Snakepit (27 page)

“How many people did the pirates move in order to start their broadcasts?” the Professor ridiculed.

Bat kept quiet about his brother and the money he had supplied. Too sensitive a secret. He gave Babit the task of tracking the radio day and night. She scanned the waves, turning the dial round and round, watching the pointer slide past numbers back and forth, amidst explosions of claptrap and the occasional clear sound.

“Why all this interest in pirates?”

“Aren't you eager to hear when the country will be liberated, and what kind of people are going to do it?”

“Do you know what I think? This radio station doesn't exist and you are just teasing me.”

“Yes, indeed, but keep at it. I am tired of working for these idiots.”

“What do you think about these car bombings? I sometimes think that you should stop using that car.”

“My XJ10? You are joking. I keep it in the ministry garage. To get at it the bomber would have to shoot the guards first.”

“It is evident that he is bombing cars and shops belonging to security agents. But suppose he mistakes your car for the two belonging to the generals?”

“Don't worry. Nothing will happen to me, dear.”

“Why doesn't the group claim responsibility?”

“They want to keep Amin and his men on their toes.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I am a very educated man, remember?” he said, chuckling.

“Yes, Professor.”

She was glad that things were going well. So often after marriage things cooled down and became boringly routine. She had had her fears, which had proved to be unfounded. She was glad that he had talked to Victoria and, as a result, there were no more threats. Twice a week he drove home for lunch. She enjoyed those days the most. They compensated for his absences and late homecoming. They were like two extra Sundays, days marked by anticipation and intense pleasure. She never fretted about money any more. It seemed he would never run out of work. All the ministries wanted him. They no longer interviewed him; they just hired him. One day the Englishman was bound to come. And maybe they would fly back with him, and sleep in the Grand Empire and eat all those strange foods.

Bat had hinted at visiting America. Babit noticed that he read more and more biographies of American sportsmen, film stars, politicians . . . She believed it was his form of gossip, a search for other people's secrets . . . It would be nice to go there. Maybe by then they would have children. If not, maybe they would go to a specialist and get her checked. By then she would have completed her teaching course. For now though, on with the search for the elusive radio pirates.

Three

In Limbo

There were days so fine, so suffused with bright light falling from high-domed skies, the beauty of delicate clouds, the perfume of gentle winds, the gloss of exuberant vegetation, the sheer delight of living in a bubble of peace amidst an inferno, that Bat felt totally in tune with life. He was not a religious man, but once a month he accompanied his wife to church. She chose the best suit for him, the darkest shoes, the best tie. For herself she picked the finest midi- or maxi-gown, matching accessories and a subtle, expensive perfume. They would emerge from the house and stand on the steps surveying the flower bushes, red and purple bougainvilleas; the towering thousand-year-old trees, majestic, their branches spread high above; the lake, a broken marble surface linking them to neighbouring countries in a fraternity of water; and the XJ10, the crown jewel, shining, ready to go. They would descend the steps and drive away.

At church they would mingle with well-dressed men and women who worked in the beleaguered civil service, the diplomatic corps, the remnants of the aviation service, and the armed forces. In mufti, the soldiers and the spies tried to make themselves as invisible as possible. Bat liked the fact that these days the church had turned into a human rights podium. Priests spoke out directly or indirectly against the disappearances, the killings, the abuses. The clergy had felt the bite of the bayonet, the sting of the bullet, and it made a difference. The words rolled off the priest's tongue with conviction, steeped in pain. Bat liked to sit there and think of good memories, his achievements, because his captivity had taught him how precious and luxurious the fine moments were.

On such days he liked to be surprised by uninvited guests who turned up to interrupt and enrich a day he had offered to the whims of time, to his wife, to leisure. If it happened to be his sister, they would talk about her son, her work, the state of the country. Living in a rural area, she would have a different view, a down-to-earth vision.

When his parents came, they talked about the past, who had lived where and done what. His father liked his job, a proper job, as he called it. He would mourn the fact that the coffee trade had been undermined by smuggling. His mother said little; she had always been a very reticent person. Your father talks for both of us, she used to say. His father had a bad memory now and he believed that everybody was ripping him off. Bat found it comical and would laugh.

“I always dreamed of seeing London and visiting the British Leyland plant,” he revealed one day.

“Why didn't you say so before?”

“Where would you have got the money to take me and your mother?”

“Where there is a will, there is a way, Father.”

“It is a dream I wanted to keep. But when your wife said there were parts like Naguru and Bwaise, I believed it was better that I had not gone.”

When Babit's people turned up, he would drive them round the town, to the zoo, to the airport, to the Botanical Gardens, to the landing point at Katabi where food and fish came in from the islands. Standing there always reminded him that Entebbe was a peninsula, almost choked by water, which in places was just a few metres from the road to the city. It was not hard to imagine floods rising out of the lake or crashing out of an angry sky, submerging the town for weeks, and receding to reveal a new island or clutch of small islands. It often made him curious about Robert Ashes' island. During these visits Babit led the conversation, and Bat enjoyed watching her and her people interacting.

IN THE MEANTIME, the search for the bombers intensified. Numerous arrests had already been made by the Bureau, the Public Safety Unit and, not to be outdone, by the Eunuchs. The Ministry of Internal Affairs set up a team to hunt down and destroy these men. It was believed to be a big group organized into small cells. Bat heard about all these operations and wondered where his brother was. Why had he heard nothing from him for so long? He hoped that Tayari had nothing to do with the bombings, especially after General Bazooka's wife got injured. He did not believe that the bombers were responsible for the General's wife's fate. He believed it was the result of infighting, possibly sanctioned by Amin to punish the man for one reason or other. General Bazooka's current low profile seemed to confirm the theory.

AT AROUND THIS TIME Victoria disappeared. She moved from her flat without informing Bat. He suspected that she wanted more money from him, which was fair since he had not seen her for some time now. At the Ministry of Works headquarters he was told that she had been transferred to Bombo, a town dominated by a military barracks on the way to the north. He decided to let her show her hand, as she eventually would.

Soon after, his brother's fate became clear. As Bat was driving home one evening, a man waved him down at a road junction. He held a piece of paper out to him in the darkness. Bat lowered the window and took it, and the man walked away without saying a word. He parked by the roadside and read the note: “Abel, one of us killed. Radio failed. Sorry. Cain is alive and keeping watch.”

Bat's suspicions were confirmed: his brother was involved in the bombings. He felt a jolt of fear. He felt exposed, open to attack from unknown forces. There were many questions he wanted to ask his brother, the biggest being whether he had targeted the General's wife in order to extract revenge for him. And if he had thought about the possible consequences. He suddenly felt very angry with him. He regretted having given him the money. He wished there was something he could do to make him renounce his campaign of violence. The fact that he was the only family member who knew what Tayari was up to made him feel like an accomplice. By giving him the money he had become one, but what was he to do now? It had been exciting to hear about Bureau cars exploding, but where would it all end? And who was the dead boy? Where was Tayari hiding?

The news that his brother was keeping an eye on him did not reassure Bat. Nobody could be reassured when a government's resources were turned to hunting somebody down. Luck always tended to run out. People tended to make mistakes as the pressure mounted.

Bat chewed the paper and threw it out the window. Did Tayari know where Victoria was? Where was his daughter now? In the barracks? He cursed himself and the circumstances for letting his child grow up in such an environment. Some mistakes seemed to carry incredibly harsh sentences, hurting everybody in the end, especially the innocent.

TAYARI'S COLLEAGUE HAD BEEN arrested with bomb-making equipment at a roadblock not far from the city. The quartet had earlier sworn that if caught, one should fight, hit a soldier in the balls and be shot to death on the spot. That was what happened. The boy had been travelling in the back of a van carrying potatoes and cassava. The soldiers had refused the bribe and insisted on opening the sacks. As the potatoes flooded the ground, the boy saw his life slip away. He grabbed the head of the crouching soldier, raised his knee with all his might, and drove it in the man's face. The man collapsed with a curse on his bleeding lips, his rifle clattering on the tarmac. The boy reached for it, but before he could get off shots, two soldiers shot him in the chest and he bled to death.

FOR SOME TIME NOW, cars had stopped exploding.Speculation was that the bombing ring had been crushed or had run out of steam. Bat tried to keep his mind off the events. He was busy sifting data in preparation for the annual budget. For two whole months he put in twelve-hour days and could not find time to return home for lunch as agreed. But after the Marshal had blessed the budget and launched a new million-shilling bank-note, with a picture of him defecating on Europe, the pressure abated. The shortage of petrol continued, and Bat could only afford to return home for lunch once a week as the rations at the ministry were reduced further.

The people hired to keep an eye on Bat were very delighted with this turn of events. He had thrown them off the track for some time. Energized, they put final touches to their plan.

On the scheduled day, all the staff stayed away. Babit found herself with no cook, no gardener, no guard. When they were around, she hardly noticed them, because they worked well. Now that they were absent, she missed them. The cook was a widowed middle-aged woman living near the landing point of Katabi. The guard came from the town's police station. Since the government paid him, she had little to do with him. The gardener was a large man in his forties. He had been injured in a car crash and subsequently had lost his job as porter at the airport. Since then he had been tending gardens and mourning his fall. He was very talkative and sometimes he told her stories. She both pitied and liked him. She sometimes gave him money because he was always broke and wasn't ashamed to admit it. He was like a sad uncle, dogged by misfortune, unlucky in love. She noticed his absence more than the rest.

Shortly before nine, she went to the kitchen to decide what to cook. She wanted to prepare Bat's favourite steamed bananas with fish or meat. She had dry fish in the house but no meat. The prospect of going to town for meat made her change her plan. She decided to cook fish. She soaked it in water to make the flesh tender. She made everything ready for the fire.

Shortly before ten she went for a bath. It would do her good on this bright sunny day. She filled the tub and slipped in, enjoying herself but keeping in mind not to indulge herself too long because of the cooking. She started dreaming, stretching things out to their blurred edges. Somewhere in the corners of her mind, she thought she heard the sound of a car. Bat never returned home in between leaving for work and lunch. He never forgot things. If this was an exception, she did not mind him finding her in the bath. He would most certainly crack a joke about something or sing at least a few bars of the song which had become their song: “I Can't Get No Satisfaction.” If a miracle had happened and he had been given a day off, he might join her, re-creating some of the magic of the Grand Empire Hotel. The cooking could wait. They might drink a glass of red wine or beer in the tub and listen to the birds outside. He was bound to get angry with the staff for staying away without giving notice, as if, before moving in with him, she would protest, she had never cooked, shopped, or cleaned. Things are different now, he would counter sharply.

She could see the future of their relationship. Bat had the upper hand now, and she loved it. But over the years she would gain more leverage. He had told her that he loved her most of all because he had found her open, not yet embittered or hardened by the world, not yet set in her ways. They would set together like aging doors.

Suspended halfway between fantasy and reality, she hardly had time to see her visitors. In her eyes the green overalls were just the blurred forms which accompanied a chloroformed patient to unconsciousness, sometimes to oblivion. The visitors were swift, economical. Their scalpels, magnified by her fear, were inflated to the size and brutality of machetes. They towered, hovered, pressed down hard, and applied the speedy efficiency enjoyed by the best in their trade. They disrobed without fuss, cleaned themselves, bagged their garments, and prepared to go. They drank the tea they found in a thermos flask in the kitchen. They washed the cups and the flask and turned them upside down to dry.

AT THE SCHEDULED TIME the XJ10 swept into the yard with a flurry and a crunch of pebbles. Bat leapt out, tie eased, two top buttons undone almost in one movement. He filled his lungs, exhaled loudly, and savoured those few seconds when the wind hit his exposed chest. He pushed the door open, called Babit, but the house returned only his own voice to him, spurned. He called again as he dropped the briefcase on the sofa. He walked to the bedroom. He feared every lover's worst nightmare: finding one's lover in bed with another; his was of finding her with Tayari. It lasted a few seconds, but it bit deep. The bedroom was empty. Her clothes, a blue gown with red lines at the neck, and a white shift, were neatly folded, the black shoes near the bed polished, waiting. He felt his anticipation, eagerness, cooling and coagulating into something nasty. She knew how precious their appointment was to him; why had she betrayed it? What did she have to say for herself? Was this the beginning of another phase, the revelation of a Babit he had not yet had occasion to see? Why was he so angry? Because he had come to rely on her, and he wanted it to stay that way. Maybe she was sick; who said she would never fall sick?

He took a few deep breaths and walked out of the bedroom. He saw footprints, large, blurred, pinkish. He called out as he opened the bathroom door. He almost stepped on her head. The torso was in the bath, arms hanging limply on the sides, the wedding ring winking shatteringly in the light.

He did not know if he cried out or just stared. He did not know if he fainted or vomited. It was just clear that things would never be the same again. He could have phoned. It just never occurred to him. The place seemed grotesquely swollen, with an oppressing smell that seemed to emerge from the bowels of hell. He somehow made it to the police station. It was a miracle that he didn't kill anybody on the way.

At first they thought he was insane, the freshest apparition from the windy domain of psychosis blowing through the land. They got to see a few of those per week as part of the job. But this one looked way out on the extreme outer reaches. Had he killed a general, taken his XJ10, and come to brag about it? Had he also killed the general's wife? Finally, they got through to him, or he got through to them, and the investigative machinery was nudged into motion. They wanted to detain him longer, but they realized that he would be of no help.

He left and zoomed to the city at an average speed of 160 kilometres an hour. The car was just a green blur steered by self-destruction seeking a quick suicidal release. The soldiers, who were the uncrowned kings of the road, committing every aberration in the book, from pushing cyclists off the tarmac to ignoring speed limits and red lights, sat back and watched in surprise. At the Clock Tower a group of Stingers was escorting a high-ranking officer. Bat drove through them, and before the soldiers could raise their fingers to point and threaten, he was gone. He parked in front of the house, rested his head on the wheel and wondered what to do next. It seemed such a weight to get out and put the tragedy in words. It seemed impossible.