The Last King of Scotland (1998) (2 page)

I looked down the table, over the rows of silver and crystal, towards the opening of the kitchen, where processions of waiters were bustling in and out. A slight aroma of woodsmoke, a whiff of reality, drifted up the table, fanned by the doors. All this – the china, the doilies, the display of tropical flowers, the perfumed fingerbowls, most of all her, Marina Perkins, next to me – was a bit overwhelming after those long months in the west; it all promised, it all suggested too much.

Wine was poured. Conversation bubbled quietly as we waited for Idi to finish greeting the guests. Eventually he bowled in, smiling genially as he made his way to the top of the table, to the carver chair. Behind him on the wall was a large disc of golden metal, emblazoned with the country’s emblem, a Ugandan crested crane.

Our party was two or three down from Idi’s place at the head of the table. Perkins and Todd were the most significant emissaries, politically speaking, but as they had presented their credentials only relatively recently, ancient diplomatic practice decreed that they were not placed hard by the seat of local power. About which, I suspect, they were secretly ecstatic. It’s a lesson worth noting that apparently burdensome convention can sometimes work to individual advantage.

So there he stood, Idi, solid as a bronze bull, almost as if he, too, was waiting for something to happen. What did happen was that a greying official in tails, some sort of major-domo who had been scuttling up and down ever since we entered the hall, sounded a gong and then, straightening up, read from a paper:

“His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadj Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular welcomes the Court of Kampala and assembled worthies of the city to this his annual banquet.”

I looked down at Marina Perkins’s hands resting in her lap. “I wonder how long this business is going to last,” I muttered.

“Mmm,” she said, turning towards me. “Longer than you think, probably…”

She raised her eyebrows mischievously. But at that moment, the toastmaster’s voice rose in a crescendo.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. Field Marshal Amin has requested that you should begin eating only after he has made a few introductory remarks concerning domestic and international affairs.”

Amin drew himself up to his full, impressive height, the light of the chandeliers dancing on his shiny dome, his sharply angled cheeks. The girl in pink was seated next to him.

“My friends, I have to do this because if I do not speak now, you will become too drunk to hear my words. I have noticed there can be bad drunkenness in Uganda and indeed across the whole world, from beer and from spirits. This is true of the armed forces especially. For example, looking at the faces of the Entebbe Air Force Jazz Band, I know straightaway they are drunkards.”

The diners tittered, turning to look at the jazz band, seated on a podium in a shadowy corner, waiting for their turn. Having looked doleful at the outset, and then worried at Idi’s remark, the musicians were now laughing energetically.

“Yes, some people look as though they are painted with cosmetics just because of too much drinking of alcohol. And cosmetics too can be bad themselves, and wigs: I do not want Ugandans to wear the hair of dead imperialists or of Africans killed by imperialists.”

He patted the pink princess on the head. For a moment he paused, blinking as if confused, or unsure of what he was seeing – his eyesight, I knew from the files, was bad. Then he sniffed the air and continued.

“No member of my own family is to wear a wig, or she will cease to be my family member. Because we are all one happy family in Uganda, like it is we are gathered around this table in our single house. Myself, I started cleaning the house until I succeeded in placing indigenous Ugandans in all important posts. Can you remember that even cooks in hotels were whites? Except for me. I myself sold sweet biscuits on the roadside as a young boy and was a cookpot stirrer in my first army position, before I became General. Otherwise, insecurity prevailed before. Now, if you go into the countryside, you will see we have enough food. We are growing crops for export and we are getting foreign exchange. Also I have here a report from the Parastatal Food and Beverages Ltd: it says we are selling Blue Band, Cowboy, Kimbo Sugar, salt, rice, Colgate, Omo and shoe polish. So you see, you do not hear anywhere Uganda has debts, only from the British press campaign to tell lies.”

Perkins wiped his fork on his napkin, then lifted it up close to his face, examining the prongs. He looked slightly liverish.

“Because the World Bank is very happy with Uganda. In fact, I have decided to help the World Bank. I have decided to offer food relief to countries with food problems: millet, maize and beans shall be sent in sacks to all thin countries. And cassava also.”

I thought of the terraced plots back in the west. I used to watch the women set out to work as I ate my breakfast on the wooden veranda. They carried strange, broad-bladed hoes on their shoulders and had children strapped to their backs and bundles balanced on their heads, their chatter floating up to me as they walked by.

“Ambassadors who are here, please ensure that the food delivered in your countries is equitably distributed. Even you who are from superpowers. Remember this: I do not want to be controlled by any superpower. I myself consider myself the most powerful figure in the world and that is why I do not let any superpower control me. Remember this also: superpower leaders can fall. I once went for dinner with the Prime Minister of Britain, Mr Edward Heath, at his official residence Number Ten Downing Street. But even he could fall from a great height, even though he is my good friend.”

“I don’t think we need give too much credence to that,” muttered Perkins. His wife fiddled with her spoons, putting the dessert spoon into the curve of the soup spoon. And then she changed the arrangement around.

“But the truth is, I would like to be friends with all of you. As I have repeatedly emphasized, there is no room in Uganda for hatred and enmity. I have stated I will not victimize or favour anybody. Our aim must be unity and love. And good manners. So guerrillas against the country will be met with countermeasures. You will forgive me for ending my speech here. I have said it before: I am not a politician but a professional soldier. I am therefore a man of few words and I have been very brief throughout my professional career. It only remains for me to draw your attention to one thing more: the good foods coming to the table before you. A human being is a human being, and like a car he needs refuelling and fresh air after working for a long time. So: eat!”

With this last declamation, he threw up his arms and stood there motionless for a second, like a preacher or a celebrant at the Mass. Behind him, his raised arms were reflected dully in the great gold dish on the wall, altering the pattern of light as it fell on the tablecloth.

And then he sat down. The diners hardly stirred, staring at him still. Idi savoured the sight of it, his own lips moving silently, as if he had carried on speaking. Only the rattle of the trolleys, bringing in the starters, broke the spell, and everyone began to applaud.

The hors d’oeuvre were placed in front of us, a triple choice: fillets of Nile perch, thick gumbo soup made from okra and crayfish, or, most disturbingly for the Europeans (it was the kind of thing Idi would do on purpose), a variety platter of dudu – bee larvae, large green bush crickets, cicadas and flying ants, fried with a little oil and salt. They were actually quite delicious – crisp and brown, they tasted a bit like whitebait.

“I think I’ll stick to the gumbo,” said Todd, horrified, as Wasswa and I crunched up a few.

Wasswa pushed the dudu platter towards him. “But these are a local delicacy. You may not know, sir, that gumbo is an imported dish even in our own Uganda. It is from just over the fringe of our south-western province, into Zaire, where, as you may know also, many of the border peoples speak Swahili like our Ugandan soldiers here, and come to trade fish or to be treated medically by such fellows as Doctor Garrigan, who was in those parts before.”

“That’s right,” I added, lamely. “I was in the west before I came to Kampala.”

“I guess it must have been quite rough to live out there. I went down there on tour last year,” said Todd.

“But in Zaire it is too bad more,” interjected Wasswa. “They are real washenzi, savages, in that place. In that country, sir, this gumbo, it is called nkombo, which means ‘runaway slave’ in the Nkongo language – it is how he, this dish here, came to your country America. I am sure you were not knowing this.”

“No, I can’t say I was aware of that, Minister Wasswa. Of course, American cuisine is nourished by all manner of national traditions: Dutch, German, English, but also Korean and, as you say, there’s the whole African-American thing. The melting-pot, you know. It is fascinating, isn’t it, this gourmandizing business? Every plate tells a story.”

“I thought you chaps just ate hamburgers,” said Stone. It was hot in the banqueting room, and two damp strands of flaxen hair fell over his forehead like tendrils of seaweed.

“Now don’t you mock me,” the American replied, chuckling. “I had a Paris posting when I was young. They’d call you Monsieur Rosbif there, or John Bull.”

“But in Zaire, too, those people eat monkey meat,” Wasswa said loudly, laying it on thick, piqued at no longer being the centre of attention.

Suddenly Amin himself, overhearing, called down from the top of the table.

“And what is your fault with monkey meat, Minister of Health? I, your President, has eaten monkey meat.”

Wasswa, craven, toyed with his cutlery.

“And I have also eaten human meat.”

This His Excellency almost shouted. A shocked silence fell over the table – almost visible, as if some diaphanous fabric had come down from the ceiling and settled over the steaming tureens and salvers. We looked up at him, not sure how to react.

Amin finally rose to his feet. “It is very salty,” he said, “even more salty than leopard meat.”

We shifted in our chairs.

“In warfare, if you do not have food, and your fellow soldier is wounded, you may as well kill him and eat him to survive. It can give you his strength inside. His flesh can make you better, it can make you full in the battlefield.”

And then he sat down once again. The candles fluttered light on to the silver, which threw off distorted images of the faces round the table. Oddly, I found myself thinking of ants, clay mounds, the distribution of formic acid – I suppose it was having eaten the insects.

No one said a word until the waiters wheeled in the centrepiece of the main course. It was a whole roast kudu hind. Her little stumped-off, cauterized legs stuck up in the air like cathedral spires, and she was stuffed, so the menu told us, with avocado and sausage meat. The latter spilt out, crusty and crennellated, at one end, the Limpopo-coloured fruit-vegetable at the other.

The display rolled up to Idi. We watched him rub knife against steel, rhythmically, the noise marking out still further the silence over the table. Then he slit the torso and, with a rough majesty, hacked off a ceremonial slice of meat for himself, flipping it on to the gold-rimmed plate. A drop of grease flew on to the princess’s cashmere, causing her to jump back in her seat and then, when Amin looked down, to smile at him obsequiously. Finally, he handed the knife to one of the waiters, who proceeded dextrously to layer slice after effortless slice – the meat falling away like waves on a beach – on the edge of the platter, while others shuffled them on to plates. Yet more waiters, moving swiftly behind the chairs in a complicated shuttle system, sliding along the parquet, brought them to each guest.

I prodded the kudu steak in front of me. A thin trickle of juice came out. I thought about how the beast must have been stalked and shot, dragged or perhaps carried home slung on a pole, flayed and gutted, the crouching hunters palming prize portions (heart, kidney, liver) into bloodied banana leaves to take home to their wives. And the carcass itself, too, might well have been wrapped for transport by lorry back to Kampala: as well as keeping off flies, the banana leaf is said to contain a tenderizing enzyme. Out in the bush, I’d often mused about analysing and isolating it, selling the formula to make my fortune back home.

Nathan Theseus Todd attacked his steak with gusto. He cut off such a large piece that the dark meat, darker than beef, covered his mouth as he forked it in, making it seem – ever so briefly – like a gag. Or another mouth altogether. A second mouth.

Nauseated, I turned to Marina Perkins. “What’s really interesting about all this, is that none of the meat is chilled at any point; refrigeration breaks down the cell structure of the meat, you know. That’s why it tastes different from English meat.”

She looked at me slightly quizzically. “You’re lucky, being a man of science. I sometimes wish that I had a better idea of how things fit together.”

The accompanying dishes for the kudu began piling up: a little ramekin of chilli relish; mounds of vegetables – sweet potato rissoles, yam chips, fried groundnuts, pigeon peas; and a chopped mess of green I called jungle salad: spinach, shu-shu and black-eyed-bean leaves.

“Watch out for this foods,” called out Idi, tapping a dish. “There is an old Swahili proverb: if you give pigeon peas to a donkey, he will fart. That is why I never eat this foods.”

I thought of the donkey I had as a child in Fossiemuir. It died from bloat, having eaten grass cuttings I’d left in a bin outside the paddock. They’d fermented in its stomach, blowing it up like a balloon. The only way to cure it was to stick the point of a knife between the beast’s ribs, cutting into the stomach wall where it pressed against them. I remember how the green liquor came out, when the vet did it, but the animal was too far gone – we couldn’t save it.

Nathan Theseus, excited by mouthfuls of meat, waved his fork in the air.

“We saw these wonderful cows when we went down to the Rwanda border. You know, the ones with the long horns and humped backs. Herds and herds of them, with white birds sitting on their backs.”