And when he comes back
You the wicked will be left behind
Moaning your wicked deeds
Whenever our Lord comes back
The idea of the endless repetition of this hymn pleased him so much that he had amplifiers placed at the four corners of the seven-acre plantation so that passersby and even others would benefit from the tune and the words.
Rachael would remain thus, awaiting his second coming, and on that day when he found that she had shed all the tears for all the tomorrows of all the children she had accused him of abusing, he would take her back to restart life exactly from where it had stopped, or rather Rachael would resume her life, which had been marking time, like a cinematic frame on pause. I am your beginning and your end.
What were you before I made you my wife? he asked, and answered himself, A primary school teacher. I am the past and the present you have been and I am your tomorrow take it or leave it, he added in English as he turned his back on her.
There was only one entrance to the seven-acre prison. An armed guard was stationed at the stone gate to make sure that she neither left or received visitors except officials who replenished supplies and doubled as spies, or else her children.
Her children? Apart from the numberless others he begot upon his bed-makers, the Ruler had four boys with Rachael. They were not the brightest in their class, and he had taken them out of school before they had obtained their high school diplomas. He enlisted them in the army—to learn on the job—where they quickly rose to the highest ranks. At the beginning of their mother’s frozen present, the firstborn, Rueben Kucera, was a three-star general in the army; the second, Samwel Moya, a two-star general in the air force; the third, Dickens Soi, a one-star general in the navy; and the fourth, Richard Runyenje, an army captain. But apart from their military duties they were all on the board of directors of several parastatals closely linked to foreign companies, particularly those involved in the exploration of oil and the mining of precious metals. They were also on several licensing boards. Their main task was to sniff out any anti-government plots in the three branches of the armed forces, as well as to receive bribes. The only problem was that the four were so partial to alcohol and drugs that it was difficult for them to keep up with whatever was happening in the armed forces or on the boards over which they sat. The Ruler was rather disappointed, for he had hoped that at least one of his sons with Rachael might inherit the throne, establishing a mighty family dynasty, and so he often scolded them for their lack of ambition and appetite for power. Yet on the days when they brought him their collections, there was the celebratory atmosphere of a family reunion.
They did not view their mother’s life in a seven-acre cage as a dangerous confinement, and when they were not too drunk they would call her—Rachael could receive calls but she could not call out—to say how are you, and when they heard her say that she was fine, they took it that all was well with her and they would quickly return to what they knew best: alcohol, drugs, and bribes.
In calling her, albeit only now and then, the sons actually showed more humanity toward her than did their father, who never once visited the cage to say another word, good or bad. Despite this, Rachael was always in the Ruler’s mind, for he received daily reports of her moods and activities; how she spent her day, how she slept, the words she muttered to herself, everything.
What he yearned to hear was any news of her tears, the one sign that would unerringly point to her breakdown and desire for redemption. But he didn’t. It is said by those who hold the fourth theory that Rachael, aware of this insatiable desire for humiliating the already fallen, had sworn that she would never let him see her tears or hear about them, not even from her children or the numerous spies. And the more she held out, the more he needed her self-abnegation. Her tears had become the battlefield of their wills.
This obsession with her tears, claimed the creators of the fourth theory, led to the Ruler’s strange illness.
The trouble with this theory was that it relied either on rumors or whatever could be deduced from the behavior of the Ruler’s children.
It was also the least known of the five theories because it was whispered only among people who trusted one another: for who would be so foolish as to talk about this openly unless he courted death?
5
There were others who, to this day, are ready to swear that the illness had nothing to do with burning anger, the anguished cry of a wronged he-goat, the aging reign, or Rachael’s tears, and theirs was the fifth theory: that the illness was the sole work of the daemons that the Ruler had housed in a special chamber in the State House, who had now turned their backs on him and withdrew their protective services.
It is said that the walls and ceiling of the chamber were made from the skeletons of the students, teachers, workers, and small farmers he had killed in all the regions of the country, for it was well known that he came into power with flaming swords, the bodies of his victims falling down to his left and right like banana trunks. The skulls of his most hated enemies hung on the walls and others from the ceiling, bone sculptures, white memories of victory and defeat.
The chamber was a cross between a museum and a temple, and every morning the Ruler, after first bathing in the preserved blood of his enemies, would enter, carrying a staff and a fly whisk, and then walk about quietly, looking at the various exhibits one by one; then, about to leave, he would suddenly stop at the door and glance one more time at the chamber and, with mocking gestures of triumphant contempt, at the dark holes and grinning teeth where once eyes and mouths had been.
What were you after? he would ask the skulls as if they could hear him. This fly whisk, this scepter, this crown? He would pause as if expecting an answer, and when the skulls failed to respond he would burst out in guffaws as if daring them to contradict what he was about to say: I plucked out your tongues and tore your lips to show you that a politician without a mouth is no politician at all. But there were times when it looked as if the skulls were grinning back in coun-termockery and the laughter would stop abruptly. You fucking bastards, it is your own greed and boundless ambitions that led you here. Did you seriously think that you had a chance to overthrow me? Let me tell you. The person who would even dare has not been born, and if he has, he still will have to change himself into a spirit and grow a beard and human hair on his feet. You did not know that, did you? he would add, pointing at them with his staff menacingly, his mouth foaming with fury.
Let me say as the narrator that I cannot confirm the truth or falsity of the existence of the chamber; it may turn into a mere rumor or tale from the mouth of Askari Arigaigai Gathere: but if it exists, simple logic proves that it was the Ruler’s morning rites in this chamber of skulls that long ago, before the Ruler’s fatal visit to America and any talk of his illness, had given rise to a rumor that quickly spread throughout the country. Whenever two or three gathered together, the very first question was about the rumor: Can you believe it? Did you know that the Ruler is a devil worshipper, and that he worships his lord and master, Satan, in the name of a serpent?
The rumor about devil and snake worship took root in all Aburiria following one of the most ambitious programs for birthday celebrations in honor of a Ruler ever undertaken in the country.
6
Now everybody in the country knew something or other about the Ruler’s birthday because, before it was firmly set in the national calendar, the date of his birth and the manner of its celebration had been the subject of a heated debate in Parliament that went on for seven months, seven days, seven hours, and seven minutes, and even then the honorable members could not arrive at a consensus mainly because nobody knew for sure the actual date of the Ruler’s birth, and when they failed to break the impasse, the honorable members sent a formal delegation to the very seat of power to seek wise guidance, after which they passed a motion of gratitude to the Ruler for helping the chamber find a solution to a problem that had completely defeated their combined
knowledge and experience. The birthday celebrations would always start at the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month, seven being the Ruler’s sacred number, and precisely because in Aburlria the Ruler controlled how the months followed each other—January for instance trading places with July—he therefore had the power to declare any month in the year the seventh month, and any day within that seventh month the seventh day and therefore the Ruler’s Rirthday The same applied to time, and any hour, depending on the wishes of the Ruler, could be the seventh hour.
The attendance at these annual assemblies always varied, but that particular year the stadium was almost full because the curiosity of the citizens had been aroused by a special announcement, repeated over and over in the media, that there would be a special birthday cake, which the entire country had made for the Ruler and which he might make multiply and feed the multitude the way Jesus Christ once did with just five loaves and two fishes. The prospect of cakes for the multitude may explain the more than usual presence of victims of kwashiorkor.
The celebration started at noon, and late in the afternoon it was still going strong. The sun dried people’s throats. The Ruler, his ministers, and the leaders of the Ruler’s Party, all under a shade, kept cooling their tongues with cold water. The citizens without shade or water distracted themselves from the hot darts of the sun by observing and commenting on what was happening on the platform: the clothes the dignitaries wore, the way they walked, or even where each sat relative to the seat of might.
Immediately behind the Ruler was a man who held a pen the width of an inch water pipe in his right hand and a huge leather-bound book in his left, and since he was always writing people assumed that he was a member of the press, although there were some who wondered why he was not at the press gallery. Beside him sat the four sons of the Ruler—Kucera, Moya, Soi, and Runyenje— studiously drinking from bottles labeled Diet.
Near the sons sat Dr. Wilfred Kaboca, the Ruler’s personal physician, and next to him, the only woman on the platform, who was also conspicuous by her silence. Some assumed that she was one of the Ruler’s daughters, but then, they wondered, why was she not speaking to her brothers? Others thought that she was Dr. Kaboca’s wife, but then why this silence between themr
To the Ruler’s right sat the Minister for Foreign Affairs in a dark striped suit and a red tie with a picture of the Ruler, the emblem of the Ruler’s Party.
The story goes that Markus used to be an ordinary member of Parliament. Then one day he flew to England, where under the glare of publicity he entered a major London hospital not because he was ill but because he wanted to have his eyes enlarged, to make them ferociously sharp, or as he put it in Kiswahili, Yawe Macho Kali, so that they would be able to spot the enemies of the Ruler no matter how far their hiding places. Enlarged to the size of electric bulbs, his eyes were now the most prominent feature of his face, dwarfing his nose, cheeks, and forehead. The Ruler was so touched by his devotion and public expression of loyalty that even before the MP returned home from England the Ruler had given him the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an important Cabinet post, so that Machokali would be his representative eye wherever, in whatever corner of the globe lay the Ruler’s interests. And so Machokali he became, and later he even forgot the name given at his birth.
To the left of the Ruler sat another Cabinet minister, the Minister of State in the Ruler’s office, dressed in a white silk suit, a red handkerchief in his breast pocket, and of course the Party tie. He too had started as a not particularly distinguished member of Parliament, and he probably would have remained thus, except that when he heard of the good fortune that had befallen Machokali he decided to follow suit. He did not have much money, so he secretly sold his father’s plot and borrowed the rest to buy himself a flight to France and a hospital bed in Paris, where he had his ears enlarged so that, as he also put it in a press statement, he would be able to hear better and therefore be privy to the most private of conversations between husband and wife, children and their parents, students and teachers, priests and their flock, psychiatrists and their patients—all in the service of the Ruler. His ears were larger than a rabbit’s and always primed to detect danger at any time and from any direction. His devotion did not go unnoticed, and he was made Minister of State in charge of spying on the citizenry. The secret police machine known as M5 was now under his direction. And so Silver Sikiokuu he became, jettisoning his earlier names.
The success of the two erstwhile members of Parliament was, ironically, the beginning of their rivalry: one considered himself the Ruler’s Eye and the other his Ear. People at the stadium kept comparing their different expressions, particularly the movements of their eyes and ears, for it had long been known that the two were always in a mortal struggle to establish which organ was more powerful: the Eye or the Ear of the Ruler. Machokali always swore by his eyes: May these turn against me if I am not telling the truth. Sikiokuu invoked his ears: May these be my witness that what I am saying is true—and in mentioning them, he would tug at the earlobes. The gesture, rehearsed and perfected over time, gave him a slight edge in their rivalry for attention, because Machokali could never match it by tugging at his eyelids and he was reduced to doing the second best thing, pointing at his eyes for emphasis.
Other members of Parliament would have followed suit and had their bodies altered depending on what services they wanted to render the Ruler except for what befell Benjamin Mambo. As a young man Mambo had failed to get into the army because he was small, but the fire for a military life never died, and now, with the new avenues of power opened by Machokali and Sikiokuu, he thought this his best chance to realize his dream, and he agonized over the best bodily change to land him the Defense Minister portfolio. He chose to have his tongue elongated so that in echoing the Ruler’s command his words would reach every soldier in the country and his threats to his enemies before they could reach the Aburlrian borders. He first emulated Sikiokuu and went to Paris, but there was some misunderstanding about the required size, and the tongue, like a dog’s, now hung out way beyond his lips, rendering speech impossible. Ma-chokali came to his aid by arranging for him to go to a clinic in Berlin, where the lips were pulled and elongated to cover the tongue, but even then not completely and the tongue protruded now just a little. But the Ruler misread the signified and gave him the Ministry of Information. This was not bad, and Mambo marked his elevation to a Cabinet post by changing his forenames and called himself Big Ben, inspired by the clock at the British Houses of Parliament. His full name was now Big Ben Mambo. He did not forget the help that Ma-chokali had rendered him, and in the political struggle between Markus and Silver, he often took Machokali’s side.
The idea of a special national gift had come from Machokali— though of course he had gotten strong hints from high above—and it was with the pride of the inventor that he signaled the military, the police, and the prison brass bands to get themselves ready to strike the birthday tune. The moment had come.
There was great curiosity among the crowd as Machokali, aided by members of the Birthday Committee and some police officers, dramatically unfolded and held aloft a huge cloth! Shoving one another aside, people tried to position themselves to see, and they were puzzled when they saw, on the cloth, a huge drawing of something that looked like a building. A drawing on a white cloth for the Ruler’s birthday gift?
Taking full advantage of the curiosity and raised expectations, Machokali first appealed to the people to calm themselves because not only was he going to describe everything that was on that cloth, but he was going to make sure that copies of what the English call an artist’s impression would be distributed to the entire country. He would in fact take that opportunity to thank the teacher who had volunteered his services to do the impression, but regretted that he could not reveal the teacher’s name because the artist had forbidden him.Teaching was a noble profession and its practitioners were modest, driven not by self-glory but selfless service, an ideal for all
citizens.
At the far end of the congregation a man raised his hand and waved it frantically while shouting a contradiction, It’s okay, you can mention my name, and even when told to shut up by those around him, he continued, I am here—you can reveal my identity. He was too far back to be heard on the platform but he was near some policemen, and one of them asked him, What is your name? Kaniürü, John Kaniürü, the man said, and I am the teacher the speaker is referring to. Turn your pockets inside out, the police officer ordered him. After he had made sure that Kaniürü was not carrying a weapon, the police officer, pointing at his own gun, asked him, Do you see this? If you continue disrupting the meeting, as sure as my name is Askari Ari-gaigai Gathere and my boss Inspector Wonderful Tumbo, I will relieve you of that nose. The man Kaniürü sat back. Not many people noticed this little commotion because all their eyes and ears were riveted on the bigger drama on the platform.
The whole country, the Minister for Foreign Affairs was saying, the entire Aburlrian populace, had decided unanimously to erect a building such as had never been attempted in history except once by the children of Israel, and even they had failed miserably to complete the House of Babel. Aburlria would now do what the Israelites could not do: raise a building to the very gates of Heaven so that the Ruler could call on God daily to say good morning or good evening or simply how was your day today, God? The Ruler would be the daily recipient of God’s advice, resulting in a rapid growth of Aburlria to heights never before dreamt by humans. The entire project, Heavenscrape or simply Marching to Heaven, would be run by a National Building Committee, the chair of which would be announced in good time.
As these wonderful ideas had come from the Birthday Gift Committee, Machokali went on to say, he would like to acknowledge their good work by introducing each of them to the Ruler. The committee members were mostly parliamentarians but there were two or three private citizens, one of whom, Titus Tajirika, almost fell to the ground as he jumped up when his name was called out. Tajirika had never shaken hands with the Ruler, and the thought that this was actually happening in front of thousands was so overwhelming that his whole body trembled in sheer wonderment at his good fortune. Even when he returned to his seat, Tajirika kept on looking at his hands in disbelief, wondering what he could do to avoid using his right hand to shake hands with others or to avoid washing it for some time. He detested gloves but now he wished he had some in his pockets. He would certainly rectify this, but in the meantime he would wrap the lucky hand with his handkerchief so that when he shook hands with his left, people would assume that it was because of an injury to the other. Tajirika was so absorbed in bandaging his right hand that he missed some of the story of Marching to Heaven, but now he tried to catch up with Machokali’s narrative.
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