DAMBUDZO KNEW THAT DEATH was coming. In 1986, the surgery and haemorrhaging. In 1987, pneumonia and a diagnosis. He was in constant conversation with ‘Bastard Death’, as he called him. But there seemed no reprieve. His strength to withstand was waning.

Darkness a Bird of Prey

We did not talk much after I knew his diagnosis, not about what was on his mind nor about what was on mine. I could not and would not believe that he was dying because would that not mean that I would follow, not now but maybe in a year, or two, or whenever? I was not able to tell him that the Bastard was hovering over my life too, and that of my husband. That my children might become orphans. The thought was too horrifying to be uttered.

He never asked the question: What about you? And Victor? The children? I never asked him if he knew that he had AIDS. He only mentioned that they had found ‘some kind of virus’.

Our conversations clung to daily necessities.

His knees ached, he told me; could I get him another prescription for the pills to relieve the pain?

After Dambudzo was discharged from hospital Victor and I gathered some friends inside and outside Zimbabwe to contribute to a fund from which he received monthly payments to buy food. Then, to make sure he would actually eat, we arranged for him to have lunch and dinner at a nearby restaurant. He did so for a while.

His last public appearance was in April that year at a literature colloquium at the University of Zimbabwe.