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      The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician

      MODERN

      African Writing

      from Ohio University Press

      Ghirmai Negash, General Editor

      Laura Murphy, Series Editor

      This series brings the best African writing to an international audience. These groundbreaking novels, memoirs, and other literary works showcase the most talented writers of the African continent. The series also features works of significant historical and literary value translated into English for the first time. Moderately priced, the books chosen for the series are well crafted, original, and ideally suited for African studies classes, world literature classes, or any reader looking for compelling voices of diverse African perspectives.

      Books in the series are published with support from the Ohio University National Resource Center for African Studies.

       Welcome to Our Hillbrow A Novel of Postapartheid South Africa

      Phaswane Mpe

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-1962-5

       Dog Eat Dog: A Novel

      Niq Mhlongo

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-1994-6

       After Tears: A Novel

      Niq Mhlongo

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-1984-7

       From Sleep Unbound

      Andrée Chedid

      ISBN: 978-0-8040-0837-2

       On Black Sisters Street: A Novel

      Chika Unigwe

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-1992-2

       Paper Sons and Daughters Growing Up Chinese in South Africa

      Ufrieda Ho

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-2020-1

       The Conscript A Novel of Libya’s Anticolonial War

      Gebreyesus Hailu

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-2023-2

       Thirteen Cents: A Novel

      K. Sello Duiker

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-2036-2

       Sacred River: A Novel

      Syl Cheney-Coker

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-2056-0 (hardcover) 978-0-8214-2137-6 (paperback

       491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69

      Winnie Madikizela-Mandela

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-2102-4 (hardcover) 978-0-8214-2101-7 (paperback)

       The Hairdresser of Harare

      Tendai Huchu

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-2162-8 (hardcover) 978-0-8214-2163-5 (paperback)

       Mrs. Shaw: A Novel

      Mukoma Wa Ngugi

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-2143-7

       The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician

      Tendai Huchu

      ISBN: 978-0-8214-2205-2 (hardcover) 978-0-8214-2206-9 (paperback)

       TENDAI HUCHU

       The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Mathematician

      A NOVEL

      OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

      ATHENS

      Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

       ohioswallow.com

      © Tendai Huchu, 2014

      All rights reserved

      To obtain permission to quote, reprint, or otherwise reproduce or distribute material from Ohio University Press publications, please contact our rights and permissions department at [phone] or [phone] (fax).

      Printed in the United States of America

      Ohio University Press books are printed on acid-free paper ™

      First published in 2014 by ‘amaBooks

      P.O. Box AC1066, Ascot, Bulawayo

      Cover design by Sebastian Biot

      This novel is a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination. The author’s use of actual names and places is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work. Any likenesses to persons living is purely coincidental.

      Acknowledgement is made to Carcanet Press Ltd for the use of the extract from Hugh MacDiarmid’s ‘Scotland’, from Complete Poems, edited by Michael Grieve and W.R. Aitken (1993-4).

      26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 5 4 3 2 1

      ISBNS:

      978-0-8214-2205-2 (hardcover)

      978-0-8214-2206-9 (paperback)

      978-0-8214-4553-2 (e-book)

      TENDAI HUCHU is the author of The Hairdresser of Harare. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Manchester Review, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Gutter, AfroSF, Wasafiri, The Africa Report, Kwani? and numerous other publications. In 2013 he received a Hawthornden Fellowship and a Sacatar Fellowship. He was shortlisted for the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing.

      So I have gathered unto myself

      All the loose ends of Scotland,

      And by naming them and accepting them,

      Loving them and identifying myself with them,

      Attempt to express the whole.

      from ‘Scotland’, by Hugh MacDiarmid

       Contents

       EDINBURG

       LONDON

       Acknowledgements

       EDINBURGH

      The Magistrate

      There was a knock on the door of the last house on Craigmillar Castle Road. The tat came before the rat, though the a-tat remained in pretty much the same place, producing a distorted, yet familiar sound, but then Alfonso Pfukuto, the knocker, was an ambiguous man. Nothing was quite what it seemed.

      Alfonso waited a moment, whistling Fishers of Men, his favourite ditty, and then pressed his ear against the door before bending down and pushing the flap on the letter box open and shouting, “I know you’re in there. It’s me.” He fidgeted, sighed, paced, knocked again and waited. Once, he’d been a welcome visitor. If they didn’t want to see him now, let them tell him to his face. He was a shameless man.

      The sky overhead was a brilliant blue. The weather held the muddle of spring: one day, dark clouds and summer warmth, the next bright and bitterly cold. His fingers turned white. He hopped about to keep warm, blowing on his hands.

      Finally,