The Book of Secrets

by M G Vassanji

  At that time every school was provided with a plot of land to cultivate vegetables in the service of the school’s coffers as well as the students’ characters. Every plot was divided into smaller plots, one for each class. And twice a week came the dreaded shamba period at Boyschool when these urban boys, who had never seen a spade except perhaps in their fathers’ shops, marched in the sweltering heat for three quarters of an hour, up a hill past the new bungalows and to the slopes behind the Jangwani Girls’ School. What I remember of that short-lived experiment is the diminutive Mr. Kabir the math teacher, bent over almost double under the weight of two spades; Gregory holding a machete as if in pursuit of a robber or beast; grey, bearded Desouza with a hoe for a staff, eyes on the hill ahead, a latter-day Moses; and boys digging, persistently digging, but with no maize, no yams, no okra, no crops to show for it.

  It was during one of these shamba periods, as Gregory was overseeing a pack of boys digging the red earth (“I’m no farmer, Pius, but surely you don’t have to dig this deep to plant maize …”), that he fell into one of these contentious three-foot-deep ditches, suffering sunstroke, narrowly missing the sharp end of a hoe.

  He was half carried, half dragged out, what little water was at hand was poured on his head, and I dispatched two boys to the Jangwani school to fetch a teacher. The East German math teacher came, in his car, and Gregory was taken to the Aga Khan Hospital, which was near his house.

  Gregory was released from hospital the following day, looking rather weak and somewhat sheepish. Thereafter he was readmitted several times with dizzy spells. He was not recovering properly. All at once he seemed frail and aged. He began to wheeze and had become thinner so that his immense shorts, which once were the joke of the town, were now drawn in by a belt, portending decay and worse. He was excused from his duties in school, and gradually it came to be understood that he would not return.

  It was 1971. Around this time a new batch of teachers from England had arrived at Boyschool, one of whom, Fletcher, had taken over the dramatic society. I cannot say whether it was the calibre of the students or the talents of Fletcher, but drama took off as it had never done before under Gregory or me. For the first time in many years, the school won first prize in the Youth Drama Festival with a production of an adaptation of Pygmalion written by Fletcher using an idea of Gregory’s.

  On the night of the awards, a Sunday, I went to take the news to Gregory. His bungalow on Seaview, across the road from the beach, was a small two-bedroom affair, set back from a front yard and a driveway which had two concrete gateposts but no gates. A shadowy nightwatchman sat outside on the front steps; a light was on in the front room. As I entered, two boys — one of whom opened the door — were leaving, one of them saying to me, “Sir — he’s very sick. You’ll have to call a doctor,” and the other nodding agreement with equal gravity.

  I closed the door behind them, turned to face Gregory, who was sitting on the sofa, and opened the offering I had brought with me (now so inappropriate) — fish and chips from the new Wimpy’s — and gave him the good news about the prize. He grinned. I thought, then, that only his face, with that smile beaming momentarily, had any life, any presence, so frail and insignificant was the rest of him in his soiled clothes.

  He sat up, tried a chip, put it down: “Bring me the scotch, will you.”

  “No,” I said with friendly determination. “You, my friend, need rest. I’ll give you some warm water. Then some tea and biscuits. And then to bed with you.”

  His expression turned into a most hateful leer. “Always bloody correct, aren’t you.” His voice was hoarse. “Do the right thing by me — will you — you fucking — frigid — Jesuit — who never took a bloody risk — always proper — Mister Gregory — Mister Gregory — you colonial —”

  The water spilled over his shirt, and I handed him a kitchen towel, somewhat taken aback, but not willing to take his outburst at face value.

  The tea went down better, and we talked about the play. His play, he called it. He told me that the two boys who’d left as I came in had come to say goodbye; they were going to the United States on scholarships. They were the last of his favourites, all the others had left, none had ever returned. He sat there, hunched, with a pained look on his face as if the world had come crashing down around him and he was in the midst of the debris. I could catch a faint glimmer only of how he felt, but then I was younger and less drawn to alcohol.

  “Tell me, Fernandes — Pius — if you had to do it all over again, would you? Dammit, spend a lifetime to teach, I mean … farther away than you ever imagined. Would you?”

  I was dumbfounded, and for the first time the thought came to me: What exactly had we achieved? Some satisfaction, yes, in having brought up a generation — but what comfort that, in lonely old age?

  “Why, yes — wouldn’t you? You’re being unnecessarily morbid.”

  He wasn’t listening, was weeping. Then he wiped his eyes, stood up uncertain on his feet, shivered a bit. He was ready to go to bed. I helped him along, by the shoulders, and sat him on his bed, which was unmade. Hastily, I looked for his pyjamas, found them on the floor, and then, as he shivered and sweated, I helped him change. He lay down on his side and I put a blanket on him, which he kicked off, leaving only a sheet. I started to go.

  “Wait here,” he said. “Please. Sit.”

  I sat on the bed, watched over him. Sweat ran down his face. It was warm, I reminded myself, but not unusually so. He would shiver in spasms, then relax. I wasn’t sure how long I would sit there. “I should have called the doctor,” I said. “No,” he said, “just stay.” Without knowing why, I lay down beside him, also on my side, and held him. When at last he fell asleep, it was with a great sigh and shudder, as if he’d lost a battle.

  Of that moment I remember a feeling of dislocation, a sense of empathy; a feeling of being utterly alone, with another human being in my arms. The sound of waves in the distance. An occasional car on the road outside.

  It was the next morning when I left; he was still in bed, fast asleep.

  I did not see much of Gregory thereafter, I don’t quite know why. All I have are incomplete thoughts, half explanations — the hateful look and the bitter taunt I could not, cannot, forget; but we had also, that night, reconciled and touched. What more was there? I felt guilty at not seeing more of him, but took comfort in the knowledge that he was under the care of some ladies associated with the Anglican church. I am surprised, now, at this callousness on my part, and have often asked myself, was it because I was afraid of what more there was, or could have been? I honestly don’t know. Gregory was a homosexual. Of his relationships with his favourite boys I never bothered to inquire; to innuendos about him I turned a deaf ear. Of all my acquaintances in Dar I found him the most easy to be with. I liked him. His quirks I treated with affection, sometimes tinged with exasperation. It was Rita who confused and tormented, who even now leaves me helpless by her charm and beauty, about whom the regrets are real and not unspoken.

  Images of death come, now, and quite naturally so, with the recollection of an event that came to symbolize for so many the death … of a dream, a hope, a way of life. Nineteen seventy-two saw the ruling party’s socialist policies reach their climax in the nationalization of rental properties. Those — mostly Asians — who had erected two-storey buildings as monuments to the labours of their families, who staked thus a claim in the country they had made their home, whose one investment was in two or three flats they would rent out, saw their hopes dashed in a betrayal of the faith they had in the country. Savings of a generation, two generations, were taken away. It was now the people’s property, they were told.

  Two deaths were immediately attributed to this news. One was that of Hassam Punja, probably the richest man in Dar, with numerous buildings to his name, and mills and factories (the monument to his achievements being for many years Dar’s tallest building, the imposing yellow pyramid overlooking the Mnazi Moja grounds). The other death was th
at of Nurmohamed Pipa. Pipa, a cynical old man after the death of his son Amin, upon hearing that much of Amin Mansion was the people’s property now, said, “Bas? Only this? Let Him take away me too, now.” The next day he died.

  The two Shamsi funerals were held together in a momentous event at town mosque. Both men had begun in poverty: Hassam Punja, as everyone knew, by selling peanuts in the streets; Pipa as a porter. They lay displayed to their people under white sheets, only their faces showing. Naked we come and naked we return, the Shamsis sang in their funereal hymn; but that teacher, Mwalimu, who became the president, didn’t have to hurry them along, they muttered under their breaths. And many would say in wonder afterwards that Pipa didn’t look so fat this time, and Hassam Punja wasn’t so short after all — how we tend to exaggerate.

  Over the years, the people of the neighbourhood of Pipa Corner, looking at the yellow building in their midst, had often wondered about the miser who had built it after decades of labour in his spice shop. How much? How much did Pipa have stashed away, how much was he worth? In death now, as he had in life, Pipa eluded his questioners. After his funeral, lights in the second-storey flat stayed on late into the night, downstairs the shop was busy with all manner of sounds suggesting furniture being moved or dismantled. But Remti and her daughters and their husbands were to find no hidden treasure — no stolen jewellery, no smuggled diamonds, no German gold coins. What Pipa left for his wife and daughters was worth more than any treasure there might have been: Amin Mansion — but it was now the people’s property.

  There was a third death that fateful week, but it went largely unnoticed. A few years before it would have been a local event of some magnitude and meaning; the teacher had been an institution, had taught their boys for two decades and more, they couldn’t pass English Literature without him. But, occurring now, his death was essentially an expatriate event. Mr. Gregory of Boyschool: Oh yes, didn’t he leave? No — he’s just died.

  Some hundred people — expatriates in the city and senior students from Boyschool — dutifully showed up at the Anglican church for Gregory’s funeral. A eulogy was read by Fletcher, another by one of his students; two telegrams arrived from abroad. As little known to this gathering as was the dead man, I had no words to say to them, nor was I asked to contribute any.

  It was a few weeks after the funeral, when I went to the grave to examine the headstone donated by a few former students and fellow teachers, that Mr. Anscombe, the minister, told me Gregory had left me a box. It contained papers and books, he said. I assumed they were the texts he had taught over the years, and the notes for students he had prepared, which we had once thought of publishing, before they had become outdated with the arrival on the syllabus of Achebe and Soyinka, and Miller and Ibsen. I didn’t pick up the box, however, didn’t examine the contents. Let them lie buried in some vault, I thought then, useless detritus from a life now, happily, for its owner, extinguished.

  24

  In the years that followed, through the seventies and part of the eighties, I continued to teach at Boyschool. In those years, under a socialist régime in the country, I saw the values that I had brought with me and inculcated with such ardour in the school become increasingly out of place. Mediocrity was the new order, and ideological correctness. The new generation of students who came were sent by a government seeking bureaucrats, not, as in the past, by a community eager to get ahead in the world. The Shamsis, who had built and run the school as the pinnacle of their ambition, now in large numbers began to pack up and leave for North America. I saw my best students come to say goodbye, never to return. And one by one, almost all of my fellow expatriate teachers left also. One of them, I heard through my former student Sona, taught math at a school in a ghetto in New York City. Another sold insurance in Canada. A few went to Zambia before retiring to India. And finally, in 1980, Desouza succumbed to the times in a typically drastic fashion.

  He had moved to a private school in town and I saw less of him then. After Gregory’s death in 1972, for a few months we did spend more time together, but we drifted apart again, though remaining friends. Too much, it seemed, had happened to us that took us into private worlds we were unable to share.

  One day a student of his came and told me that Desouza had not come out of his flat for three days, and could I do something. I went with the boy to Desouza’s flat, knocked loudly on the door and called to my friend, but to no avail. Finally, with everyone else gathered there — servants and hawkers — assuring me that the teacher was definitely inside, I agreed to let the door be forced open. We found Desouza in bed, shivering, starving, and almost dead. There was no food in the house, not even tea or sugar. He was evidently suffering from malaria; and although this was a time when medication had become scarce, he was soon rehabilitated with the help of a doctor who had been a student at Boyschool. Shortly thereafter, during December holidays, Desouza went to India to stay with his sister and recuperate; he never returned. He wrote me once that he was having trouble obtaining a visa to come back. Apparently, he had never taken the trouble to become a citizen. Now, according to the visa authorities, he was too old to come back to teach.

  Three years ago the headmaster of my school called me into his office and asked me if I knew I was past my retirement age of fifty-five. Yes, I said, but I had many years of teaching left in me. He smiled, reminded me that rules were rules. So I bowed to his greater authority and accepted a pension.

  I have felt alone for a good many years, now; alone and lonely. The admission doesn’t come easily. I suppose I could have left after Gregory died. But where, and to what end? Only filial duty would have taken me to India, but by then both my parents were dead. And the loneliness of old age can come upon one anywhere. This city where I first landed forty years ago has so grown on me, it is like an extension of my self. I will never shed it.

  One thought, though, has been a balm in my solitary days: that I continue to live in the hundreds of students who have passed through my hands. Such were the times I served in, such the nature of the trust placed upon us teachers. Gregory would have understood this idea of fulfilment in the eventual dispersal of oneself, but he was not the type to draw upon it for comfort. “Are we thinking of the next incarnation already, Pius? A shade of Mr. Chips, perhaps …” I hear the purr of the pipe, see the twinkle in the eyes.

  Seventeen years ago he asked, Tell me, Pius, would you do it again, has it been worth it? I could understand the question then, though I couldn’t feel the urgency, the anxiety behind it. Now, closer myself to his own circumstance, I hear his question only too clearly.

  As my answer, three months ago, I would have proudly displayed to anyone letters from my former students, all doing well abroad — testimony enough to warm the heart of any retired teacher. I might have pointed out a visiting former student or two, if they were around, or a young bank official from among my more recent accomplishments. I would have confessed to dire financial straits, yes, but I would have shown all the satisfaction of having done a job well, having influenced a generation of students. Surely there is something to be said for that, even in this cynical age?

  But there was more to my life than the satisfaction of teaching. There was Rita, the girl who so ensnared the earnest young teacher that I was; and there was the angry, later sad, Desouza, with whom I could not develop a complete friendship because of Gregory; and there was Gregory, whose companionship I valued but could never quite understand.

  I am not one to dwell upon paths not taken, to speculate on what might have been. Here I am, where I have arrived; this is my credo. Gregory would say, To live is to risk, and so you did not live. To which my schoolgirls of 1950 would put a more filmic gloss: “The world belongs to the one who loves.”

  But at least late in life this kindness has been conferred upon me, an unexpected, perhaps undeserved, gift: I have sat with Rita as I could not have in the past and admired her openly, and we discussed the question I had been afraid to ask myself before, about my r
elationship with her and what it could have been. And I allowed myself to go back to that evening in Gregory’s house, and I cannot turn away from it now.

  I have with increasing interest and frequency been dipping into the pages of Gregory’s posthumous collection Havin’ a Piece, which Rita gave to me. It has brought back many memories of Dar as it used to be, some simply by the description of a familiar subject in a poem, others more obliquely. For example, the poem “Pili-Pili Bizarre” — punning on the words “bizari” (spice) and “bazaar” in typical Gregory fashion — describes a spice shop such as the one Pipa had, the likes of which still exist at the odd corner. There is an angry, irreverent though moving poem, “Kalima,” which begins: “There is no Deity but He / Who plucks out the heart of a woman / and serenades the night with her screams.” It refers, I believe, to Pipa’s son Amin’s funeral, which seemed to affect Gregory profoundly, and is a testament, moreover, to his denial of God and redemption. And I have no doubt who the brown man of this little poem is:

  BROWN MAN

  He will endure

  in sweet tan innocence

  inert untouched

  hardy transplant

  in the region’s new sun …

  While I

  pale and larva soft

  wither

  in African heat.

  All these Dar poems are haphazardly distributed throughout the volume and cry out for a context. At some future time I shall perhaps make a study of these poems of my friend and explain their references to this city in which he served for so many years.

  That Gregory, through his poems, should remind me now of Pipa is not altogether remarkable, only indicative of the small place and the times we lived in. More intriguing for me has been the presence in his collection of some poems dedicated to “A. C.” who clearly was a woman. One of these poems has an explicit reference to Kampala, Uganda. Gregory told me he’d been in Uganda in the early thirties, as, of course, had the Corbins, who were transferred there from Dar. Could Gregory have known the Corbins — was the A. C. of the poems in fact none other than Anne Corbin? The thought, a dim possibility at first, kept recurring with greater force and conviction. Yes, why not — after all, how many Britons had lived in Uganda in the early thirties? And if I was right, then all the years I had known him, Gregory had known Alfred Corbin, whom I was to resuscitate decades later.… How our paths have crossed and recrossed.