“What’s going on?” Mukabwa demanded.
“You know what’s going on,” the hospital administrator stated in the calm, measured tones he reserved for agitated staff. “I’ve heard a lot of complaints about you, Mukabwa.” The administrator gazed steadily into Mukabwa’s bloodshot eyes. “Thought you were too smart, eh? Well, your forty days are here. Where’s the money these people just gave you?”
“What money, sir? I do not know what you are talking about.”
“Don’t give me that act, Mukabwa. You either produce the money or we get it from you. Now, which do you prefer?”
From the wet table the still customer, who was at the center of all the drama, gazed unblinkingly at the ceiling. He was a sufficiently frightening sight for those not accustomed to death, with his bloated belly and puffed-up cheeks. The guards were nervous, Mukabwa could see, shifting uneasily in their boots and looking anywhere but at the cold body that lay immobile on the table. The villagers crowded, horrified, in the doorway.
“One last time—where is the money, Mukabwa?” demanded the administrator, increasingly agitated.
“I don’t know what you are talking about, sir,” replied Mukabwa coolly.
“The strip-search it is, I suppose,” he said with a curt nod to the guards.
The guards conducted a thorough search; every item of Mukabwa’s clothing was peeled away and given a shake, right down to his dirty Wellingtons. But despite their efforts, including forcing him to squat, not a shilling was found on Mukabwa’s body.
“Very smart, eh?” said the administrator, his eyes glinting. “Well, we’ll shake the entire place down if we have to. And don’t you imagine you’ll scare us!”
Calling for a pair of latex gloves, the administrator proceeded to draw out all the trays upon which Mukabwa’s charges slept in hallowed silence, with only the tiny toe tags identifying them. After an hour of fruitless searching, not a cent was found. Not even at the bottom of the slop bucket.
“Sir, what is all this about?” Mukabwa asked persistently, his wide-eyed gaze following his irate boss around, as if Mukabwa were trying in vain to convince himself that the fellow had not entirely lost his mind.
“Where is the money those people gave you?” the administrator demanded, finally losing his patience. “Where is it, Mukabwa?” His voice rose to an unsteady pitch, and a film of moisture shone across his cheeks.
“What money, sir?”Mukabwa shrugged helplessly.
The administrator had no choice but to storm out of the morgue in a defeated huff, the mystified guards following close behind. “I’ll catch you, Mukabwa,” he muttered to himself as he left. “I’ll catch you, you foxy bastard. Some day.”
The morgue attendant, meanwhile, picked up his pants and slowly started getting dressed. With the door securely locked, Mukabwa returned to his quiet client lying on the table.
“They have no manners now, do they?” he said softly, almost apologetically, to the corpse. “Storming in here to desecrate our peace. A whole bunch of idiots they are.”
Replacing his rubber gloves, Mukabwa circled the body, whistling softly to himself, until he came to the head of the table.
“Now hand it back, you fat old fellow. We don’t want you taking it with you to that place yonder. I suspect they don’t accept our currency there. Nonetheless I must give it to you; you acted pretty coolly back there. A good customer you are. And for that you know what I’ll reward you with? I’ll give you a perfumed bath so that you smell like flowers for the angels when you get to the pearly gates!”
And with a hearty laugh at his own joke, Mukabwa pried open his customer’s mouth and started extracting his money.
* * *
1 Off-license bars in the slum districts of a town, often composed of wooden or metal shacks, where cheap and illicit liquor is sold, not to mention cheap sex!
2 A common name for kale or collard greens, a staple in many poor Kenyan households.
3 Swahili for: “A safe resting place in the after-life.” A reference to heaven.
Small Change
Godo paced the grassy yard at the front of his house, his arms swinging restlessly. He had tried sitting in his favourite spot under the fig tree at the end of the compound listening to the salaams4 on his little transistor radio as the sun went down, but even that had been unappealing. He had fed and put to bed his youngest child, and awaited his eldest daughter to return from fetching water at the stream with her little brother so that they could prepare the evening meal.
It was unusual for Godo to be home at this hour. Usually he remained at his shop at the edge of the market square until after dark, fixing old bicycles that had broken down. Sometimes after work, if the day had been busy and his customers generous, he would pass by the village brewer’s for a drink on his way home. When the brew was sweet and his pocket was full, he would give the parcel of meat he had bought at the market to one of the village lads to bring over, and Godo would stagger home sometime past midnight.
Bicycle repair was not a very lucrative job, but somehow it scraped in enough to feed the family. And Godo had been in the trade long enough to learn all the tricks. He always managed to find a new fault with someone’s bicycle—a defective brake-lining, worn ball-bearings, a slow puncture, a dented rim that needed straightening, or a grease-job. If despite his best efforts he could find nothing in need of repair, he would seduce them with a gleaming side-mirror, thick saddle-padding or a custom-made mudguard with a fancy label like MLACHAKE or ROAD-RUNNER hand-painted on it. These he would attach at a little extra cost.
Tuesday, not being a market day, there had been little business at his shed, and little business for the boda-boda5 operators, who lounged, bored, in the hot sun all afternoon. On market days, at least, there were basket-loads of goods and produce that needed transport home, but on Tuesdays there was nothing but the occasional customer traveling to Kilingili, whom the boda-boda operators would fight over loudly with traded insults and dusty scuffles. And Godo’s work was inextricably tied up with the boda-boda operators—if they sat idle, nothing was transported, and there were fewer opportunities for bicycle repair or money for bicycle accessories. It had been a bad day for all of them.
This lack of business did little to ease Godo’s worries. His eldest daughter, Adema, was preparing to join Form One at a new district boarding school a day’s journey from the village. Godo had managed to save half of the required tuition, and had only a week to raise the rest—which did not account for the additional school supplies she would also require. These considerations contributed to the headache that had bothered Godo all afternoon, and made sitting beneath his tattered umbrella in the hot sun, waiting for the scarce customers, unbearable.
Matters were made even worse for Godo upon his return home, greeted as he was by a chaotic homestead—dirty pans strewn about, the children unwashed and crying, his wife nowhere to be seen. He had hoped for a tasty calabash of wimbi6 porridge and a warm bath, and a late visit to the brewer’s compound for a tin of grain-beer to ease his headache and help lull him to sleep later that night.
It was dark by the time Adema and her brother returned from the stream.
“Did your mother not tell you where she was going, and how long she would be gone?” he asked her yet again.
“No, baba,” Adema said with a shake of her head.
“Well, you will have to prepare the meal for your siblings and put them to bed,” he told her.
Godo then set about locking their cow and two goats in for the night. After the evening meal of ugali7 and dried omena8 fried in onions and tomatoes, Adema pulled down the sleeping mats from where they were tucked away in the rafters and prepared their sleeping places. Godo lingered in the darkness of the front room. He had blown out the lamp after the children had gone to bed to conserve kerosene. As the stillness of night set in, the chickens settled in ar
ound Godo’s feet, tucking their heads into their wings, and the cockroaches and rats came out of their hiding places to begin their ceaseless night-long foraging in search of food. From the inner room the children could be heard snoring softly.
Godo rose and left the hut, drawing the door shut behind him. For a while he paced around the compound, straining to hear the footsteps of his wife on the path. December had come and gone so there was not the excuse of attending late-night choir practice at the church. As for plaiting her hair—another reason she might be away—such a task was unlikely to keep her out past midnight.
He had prepared well for his wife’s return—a thin guava cane broken off a tender sapling swung by his side. The nights were breezy and warm and the moon was preparing to show itself. It was a fine evening to be out with the boys. He knew that the brewer’s would be brimming over with late patrons, sitting in little groups in the yard, chewing the fat of the day over a leisurely drink. He could hear villagers on the path beyond his house, either traveling to or returning from the brewer’s compound. Although these men were known to him by voice, he did not wish to call out a greeting over the unkempt euphorbia hedge.
It was as the late chill set in that Rona finally returned to the compound. She hesitated at the entrance, as if she knew there was trouble waiting. Rona eyed the hut warily, the guilt evident on her face. On seeing Godo’s bicycle leaning against the wall of the hut by the front entrance she started circling the hut, intending to approach from the back entrance, quite unaware that Godo was following her in the shadows. As she fiddled with the knot in her lesso,9 he stepped out of the shadows like a wraith and seized her by the arm. Rona spun around with a gasp as the guava cane descended.
Within a short time, a sizeable crowd of curious onlookers had formed outside Godo’s compound, drawn by Rona’s shrieks.
“Bayaa! What is going on in there, do you know?” Matayo, the quail-keeper inquired of Omenda, the carpenter. “It sounds to me like someone receiving a thorough beating.” The two men were on their way home from the brewer’s, and had paused on the path that skirted Godo’s compound.
“Godo must be disciplining his wife,” said Omenda, peering through the leaves of the euphorbia hedge.
“But why should he beat her that hard? I would have thought that one or two slaps were appropriate for a misbehaving woman.”
“Maybe she did something real bad.”
“Godo is usually a reserved and calm chap who goes about his bicycle repairs without bothering anyone.”
“Maybe the two of you should go in and lend a hand instead of just standing there,” said Onzere, the miller, as he strolled up the path, joining the two men by the euphorbia hedge. “Judging by her screams, that man is surely going to kill his wife.”
Onzere was right. The screams were getting louder and louder in company with the swish of the guava cane as it descended upon her back. The gathered men could see the couple clearly as they tussled in the moonlit yard outside the front door.
“You are right. Maybe we should go in and help,” said Dome, a new arrival at the hedge. He assisted Onzere at the mill, and had accompanied the miller for an after-work drink.
“But is it really right for us to intervene?” asked Omenda hesitantly. “I mean, this is clearly a matter between a man and his wife, and Godo is within his rights to discipline his wife when she strays. In any case, we don’t even know what it’s all about.”
“You are right,” said Matayo with a thoughtful nod. “What if we went in and Godo, upon seeing us, decided to dash in for his machete and turned it on us?”
“I say the lot of you should be ashamed of yourselves for making lame excuses in a matter that clearly needs our intervention,” said the miller, stepping into the compound. “Do you want someone to be killed before you can make up your minds?”
All four men were required to restrain Godo, who seemed intent on inflicting indelible damage on his wife.
“Bayaa! Have you gone mad, Godo?” the miller cried, holding the bicycle repairman by locking his elbows firmly behind him. “Is that the way a man disciplines his wife? I say, cool down, Godo. You are going to kill the woman.”
“I said let go of me!” spat Godo, struggling with the beefy miller. “That woman deserves a dog’s beating!”
“Oh, calm down, Godo,” said Omenda, who, unlike the brave miller, was keeping his distance. He was still smarting from a kick in the shin that Godo had given him as they struggled to get the bicycle repairman off his wife. “You don’t want to go to the cells now, do you?”
“And why should I go to the cells, you coward? Is it now a crime to discipline an errant wife? Have the lot of you become a bunch of women?”
“The police will surely come into this matter if you carry on like this,” said the miller, holding Godo firmly in a bear hug. “Hooo! You call us women, do you, Godo? Well, you can hear this from my own lips. You will go to the cells this very minute, I tell you! Don’t you know that these days the serikali10 is different? He-heee! You will see fire, Godo, I tell you!”
“And that is why the lot of you see fit to come in here uninvited and threaten me in my own compound, is it? Are you now going to heap abuse on me in front of my own wife, Onzere?” demanded Godo, kicking viciously at the miller with renewed zeal. “I say, let go of me!”
The miller struggled to hook his feet over Godo’s in an effort to protect himself, and the two men went tumbling to the ground, rolling in the dewy grass. It was only after Omenda and Matayo each seized one of Godo’s flailing feet that the miller was finally able to sit on Godo and thereby restrain him.
It was well toward midnight when the men—with the help of three other neighbors who had been drawn out of their compounds by Rona’s screams—were finally able to calm Godo. But even then it was another effort to get Rona back inside the hut with her husband.
“The man will kill me. I swear to God he will after you leave this place,” she cried, hiding behind a stocky woman. “You cannot trust what he says. Can’t you see it in his eyes? He is still intent on killing someone, I swear to you!”
“Godo has given us his word. This matter is settled. Or haven’t you, Godo?” asked the miller, patting the silent bicycle repairman on the shoulder. Godo nodded, his gaze trained on his twitching toes. “See? Now, go inside, Rona. The matter is settled.”
“No. I must hear him say it with his own lips,” Rona insisted. In the bright moonlight angry welts crisscrossed her bared arms, her dress reduced to tattered strips. “I must hear it from the man himself.”
“What do you say, Godo?” asked the miller in a fatherly tone. “She needs to hear your word. Go on; assure her that this is now settled.”
“I say get back inside!” growled Godo. “Go inside and get to bed!”
“Now, that is the spirit,” said the miller. “This is really a small matter that needn’t get beyond the walls of this compound.”
There was a brief scuffle later that night after the villagers had left. But unlike the earlier battle, this one was brief, lasting barely a couple of minutes. One of the neighbors heard Godo say to his wife, “You want me to take out my nyaunyo11 now, is that what you want, woman?”
For a while the woman whimpered, then when Godo’s voice started rising, she said, “No, no, do not take it out. I will tell you. I will tell you everything, Godo.”
There followed a muffled conversation, the likes of which the neighbors could not quite hear despite straining their ears to do so. Thereafter the couple were quiet and the stillness of night returned.
It was the busy hour at the village duka12 when every villager suddenly wanted to run to the shop to purchase a matchbox, or a quarter kilo of sugar, or a scoop of cooking fat for the evening meal. As usual the shopkeeper’s wife had to leave her chores at the back of the shop and lend a hand at the counter. But even with his wife helping dispen
se measures of milk and kerosene at the other end, Suba, the shopkeeper, found that the queue kept increasing at his end because he kept handing back the wrong change, and had to constantly use the little calculator on the counter to get it right. These errors were uncharacteristic of Suba, who was famous for being a “walking computer” when it came to small change.
Finally Suba came to the second-to-last customer in his queue, a man who had patiently hung back to allow everyone else to get their purchases. It had now grown dark, and it was impossible to see beyond the ring of light thrown by the lantern resting on the counter. At the other end of the long scarred wooden counter Suba’s wife was engaged in an argument with an elderly woman, who felt the measure splashed into her bottle was less than two shillings’ worth of kerosene—even though the cost of everything was shooting through the ceiling these days.
Rona disengaged herself from the pillar on which she had been leaning and approached the counter. “Sugar and a matchbox,” she said, placing ten shillings’ worth of silver coins on the counter. Suba took the money and, without bothering to count it, deposited the coins in the little drawer underneath the counter. He then took the sugar scoop and measured out a kilo from the sack beneath the weighing scale. To this he added two boxes of matches, a packet of tea leaves and a sachet of curry powder. Suba then worked out the amount of Rona’s change on his calculator, sucking in his lower lip in concentration.
“That will be twenty-five shillings and fifty cents in change, is that right?” he asked, his eyes lifting from the little electronic gadget.
“That’s right, Suba,” said his customer with a half-smile. And in that brief second that the shopkeeper’s gaze locked with that of his customer he felt his heart flip over.
“Right,” he added hastily, drawing his gaze away in the manner of a schoolboy flustered by his first date. “I’ll wrap your purchases for you,” he added, a little nervously—reliving, as he was, the brief moment of electricity when her fingers had brushed his as he handed over the change.
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