The Last King of Scotland (1998) (26 page)

He took the wheel of the jeep himself, telling the driver to move over. The jeep swung towards the gates of the sports ground, where more crowds were in place to cheer him. The dignitaries, as usual, waited for him to go first.

As Amin turned out on to the main road, there were two explosions, in quick succession. Smoke billowed and there was a faint rain of debris. Then two shots rang out. The ministers, my informant told me, judiciously fled through the same gate as Amin, lest they be accused of being involved in the attempt. The crowd ran away less thoughtfully, screaming. Already the police were pulling imagined perpetrators from among them.

The first grenade, it emerged, had exploded where Amin would have been sitting, had he not taken the driver’s seat. As my X-ray later showed, it forced the splinter into the driver’s brain. The moment after the blasts was pandemonium. Amin, opening his briefcase, pulled out a grenade himself, ready to throw it if there was another attack.

That night, I remember, troops flooded Kampala. Civilians were haphazardly killed and beaten as punishment for the attempt. No one knew who were the culprits, but the reprisals took place none the less.

“Three grenades hit me,” Amin told me later. “They killed thirty-nine people. My driver was killed and so was my escort – it was only I that escaped. I was saved by God’s wish. I will not die until the date God has ordained. I know it, but I don’t tell you to stop your suspense.”

I
di got married again. Wife number four. I attended the ceremony at the cathedral. It was packed, not to mention the thousands cheering themselves hoarse outside. It had been announced that he was also having a Moslem ceremony – “I love all the religions in Uganda,” he’d said on the radio – but I wasn’t invited to that. The Christian one was a strange affair, not least because the ushers were high-ranking army officers, except for Wasswa, who was best man. I took up my seat at the back on the right, along with the other expatriates – among whom, I was embarrassed to see, were Marina and her husband, and Stone as well. Nearer to me, half-obscured by a pillar, was Swanepoel.

The cathedral was very big and grand, and I concentrated on its high pink-and-blue-painted ceiling while the organ was playing before the bride came in. I tried not to look at Marina. It was now over a year since my gaffe, but I still smarted – though it wasn’t much, really. I hadn’t done anything that offensive. My eyes fell instead on Idi, his back taking up a sizeable portion of the first pew. His jacket was dark green. Sea-green. He kept looking round, with a puzzled expression one saw often on his face, manifesting itself in frowns and darting glances. The soldier sizing up danger, I supposed. The strange thing was he smiled when he did this. As if two parts of his brain were working totally independently.

The music stopped, and we stood up. My eye swivelled inevitably towards Marina. I couldn’t help it. She was wearing a plain white blouse buttoned up at the neck and, so far as I could see below the pew, a green skirt with flounces. Not the same colour as Idi’s, more like parsley. She was also wearing a hat, under the brim of which – she didn’t look at me.

The procession started and the ushers, two by two with the scarlet stripes on their military trousers criss-crossing like scissors, walked up the aisle. A few paces behind walked the bride on her father’s arm, her long heavy train and the bridesmaids behind her. The father’s suit didn’t fit. He looked like a Scottish farmer on market day. At the top of the aisle, the bridesmaids and groomsmen peeled off to left and right respectively. The new wife’s name was Medina. Almost as tall as Amin, she was a dancer with the Heartbeat of Africa troupe, which was used for entertaining visiting diplomats and at official state functions.

“Please sit down,” said the Archbishop of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Za’ire. A tiny man, in spite of his title, he was dwarfed by the altar. His head, with its greying temples and kind creases round the eyes, had the statesmanlike look that many senior churchmen seem to acquire.

“Dearly beloved,” he intoned, “we are assembled here in the presence of God to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony. Marriage was instituted by God in the Garden of Eden when He saw that it was not good for man to be alone. It thus is an institution of God – ordained in the time of man’s innocence, before he had sinned against the Maker, and been banished from the Garden. It was given in wisdom and kindness, to repress irregular affection, and to support social order. Older than laws of merely human origin, it lies at the basis of all human legislation and civil government, and the peace and well-being of the community and country.”

A slight frisson went through the congregation. Idi’s shoulders, I could see even from that distance, had tensed up.

“A relationship consecrated in this manner should not be formed lightly, but advisedly, in fear of God, and for the purposes for which He, its Divine Author, has ordained the blessed state of matrimony.”

The muscles in my back were already beginning to ache from the hard pew. I wanted to stand up and stretch. The strange idea came into my head that my body and Idi’s were connected. Like the King’s umbilical cord.

“Let me thereby remind you, Idi and Medina, that your home will never be what God intends for it to be if you leave Him out of your relationship. As you are obedient to the Word of God, and allow God to control your relationship, your home will be the place of joy and testimony to the world that God intends. You must recognize that this covenant you are about to make is more than a legal contract…”

I looked over at Marina again. She was looking in my direction, I could see the lashes of her eyes. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at the pillar.

“…it is a bond of union established in heaven…”

Those pillars. Scrollwork like a piece of sweet rock. All that Catholic stuff. I couldn’t be doing with it, not with my background. The whole place smelt over-ripe: God in the plaster, God in the wood of the pews. The incarnation of mortar. Hopeless. Or too hope-full, rather. As if one drop, half a drop even, of that blood-red wine would redeem any number of sins.

“…and not to be broken on earth.”

The first lesson was taken from Romans. Wasswa read it, his voice reedy and shaking. I swear I could see a hard gleam in the Archbishop’s eye as the words came out.

Who is he? I thought, madly, as Swanepoel’s beard came into my field of vision, Swanepoel winking at me like a drunken sailor.

Then the psalm, and another lesson, and the Gospel.

When everyone said ‘Amen’, it sounded like ‘Amin’, and when the Archbishop proclaimed, “You stand before us as individuals redeemed by Christ,” I thought of those drops of blood and of my dead father.

“We are free,” he used to say, “and we are not free. That is the mystery. It is mystical but it is also scientific. Biology, society, God knows what else (and He does), are pushing us in this or that direction all the time. And yet we can choose, also. It’s like that new motorway. You’re on it, like it or not, but you can come off it at a junction – should God will there to be one where you want one – and take another road. But it’s still His road. Do you understand, Nicholas? Do you understand that when people say there is no mystery in the Presbyterian church, they’ve totally misunderstood? There is a mystery and it’s a scientific mystery an’ all.”

This was his standard line, God as civil engineer, and it provoked much mirth amongst the congregation of Fossiemuir.

As if in divine confirmation of my train of thought, when Idi stood up for the vows, he was wearing a kilt. The sea-green jacket was just part of the Highland get-up, spats and sporran, skean-dhu and brogans…the full, romantic, nonsensical lot, the same as I had seen in the mountains.

And then the questions.

“Are you prepared to love Medina as Christ loved the Church, are you willing to love…”

I looked round the walls, at the tableaux of the Stations of the Cross, representing the successive stages of Christ’s Passion. The folds of cloth and angular faces jutted out in plaster relief. They were painted in bold, relentless colours: one could not doubt (and yet one could) that this was blood, that this was wood, that this spear would pierce flesh, this sponge drip vinegar that really stung. To me, they did seem a little theatrical, but they were moving, for all that. My father wouldn’t have agreed, however.

“In the full knowledge that this love is not to be diminished by difficult circumstances, and it is only to be dissolved by death, will you now speak your marriage vows?”

“I have prayed you as my wife,” Amin said, “and the god has truly answered my prayers. I have talked to him straight – ”

The Archbishop interrupted – “you praise and thank Him for His faithfulness for I have delighted in knowing you and loving you…”

“Yes, that is the correct, for I have delighted in knowing you and loving you…”

“If these vows be discharged, they will add to the happiness of life, lightening by dividing its inevitable sorrows and heightening by doubling all its blessedness. But if these obligations be neglected and violated, you cannot escape the keenest misery as well as the darkest guilt. What token do you give of the vows you have made?”

“This ring.”

“The ring that symbolizes the never-ending love you have pledged: for that love – a perfect circle as far as the eye can see, and for that love also – gold, as the emblem of that which is least tarnished and most enduring. Through these rings, let the light of Christ shine upon you for all of your life together, delighting in the society of each other as you conduct yourselves by His law. For it is also true that rings have, in history, been the traditional sign of authority, used to seal documents and sign proclamations. Before you exchange rings, will you therefore accept the authority of Christ in your life?”

I will. I willed Amin to say ‘I will’ but I didn’t hear it. Just a muddled and hardly audible –

“I accept the authority of the god…”

Then the Prayers of the People and – crowning moment – the Blessing of the Union.

Idi rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. No words came out.

“I do, I do.” The Archbishop muttered insistently.

“I do.” Finally it came.

I looked for Marina, but all I could see was the back of Swanepoel’s head.

“Medina, your husband is going to look to you for encouragement, cheerfulness and confidence…”

“I do.”

Quietly, like the brush of a hand.

“…I charge you both before God, the Searcher of all hearts, and before the Lord Jesus Christ, who shed His precious blood to redeem you from sin, that if either of you know any impediment why you may not be lawfully joined together in marriage, you do now confess it. For be well assured that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God’s word allows, their union is not blessed by Him. Equally, if any person present here today…”

I smiled to myself. It wasn’t likely.

“Ministering in the name of the Lord Jesus, I now pronounce you husband and wife. May Christ be the head of your home. May He be the unseen guest at every meal, the listener to every conversation. May Christ’s love rule your hearts and lives. You may now kiss the bride…”

Idi craned over her, like a boy biting an apple.

Then the Archbishop blessed them. Once that was over, the rest of the Mass felt like an anticlimax. I stole the odd glance at Marina during the closing hymn. Our eyes met for one moment but she turned away, and as I followed the crowd out after the Recessional – Idi sweeping by with a look like thunder – I lost sight of her.

Her attitude having put me in a sour mood (which was, I know, more than a little unfair on her), I decided to miss the big reception that had been laid on at the Imperial Hotel. According to the
Argus
, they had killed 300 goats and made 70 vats of curry – of which, as I have said, I am not fond.

Driving back home, I thought about the new wife. She had light-coloured skin and the gossip was that Amin’s nickname for her was Kahawa: coffee in Swahili. As well as being in the dance troupe, she was the official ‘face of Uganda’ on tourist material, though I had heard that she was to be deleted now they were married. Poor girl, I suspected she would not derive much pleasure from that relationship. Amin’s sex life struck me as likely to be, if not monstrous, then rather tender and geriatric. With a body that size, one imagined that the only genuine pleasure he could get was to lie on his back and let the world spin about him.

Medina would take her place within his households, I supposed, much to the irritation of the other wives, who had enough problems competing for his attention as it was. Sometimes, looking out of the bungalow window, I saw them walking in the gardens, chattering and arguing like a bunch of schoolgirls. Only one of them actually lived at State House, but they all got together from time to time. They were of different ages, but the situation was so confused that I was still not quite sure which was which, having been introduced only at functions when they were all togged up in white robes and turbans and difficult to distinguish. So I made some enquiries of Wasswa on the matter, and this, it seemed, was about the sum of it: