by Imbolo Mbue
Woja Beki stood up and thanked us too. He wished us a good night and reminded us to return for another meeting in eight weeks. He told us to be well until then.
* * *
On most nights we would have left the village square and turned homeward.
We would have said little to each other as we walked in the darkness, our entire beings drenched with an unrelenting, smothering form of despair. We would have walked slowly, our heads hung low, ashamed we’d dared to hope, embarrassed by our smallness.
On any other night, the meeting would have been a reminder that we could do nothing to them but they could do anything to us, because they owned us. Their words would have served no purpose but to further instill within us that we couldn’t undo the fact that three decades before, in Bézam, on a date we’ll never know, at a meeting where none of us was present, our government had given us to Pexton. Handed, on a sheet of paper, our land and waters to them. We would have had no choice but to accept that we were now theirs. We would have admitted to ourselves that we’d long ago been defeated.
On that night, though, that night when the air was too still and the crickets strangely quiet, we did not turn homeward. Because, at the moment we were about to stand and start bidding each other good night, we heard a rustle in the back of the gathering. We heard a voice telling us to remain seated, the meeting was not yet over, it was just beginning. We turned around and saw a man, tall and lean, hair matted, wearing nothing but a pair of trousers with holes on every side. It was Konga, our village madman.
He was breathing heavily, as if he’d sprinted from the school compound to the square. He was exuberant and bouncy, not his usual lethargic self, the self that lumbered around the village laughing with invisible friends and shaking his fists at enemies no one else could perceive. We saw the glow in his eyes in the light darkness, his excitement apparent as he rushed to the front of the gathering, nearly floating in exhilaration. We looked at each other, too dumbfounded to ask: What is he doing?
Never had we seen the Leader so stunned as when he turned to Woja Beki and asked what Konga wanted—why was a madman disrupting the end of his meeting? Never had we seen Woja Beki as devoid of words as when he turned to face Konga.
Before us all stood a never-before-seen version of our village madman.
As if all authority on earth belonged to him, Konga barked at the Pexton men, told them to sit down, hadn’t they heard him, were their ears so full of wax that sound couldn’t penetrate it? The meeting wasn’t over, it was just beginning.
The Leader, maddened by Konga’s audacity, and running short on the decorum he’d brought from Bézam, reciprocated the bark, asking how dare a madman speak to him, Pexton’s representative, in that manner. Konga chuckled, before responding that he had the right to speak to anyone any way he liked, an answer that prompted the Leader to turn to Woja Beki and demand to know why Woja Beki was standing there like an idiot, tolerating this insolent fool. Konga cleared his throat—everything in it—and spat out what we imagined was a glob of dark yellow phlegm between the Leader’s feet.
We gasped. Did Konga know who the men were and what they could do to him?
The Leader glared at Konga. Then us. Then Konga again. He motioned for his underlings to pick up their briefcases. All three men lifted their briefcases and turned to leave. We took a deep breath, thankful the drama had reached its finale, but our relief morphed into greater perplexity when Konga asked the trio how they intended to return to Bézam. The representatives turned around, puzzled, if not alarmed.
What happened next, we could never have expected. Could never have imagined Konga would put a hand inside his trousers in front of the Pexton men and the village. Our mothers and grandmothers covered their eyes, afraid he was about to do a thing women should not witness, the thing they’d told us to never look at if Konga did it in front of us.
We kept our eyes open and watched as Konga caressed something in his trousers, his lips parted, stroking, stroking, no doubt an exaggeration. Gently, he pulled out something. He held it up and asked the men if it belonged to them. Our eyes widened, as did the men’s—they’d recognized their car key, golden and glossy, in the madman’s hand.
Before we could recover from the revelation, Konga asked the Pexton men where their driver was. The driver always waited in the car during the meetings, but with the key in Konga’s hand, where could he be? Konga did not say. He merely, with a smile, informed the men that the key in his hand was indeed their car key and when they returned to the school compound they would not find their driver waiting.
We began talking all at once. What was happening? What was he doing?
Woja Beki started stuttering, bowing to the Leader, informing him that Konga was only playing a madman’s game, the Leader should please understand that without brains Konga couldn’t discern that the honorable representatives did not play games; of course the driver was fine, likely standing next to the car; of course Konga was going to hand over the key immediately; the Leader should please accept deepest apologies on behalf of the village; none of this was meant to disrespect our guests; travel blessings on their return to Bézam; all of Kosawa was grateful to them for coming once more to—
Konga commanded Woja Beki to shut up and step aside.
We wanted to hoot with delight. We yearned to jump up and clap, but we didn’t—we were witnessing something extraordinary whose unfolding we dared not disturb.
Konga lifted his eyes to the sky, as if to commune with the stars. When he lowered them, he informed the Pexton men that they would not be returning to Bézam that night. The Leader and the Sick One and the Round One looked at each other and chuckled, amused at the idea that a madman was threatening to keep them captive. We thought it somewhat funny too, but we did not laugh, because Konga said it again, this time slowly, categorically: Gentlemen, you’ll be spending the night with us in Kosawa.
He meant what he was saying, we could tell from his tone, and the Leader could now tell too, because he stopped chuckling. He looked at us in confusion, asking us what was going on, what was the madman talking about, his tone at first beseeching before turning demanding; determined as he was to get a response from us no matter the means.
We uttered not one word.
The Leader glared at Konga. Wrath was gushing out of the Pexton man’s nostrils, but he had to contain himself. Raising his voice only slightly, he told Konga that whatever game he was playing was now over, it was time Konga handed over the key, he’d rather not use force, the night was certain to end badly if he did, he did not want that, considering how much Pexton cared for Kosawa, so it would be best if Konga quietly handed him the key so that this could all be forgiven and forgotten.
We did not expect Konga to obey, but neither did we imagine he would stare at the Leader for seconds, scoff, and burst into a prolonged laugh.
The Leader turned to Woja Beki, who quickly bowed his head.
“Get my key from him,” the Leader shouted at our village head.
Woja Beki made no attempt to move. It was obvious to us why the Leader would ask this of Woja Beki—the Leader could never debase his honorable personhood by getting himself, or his men, into a physical confrontation with an uncouth madman.
“Get my key from that idiot,” the Leader shouted again.
Woja Beki remained frozen in his spot, perhaps ashamed, likely afraid, to look into the eyes of the big man from Bézam.
What came afterward, we’d long fantasized about doing ourselves—some of us had done it in dreams from which we woke up smiling—but it did not lessen our shock when it happened, when Konga, laughing no more, walked up to Woja Beki and spat in his face. We giggled, we gasped in horror, we half-shut our eyes. Woja Beki, without raising his head, wiped the saliva that had landed on his lips. Barely glancing at Woja Beki, the Leader, now a gesticulating bundle of fury and befuddlement, resumed his shouti
ng, yelling at everyone, anyone, to get his key from the madman, someone get his key right now, otherwise there’d be severe consequences.
Not one of us did or said a thing.
None of us took it upon ourselves to tell the Leader that Konga was untouchable. We did not attempt to tell him that no matter what Konga did, however much he humiliated or hurt us or scared us, we could not touch him, because we do not touch men with his condition. We did not tell the Leader that for decades no one had touched Konga and no one ever would, because to touch a madman was to invite the worst curse.
* * *
—
If the Leader had sat down with us, we would have told him Konga’s story, the story our parents repeated whenever we ridiculed Konga, every time they caught us skipping behind him around the village, laughing at his matted hair, his lone pair of trousers, his dirt-clogged fingernails. We would have told the Leader that Konga wasn’t born a madman and that, hard as it might be to believe it now, he was once a proud, handsome man.
If the Leader had asked, we would have told him that long before we were born, when our parents were children our age, dozens of young women in our village dreamed of becoming Konga’s wife and bearing sons as chiseled and long-limbed as him. His parents, long gone now, dreamed of the grandchildren their only child would give them. He was a fine farmer, a fine hunter, and a very fine fisherman. On any given day, our parents told us, Konga could be great at being anything—he was destined for a beautiful life. But then, one day, a hot day, he began complaining of voices that wouldn’t stop talking to him. They were laughing at him, he told his parents, imploring him to kill himself, telling him he was going to live forever. They appeared in his dreams at night and emerged from dark spaces during the day in the form of men, women, and children who’d been in the grave for so long they’d lost most of their flesh. They seemed determined to never let him go, badgering him in a language he couldn’t understand, surrounding him whenever he sat down to eat, chasing him around the village.
His parents took him to our village medium, who told them that nothing could be done—a vengeful spirit had taken Konga’s sanity as punishment for an evil committed by one of his ancestors centuries before Konga was born. Konga was to spend the rest of his life as an atonement; the spirit could not be appeased. All his parents could do, the medium said, was to keep the front door of their hut open so Konga could come and go as he wished. They also needed to leave a mat outside their hut so Konga could find a suitable outdoor place and sleep comfortably on the nights the voices allowed him to.
By the time we were born, Konga had been sleeping under the sky for twenty years. With his parents gone and having left behind no siblings to feed him, our mothers took turns bringing him food and water under the mango tree. Some days he ate the food and drank the water; other days he ignored it until the flies came for it, and the ants marched into it, and the goats accidentally knocked over the bowls holding the rest of it, and our mothers sighed and took their bowls home, only to carry food to him the next time it was their turn. Many afternoons he sat half naked under the mango tree, scratching the skin that touched water only when it rained, pulling out thick chunks of crust from his nostrils. Occasionally, he sang a romantic ballad, his eyes closed as if he’d once been a character in a great love story. Sometimes he offered words of wisdom to his invisible friends, or chastised morons no one could see, his arms flailing, his face scrunching as he raised his voice to emphasize points that made no sense to us. He attended every wedding and funeral, watching from a distance, neither dancing nor crying, but he never attended the village meetings. On meeting days, he stayed in the school compound, uninterested in our plight. We thought him incapable of anger toward anyone but the voices in his head and the spirit that had ruined him. We thought him unaware of everyone and everything around him besides his immediate needs and the phantoms following him.
That evening, though, as he stood with the car key in his clenched and raised fist, we could see that he was capable of anger toward men, an anger that came out with no equivocation when he told the Leader that there was nothing the Leader could do to him.
* * *
—
The Leader, fatigued from railing to an unresponsive audience, paused and let out a deep sigh. He shook his head. He’d realized, it appeared, that he couldn’t make us get the key from Konga and that there was nothing he could do to a madman in a dark village, a long way from Pexton’s headquarters. We felt no sympathy for him—we had no capacity for that, occupied as we were in delighting in his despair. Beside him, Konga was now singing and twirling around. He waved the key in the Pexton men’s faces, prancing as gaily as a groom on his wedding day, repeating over and over that the men would be spending the night with us, perhaps many nights—oh, what a wonderful privilege for them.
The Leader beckoned for his men to move closer to him. He whispered at length into their ears. The Round One and the Sick One nodded as he spoke, all of them intermittently looking sideways as they attempted to devise a strategy to retrieve their key, a plan they must have hoped would involve the least amount of debasement.
Seemingly satisfied with their plan and convinced of its strength, they took a step toward Konga, knowing nothing of the curse that would hold them and their descendants captive from that night till eternity. We leaned forward. The Pexton men took two more steps and stood closer to Konga. Konga moved the key to his lips.
“One more step,” he said to them, “and I’ll swallow this key.”
We held our breaths. He would do it. We knew he would. The Pexton men must have recognized this too, because the Sick One staggered, and the Round One’s face grew more spherical, and they suddenly all seemed like children in a dark, deadly forest.
We turned our attention to Woja Beki, who had regained his speech and was now imploring Konga not to bring shame to our village. He begged for a full minute, calling Konga the son of the leopard, owner of a voice more melodic than music, bearer of a brilliance that rivals the sun’s. He reminded Konga of how beloved he was, how blessed we were to have him, what joy there was in Kosawa on the day he was born, what—
The Leader cut him off and told him to stop speaking nonsense; his voice now had not a trace of politesse left. Its pitch rose as he shouted—looking at his underlings, who were still nodding at his every word—that all of this was nonsense, utter nonsense, to which Konga said the Leader needed to clarify exactly what the nonsense was, and the Leader responded that the idea of a madman preventing him, the Honorable Representative of Pexton, from returning home, was the exact definition of nonsense.
Konga doubled over, roaring with laughter. Deep in a trance into which we’d now fallen, we could scarcely move a muscle on our faces. Woja Beki pulled us out of our stupefaction by stepping closer to us and asking, in a quivering voice, if we were going to continue sitting there quietly while Konga insulted our guests—guests who had traveled for many hours to do nothing but assure us that our troubles would soon be over.
No one responded.
“If our honorable guests aren’t back in their office tomorrow morning,” Woja Beki went on, “soldiers will arrive by evening to look for them. I’m promising you, it won’t be pretty when the soldiers arrive. They’re not going to ask us why we did nothing to stop Konga. They won’t be concerned about the fact that Konga is uncontrollable. They’re simply going to mete out our punishment. They’ll slaughter us, every one of us.”
We looked at each other.
“Are you doubting me?” Woja Beki continued. “Wasn’t it only last month that news reached us of how soldiers burned a village to ashes because one of its men split open a tax collector’s head with a machete in anger? Where are the people of that village today? Are they not scattered around, sleeping on the bare floors of their relatives’ huts? Would they say it was worth losing their homes for the sake of one man’s heedlessness? If the soldiers can do it
to those people, why won’t they do it to us? This is a country of law and consequences, my dear people: we’ll pay the price if we don’t afford our friends here the respect we’re required to give them. I’m begging you: please, please, don’t let it happen to us. Let it not be that I did not say it. The soldiers won’t care that this was the work of one madman. They’ll put bullets inside all of us, down to the smallest child.”
The men from Pexton nodded, a warning, it seemed, that it was all true.
Our collective sweat could have filled a dry well when our probable fate dawned on us. We knew what guns could do, but we’d never considered death by bullets.
One of our grandfathers stood up and turned to a grinning and swaying Konga. “Please,” he said, “we don’t want soldiers in our village. Please, Konga Wanjika, son of Bantu Wanjika, I’m begging you, give these men their key. Your father was my second cousin, and I’m now speaking to you on his behalf. Don’t bring any more suffering on us. Drop the key on the ground, and I’ll pick it up and give it to them. Go bring their driver from wherever you’ve hidden him. Let us all wish each other a good night and go home.”
We thought Konga would heed the counsel of a man enlightened by age, a man who had lived long and mastered the difference between right and wrong. We thought the madman would remember that it was our duty to obey our elders and revere the words of the wise, a lesson we’d been taught and retaught since we were toddlers. In our cloud of bafflement, we forgot that, with the loss of his sanity, all that he’d been taught since birth had been washed away, diluted and pulled through his ears and out of his brain by that vengeful spirit. We forgot he was more newborn than adult now, possessing no sense of time, no awareness of the past or future, possessing only a faint consciousness of the spirit world from which we all came and to which we would return. We were reminded of how far from sane he was when he slid the key back inside his trousers and started laughing.