HoneyCrisp 8. Pazazz

Taiwanese English

Many people were dying as the train was crushing.

8. Pazazz

“My name is Keisha. I am an interior designer, home décor, home furnishing advisor, critic and practitioner. Soft furnishings, colours, home looks and fabrics are my forte. The way you paint your interior or display pictorial or visual art is where I come in. That is where my bread is buttered. I am coming from Kay4 Fabrics & Interior Décor. We are specialists in home décor and interior furnishings.”

That had been her introduction. It was like a receptionist answering a telephone call. Precise and to the point. In the first few lines of conversation is when one made a sale or they didn't. It was the first few words that made the other person befriend, hate or remember you. First and early impressions counted in business.

“Is that so? Then let me out. I am not a human being. I don’t survive when there is daylight. I was on a cruise ship from another galaxy. I somehow got separated from my extra-terrestrial mates. I don’t do decorum. I last saw those colours you mentioned 600-earth years ago in an inter-galactic orbit between the seven moons and the deep black hole that consumes asteroids and comets. I also watch those beautiful sunsets over a valley with the sun going into its sheath. The colours are thrown as if from a pit. They paint the whole sky in octaves of different designs.”

“Too late chum, it’s pretty hot out there. You could be saturated by the sun and start melting on the pavement. I don’t want green eyed extra-terrestrials looking like a cross being a goblin and a talisman whimpering about you to me. You may as well stay in the confines of some rooms with a fan in this heat.”

"K4? Four K names? Does that include Kembo Chunga and Kenneth Kaunda?"

"Keisha, Keandra, Kayla & Katherine. Four siblings."

"Sisters, who needs them? I am out of here. K would easily have been a National Geographic program. The voice over would be saying, ‘Karoline the male lion from Luangwa valley surveys the dead carcass of a wildebeest taken down by a pack of wild dogs as big as a domestic doggie.’”

"K is me. Us. You do have a good sense of humour, don’t you?"

"With me it's a brotherhood of four males and two sisters only, at the extreme end of the family sibling tree. The male lion and its female tigress gave birth to us in less than fifteen years apiece. We have entirely different alphabets. I am the only Z for Philip. We want no adoptions or transfer ins of any type into our closely knit family of siblings. That excludes spouses as well. The last time a certain family invited spouses in, when the divorce of one went through she took custody of her father in-law. It had to be a court battle to extricate him from her clutches I tell you. Believe me, I always tell the truth I see in dreams. When we sit down to a mother made meal, we are enough on the dining room table, and spouses are not represented neither are they included/invited to the marriage supper of the wolf."

She had come to a fourth floor flat near Montagu Heights. Walking up had taken her breath out. The joints in her knees were breathing like hot chilli. Why did the force of gravity oppose those going upstairs? She wished zero gravity could start the moment a person entered a flight of stairs, whoosh right to the top in a minute of two faster than a cable car going up a Swiss mountain. It was another block of flats she knew well within the Avenues area. She admitted, the fresh blow of the wind was a pleasure to experience. On the other side were balconies. On these in no apparent format satellite dishes adorned the walls like a team of swallows taking river frontage to build their nests. They appeared on one side of the block near the balconies hanging precariously like the nests of swallows or bee-eaters up in different trees to keep predators at bay.

Without these satellite dish contraptions and their attendant decoders of different makes, DSTv, Wiztech, Philibao and others, families relied on video/disc players for entertainment. With an interior aerial, could only tune in to the single state run television service and its four radio stations. The socialists filled it with propaganda, jingles and reminders of a war fought so many years past. Here it was worse. Either programs were repeated or it was the ruling party policy that ruled the roost. News started with the state president. His jokes were repeated until they were sore. His comments were normally stinging ones against detractors, the opposition, the white minority mostly the commercial farmers and business class and the British establishment. Those opposing views were loudly silent, conspicuously absent. A modern convenience of the television was taking over social life.

She had frequented these flat blocks in the past. She had been in high school then. Like most teens, she had different colours, creeds and makes of school friends. At that age it was so easy to make friends mixing colours like a rainbow. When they had become adults, race, creed and religion ruled the roost creating more cohesion than adhesion. Most had moved on with the tide of life. How sweet the youth years appeared when someone was fast making a decade out of the teen years. Did innocence end when teen years ended? Had they grown mature?

A few had flower boxes on their graves. That is why people said life was a bi**h. Many times she had visited these flats on business, in the latter days. It was sad to note that newer and more modern block of flats had failed to materialize. Demand had outstripped supply. The rents had shot up instead. The socialist experiments had failed to bring home the bacon. Maybe socialism here said kill the cow and feed only the politician and his immediate family not the masses like in Siberia. The old ones were changing hands with few alterations. She was wearing a black button up dress cut at the neck in two right angles. She had formal soft tie up heeled brown leather ladies' shoes.

“I am called Philip or Phil for short. I am not Phil Collins. I am single, courteous, handsome, benevolent, obedient, smart and intelligent. I am obedient and very benevolent when there is a court order issued against me. I am a loyal citizen of the state especially when they send three police officers to make me comply with an order. I don’t do public drinking. I take my beer, move a metre or two away from another group, form a new group and we drink watching for the police and municipal agents! I don’t know then why I run away from uniformed police officers when I am holding my beer. Maybe they may confiscate it as evidence of beer vat disease or something.”

“Philip Morris tobacco company USA? I didn’t know they were represented in the home territory by you. That could do seeing that we are one of the biggest producers of Virginia and Barley tobacco whether flue cured or whatever as long as it is exported and grown in the interior is all I know.”

“I wish I was. I would have free smokes of quality imported tobacco and billions of dollars’ worth of shares. I wouldn’t be living in Zimbabwe then. I would have a cool room full of wines, whiskies, vodkas, Johnny Walkers, Jack Daniels, and Bols Brandies to name but a few good alcoholic beverages. Alcoholic beverages of lesser alcohol content would be piped in, paid monthly through pre-paid meters. I would host swimming pool parties every forty-eight hours. I would charm the politicians with my innuendos especially when dead drunk.”

Philip had heeded her door bell. He was a short and sturdy charming man full of humour. He looked agile like a rugby player who was good at tackling the opposition. He had the frame expected in continental wrestling on Fiji, Tonga island rugby sevens. She stood about twenty centimetres higher than him even though the floor was raised higher than the passage she was in. He was like a thicket in a pedestrian way. She wondered if all his siblings carried the same genes as he did. Impenetrable.

Philip extended his left hand. He was holding a dish towel in the right. He had been making good use of it. He had been using the slightly wet dish towel against cockroaches and flying insects including spider’s webs. How had the creatures climbed to the fourth floor them being less than three centimetres in length? The towel should aptly have been called flying insect or spider swat not a dish towel.

He had invited her into the two bedroom apartment. The views from the lounge were fantastic. The small balcony was cordoned off by burglar screens. Only Spiderman could squeeze through by altering his skeleton and flesh. In her view the colours adorning the wrought iron work were a mismatch. It was rushed brown and what looked like black. The paint job was as if it had been done at night, by candle light, with a blind man as the painter, a deaf and dumb man shouting instructions. There must have been more beer to consume than paint. In that case the painter was well sighted. His thinking mechanisms had been interrupted by alcohol in his brain system.

“Philip, your landlord contacted me saying I should look the flat up and do some interior décor quote,” she said.

“That was me. I phoned you yesterday after recommendations I received at a party in Sunridge, Mabelreign from a female relative of mine whose cottage you renovated. She now rents it out to three college students. I had a heavy cold day before yesterday. My rasp has cleared, thanks to Benylin® cough syrup. Otherwise you would have stood two metres from you. Behind the scenes with the medication went about three lemons, four Crystal® sweets, a bit of ginger and other concoctions. They failed to bring the dead to life. However, I not only retrieved my voice from wherever it had been stored. I am not healthy, without a need for constant communication with my handkerchief neither am I sneezing like a witch doctor receiving orders from the spirit world.”

“Sorry,” she felt very embarrassed. “You refused to be a tenant. I would have read you a few basic rules. That wasn’t the name you used.”

“I used my middle name. I just bought the unit. I want it to look fresh and fun. It is not a bedsitter you would expect a bachelor boy to spend his free days and time in. I want it to look spectacular, presentable, a home away from the work jitters.”

“Alright Philip here we are, here goes. You want something done to your pad. The way I see it, it has potential. Decorators like estate agents seek out the charming from what others may think is drab and boring,” she had replied. "I have watched videos of old style houses in the western world that were not selling. A developer comes in, checks them up and down. A year later that oldie is converted to a charming residence with all the historic issues intact. It sells for a piece of cake in profits. That is a vision decorators like me want to share with owners of houses we deal with. Flats are limited in that you can't punch holes in the wall and do changes."

“I am pleased to be of acquaintance. I cannot decipher the difference between wall paper, interior paint and interior décor. The last wallpaper I remember was my grandmother’s kitchen in the sticks out there. It was periodically treated with wet cow mixed well like cement based mortar. The dung was used to plaster the walls. The whole round hut was then made of logs which you call deforestation today. Then we cleared the way for grass and shrubs to grow. It was eco-friendly then. Rats, mice, lizards, creepy crawlies could make their home in holes within the patchwork of logs and dagga without cement. Even snakes were caught indoors. Nowadays you use paving and cement, it is so rough lizards and snakes keep away. Eagles even came close to home to pick off excess chicks. Now you have fenced in fowl runs. We eagles, skunks and other predators can’t come in.

"To think the old folks would move from one kitchen hut to another gazing at the floor and walls to find out whose grandmother had the best interior décor! I think we are wiser, oil paint can be wiped cleaner than a dung coated wall. The smells are entirely different too. I think in the old gone by days, we were making the dung beetle go extinct. I remember those were the days of the two strip tar. Don't tell me the difference between red, ox blood, magenta, yellow and orange. I know for one there is no fruit called a yellow. In other words I am not interior fashion conscious. Gone are the days in school when I would paint a blank board with red water paint then follow with black to change and create colours. You can call me interior or soft furnishings, blind. When we grew up there were about six or seven primary colours centred on white, red and yellow.”

Fact.

"At least you can see when an interior is well made despite the colours you may not distinguish. What moves your sense of sight sense or appreciation as you enter a home is where I come in. I want the first impression to be wow. Even if you talk of the log hut, look at the changes to a first view, brick under thatch, cement floor with tiles, oil paint and the kitchen looks walla."

"I subscribe to SA's Home & Garden magazine beside Cars and Golfing Weekly. I normally see some good make overs of interiors. When I pay people a visit, there is a stark contrast with my own hiding hole. That has been shaming me. That's how I know about interiors, furnishings and decorative arts. I then know I am very far behind the craze. It is like living in an ancient world. If I visit Meikles, Greatersmans and Bradlows, I see wonderful home ideas."

"Home ideas never end. To me home ideas are like the culinary arts where cooks are doing things in their kitchens to entice our palates. We are like painters who come up with fresh ideas every day. Even a bedroom can have a makeover. You can learn. You can be taught how to set out your bedding so it appears welcoming. Just look at home beddings in hotels are made to make the visitors appreciate design and colour arrangements."

“I understand. It is indeed a profession. Some have it just like a sense of smell."

"I learnt the craft. It works well with dedication and love to the job."

"Me, my nose is in the hot sand. I am breathing fire. It is way better than an African furnace made of mud heated with the likes of Mopani wood. I can’t re-arrange furniture to suit soft furnishings. I try to be tidy at least. At least I think I am better than a hippopotamus. A hippopotamus eats away at all the green décor in the river and the banks too. I should have been a Bedouin trader living in my smug moving tent worried about my cherished sword and jewel collection more than the colour of the seatee!”

“It happens, most of the times. That is why we are professionals in one thing seeking services from other professionals in others. Medical practitioners need architects to do their houses. Builders seek nurses when they have a persistent cough. It is a cycle that goes on.”

In earlier days she had had friends whose parents rented/owned these residences. She didn’t fancy living three flights of steps from the ground without an elevator. Then who wanted an elevator when there was load shedding? Most of the blocks which had elevators had seen these monstrosities fall into disuse. Most did not work, the elevators that is. Someone had forgotten to modernize and maintain them while the population had exploded more than previously desired. Those that did work were antiques on road show if you tried using them. Some jerked to a stop in a manner like an unborn baby planning to come out at the wrong place and time. At least the staircases had been constructed to British standards. They still worked long after best use by date. Some elevators had retired, shut up in their elevator shafts.

Try getting stuck in the lift when the electricity had been switched off. How did they do when the water had no pressure seeing that the economy and every municipal service was in retreat mode? Garbage could pile up until collection day had been rescheduled. How did they survive when there was a power outage since power outages were now part of the economic syllabus. When antiquated electrical equipment inherited from retreating Rhodesians blew up in the heat of overloads, how did these people survive?

The drone of generators was the national anthem. Their silence was eerie to behold. It smacked of suspicion. It was like a riot or violent demonstration that had no police presence. Something fishy would be on the offering plate. When several generators were in the same area like medium or high density, their different whines, hisses, coughing, hiccupping and drones were like mismatched choir practice. Even those who believed in ancestral spirits séances, could have these spirits rushing back to the spirit world for cover against the noise, choking smoke/smog. Want to exorcise ghosts/spirits, don’t quote the author?

Send them to socialist run third world countries! At times, the national power system did soliloquies in an area. The power would switch on/off alternating like solo musicians leading an orchestra. Or better still, like indicator lights of a vehicle. The very next neighbour would be shaded off. Their next one would have power. The on/off sequence was like signal lights of drug traffickers meeting in the middle of the night. The whiff of fire smoke during power outages in the suburbs added to the smell of city life.

What happened when there were power blackouts as was now standard especially in the evening considering that the steps had dark patches during the day? Blackouts of entire areas gave scientists much space to study the stars on a clear sky. It increased the sales of rubbing ointment to reduce swelling. Maybe the biggest telescopes in the world should be moved to socialist run economies where lights were switched off during blackout. They could study the stars without any interference.

“Would you want to rent it out as a source of passive income?” she had inquired. "I am informed the demand for accommodation though on the expensive side is great. It's access to the best medical facilities, security, privacy, schools, colleges, shops and the city centre a bullet's range away that drives tenants here."

A guarded premise block meant vendors and political malcontents were taken care of before they started door to door home visits. In a guarded premises, an ordinary thief was kept at bay. Those that had perfected their art of thievery still made attempts. Foreigners preferred renting out the whole house or flat before mixing with the locals. It made sense. They kept their privacy, language, customs and original DNA settings.

“Nope I have been staying in the background in a semidetached house in Arcadia. I felt the challenge of the flat. I need match my compatriots in both housing and driving modes. I have taken the flak too much. I do not need worry about lawns, shrubs, the bird bath and other necessities. The semidetached I had is being invaded by change of use. It pays good rent to allocate it to a tenant offering services. I have had enough of waking up to find there has been a burglary or the wind has dropped a tree right at the door. Flats are secure in a sense of shared responsibilities. I do not have to sweep the yard especially in wet and windy seasons.”

“Okay, two bedrooms with one bathroom. This was standard in the Rhodesian days. Nowadays two bedroom flats are coming with an ensuite toilet and shower or bathroom with the other bedroom and visitors sharing a toilet and bath/shower room. For fresh air the balconies extend to one of the bedrooms, the main one with a partition.”

“I do not want the bathroom waste water pipes to be seen. Maybe I will invite a carpenter to hide them conveniently.”

“You can trust me on those details. They can be tucked away either through vanished wood or plastic tubing. In your lounge, do you want the florescent light dangling like it has recently missed the gallows? It is swinging like a merry go round pushed by visually impaired growth deficient children,” she said. “The fluorescent fittings look like Al Capone on death row. One is blinking like distant thunder. Listen to the sound of the misfiring ballast. Owls will come in searching for rodents. You would think it's an Israeli anti-aircraft computerized fire weapon system setting itself against the Egyptian air force MiG 25s."

"You should have been an orator! You do have powerful humorous sentiments. We could make a team. Why don’t you write lines for me?"

"I have an "A" each in English, Shona and Art at advanced level. The university college had offered me a bachelor of arts in African languages, minors in English and Art. I would have been teaching high school. Teaching is part of doing community service with nil benefits. You retire on a pension that can't buy a second hand vehicle that is less than five years old. You watch your ex-class mates taking yearly holidays to the falls like practitioners of black arts."

"Though I did journalism at Harare Polytechnic I normally work as a comedian, director of ceremonies or radio presenter these days. I thought the lounge required hidden lights that are reflected by the white of the ceiling.”

“The fluorescent lights look like they are primed to explode when visitors are in, just for the joy of embarrassing someone. Hidden lights will do well. The ceiling could do with a new coat of paint before the electrical are looked at. These days we are going for incandescent bulbs. Bulbs that are rate 20-watts give the same light as a standard 100-watt bulb. They don't heat up their environment. They save on electricity bills. With a solar system or a battery and inventor, when there is a power outage, they do not use much power. Maybe three incandescent bulbs that do not glare much but give good lighting would do well."

"I do read a lot. Incandescent lights do not give off heat I agree. The only problem is getting genuine incandescent bulbs within the mixture of imports from cheap Asian products. The fake ones expire within three weeks. When they expire they make the household know they are going. At times you hear an explosion. You suppose black and white/gray cats are shooting each other. Then there is a smell. Not of cordite, something else better than sewer in the high density suburbs. The old type make you sweat. They should be reserved for the winter chills.”

© Copyright tmagorimbo July 2017