The Room of Four: Masculinity, Silence, and the Digital Ghost

In the quiet of a Zimbabwean night, a bedroom can become the most crowded place on earth. It’s not just you and your spouse; it’s the expectations of your ancestors, the mocking echoes of social media, and the betrayal of your own body.

The Room of Four

By Lawson Chiwara 

The paraffin lamp flickered, throwing long shadows against the cracked plaster walls of the bedroom. Outside, the Zimbabwean night was alive; crickets sang their endless, rhythmic chorus, and somewhere in the distance, a dog barked at nothing. Inside, the air was still and heavy.

Pauro Saungweme lay stiffly on his side of the bed, the mosquito net hanging limp above them like a quiet witness. He adored his wife—more than words could hold. Tonight, with the children gone to their grandparents in Gutu, was meant to be theirs. He had told himself all day, a mantra of masculine intent: “Pauro, tonight you give her everything. The house is ours.”

But when her hand reached for him under the faded floral blanket, his body betrayed him. Whether it was fear or some hidden sickness, Pauro couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was expectation pressing too hard, or nerves that betrayed him when he needed them most. She had once laughed off his suspicions of failure, reminding him of the three sons his body had already given. Yet lately, the proud flame refused to rise, leaving him stranded in doubt.

The silence that followed was heavier than the rural night air; he could almost taste the metallic tang of shame on his tongue. She turned away, pulling the blanket higher—a quiet fortress. Pauro’s eyes fixed on the mosquito net’s folds, counting them as if salvation lay in numbers. Each chirp of the crickets outside was a reminder of his failure, louder than any clock.

Later on in the night, after he had cajoled it into a reasonable stiffness, Pauro had turned her around and tried to satisfy her bruised need. He could, however, tell she wasn't really enjoying it. The act was no longer about love; it was a desperate attempt to pay a debt he felt he owed his own ego. Between them stretched a gulf wider than the bed itself—a silence more brutal than any word.

At dawn, the routine of survival took over. She worked as a cleaner at the nearby teachers’ cottage, scrubbing floors and fetching water for whoever asked. After her ritual bath in the pit latrine that doubled as a bathroom, she returned to the bedroom. Steam rose from her skin, carrying the sharp, clean scent of soap and the fresh morning air.

It was a scent of renewal, a defiance against the suffocating shadows of the night before. She moved with the weary grace of a woman already resigned to the day’s burdens. Pauro lay still, paralyzed, watching her fold her skirt and tie her headscarf. The silence clung to the corners of the room like cobwebs. He was the father of three, a man of Gutu, yet he could not summon the strength to rise and face the woman who had just washed away the evidence of his failure. The blanket pressed against his chest felt heavier than stone, a quiet verdict he could not escape.

He mused how the world outside was already thriving without them… without him. The distant sounds of the teachers’ cottage coming alive—the clink of buckets, the murmur of morning greetings—reminded him that life did not pause because Pauro Saungweme felt hollow.

A colder thought chilled him: Would she go on without him? Would she stray, like the women he read about in WhatsApp groups and Facebook threads, mocked with laughing emojis and cruel comments? The digital world was full of men’s failures, turned into entertainment. In his mind, she was becoming a statistic; every shadow he had ever scrolled past had stepped into his bedroom.

That night, the paraffin lamp was out, but the bedroom was crowded. There was Pauro, lying as still as a fallen log. There was his wife, a shadow of weary grace beneath the faded floral blanket. There was the glowing phone on the bedside table—the ghost that whispered digital lies about straying wives and mocking emojis.

And then, the fourth presence: the fallen soldier inside his trousers. That folon little member. Once the proud father of three sons, now a shrunken deserter, refusing to rise. It crouched like a coward in the trenches, indifferent to Pauro’s desperation or his wife’s bruised need.

Pauro felt the weight of all three—the wife he could not reach, the world that laughed at him through a screen, and the body that had gone on strike. The silence was not only in the room; it seeped into his bones, into his very skin, until he himself became the silence.