“This is our sound,” says Robert to them after the playing has stopped. “Africa’s sound. The sound of our cultures. We can give it to the world. No one else can do this. If we don’t, it will vanish.”
And on it goes.
From the Jopadhola people, they learn the intimacy of dual singers and dual harpists, vocalists alternating call and response in an animated conversation that ripples along to the deep watery notes of the bow harp, the ntongoli, that each plays with precision. “Instruments that speak to one another,” says Robert.
Added to the harps are percussion instruments — two teke, pieces of wood played with wooden sticks; the fumba, a long narrow cylindrical drum with a skin at one end only; and the many bells the dancers wear twisted around their legs. Charles is intoxicated as the singers begin chanting and the women ululate, as the drums pound and feet stomp in rhythm.
A female dancer motions to Charles to join in. Now, he sways backwards and forwards from the waist to the shoulders as though he has been doing it all his life. And he has. Undulating like rain and wind in trees. Like a running river or the swimming of the crocodile. Skimming over savannah like the leopard. Roaring like storm. Crackling like night fires.
It is around such fires in front of village huts that the troupe also hears stories and legends. These tales invade them: stories of night dancers who walk over graves calling dead bodies by name, bodies of those who have practiced witchcraft and so must be punished. It is the night dancers who pull them out of the ground, drag them to a place of desecration. Then walk through the village whirring like bats roused up and swooping.
Charles watches them in a village near Yumbe. While the bush settles itself thick as fur, folding close its night creatures, they focus on the animated face of an Acholi woman who tells of twins. She addresses her words directly to Joseph. After all, he and they are the same people and she will rely on Joseph to convey her tale to others.
Twins are a fearful event for them all, combining heaven and earth in a single being. Twins with two fathers — one spirit and one material. Perhaps they are an incarnation of Wuo — the wild bush cow — mad with twitching and jumping, moody and capricious, to be handled with caution. Kill them. Better to be safe.
Charles watches the dancers’ masks with their bold black-and-white sectioned cow heads, their startled eyes, huge horns and black skirts completely covering the body. Twins have always meant danger to the community.
“If you are the father of twins,” says the lead singer to Robert, “you are not allowed to fight in tribal wars. You are not allowed to shed blood. For if you do, then your twins will turn on you. To prevent this, they must die by spearing. And you must be purified. So is it spoken.”
Silence. The words take root.
“Now I will tell you the story of Renga Moi, the Father of our village, the Father of twins.”
Gathered back at their rehearsal room, stretched out on mats that cover the polished wood floor. Robert recalls Renga Moi for them.
“He painted his skin with red dye, the colour of blood. He called himself the Red Warrior and he was renowned for his bravery. He is the leader. He is the first into battle. The other warriors only fight because he is among them.”
Now the whole company is contributing, eager to show Robert they too remember a place existing long ago.
“There is also a Priest who leads the village in religious matters, settles disputes, and makes sure that rituals are properly observed.”
Charles listens carefully. “It is the Priest who decides when to fight. It is from him that Renga Moi derives his power.”
Robert leans into the group. “But we have also learned that this man’s wife, Renga Moi’s wife, Nakazzi, has given birth to twins. What will happen to the village if they are attacked and he can no longer lead the warriors into battle, can no longer draw blood? What if other villages know as well and they attack? What if he goes into battle anyway? Can the village survive?”
“If Renga Moi does fight, the twins must be killed,” Charles says solemnly. “The rituals must all be observed.”
“Now,” he whispers urgently, “Let’s dance this through. Begin with morning, the morning the twins are born.”
Leaping to their feet, they move in unison. Give birth in unison. A passage through legs sturdy as trees. The drumming intensifies. Only when a second child emerges is the danger felt. Faces carved in fear. Strained and secret. Impending calamity. With the first assault on the village, Renga Moi steps forward to fight.
“But he cannot break the taboo,” says Charles. “He cannot.”
“Yet he must save the village.”
“Then the twins will die. Must die.”
“Protect the village now or lose it. Some action must be taken.” Joseph stands on one side of the room as Renga Moi, the Red Warrior, the Father. On the other side, stands Robert as the Priest warning him — warning the whole village — that divine edicts must be obeyed.
Abafumi’s first original play is being born.
“Renga Moi is a warrior before anything,” says Joseph. “He must defend his people against invasion. He has no choice.” Defiantly, Joseph beckons his warriors, and marches across an invisible border. He does not look back.
“Renga Moi is doing what he is trained to do. Does he have a choice?” asks Robert in a steady voice.
“The original story ends there,” says Willy. “If Renga Moi fights, the gods will bring famine. People will starve. He may save the village but at what cost? His own twins will be the first to die.”
“Nakazzi suffers most,” whispers Beth mournfully, “because she knows her babies are in peril.”
When the village is attacked, an enraged Renga Moi fights back.
“He has broken the law,” declares the Priest. “The twins must die.”
“Hide, Nakazzi. Hide your children.”
A hunt begins for Nakazzi’s children.
Robert, the Priest demands unquestioning faith. Kill them.
Renga Moi will not beg.
Though the villagers return without the children, the Priest will still be obeyed.
A tale hundreds of years old, re-lived in dance and sound. Sacrifice reborn in Kampala’s National Theatre. The world outside has stopped as well. Amin, like the maddened Priest, demanding the blood of innocents.
Faint, fearful bells strum at the nerve endings of the group.
They have arrived at a hanging point in time. A convergence of history and heart. Robert has brought them here. To whom must they listen?
From the floor, Nakazzi’s arms shoot up. She collapses in a shapeless shroud of grief. The Priest touches her shoulder. “Be proud.”
Her eyes are black. “My children must not die”
Spears cross. Strike home along a beam of silver. Pierce and stab. A shriek wounds the air. Silence.
Slowly, to the hypnotic sounds of drum and bell, two tiny bundles of black cloth appear. Held high on the ends of weapons.
The Priest has had his sacrifice.
At the next rehearsal, a new tack. Renga Moi — not knowing his children have already been sacrificed — tries to warn the village of further danger. Then he finds Nakazzi. She is softly weeping.
“Where are the children?” he demands. The villagers crowd in, close the space between husband and wife. “Where are my children?”
Nakazzi motions feebly and lifts two mounds of cloth. Like a wounded animal, Renga Moi roars his pain, shaking and mad with grief.
The Priest enters, raises his arms as if to stop the storm that is Renga Moi.
Warrior and Priest face one another in a power struggle that will determine the very continuation of this community. Joseph and Robert locked in conflict before the waiting company, which is improvising half sounds, cries that could tip them into oblivion.
“You have brought pollution upon u
s,” accuses the Priest. “My laws had to be followed.”
“I have saved our land,” retorts Renga Moi. “We are free.”
Faces go stiff, eyes and mouths gape wide with shock.
“You cannot challenge my power,” roars the Priest.
“You cannot challenge the people.”
Renga Moi allows the purification ritual but reluctantly. He is led to a teeming mound of earth, a tower of termites. A fantastic weave of arches. To be purified, he must climb through it.
Robert walks Joseph through the crawling insects played now by the actors. Speaks him through it. “Renga Moi is no longer the warrior,” says Robert. “He must become a human sacrifice to survive this torture chamber and emerge newborn, knowing this supreme test shall not destroy him.”
Each actor now also follows Renga Moi, taking their own turns in the suffocating mound, squirming through its horrors, hunching against the swarming, biting, stinging insects.
A complicated choreography. Drums building slowly. One by one, Renga Moi and the people return to sunlight, blinking and disoriented.
When it is over, Robert asks each where they were, how they experienced this agony.
“I was in a slave house,” says Charles “waiting for a boat to take me far away. The stings were the tips of swords prodding me along.”
“How did you feel?”
“Ashamed. Terrified.”
“Good.”
Asked where he was, Joseph, naked when he finally crawls out of the giant mound just sings. “Zibo ko-ko-ri…. Bring my children back.”
Joseph demands their bodies. Nakazzi, rigid as stone, eyes closed, turns away, keens for her dead babies. Suddenly, Renga Moi runs at the Priest and, with one prodigious blow, kills him. The play is finished. The dictator is dead.
But in that same moment, equilibrium has been destroyed, the balance between past, present, and future. All will perish in the failing earth. The ancestors!
Is redemption possible at all? Even for those with right on their side?
The actors continue their work, continue to change and multiply ideas.
Dawn. Renga Moi towers above the body of the fallen Priest. He draws the bloody cloak carefully over his own shoulders.
He himself has now become both warrior and priest. Saviour. Dictator. As the play ends.
“What will happen,” they all ask Robert. “Will Renga Moi succeed?”
“We don’t know. All we know for sure is that he has sustained loss. We all have.”
“Why does one always have to lose so much?” asks Mara, the angry gadfly of the group.
“He has learned,” says Robert finally, “the cost of upsetting divine balance.”
“But why couldn’t someone less important than Renga Moi be sacrificed?” Mara persists.
“Because then the value of the knowledge gained would be less.”
“What knowledge?”
“Real knowledge.”
“We do learn from it,” says Charles, in rapt silence until this moment.
“Great tragedies,” Robert concludes “always end in knowledge. Yes. We do learn.”
A new Kampala also begins to take shape. Slowly the ministries re-open their doors. With a general in charge of everything.
In order to get the company out, Robert has requested support for touring abroad. A small amount — barely enough to cover daily expenses — is granted. Robert reaches into his own bank accounts for the rest. He tells Abafumi he knows where to get more.
He has also asked for new housing to accommodate the company in Kampala. Empty homes of Indian businessmen are offered and, after much debate, accepted. With barely enough to eat, the company suddenly finds itself in luxury living quarters.
Charles stares at the ornate ceiling of his new flat. Sky blue and gold. Bright tendrils curling around a crystal chandelier in sunbursts. Elaborate. Ornamental. Shiny hardwood floors reflecting it all. Pure white walls blind him, fill him up, drive everything from his mind.
Draperies hang in unexpected places, hiding secrets. Oil lamps glow coldly. Archways intersect, each painted with a different scene: miniature crowned elephants, peacocks and flowers, their nodding heads alive as snakes. Veiled women dance in the bedroom, their starry saris intricately entwined.
A maze of delights, the compound boasts an inner garden, flowers, and a mango tree with plump mauve fruit ripening over high walls that block off the angry streets.
He feels guilty. They all do. Like usurpers. As though they have killed a king and taken over his wealth, usurped a ruler. But no one declines these free and sumptuous spaces.
Military transport is also available to them any time they wish. But they wish they did not need, so often now, to be stuffed into army vehicles and hurtled away like convicts. In open jeeps they roar through the sights and sounds of this new Kampala, a loud humming, a speeding ring of unpredictability. Trying not to see just beyond the urban buzz, people hurrying out of sight, slipping into doorways and down alleys. Trying not to be seen.
Abafumi gathers at the Serumaga family’s own compound in the “big shot” section of the city, a rambling estate, long owned by his family, which has become the new artistic command post. A pale palace, with many rooms immaculately set on green grounds. Perfect for their own dictator. His personal White House.
Guest rooms display grand chairs — supple leather and carved wood — that remind Charles of Father’s judging chair, chairs that tell everyone how important the people are who own and occupy them.
Robert has an imported sound system and tape recorders. Music of all kinds that can be used in the service of art.
But tonight, Robert wants to party. He knows he cannot do this on a regular basis because his wife and children are not part of the company and they would not understand so easily. Tonight, though, they are away. His wife, particularly, would misconstrue the rather special attachments that her husband has developed for two of the beautiful young women in the group, Kiri and Mara, who casually accept Robert’s regular attentions. All in the interest of art, of course. But can Robert’s theatre wives be so easily accommodated in his own home?
If this a double standard, it is never questioned by any company member. Especially in Robert’s presence. Especially on a night like this, when strong spirits conspire with joy. Robert loves his women almost as much as he loves his company. Almost as much as Charles loves them. Robert’s youngest and most avid student, Charles watches him constantly, learning his every move.
Joro, an inspired musical improviser, begins to play his own version of Santana. Mellowed by beer, by a sense of accomplishment in their daily work, temporarily exalted in some sort of diplomatic exclusivity, all join in the music — Kasa on bass, Willy on bongos to praise their Chief, their Main Man, their Leader. It is he who has shown them the way and it is he who is now able to lavish some modest luxury on them, making them one.
Kiri and Mara now sing his praises musically as fervently as any griot. They improvise and embellish, growing louder and more outrageous. Robert sends back his own greetings until they jointly exhaust voice and energy. Through the long evening, Robert drinks and sings, sings and drinks, letting go the ascetic in his soul. Disappering for long stretches of time with his two favourite women.
So many secrets still to learn.
Ways of being in the world.
Word is out. Abafumi wields influence, is becoming a force to be reckoned with. On an increasingly regular basis, Robert is seen meeting foreigners. At his home. In hotels. American dollars appear in abundance.
Internationally, however, Amin’s Uganda is a pariah. So who are these contacts Robert speaks of? What is their business together?
A tour is quickly announced. Abafumi will go to Europe and perform.
Tickets are booked.
Charles will now fly. For the first time.
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br /> On the plane, Charles shivers like a new baby in a cold bath. The shock of water. Air. Airborne. Free and trapped, He huddles in the long dim tunnel, praying. He is certain this great shuddering and vibrating steel womb will split wide open and spew him out. As the wheels leave the ground, he shuts his eyes and prepares for death.
“It’s okay,” says Beth softly, seated beside him. “We are safe. You are safe.” She takes his hand.
Now, the metal beast roars like thunder and the ground falls away. Charles sits frozen in his seat, watching Entebbe Airport recede from sight. Watching it turn into a tiny map and then, incredibly, a pinpoint of light before clouds enshroud him.
Abafumi is en route to Amsterdam for a major international engagement. A festival of experimental theatre. Accommodation and meals. Modest money in their pockets.
Slowly, Charles relaxes. Everyone starts talking now, joking. Turning to one another, kneeling over seats. There are only a handful of other passengers on this plane heading first to Cairo and then on to Europe.
Willy pulls out a small drum and his nervous fingers fly over the skin. It is a cue. Joro and Kasa begin tuning strings, plucking at songs they all know. Robert joins in. Soon the whole plane is alive, rocking its way to an opening night in a strange new playground that tantalizes them all.
Dinner is served. They return to their seats. Robert announces that the plastic food they have before them is edible. “But just barely.”
A Dutch passenger — impressed by their artistic credentials — offers to buy beers for everyone in the company. But Robert politely refuses the offer, explaining that it is strict company policy not to drink alcohol or use drugs.
The facade must be maintained here. Robert is good at facades. They have all come to understand that.
“You are dedicated,” remarks the businessman. Robert smiles broadly. He winks at his actors, remembering the enormous amount of beer they had been drinking just nights before.
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