Abyssinian Chronicles (21 page)

One afternoon, after most of the Indians had gone and the bully had paid Serenity one hundred dollars, the one and only payment he made, the puke-yellow Uganda Postal Service truck returned. This time the tailboard spilled forth a fridge-cum-oven, a mighty spring bed, a box of black tea cozies which were in fact Afro wigs, a few other bits and pieces, and something which greatly fascinated me. It was two-legged like a billboard, had a rectangular shining face and was so burnished and smooth that one could see one’s face in it. I watched the driver’s hairy hands carefully to see if his palms became wet after touching the gleaming surface. With bated breath I waited for him to wipe his hands on his khaki overalls, but in vain. A smile on my face, I went near Serenity, hoping to touch the object in order to sate my curiosity, but Serenity just growled and said, “If you touch it …”

The reverence with which the new imports were handled made it clear that they were dear, much dearer than the stinking Toshiba or
Serenity’s suede shoes. I could hardly camouflage my interest as the shiny object was being installed in the fastness of the despotic bedroom.

The hour after the truck’s and Serenity’s departures passed with grinding sloth. I kept watching the clouds—dusky, foamy horses with heads jammed into each other’s rear ends—as they slid across the sky. Was it going to rain?

Padlock was neither in the Command Post nor in the toilet, which led me to conclude that she had gone to the shops to buy cotton, chiffon and other materials for dressmaking. Loverboy had not appeared, and it was too late for his visit. The shitters were either busy with menial tasks or wrapped up in play. This was the time to storm the walls of my humiliation and walk the floor kissed daily or every other day by my knees as I worshipped at the altar of despotic power. This was the time for me to enter the shrine of despotic slumber, on my feet like a pirate taking an island, and, like a conqueror, grab the treasures I desired. This time there would be no one to make me check my step, my manner, my tone of voice, my conduct. I was going to be the lord of the chamber of despotic decree, dreams, love, child-making, nocturnal debate and hidden conflicts. This was my coup d’état, my riposte at my tormentors. I was going to open their drawers and boxes, and examine their clothes and jewelry, and see if they had dirty little books filled with smudged secrets. The magnet at the heart of this putsch was the glittering object. It had razored the darkness at the center of my fear with its lightning swords, and the concomitant blood of courage had birthed this coup, this rebirth of my old days of power.

I stormed past the Toshiba, its pale case dimly beckoning and obliging. The soles of my feet bounced on the hairs of the carpet, whose thickness was alive with the dust that made stiff-brushing it a stone-rolling ordeal. “You will clean it till I tell you to stop,” I could hear Padlock croaking. I brushed past her ghost, which never forgave Grandma for dying before a Hoover could be bought, those resources having been diverted toward her burial costs. Serenity had since refused to buy the machine.

I pushed the door before which I had trembled when I heard Padlock’s plan to break me, and I was soon inside her bedroom. It was in semi-darkness, as if the walls were bursting with untold secrets. The old bed was bare, stripped naked, its cone-shaped springs facing the
ceiling like empty funnels. I sat on the springs, eliciting a few metallic squeaks. The bed resembled Serenity’s bachelor bed of old conquests. The springs and the frame cut into my backside. I stood up and turned my attention to the new bed. The thick, prickly blanket looked snakelike in its red and brown patchy magnificence. Face taut with excitement, I ran my fingers across the blanket, static electricity crackling. The silky bulk of the pillow felt like the coat of a sow at mating time, just before misdirected semen jetted over it. On this pillow heads full of horny dreams rested as the despots, and the Indians before them, mated. A stuffy, woody smell floated on the air, combining with loose, lewd dreams to foster a mounting tension in my loins.

Padlock had an intriguing reading lamp: the shade was a black-dotted yellow cone, the stand the effigy of a famous white woman, her pleated skirt billowing round her waist as though she were standing on a fan, and a cheeky full-lipped smile on her face. There she was, this silver-screen veteran, discarded by departing Indians, adopted by the despots. I prodded and stroked her behind, the incongruous obscenity of her presence filling the air with refracted sexual forces. I prodded her behind one more time and moved on.

I brought my nose very close to the glittering object at the head of the new bed. I was disappointed because it smelled like shoe polish, its oily tang lingering on my palate. Succumbing to tactile temptation, I stretched out my hand and touched the gleaming surface, its dry smoothness, the imagined smoothness of Lusanani’s backside. I closed my eyes and explored the very cool, very smooth surface, my fingers going deeper and deeper into imaginary orifices, my imagination’s eye peeking under the sheet at slick dilated lips. I stretched across the thick pillow, and it moved under me like the back of a sow, and my hand reached the extreme end of the object, very near the wall. The sensation of swimming in a dark pool, warm and slick with swine sperm, was intoxicating. I got the feeling that the Lamp Lady, Nantongo and Lusanani were sitting on my stomach, squeezing a thick liquid out of my loins. As I turned on my back, I saw the box of wigs. One wig was sitting on top of the box like a hen on its eggs. The hairs called back memories of Aunt Tiida’s pubic hair. On closer scrutiny, though, the wig was more like myriad black caterpillars sewn together into one monster. I turned to the glittering board, the pressure in my loins more palpable. What was beneath this glittering magnificence, this slick dryness?

Using my thumbnail, I attacked the edge of the board. I worked slowly, trying to attain a good rhythm, but got nowhere. I needed an implement. I thought of fetching a nail or a knife, but changed my mind. I didn’t want to leave scratches or betray my tracks. I had to use my fingernail, but with better technique. I wedged my thumbnail between the veneer and the glue and the frame. A piece of veneer as big as a man’s fingernail broke off. Beneath the veneer was mere wood! Dull brown, long-grained wood! Sweat broke out on my back: What was I going to do with the broken piece? A dull, anticlimactic feeling assailed me, momentarily stalling panic.

I licked the glued side of the splinter and attempted to paste it back in place. Was there no proper glue in the house? There was a tube of solution used to patch bicycle tubes. A bolt of elation shot through me: I was going to get away with the invasion, the damage and the discovery that below the glitter was banal dullness. I trembled as I had trembled when I thought that Padlock’s baby was going to fall through the rectangular latrine hole. Once again I was ahead of her.

A soaring sensation overtook me. I was soaring into safety’s bosom, swimming through currents of warm air as thick as morning mist. At that moment a furious palm swept hot air into my face. Two fingernails sank into my lower lip, carefully avoiding my lethal teeth. This was a novelty, for Padlock was a celebrated ear puller. Maybe she was so excited by the occasion that she could hardly contain herself, let alone stick to normal procedure.

“Do you know what you’ve done?” This woman knew how to irritate me on all fronts: her pathetic country-western girlie whine, xeroxed from a white nun from her convent days, the same nun from whom she had inherited the little tremolos which she sprinkled piously on the last hymn every night, really got to me. If somebody was going to torture me, I preferred it to be done manfully or womanly, not childishly or girlishly, which made it feel as if I had been spat upon by a five-year-old brat.

“Ma-ma-my liip,” I said, trying to control my fears.

“Do you think you are still in the village, where they do things mindlessly?”

“No-no-nooo,” I replied for lack of a better answer, angry that I had betrayed myself. People didn’t do things mindlessly in the village. On the contrary, they conformed to norms. People did a lot of mindless
things in the city but were too pretentious to admit it, and possibly too ashamed of themselves to face the fact. In the village Grandma or Grandpa would have told me straight away that the glittering thing was just a bloody headboard for a bloody bed, wooden, veneered, period. Here, in the jungle of pretensions and despotisms, adults acted dumbly, explained nothing, and at the same time believed they were doing a wonderful job. In the meantime, Padlock twisted my lip and slapped me again.

“Do you know what that bed cost?”

I kept quiet. My lip got twisted. Colored dribble mixed with tears ran down my chin.

“Remember this: I am not your grandmother, and I am not going to spoil you like she did. I am going to set you straight. And I am going to hammer sense into your head even if it kills you.”

“Yes, yes, Grandma, Ma.”

“I am tired of your boorish behavior. I am tired of your rotten manners. I am tired of always getting shamed by your behavior, you hear?” A twist of the lip followed each of those statements, her eyes wells of black, yellow, red fires.

“Stop eating like an ox, you hear? Stop eating as though there was no tomorrow. Do you hear me? Stop it, stop it, stop it.”

This was very hard to bear: being reduced to the voracity of a healthy ox in a wire-thin voice was the ultimate insult. The eating habits of city dwellers totally disgusted me, especially when their deficiencies were veneered with brittle respectability. In the village you ate your fill, and more food was forced on you; all that on top of the sugarcanes, the jackfruit and the pawpaws eaten between meals. Here, on the contrary, you were expected to starve yourself or eat as little as possible, work like an ox and be proud of it all! If you wanted a sugarcane or a pawpaw or a jackfruit, you had to buy it. Since there was no money to throw around, many people could not afford to buy fruit, yet they acted as if you were supposed to be proud of that too. If city dwellers revelled in the masochism of measly meals, that was their business, but expecting me to adore it like a sacrament and to strive for it like a Holy Grail was totally unacceptable to me, because I knew better. If the despots found it hard to feed their children, it was their problem. Maybe they should not have migrated. Maybe they should have planned their births better. To expect me to play along, and to worship
deficiency, was to insult my intelligence, especially when I was working so hard, freeing them from their filth. Consequently, I never forgave Padlock for the scalding transgressions of her tongue, the vicious excesses of her imagery and the despotic myopia of always seeing things from her side.

As more and more strings of bloody saliva dripped through her fingers onto the front of my shirt, Amin’s words dripped through the filters of my brain into my consciousness. Amin had exhorted every citizen to walk tall, to act proud and not to let anyone deny them their rights, their dignity or their self-worth. Amin called on everybody to empower themselves and to excel in their chosen fields. He said that as a boxer, he always won by knockout in order to avoid the traps of biased officiating and the pitfalls of contested victory. He called upon everyone to knock down the obstacles in their way, no matter what, to emerge victorious and remain on top. He reminded us that the axis of power was always shifting, drifting in the opposite direction, and that nothing would remain the same, especially for those who were ready to work hard and realize their ambitions. He said that the main reason most people were not what they wanted to be was because they were too timid, too ready to follow others, too lacking in initiative and too unwilling to take risks. He said that his government was a government of action, a revolutionary government which would wake sleeping dogs and pull everybody along. He asked everyone to get involved. He asked pupils to depose bad teachers, workers to overthrow tyrannical bosses, wives to divorce bad husbands, children to reject bad parents, victims to rise up and take power and the poor to take chances, make money and enjoy the fruits of this country. He reiterated that Uganda was a free country, for free people, where all were free to do what they wanted.

I was in chains, and what was I doing about it? I was bleeding, crying, begging for mercy, allowing injustice to go unchallenged.

If I wanted, I could chin-drop Padlock with the top of my head and crack her jaw. If I dared, I could gouge her eye, break her nose or dislocate her knee with a side-kick. If I had the balls, there were many things I could do to end my suffering. But, like the people Amin talked about, I was not taking any action. In this case I was afraid of Serenity. Would he not kill me for injuring his wife? How was I supposed to unite powerful exhortations of courage, freedom and self-empowerment with
the immediate dangers of retaliation from Serenity’s anger? St. Amin, help me. St. Amin, pray for me. St. Amin, overlook my cowardice. St. Amin, deliver me from my fears. With all my attention on Amin, my pain subsided. I started feeling proud that I was not crying out and that I had not pissed in my pants. I was keeping up in my own way.

Amin had said that if you got cheated out of your deserved victory, go home, regroup, train harder than before, return to the arena and deliver the biggest knockout ever seen. He said that for some it took two or three or four trials before the glorious moment came, but that one should never give up, and never accept defeat. I stood very still, apparently impervious to further punishment. I had decided to wait for my chance.

By now Padlock had become annoyed with my lack of attention to her words and her torturings, and with a final shove, she released me. Bloody, like her ink patch of not so long ago, I felt proud. My lip was swollen and devoid of sensation, droopy like a pig’s teat, but I carried it like a flag of courage. Amin had to be proud of me.

I was clever enough to realize that my punishment was not over yet. I cleaned the blood from the floor and left the garden of the Lamp Lady with her billowing skirt, fear ticking like a small device in my head.