Abyssinian Chronicles (16 page)

“Should I keep quiet when they call me names?”

“She is answering her employer back! What an ingrate! Who do you think is interested in seeing the inside of your mouth or in counting your molars? You teach my children bad manners. How can I keep you under my roof? You look at everybody as if you were going to swallow them. Didn’t they teach you to respect authority where you came from, eh?”

“But Mrs.—”

“You are showing me your teeth once again! You are showing me the roof of your mouth! For once, listen to what your superiors have to tell you. What kind of a man would want a girl without manners who eats like a lawnmower?”

Me, me, me, I wanted to say. Others too. I had seen men dallying
with one-legged or clubfooted women. I had seen men in love with one-eyed women. Uncle Kawayida’s mother had buckteeth. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

I soon learned that Padlock was not displaying her knowledge of men; she was just carrying out a campaign to drive the girl out of her house.

“Remember when you came here, girl. You were crying. You were desperate to get a job, and a roof over your head. I gave you everything, and now you can’t even cook me a decent meal.”

To crown the drama, a cup slipped off the tray Nantongo was carrying to the cupboard and shattered on the floor. I had never seen anybody mourn so much for a lousy china cup with a chipped rim, a stained, scuffed bottom and a fading pattern of periwinkles. It hadn’t cost much, and would never have made it into an antiques gallery, but it got quite a send-off.

“I knew it! I knew you were capable of things like this! What will be the next move, Nantongo? Botulism, or something more potent? Don’t forget there’s a lot of rat poison in the shops, and a packet in the house.”

Padlock’s face bore the chipped strain of a faked rage; the girl turned around to face her, smiled and dropped all the cups on the floor.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Padlock struck her thighs and lamented as the cups collided with the cement and disintegrated into bits which seemed to cover the entire floor. Then her face hardened with the intent to cause serious bodily harm. Nantongo, as nimble as an antelope, sidestepped her and said, “I have allowed you to say whatever you wanted to say about me, but I will never allow you to touch me.”

Padlock could not believe the quiet vehemence of the girl’s words. She was momentarily caught between intoning another futile dirge and wringing the girl’s neck. To salvage the tatters of her authority, she blurted, “You are fired.”

By daybreak Nantongo was gone. All the remaining china was packed in boxes, and everyone got a mug.

Serenity espoused benevolent dictator tactics to the nth degree. He relied heavily on the potentiality of force rather than its actuality. He loved operating in a web of unuttered threats, restrained violence and low-voiced warnings. He let reports of individual misdemeanors
hover round him like flies on a slumbering crocodile. He let it be known, indirectly, that he never interfered with the work of his enforcer, except in the most dire of circumstances. If he ever noticed that Nantongo was gone, he never said or gave any indication. According to his principles, Nantongo was just another ripple on the surface of a pool which would be around for eons. He let that ripple expand to the edge of the pool, where it died, unnoticed. With Nantongo gone, I was the next in line, yet Serenity acted as if he never received any reports about me.

Stiff as a ramrod in his pressed trousers and shirts of the same color, he walked into the compound with a leather bag under one arm, waving to the neighbors with the other like a beneficent general on holiday. If the courtyard was clean, without rubbish or excreta, he would nod and enter the house. If you had done well at school and there were no school bills or letters of complaint from teachers, he left you alone. He often retired to his arsenal of books, or changed and headed for the gas station to meet Hajj Gimbi and two other friends to converse, watch the traffic and bemoan the state of affairs or play cards.

The four friends discussed the post-independence situation, the suspension of the original constitution, the 1966 state of emergency, the 1971 coup, the future of the country, of Amin, the Muslims, the Catholics, the Protestants and the foreigners. When they got bored, they reminisced about their youth, their careers, their dreams.

On the way to the borehole to get water, I would pass this Total petrol station, its trinity of pumps sealed in the dull uniformity of headless statues, the store behind smothered in fluorescent light and the glitter of oilcan tops, the rectangular hole in which greasy mechanics buried themselves to examine the underbellies of cars gaping like a mass grave. The four friends, epitomes of male privilege, would be placidly intoxicated by motor fumes, flying dust and the grating passage of time. Sometimes they seemed lost in the magic of the cards, or dazed by conversation about the feel of a woman or the first smile of a child, or the rush of a successful deal. Sometimes they were rocked by laughter at a rude adult joke.

The mood at the block of African shops hard by was always different. Music from loudspeakers placed on the gas station’s veranda charged the air and set the tone for the loud arguments, the hard laughter, the backslappings and gruff chest-thumpings which crowned a
successful joke or a clever statement. Sometimes there would be the roar of an explosive quarrel, spiky words carving the air and captivating loafers with their viciousness, outrageousness or acerbity. Sometimes there would be an acrobat, a contortionist or a guitarist picking notes off rotten strings on a rotten guitar. Sometimes the air would whistle explosively amidst a fistfight complete with glistening muscles, rasping gasps like tearing metal, and generous cheers as spectators appreciated the show. Sometimes a travelling quack would be promoting wonder drugs which cured baldness, halitosis, barrenness, bad luck and premature ejaculation with a single dose.

I never stopped there; I had to hurry to the borehole and stand my jerry cans in line, awaiting my turn. There was an old-fashioned British pump, heavy, cumbersome, thick-handled, large-mouthed, impossible to handle on an empty stomach, destined to last a century. The wooden handle always smelled of grease, smeared on to discourage the ubiquitous termites.

If a well-shaped girl like Lusanani was pumping, and you stood two feet behind her, you could see her arms rise, her body bend into curves and her face dip under the handle. You wanted her to pump on for ages because her openmouthed, dilated-eyed expression and her laboring body lighted your mind up with lewd fantasies. Her slender waist; the lines of her underwear peeping through her dress; her thighs, her calves and her legs, taxed by the motion of the heavy pumping action, fueled diverse imagery in my lively mind. As I watched her buttocks opening and closing, and how her panties curved around them each time she bent over the handle, I knew that some adult part of me desired her, and would get her and capture her spirit, and it would infuse the next stage of my life’s journey. I felt doomed.

On the way home, with cars roaring on the road and some occasionally stopping at the gas station, the sight of Hajj Gimbi, his white skullcap and trademark beard, would unsettle me. I felt he was studying me, reading my mind. This suspicion was bolstered by the fact that many fortune-tellers were Muslims. It was common knowledge that the Koran was a potent book, full of magic, blessings and curses. Hajj Gimbi seemed to know what I thought of his wife, and that I wished he would disappear and leave her to me. He seemed to be waiting to catch me red-handed with her. I figured he was taking his time because Dad was his friend and he did not want to act rashly without concrete
evidence. When we met, or when I was sent over to his home to deliver a message, I would tremble, waiting for him to confront me with my evil thoughts. He never did. He appeared strangely happy to see me, which confused me, although it did not change my thoughts or my feelings for Lusanani.

Confronted with dictatorship, and especially with the lack of freedom of speech for the first time, I thought I was the only one suffering in silence, but the red-ink incident proved otherwise. I had somehow adapted to the blind alley that was my new home. I had learned to keep quiet, to divert my eyes and to not say a thing. It was a new sense of self-preservation, the type I lacked in the village, the type which made your throat scratchy just when you were about to make a dangerous statement. Why the despots were super-sensitive to little things I could not tell.

One morning while I was kneeling down to deliver courtyard worship, I noticed that something was sticking out from Padlock’s behind, as though a Quink ink bottle was stuck in her ass underneath her clothes. I knew that this was not a joke, because if Padlock had any sense of humor, it was not of this kind. So what was it? The bulge was too deliberate to be an oversight. So what was going on? Titillated by this rare piece of drama, my spirits catapulted me from my sullenness, and I got the tone right the first time. Padlock, anticipating resistance as usual, was startled by my humility. I quickly moved on to my usual tasks, washed and prepared to leave for school.

Padlock was the family banker, and since I had asked Serenity for money to buy exercise books a few days before, I had to go to her to collect it. This was normal procedure, because Serenity asked us to plan ahead. “Money does not grow on trees,” he often said, warning us that he needed time to get it.

I found Padlock in the sitting room. She said nothing when I told her what I wanted, but just turned round and headed for the bedroom, where she kept her purse. And then I saw it: a patch as big as a baby’s mouth, red as a ruby! I could hardly take my eyes off her behind. It was not that I had never seen blood before; no, I had seen it many times, and I also knew how it smelled. I concluded that a person this careful had to be in grave danger if she was leaking blood like this. I opened my mouth to alert her, but at the last moment I coughed instead. I had
to kill those words. It was unwise to alert a dictator before she had given you what you needed. What if, in shame, she changed her mind and refused to surrender the money? I could not risk getting into trouble with teachers, and ruining a fine day at school, by doing something the consequences of which could only be guessed at. Wasn’t I a custodian of Aunt Tiida’s secret? Didn’t I know too well that silence was golden? Would this new secret be too hard to keep? I didn’t think so.

Joy swept over me: now I had something to blackmail my enemy with. I could use the secret against her in future. I could definitely use it to stop her from hammering me. How would I go about it? It was real blood, her very own despotic blood. Let her sit in it a little longer while I thought out a master plan to end my miseries. She could smear the house with it. She could retouch the red dates on the calendar with it. That would advertise the fact that despots were also human and that they bled when you cut them.

Next time around it would be Serenity’s turn. He was bound to bleed from the front, in the fly area. He could spray the courtyard, the toilet and the entire neighborhood with it. He could even spray Hajj Gimbi’s lime-green Kawasaki motorcycle, the gas station and some of the passing cars.

When I received the money, I did my best not to betray myself by recoiling from her touch. I had the suspicion that her fingers smelled of blood and that the money carried a nauseating whiff. Her fingers were damp and cold, which worried me a bit because Grandma had said that coldness of hands and feet was caused by anemia. How anemic was this woman? Obviously not enough to die before I returned from school, I concluded. I sniffed the money: it had no noxious smell on it.

As I walked to school I tried to imagine what was happening down Padlock’s pants. Was she bleeding like a headless cock? If so, what a tough nut she was, hemorrhaging and yet acting as if everything was under control! This should have been the right time to whine, yet she was not giving any inkling that she was in pain. Pregnant women undergoing hemorrhage used to feel alarmed, and call for help. I remembered that cocks used to kick and twitch as they bled to death: Was this woman feigning indifference? Padlock was impervious to pain, I concluded. It was the reason she was so handy with her guava switches. I was then gripped by curiosity. I wanted to find out if Padlock was incapable of feeling any pain at all. What would
Loverboy have to say about that? Maybe it was the reason he liked her so much.

The day conspired against me by thrusting me onto the wings of irrepressible joy. I did very well in class, and during break time I found a ten-shilling note in the grass behind the classrooms nearest the playground. This was a rare stroke of luck, for I hardly ever found anything.

I looked at the note carefully to ascertain that it had not been deliberately planted there by a sufferer of boils or some other communicable disease, to be picked up along with the sacrifice, for ten shillings was a lot of money in the early seventies. Padlock would lash the skin off your back for losing it; Serenity might do the same thing.

By way of celebration, I called together two friends and bought them buns and sodas. As we ate I worked out where to store the rest of my booty. I would have shared my good fortune with my two most loyal shitters, but did not for fear that they might get so excited they would end up betraying us. In a dictatorship, there was no use getting oneself in trouble over superfluous generosity.

The school day drifted away with the speed of rain clouds chased by hurricane winds. In my exuberance I had forgotten to work out how to use my new knowledge against Padlock. And on the way home I could hardly think deeply. Nevertheless, I was feeling happy when I arrived. My thoughts kept dazzling me. I felt anchored in the glories of my academic capabilities and good luck.

The Padlock who confronted me when I entered the courtyard crushed my exuberance like a dry leaf: she looked like a fortress, her moat alive with piranhas, her drawbridge chained firmly to her castle walls. So she hadn’t bled to death! So she hadn’t smeared anything, even during her most difficult moments! She looked as if she were being eaten alive by so many locusts that the front she presented to the world was moments away from calamitous disintegration.