One Man Dancing

by Patricia Keeney

  Charles sits next to Julia under the stars. He watches the wonder of her small white face through flickering lights.

  The students visit the public beach the next day. There Charles sees the marvels of Julia multiplied. She is in bathing suits of every style and design. How can so little material appear in so many different forms? Some garments have middles like fishnets. Or no middles at all. Some have peep holes like bubbles in a fish tank. Some have no backs, plunging down below the waist with just the thinnest of straps to hold them up. Some have soft see-through wings and look like wet moths when they come out of the sea. Some have short skirts and very skimpy tops.

  He sees these multiple Julias — black and white — stretched out on blankets. They are running into the sea, laughing and carefree. They are oiling themselves, caressing every inch of their bodies with slow loving fingers. They are lying, seductively cupped, to catch the sun. They are smiling and half naked, self-absorbed as cats.

  Charles has never seen so much exposed female flesh. He has never seen so many white women. He is amazed at the paleness of white flesh, like morning sky before dawn or between rains when clouds still form a canopy overhead. Some girls appear to crackle in bronze, like meat before eating and some are, astonishingly, spotted like the coat of a leopard.

  It is these young women who show him the fullness of breast and thigh, the delicacy of nipple and navel, the gently rotating stride of girls in their primary flourish, each step a deliberate corkscrew into the sand, boldly marking their trails, knowing they will vanish the instant they move on.

  And they always move on.

  Out. Over the horizon.

  He watches the setting sun copper the waves and then sink. He wants to go where it goes. Where they go.

  The trip home to Kampala takes them through Nairobi where the group stops for two nights. Even more eye-opening than Mombasa, Nairobi — the Kenyan capital — seems like sin city to them.

  “Kenya is a country of many colours,” remarks Headmaster on their first excursion into the city. “The Masai called this area ‘place of sweet waters,’ and they would let their livestock graze and drink freely. Now, it is full of parks and restaurants and museums.”

  The Masai. Tall, slender bodies billowing in red cotton, bright under the sun, staffs swinging slowly beside cattle. Charles is amazed at how wide the world of Africa is. When they enter Nairobi, however, he feels small. Invisible. The harsh light glancing off concrete high-rises blinds him, cancels him out. Even when he sees a traditional Masai sipping coffee.

  “There is a colour Headmaster forgot to mention,” says Mr. Makuba to a handful of students sitting around him. “And that is the colour white. The British Government set aside the most fertile areas for their own settlers and called it the White Highlands.”

  Charles hears and nods but says nothing. He is caught up in the clicking pace at which people walk and traffic signals change, the impersonality of stores where money seems to flip back and forth, where clerks do not smile. There is no softness here. Only efficiency and organization. Palm trees and street lamps bend the same way, spaced and placed in exact order.

  They visit City Park and the Arboretum where acres of grass stiffen behind fences, where the bursting flora of the land is preserved under glass or arranged precisely in ornamental tree gardens.

  After dinner, they are free but they are warned not to go more than a few streets from their dorm. Mr. Makuba wanders off with some of the male members of the Drama Club, including Charles and Joro. An hour later, Charles drinks his first beer — which tastes sour — and smokes his first cigarette, which scrapes his throat.

  An hour after that, he sees something he could never have imagined even existed. “We are going on a secret mission,” Mr. Makuba says with a smile. “You must tell no one of this excursion, especially Headmaster.” The senior boys savour the prospect of this extracurricular visit. Whatever it is.

  It is dusk as they thread through the glittering back streets. Humming, the city lights up for the evening. Putting on spangles and bangles. The sinuous music of Tuareg bands pulses from tiny restaurants and bars. They stop now before a black door framed by the painting of a nearly naked woman. A giant white female who curves up, over and around the entrance with the circles of her soft body. The boys all have one simultaneous thought. To touch this vision whose flesh seems to glow like a lightbulb from deep inside.

  “She is truly a naked goddess,” says Charles appreciatively.

  “You might say that,” replies Mr. Makuba. “But let’s keep religion out of this tonight. Would you like to see the real thing?”

  The real thing?

  Mr. Makuba presses a bell and the boys stare in awe as the goddess winks a big blue neon eye at them. The doors of her arms open wide and they file in.

  They are led through a smoky blue haze by a tall young man to a round table directly under the stage. The women they look up at now are encased in sparkly nets, winding themselves around poles, caressing themselves under mauve spotlights. Drinking their second beers, the boys stare amazed. When some of the dancers flick gauzy scarves at them, Mr. Makuba catches part of one and, laughing, wafts it in the faces of his boys. When the dancer comes a few moments later to claim it, she bends her oiled naked breasts over the table. Mr. Makuba carefully places a bill between them and she smiles. Her fullness so near. Smelling of flowers.

  Fragrant female bodies torment Charles the next morning as the group strolls through Nairobi’s Museum of African history. Mr. Makuba whispers to the group, as they stand before cases of skulls in the National Museum of Kenya. “We all come from the apes. These are humanoid skulls from more than a million years ago, skulls found right here in Kenya. Even older skulls have been found in Ethiopia.”

  Charles stares at the empty eye sockets staring back at him. In most cases the lower jaw is missing, so that the forehead — the thinking part — is prominent. Homo Sapiens. “What do the words mean?” he asks.

  “It’s Latin,” says Mr. Makuba. “First there was Homo Africanus. African Man. Then Homo Erectus.” The boys giggle. “Standing Man” he says, ignoring the joke. “Then Homo Sapiens. Thinking Man. Man with knowledge.”

  As Charles gazes through another glass at the squashed skull of an actual ape, images from the previous night appear through it. Julia’s features waving in green fluorescence. He looks around quickly and blinks. “Julia?”

  Reality intervenes when they start the long train ride home. Relentless as the sun, the round smiling face of Idi Amin beams out at Charles from the front page of a newspaper held high for all to see by Headmaster. Threats. Boasts. A new heaviness hangs in the air that is more than heat and humidity. It sits in big black headlines stabbing out stories of Amin’s meteoric rise to power.

  “If he really gains authority,” says Headmaster, “we might get our Olympic-sized pool.”

  “Will he really have the influence to do that?” Joro asks.

  A recent graduate of Mengo, Joro has impressed Charles as being smart in many ways. Now a student at Makerere University where he is studying theatre, Joro is like a younger Mr. Makuba. He also writes plays, and seems very political as well as being a wonderful actor and dancer. Mr. Makuba has invited Joro back to the school on several occasions in the last two years to assist him.

  “He wants to have that power,” says Mr. Makuba. “But he is still a deputy. President Obote is in Singapore right now at a Commonwealth Conference, so Amin is making a lot of noise back at home.”

  “Perhaps,” says Joro after a long pause, “we had better get the pool order in quickly.”

  Headmaster holds up another full-page photo of Amin dancing at a village festival. In his hand is a ceremonial spear. The general’s head is down, covered by a huge brimmed hat, as though hiding the grin that they know is there, as though concentrating on the heavy stomp of his feet, exactly where and when to place them.
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br />   “He’s wearing a John Wayne hat,” thinks Charles who, like most of his classmates, has long been addicted to American westerns. On the same page is a photo of Amin playing the royal flute. The paper is passed around. The general is shown in another photo laughing heartily.

  “He looks jolly,” comments Julia turning her attention to the next photo. “Not like President Obote.”

  The conversation stays on Amin. How strong is this general really, who looks as solid as rock and rooted like an old tree?

  “Here is an interesting fact,” says Mr. Makuba, “General Amin was raised a Muslim.”

  Charles looks at Amin’s glowing face and wonders whether he also likes little boys. “Where did the general go to school?” he asks.

  Mr. Makuba tells them that Amin never completed school and, according to rumour, cannot even read very well.

  “He has friends in high places,” says the Headmaster. “Like Obote, he is also a northerner. And he helped Obote when he came to power. The British military also likes him. For the army, he was always a model soldier.”

  In fact, Amin is change itself, a big blustering wind of change blowing a sandstorm through Kampala, through Uganda, through East Africa.

  At midday, the train chugs slowly back into the Kampala station. But someone has connected the wrong dots.

  Soldiers are everywhere. At every exit. In the station itself. Occasionally they emerge pushing someone before them. Or, they emerge smiling and smoking a cigarette. Charles raises a window and thinks he hears screaming. Sees a man bleeding on the ground. Sees a young woman on her knees before a soldier, with her hands tied behind her. He quickly closes the window and prepares himself.

  Soldiers guide them to a waiting bus. Normal. The driver explains to Headmaster what has happened. “The military has taken over. It’s a coup. Amin is now in charge.”

  “Get us to the school,” says Headmaster.

  As they start to drive he tells them that all will be well. Joro is dropped near his parents’ home. The tension on the bus is thick. The ride is slow. Unbearable.

  The road up Mengo Hill is blocked. Headmaster steps outside and speaks to someone with a gun. A moment later, he calmly instructs his students to get out. Soldiers with guns separate Headmaster and Mr. Makuba from the rest and put the two of them into waiting jeeps. The students are told to get back on the bus that immediately turns in another direction. A soldier not much older than Charles now stands at the front. With a machine gun.

  Charles focuses on the caked rubber boots of the many peddlers outside pushing tires through gritty puddles, wobbling rickety wheels beneath the wide wet trees, digging deeper and deeper into the clay ruts that suck them down. No one is smiling now. They are almost too intent on their tasks: cleaning windows, folding fabric, piling fruit, cutting up tires, trimming hair before mirrors tacked to trees.

  It is deathly quiet he realizes.

  The bus passes the radio station. It too is surrounded by soldiers, a tank rumbling on chains outside, roaring as it prowls around the perimeter. Like king crocodile, with a gun. Kitindi with a monster metal head and eyes that never close. “What could they be doing at the radio station?” Charles wonders, concerned now about the place of his first theatrical success.

  The senior students are installed in small hot huts in a wooded area just outside the Kampala city limits. A dozen in each hut. They all hear the occasional blasts and yells and crashes. Like the movies, thinks Charles. Real and not real. Flattened pictures on a screen.

  They are fed military meals. Sent back to the huts. Boys here. Girls there. Told nothing. Restlessly they squirm on wooden seats. Clothes sticking. Flesh squeaking. They try to absorb the words they hear. White fluoresecent lights hiss at all hours.

  The next morning they are marched out of the sleeping area, past the awful smelling latrines. They have no idea where Mr. Makuba is. Or Headmaster. They are given old books and told to read. They whisper. They wonder. They eat and they sleep.

  On their third morning, a military figure arrives. There are now more than two hundred private school students in their group. He addresses them all politely.

  “I am sorry you have been inconvenienced. There have been changes. You will return to your schools now and carry on as usual. There is no bus available at the moment, so you will have to walk. Leave your bags here. We will send them later.” And then he adds, “Long live the revolution. Long live Idi Amin.”

  Smiling oddly at the frightened students, he dismisses them. Obediently, they follow instructions. Because this man has a gun, the new authority.

  They begin the long walk towards Mengo.

  Headmaster Hermitage is at the school when they start arriving. Fruit and drinks are waiting.

  “Where is President Obote?” Charles asks. “Where did the army come from? Who are all these soldiers?”

  Headmaster puts a warning finger over his lips. “Too many questions are not good right now Charles. I have been told to tell you only that General Amin is now in charge.”

  They head to their rooms in a daze, hearing only the occasional burst of gunfire.

  Two days later, Charles and some of the older boys decide to find out for themselves what is really going on. They walk down the hill into town, into the choking grey cloud that is now Kampala. Charles cannot see and he cannot breathe. There is a stink of rubber. A scorched acrid haze that makes him cough.

  Smashed glass spikes the road as they move out from the school. Tin roofs in the town have caved in. Metal lampposts twist through thick haze. Wires coil over the road like dead snakes, some still sparking. Trees loom suddenly, then veer off. Not trees but the ghosts of trees, their green life gone, their shadowy shapes straining.

  The destruction seems accidental, desultory evidence of a stand made here and a battle lost there. Resistance easily overcome. A city briefly, fiercely defiant, then easily defeated.

  The town has been conquered in warlike fashion. Perhaps the war is still being fought. The few people who are outside sit silently. A few crouch in alleys or scurry along walls like frightened insects. Holding small transistor radios to their ears, listening for some signal, some instruction that will explain, tell them what to do.

  What they all hear, however, is music that wants everyone to move, not think. Martial music, good for a soldier swinging his gun. Music that will not allow anyone to pause for even a moment. To wonder or doubt. Just to keep going.

  The boys see a blasted car. A burned hull of metal and roasted upholstery. A shrivelled black lump at the driver’s wheel. They stop and stare. A soldier tries to move them on. But they are frozen to the spot. Transfixed by a corpse with a sign around its neck that shouts “Traitor.”

  “That was a priest,” the soldier finally says to them. “He spoke against the revolution. Let that be a lesson to you.”

  A priest?

  Charles remembers a tall handsome priest from childhood. Met in the Catholic kingdom with Father. A man who helped so many get an education at Mengo. A man of God. A man who preached what Kekinoni herself believed. That Jesus died for everyone. That he was nailed alive to a giant wooden cross and left hanging in humiliation and agony while the sky turned dark.

  Charles also remembers a cross in a large church with Jesus twisted on it. He remembers studying Jesus’ foot. The rest of the cross was so high, he had to look up to see anything. But the foot was at eye-level, its delicate bones and fine nails, its ivory colour. The skin punctured by a square nail poking through, peeled back a little, the way his fingernail did when he bit at the quick. Bright blood painted on. A blue vein ruptured.

  Had the boys’ combined sins helped make this happen? Their sins of flirting, swaggering in new clothes, beer drinking, cigarette smoking? Their sins of vanity, dancing, acting, playing football? Feeling his legs weaken beneath him, he looks around and sees horror on other faces. The group is gradual
ly shooed away, leaving the dead priest to turn slowly into ash and Kampala to melt in the acrid haze.

  Far away, Kekinoni stands numbly over her daughter Debra, who had been caught in it all. Pain keeps Debra unconscious. Asleep for two days now, entwined amidst the pink and blue flowers of her bedsheets, cradled among the stems like a small seed that won’t open. Sunlight beams white on the gauzy curtains billowing at the open window of her room that rain turns blue. Debra lies in her bed of dreams. Draped with mosquito netting.

  Ripped. Raped. Now in a witch’s spell.

  Don’t worry,” the doctor tells Kekinoni. “She is still breathing. I am sure she will be all right.” The doctor can tell life from death. Can give injections and apply bandages. But he has no idea how to deal with the damage inside Debra’s head.

  Kekinoni creeps through the house in the starched white cotton dress of her spirit church. Calling Raphael the Healer, softly intoning hymns of praise and supplication from under her white turban.

  When classes across the country are suspended indefinitely, Charles makes his way home. His close friend Samuel arrives too, his own house burned to the ground. The boys are in shock. “How can it have happened to her?” Charles asks his parents over and over. “I don’t understand.”

  “They attacked her when she got off the bus,” says Father. “Here, not far from home.”

  “Soldiers.”

  “Two of them. They offered her a ride home. Her mistake was to take it. She thought they were there to protect her.”

  Charles remembers her smile. How she was unable to control it when teased by her brother. Once the smile began, she couldn’t stop it. And it made her so angry.

  “They dropped her off afterwards. She was full of blood. They said she had been in an accident. She was hardly moving. And then they drove away. As if nothing had happened. I’m sure they thought she was dead. But people saw. Heard. Now they are gone. Sent to Kampala. We’ll never find them.”