Abyssinian Chronicles (42 page)

That same evening he came to our refectory, and in a calm, toneless voice announced that he was going to catch the culprit even if it meant going to Mars. He said this standing two meters away from my table. Everyone knew that he had burned the clothes in revenge, and many wondered why he was still pursuing the case after releasing his anger in the bonfire. I was not the only one who had fantasies of stoning him with chunks of the loathsome posho we were about to eat.

The literature teacher, who had not attended the fateful Monkey Mass, as we called it, referred to the incident obliquely, by exclaiming “God!” at unexpected intervals in the lesson. We prodded him for comment, but he kept on saying, rather ironically, “I reserve my comments. Silence is golden, speech is silver. I would rather keep the gold.”

The seminary was awash with speculation as to who had shamed Lageau. I kept out of it. Lwendo tried to talk about it, but I showed no interest at all.

The line of investigation Lageau took scared me. He collected specimens of our handwriting and promised to feed them into a computer. I hurried to the library to find out what a computer looked like. I tried to find out how different computers worked, but I got no wiser in real terms. Kaanders noticed my sudden interest in computers and said, “Oh boy, boy, Father Lageau is going to catch that bad boy, boy.”

“It was a shame what they did to
Agatha,
Father.”

“Oh boy, boy.”

“I hope the culprit gets caught,” I said to test him. “It is probably the same person who steals library books.”

“Yes, yes, boy.”

I asked Kaanders how a computer could be used to catch the culprit, and he said that it would look for similarities in letter patterns. I now had to cover my tracks by sabotaging Lageau’s efforts.

Like most dictatorships, the seminary was locked in a web of rumors and mystery. Days later, Lwendo came and said that Lageau had already caught his man.

“A staff meeting took place last night. But the staff is divided about what to do with the culprit.”

“How was he found out?”

“Somebody slipped a piece of paper under Father Lageau’s door, and it might have helped the computer. The same fellow is said to have been seen entering the dormitory in a cassock some nights ago.”

I was now sure that I was not alone in my hatred for Lageau. This sounded very much like “Fisherman,” as we called the secret power saboteur. I became more and intrigued by this fellow. I suspected that he was a bit like Cane, always out to challenge authority. Had Fisherman really seen me, and was he now just enjoying the game of fooling Lageau? And if so, why was he fingering certain individuals?

“To me, it looks like only bullies get fingered,” I said, feigning indifference.

“Lageau is different from Mindi. Bullies, well, they are the ones who commit crimes, aren’t they?”

I felt I had to do something quickly. There was a chance that the boy would not be expelled. For the moment, though, I was banking on the possibility that Lageau was concentrating on a number of things and would not keep too keen an eye on
Agatha.

In the morning, the boy was dismissed. He told his friends that he would be called back because he was innocent. This was unlikely; hardly any dismissals were reversed, except if one came from a very powerful family with diocesan connections, which the boy’s parents lacked. I became more determined to throw a spanner into the works.

This time I first checked on the watchman. He was asleep. I approached the hallway from the refectory side. The smell of
Agatha
excited me.
Agatha,
like a sorceress casting her stones for divination, kicked up images in my head. I could see her on the lake and hear winds moaning all around her, above the monotonous purring of her engine. The noise seemed to rise to a crescendo, fill the whole hallway and make the floor vibrate.

I sank onto one knee, ready to gore anybody sneaking up on me in the gut. I etched the words
RED INDIAN
under
OH GOD!,
which was
still there. Cold sweat trickled down my back and armpits. I rose suddenly, thinking that somebody had tapped me on the shoulder. False alarm.

Relieved, I walked out of the hallway, leaving the rusty nail behind. I had played the same trick twice and got away with it! This time I went via the refectory to the back of the classrooms. The neat rows of desks had something almost divine about them. They represented a little world, complete in itself, with its own rules, rewards and punishments. I could see the acacia trees in the distance. Home, I was almost home. The trees, the squeaky insect sounds, the forest in the distance, all reminded me of the village, the swamps, the hills, Ndere Primary School, the church tower, the nuns and Santo the madman.

The bathrooms were nearer now; I could see them looming like decapitated statues. They suddenly reminded me of the three gas pumps at the service station where Serenity and his cronies congregated. I negotiated the corner of the last building and almost collided with Dorobo. I thought he was smiling, because I could see a white burst in the pitch-black ball of his face. I froze.

“Gud morning, Faza,” he boomed.

“Good m-morning.” I could not remember his name. I wanted to bait him with the sound of his name and acknowledge him with the most unique feature about him, but I could remember only “Dorobo,” the name of a Kenyan tribe given to him by the boys because he was so black. How tall he looked now! He reminded me of awesome American wrestlers in cage matches. I might have been inside a steel cage, slipping and sliding on the sweat- and blood-stained canvas, trying to figure out how to escape this monster. There was not much I could do except to wait for what he had to say, and maybe beg for mercy. What would I trade in return for clemency? Dorobo then surprised me with a touch of humor: “You no sleep, Faza?”

“Ah, I-I sleep …” I was tempted to add the highly patronizing “my son” to my answer, but how dare I? He could book me for truancy, cassock-stealing, raping
Agatha
 …

I suddenly thought of Cane and the corpses: how big Cane must have felt, standing there and showing us the corpses as though they were dolls! How powerful he must have felt while pushing Island’s head down toward the dead woman’s stomach! It occurred to me that there might have been something sexual in it for Cane. Wasn’t that
why he lifted the dead woman’s skirt with his foot? I was glad I hadn’t looked. I was glad I had not seen what was underneath.

“You no sleep, Faza, eh!” the giant said and laughed.

I wanted to join in the laughter, but I did not know what exactly he had up his sleeve. “Yes, too much worry about exams.”

I was in for a bigger shock. He said, “Sank you fa
Agasa
job, he-he-heeee.”

“Ah …”

“Sank you fa Mindi job too, he-he-heeeee.” And he rocked with more laughter.

I was now sure that he was beating me with my old stick: blackmail. But why, if he knew all along, had he waited this long? To gather sufficient evidence and leverage? I knew it. He wanted me to forge and stamp documents for him. He probably wanted a recommendation written out on seminary stationery, stamped and signed in the rector’s name. I could do that, with some degree of difficulty, of course. My guess was that he had found a better job but did not want to alert the staff about it.

“Are you thanking me?” I said, waiting for the bombshell.

“Ya, ya, tough, eh? Faza Mindi no gud. Faza Lago no gud. You? Ha ha haaaa, tough. Otha boyz coward, but you?” He roared again and made me uncomfortable. “Faza Lago ask about boat and I say I watch fa thief not fa writer, ha haa …” The giant doubled up, clutched his thighs and roared away.

My fear now was that some troubled priest who might have heard us was about to catch me.

“Very clever of you to look out for thieves and not for writers!” I unsuccessfully tried to laugh.

“Me writer too,” he said, pointing to his huge chest with the quiver full of his odious arrows. “Me put dem pepaz wid name in Mindi and Lago orfice, he he heeeee.” He went off into one of his huge laughs. This time I joined in.

“You?”

“Ya, fa Dorobo game.”

I laughed hard this time, for now I understood. A group of boys used to tease this man by pretending that they were involved in a sentence-making game.

“I met a Dorobo warrior yesterday,” one would say.

“Did you know that Father Mindi’s mother was a Dorobo woman?” the second would ask.

“What a coincidence! The bishop’s uncle was a Dorobo warrior too!”

Those boys were the ones who took the blame for the damage done to Fr. Mindi’s car. None of them knew who had done them in. The watchman had fooled us all!! It all made sense, because both Fr. Mindi and Fr. Lageau had talked about firing him, but the rector had vetoed the decision on all occasions.

“It late now, Faza. Sleep, sleep.” He made a snoring sound and melted into the shadows. I kept thinking that he was Fisherman, the power saboteur. A real fisher of men. I hurried to the bathrooms. My teeth still clattered as I lay down in my bed.

There was confusion and incredulity when morning uncovered yet another assault on
Agatha.
While he condemned the action, the rector showed us the nail the attacker had left behind. Fr. Lageau had another migraine attack and ate pills and stayed in bed the whole day. There were threats from staff members loyal to him, for they were afraid that their cars and other properties might be attacked too.

Agatha
was repainted, and a German-made monster of an alarm was installed on her. There were rumors that Lageau had put in an order for a ferocious police dog. As if I planned to attack
Agatha
again! The dog came after I had left the seminary. Years later, government soldiers sent to hound guerrillas from the forest cut its throat and barbecued it.

“Agatha’s
alarm could feed you for a whole year,” Fr. Lageau was quoted as saying by his volleyball playmates. We could live with that, because there were no more expectations from him, and the hope that he might improve things had died. Boys now made jokes about
Agatha
and the dog.

“How is
Agatha?
”

“Oh, she is fine.”

“Who is Agatha?”

“A little yellow-haired Canadian whore.”

“Where did she spend the night?”

“Whoring and cheating. Her pimp cut her up in retaliation.”

“What did her boyfriend do about it?”

“He bought her a police dog.”

Almost at the same time as the events at the seminary, Padlock lost her parents to natural causes. At the moment I was facing the night watchman, a large, flamboyantly patterned puff adder was being attacked and displaced by safari ants. He moved his headquarters to a sweet potato garden and buried himself under the soil and the sparse leaves left by the hot season and the first harvests. A few hours later, the old woman woke her husband for morning prayers, the rosary and a hymn to welcome God’s new day. This was like second nature: they had been doing it for the last forty years. They loved praying to the God who had sent both their children to Rome and the Holy Land and brought them safely home. The old woman prepared tea on an open fire in the kitchen and served it quickly. She left her husband in the sitting room under the supervision of the crucified Jesus and the Holy Family, and went to the garden. It promised to be a hot day. The sky was clear, and she could see all the way to the forest. One part of the forest still bore the ravages of the recent storm. Godless people blamed Mbale for causing the storm. She found this ludicrous, pitiable too. Those people needed a foundation—God. The storm had come but had not done much damage to her house and gardens. She believed that it was not the hill that had protected them, but God. Mbale had got off badly and now had debts to pay, but it was all for the better: he would work harder and pray harder. There was nothing God could not do if asked with a sincere heart.

The old woman bent down to rake up the sparse potato leaves clinging to the thin, snaky stalks. She became aware of the sharp pain in her lower back. It had been there for years. She had dedicated it to the Virgin Mary. She stepped over potato mounds, gathered the leaves and heaped them at one end of the garden. She surveyed the naked mounds, survivors of wind, rain and the first harvests, which had been done with digging sticks. She grabbed her hoe, ready to dig up the mounds, collect the last potatoes and prepare the area for another crop. The pain shot up again. She thought about asking one of her grandchildren, probably Mbale’s, to come and live here and help her with some chores. She raised her hoe and cut deep into the mounds, spreading
the soil over her feet and collecting the potatoes one by one with her fingers. Last harvests were usually mediocre, and this was no exception: the potatoes were small and stringy.

She felt a scratch on her right foot. She ignored it. It had to be one of those red safari ants she had seen near the latrine. As she dug up the mounds, she thanked God for the blessings He had poured on her family: her children bringing home the pope’s blessings and pictures in which they stood near the Holy Father was more than she could ask for. It made all the hard work of raising them rise like a cloud of incense to the portals of heaven. Her own children! Children who used to go barefoot to school, who were teased for being poor, who were taught the hard way. Her children had flown to the Holy Land! The blessings Nakkazi had brought back were a sign that God had forgiven her sisters for living in sin, for rebelling against His will, for shaming everyone by begetting children of sin and for spurning holy matrimony.

The second scratch was almost imperceptible: the pain was swamped by the thoughts swirling in her head. She was remembering Nakkazi’s wedding. She could see the whole place crawling with people: relatives, friends, strangers. She could still hear the builders hammering, taking down the old roof and putting up the new one. She could see the bride glistening in the sun, butter oil sinking deeper and deeper into her skin. She remembered feeling a bit pressured by the in-laws, and had been instrumental in turning down the transport they had offered. Then their vehicles broke down on the wedding day, and most people remained behind! She remembered feeling worried that Nakibuka would create a rift in her daughter’s marriage: the way she eyed the groom had been unhealthy. Thank God nothing had happened, and Nakkazi had been happily married for years and had never said a word against her aunt. Now one of Nakkazi’s boys was going to become a priest: what an honor! The old woman felt she had fulfilled her mission on earth.