Read an excerpt of 'His Middle Name Was Not Jesus' from award-winning Zimbabwean writer

Granta just published a short story written by NoViolet Bulawayo, the author of the award-winning We Need New Names.

According to Granta, ‘His Middle Name Was Not Jesus’ is forthcoming in the Caine Prize for African Writing anthology, The Daily Assortment of Astonishing Things and Other Stories, published in July 2016.

Read an excerpt:

He was bringing them drinks – a Castle for him, a Zambezi for her – when he walked into it. Things had been fine when he left with their order, but now they had morphed into animals, all bared fangs, vicious, bloodthirsty. He didn’t know their language but understood it in their boiling voices, the heat on their faces, how they singed each other with their eyes.

He hesitated by the entrance, deciding what to do. Turn on his heel and go back? Wait for the storm to pass? Proceed to the table like nothing was happening? He caught the man’s eye and gave a relieved nod, looked to him for a sign.

The man continued speaking like spitting, without acknowledging him; he might as well not have been there. Hot blood roared in his head; if there was anything, a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g he hated most in the world, it was for someone to look right at him and still ignore him. And not just any someone, but a midget at that – the man was such a shrimp that even his wife could pee on him squatting.

He was standing like that, deciding what to do, when Francis, the manager, came down the hallway pushing a trolley, which left him no choice but to thrust himself quickly into the room. No need to give the man the opportunity to show he was manager, which he was always dying to do. He balanced the tray and moved with careful steps, the way you approach a rabid dog.

The woman looked at him like she had never seen him before. It stung. He had done things for her. The midget too. Just that morning he had rescued the woman from a terrible downpour by stopping for her in the jeep and driving her the rest of the way to her cottage; once there, he had escorted her to the door under an umbrella. And now this treatment? This treatment, really? Mnccc.

He opened and served the sweaty bottles without smiling, without trying to meet their eyes; if they were going to be like that then, fine, he could be like that too – his middle name was not Jesus and he did not have to be nice.

The thought gave him some satisfaction and he begun to hum, softly, but still loud enough for them to hear. He was encouraged now by the sudden drop in their voices; no doubt they didn’t expect him to behave as he was doing. They were probably even talking about him too, this he could tell from the shift in their voices. If someone is talking about you, you just know it, even if you don’t understand the language. It’s a feeling.

‘Tivuschutyzoberdustryongstiotchachadct,’ it sounded like the man said.

‘Vzhustubinzhuclar,’ the woman said, whatever it meant. He had, until that point, thought her an effortlessly gorgeous woman.

Whenever he saw her – at mealtimes, in the library where she liked to sit and read, at the veranda upstairs, or just roaming around the lodge, her beauty never failed to surprise him, as if he were encountering it for the first time. He revelled in it, like it was meant for him alone. It was this beauty that motivated him to go out of his way with his niceness, to do things for her.

Come to think of it, though, she wasn’t even that beautiful. No. Not with those perpetually startled eyes, not with that long forehead. Besides, she had no ass. And the midget – the midget was not even worth talking about.

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