Yes, mfumu,” I said. “That was his wish.”

The chief shifted forward. My heart – and my genitals – shrank further into my body.

“Young man, unlike you people from town with your modern ideas, we still take the death of a loved one seriously. And now, during our time of grief, you come to me with such foolishness?”

Words formed in my brain. My mouth refused to utter them.

“Listen here,” the chief continued. “We are grateful to you for bringing our son back. You have provided transport, and some of the food. You will not, however, dictate to us on how to take care of our dead. If I hear any more of this heathen talk from you or any of your friends, I will have the boys chase you and the rest of your townsfolk from this village. Are we clear?”

With that, the chief turned his face away from mine in form of a dismissal and held out his hands. A little washing bowl was immediately brought before him.

I had pleaded with Maziko. As I walked outside to join the rest of the mourners, I remembered how I had tried show him the futility of his insistence. But Maziko had only rolled onto his side, facing me on the bed. He had the familiar mixture of intelligence and mischief in his eyes, something I always seemed to catch.

“I don’t care what people think. This is what I want. You know what that lake means to me. I always feel calm there; peaceful. That is what I want for eternity. For my ashes to be one with the deep, blue waters, while my soul shines from above.”

I knew exactly what he was talking about. The lake had been a great source of inspiration for him. The water had a calming effect; you could see that every time Maziko came out of the lake. His eyes burned with a renewed passion, and even his movement was that of a man revitalized. At times, he would sit on the beach in the morning, drink his seven-day old thobwa and write all day.

“I do not want anything else,” Maziko had said. “My family can do all the rituals they want. Hell, they can hold a ceremony in a church if they want to, even though God and I aren’t exactly on good terms right now. All I want is to be where I know I belong; my charred remains scattered all over my first love.” His attempt at humour did nothing to lighten the mood.

They were bringing him out, about to start the ceremony. I only became aware of the wet blurriness in my eyes when I turned from the coffin to look at Wilson. He was looking at the men who were carrying Maziko from the house and onto the open ground of the compound. I was glad; the men were ours.

I have to admit, it was a wonderful ceremony. The preaching was short but touching, seasoned with a few jokes that even Maziko himself would have laughed to. The family representative and the chief both kept their eulogies to a minimum. Even a party representative, and it is still a wonder as to why he was allowed to speak at all, talked only of the village losing a bright young man. There were no lies about how Maziko, who abhorred politics, was important to their party.

He hadn’t complained at all when he was ill. He knew he was going to die, but in the three months between his diagnosis and subsequent death, Maziko was still the jovial being I adored. I even laughed when he explained to my little niece what was wrong with him. Uncle loved to drink a lot of beer, he said. One day, a tiny tortoise swam in the beer uncle was drinking and plopped into his belly. While there, the tortoise had loved the taste of uncle’s liver and had started eating it. But now, the tortoise was full and wanted to get out.

“Is the tortoise going to die?” My niece had asked, nervous.

“No, of course not,” Maziko said, smiling. “They will take him out and keep him at the zoo. No more liver for him, unfortunately.” My little niece had smiled, and so had Maziko, but as he looked at me, we both knew the truth. The tortoise would never come out. He would die, full of liver, and Maziko would die with him.

Maziko had talked a lot on the day he died. The doctors said he was most likely in great pain, but he did not show it. He spoke of his childhood, our days in college, when we first moved in together and the fun times we had. He even talked at great length about his parents, a subject he mostly avoided. Then, just as the sun was beginning to set, he had smiled at me and his eyes had mesmerized me one last time.

“Respect my wishes.”

Then his voice was taken from me, and his eyes forever shut.

A quick nudge in my ribs. Wilson. Reality struck in the form of the Master of Ceremony bellowing out orders as to how we were to proceed to the cemetery. Wilson’s car was to lead, and since it would be impractical to use the lorry due to the graveyard’s narrow, tree-lined road, the rest of us would go on foot.

The boys were ready. All of us helped get the coffin into the pickup. A solidarity gesture from his friends from town, the understanding faces of the mourners said. So when Wilson gunned the engine and sped out of the compound and towards town, it took over a minute for the crowd to realize what was happening.

Nobody spoke as we headed back to town and the crematorium. I tried not to think of Maziko’s mother, and the heartbreak of not being able to bury her son. I tried not to think of the larger consequences of our actions, or the fact that the lorry we had left behind was probably following us. All I could think of was the man who had become my rock, my life, my husband, the centre of my entire being, and the last words he had said to me.

“Respect my wishes.”

Andrew C. Dakalira has been published on platforms such as Brittle Paper and The Kalahari Review. He also appears on two volumes of AfroSF, a collection of Science Fiction works. Shortlisted for the 2017 Writivism Prize for Short Fiction, he lives in Lilongwe, Malawi.