by Vamba Sherif
CHAPTER 4
Makemeh was the only one besides him walking on the main street. At that hour of the day, the street exuded the sensual smell of dust as after a slight rainfall. She reached the town centre proper which was crowded with marketeers, and all the while William followed her but at a discreet distance. Soon the centre was behind them, and he saw a man approaching Makemeh with swift steps, saw him reach out to stop her by placing his hand on her shoulder. The man was tall and heavy-set like a wrestler, and he wore a tailored grey suit and a broad-brimmed white hat. From where he stood, William could not tell whether Makemeh was responding in any way to the man, as she was standing with her back to him. Suddenly she left him and walked on.
William waited, just like the man, until she veered off the main road and took a grassy path, climbing a hill towards a house he would later come to know was her home. Then the man crossed the road and entered a carpenter shop from where the sounds of machines emerged. On both sides of the path Makemeh had chosen were verdant bushes, and at one point she stepped into the bush to the right of the path. William pursued her at a quick pace but lost track of her when she stepped into the bush. He found himself in a coffee farm which encompassed a huge area, including some parts of the mountains. Fiery ants assaulted him. One got lost somewhere between his waist and nape, and just as he was about to give up after a thorough search the ant bit him. He fumbled through his clothes but failed to find it. On lifting his gaze to a coffee tree right above him, he saw a colony of agitated ants, and broke into a run. He stopped to catch his breath, and from close by he heard the furious fall of coffee seeds into baskets hooked to the coffee trees, while a singer spurred the workers on with her praise songs.
On tracing the source of the voice, it led him to Makemeh. Her voice was clear, almost sparkling, as she wove the names of the workers into her songs. Most of them were women. Their bare backs and their tough and tested shoulders glistened with sweat, as they filled baskets with coffee seeds which they then carried on their heads to a warehouse to be dried and cleaned. The women pulled frenziedly at the coffee seeds, their faces, their bared shoulders and breasts exposed to the assaults of killer ants whose bites sometimes occasioned fever or even death. They were in the grip of filling and emptying baskets with a dedication that rendered their faces the aspect of fierce competitors.
With the workers was an old man who looked on with an air of solemn importance. He was tall, dressed in a long gown, and with a trimmed goatee. On seeing William emerge from the cover of the bush and into a clearing, the old man stopped, and Makemeh did the same.
‘So you followed me here,’ she said.
She was sweating but sounded calm, her voice mirthful, full of delight and promises that made William’s heart skip a beat.
‘I wanted to know where you lived.’
Most of the workers had by then stopped and were watching William and Makemeh. A silence fell on the farm.
The man turned to his workers and roared at them:
‘Go on with work or you’ll have no lunch today. Who is this man?’ he asked Makemeh.
‘Mr Mawolo, meet my grandfather Boley.’
William extended his hand, but Boley ignored him and instead turned to his granddaughter with a stern gaze.
‘Is he one of your suitors?’
Makemeh laughed.
‘My grandfather is a jealous man, Mr Mawolo.’
‘I came to repair the generator,’ William said.
This piece of information brought a smile to Boley’s face, and all of a sudden he was friendly and charming. ‘Mr Mawolo, we truly hope that you are the man who would once and for all put a stop to the chronic malfunction of our generator. We are fed up with it.’
There was an aura of importance about him that even his working clothes could not conceal; his trimmed goatee with its dash of grey gave him an air of cultivated arrogance punctuated by his habitual toying with the edges of his gown.
‘Where are you staying?’
‘At the mansion.’
‘That makes you the first person to ever occupy that house. You must be a very important man, Mr Mawolo.’
‘The mansion was Old Kapu’s idea.’
Boley nodded without a comment, as if he could read into William’s answer the real purpose of his being in Wologizi. This was a man, William thought, one could easily get to dislike.
‘It’s lunch time,’ Boley then shouted.
The workers came out of the coffee farm in rags, their sweaty faces lined with extreme fatigue, and they headed for the house where lunch awaited them. The house was a large, whitewashed affair which thundered at that hour of the day with the cry of children. Boley showed William to a sofa in a spacious living room and then disappeared into one of many rooms in the house, only to emerge later in a fresh, embroidered gown, ready for lunch. When William was about to join them, Boley stopped him. ‘I’m sorry Mr Mawolo,’ he said. ‘I only feed those who work for me. That’s the rule of this house.’
The tantalising smell of chicken cooked patiently in peanut sauce tormented William. His stomach churned, and despite the insult he craved to be part of those people squatted around the lunch in groups according to age and stature. On a dark-blue wall before him was a portrait of Boley right beside the president’s, both large and impressive. The president looked young, full of vigour and promises, but a moustachioed Boley looked serious and with the rough edge of a hard-working farmer.
Makemeh came to William’s rescue. She led him to a shaded corner of a courtyard with more than a dozen rooms looking out on it, and gave him a calabash of cold water. That afternoon, some boys had plucked a basket of mangoes from the trees that surrounded the house, two of which Makemeh decided to prepare for him. She covered the distance between him and the kitchen, which was part of the courtyard, aware of his intense gaze – felt it burning her nape even when she was not with him but in the kitchen, preparing the mangoes. Later she came out with chunks of the fresh fruit in a bowl. William attacked them, his hunger heightened by her presence.
‘Is your grandfather always like that?’
‘The townspeople call him “the Miser.”
‘How was his relationship with your father?’
She seemed uncomfortable, and William thought that perhaps her father was a sensitive subject to her, his disappearance unbearable. She must be suffering, he thought, not knowing his whereabouts.
‘You’ve started off on the wrong foot, Mr Mawolo.’
‘No, I don’t think so; you are the one who came to me.’
She pondered this for a while, and then decided to throw him a fragment from the past and see what he would do with it.
‘It began with the storm, Mr Mawolo.’
Makemeh related the day her father came to see her on the rice field, which was part of the large farm, two years before his sudden disappearance. It was in the wake of a terrible storm that had spared most houses in Wologizi except her father’s. The storm had carried away the entire corrugated iron roof, spreading the sheets scandalously on top of a tree behind his house. Before the disaster, Tetese had scraped a living by telling stories, an unrewarding profession, because he was not taken seriously by the townspeople, and as result he was often penniless. The incident with the roof only added to his misfortunes. Makemeh was pinching rice plants in the swampy soil, her feet knee-deep in the mud, the sun steadily burning her back, when she heard her father say, ‘I came to see my daughter.’
Those words were directed at Boley, his father-in-law, and there was an unmistakable tone of anger in his voice. It was the first time she, Makemeh, had ever seen her father stand up to her grandfather. She had quickly crawled on all fours out of the swamp, anxious to reach her father before the situation escalated between the two men. On her face was a smile she was certain would calm him once he saw it.
‘So you’ve heard about the roof,’ Tetese said to her.
He seemed mollified by her presence, as if being with her made it possibl
e to bear his misfortune with some pride. He would tell her that day that the one thing he regretted the most in life was not being able to bring her up, or to father her as was required of a man. Makemeh could see herself in him: the broad forehead, the impatient lips which moved constantly but would close whenever he became aware of them, as though it was a habit he loathed. And then there was his height: Tetese was as tall and as slender as she was. She noted, as if for the first time that day, the sharp difference in the colour of their skin, her father’s as dark as soot, hers as bright as amber.
‘What are you going to do now?’ she’d asked.
Tetese had shrugged – ‘I don’t know.’
‘And then,’ William prompted. ‘What happened then?
‘It was then that I suggested to my father to approach the Lebanese, Mr Mawolo. I told him that perhaps the Arab could help him with some corrugated-iron for his roof.’
‘Why not your grandfather?’
‘The two were not the best of friends,’ she said and paused, gazing in the direction of the main door. ‘My father always accused him of stealing the one person dearest to him – me.’
‘What did the Lebanese do?’
‘Why not ask the man himself?’
‘How could a mere storyteller, who was not taken seriously by anyone, make it to the paramount chieftaincy?’
‘I’m sorry, I cannot tell you this. My only suggestion to you is to begin your investigation with the Lebanese.’
She had a point, he thought. Perhaps it was better to hear out the Lebanese, and even though he doubted whether that would unravel the mystery of Tetese’s disappearance he hoped it would lead him on the right track. The Lebanese, being a foreigner in that town, might know things that would be of some value to his investigation.
Makemeh promised to see him that afternoon. Then she stood up and led him through the house to the front door. The house was by then empty, most people having returned to work. For a while after she was gone, he paused before the closed door, vacillating between climbing down the hill or confronting her and ridding himself of the doubt that had gathered like phlegm in his throat. Though he’d been aware of every phase of their interaction, had he ended up yielding a part of himself to her? There was no sound of her footsteps on the other side of the door, which meant she was watching him. Was it to make sure he was gone and then gloat over the fact that henceforth he would be at her beck and call? What role was Makemeh actually playing?
Through a peephole Makemeh noted, as she watched him leave, that the stranger limped. Not even his lofty disposition, not even the expensive suit, could conceal the handicap. The stranger looked so solitary, so fragile before the storm of a series of events that had been unleashed before his arrival that she feared for him.
CHAPTER 5
The Lebanese, bald and pinched-faced, carried his potbelly like a load, every now and then pulling up his unbelted trousers as though to properly contain it. The moment he saw William, the Lebanese, who had cultivated the talent of weighing people up, quickly put him down as one of those men from the capital who were worth the attention only because they would not leave his shop without a packet of cigarettes, a bottle of strong drink, or a round of gossip about country girls whose docility titillated their imaginations. William indeed ordered a drink, sat on a bar stool, and leaning on the counter took slow sips at the bottle, turning it around on the counter in silence. The silence got on the Lebanese’s nerves, and he decided to break it by inquiring from the stranger as to the purpose of his visit in Wologizi.
‘I’m here to repair the generator.’
‘Who asked you to do that?’
‘Old Kapu.’
‘It’s about time.’
‘I’m putting up at the mansion.’
‘So, you are staying at the mansion?’
William nodded. ‘Makemeh and a few women had cleaned it thoroughly. She told me she was Tetese’s daughter,’ he said, and as he gazed at the Lebanese he saw his face transform from a jovial one to one stricken by fear, which confounded him.
‘Please know that I didn’t have anything to do with it.’
‘Anything to do with what?’
The Lebanese reached across the counter and grabbed him by the arms, and William noted that two fingers of his hands, the index and forefinger, were missing. ‘With his disappearance.’
‘What type of connection did you have with Tetese?’
‘Connection? I wouldn’t call it that. For years he sat in front of my shop. He was shunned everywhere, but I had no problem with him sitting there every day and wasting his time.’
The shop in which this event unfolded was located on the ground floor of a two-story building. From a once white but now yellow ceiling hung a fan which rattled in self-mockery, generating air that mingled with the smells of expired foodstuffs. Products of various kinds were stocked up in every corner: the walls covered with posters of voluptuous actresses all of whom were foreign. The master of that domain had arrived at Wologizi years before and had opened up the shop which, rumour had it but was never confirmed, was a joint venture involving Tetese’s father-in-law, Boley, the man behind every successful enterprise in that town.
One day, the Lebanese had gone home and had returned with a tiny, sickly wife with whom he strolled hand in hand from one end of town to the other. Perhaps fed up with the drowsy monotony and solitude of a forest town, the wife had left him. Thereafter, dusk would often meet him standing in front of his shop, throwing lascivious glances at young women who laughed or mocked the nasal sound that accompanied his every word in the local language. He slept with some of them and lavished them with presents to silence them. The Arab had quickly aged. Time had shaved his head bald before he was even thirty, hence the nickname Baldhead, which had stuck like a leech to a body.
‘One cannot help but wonder how it came about that an obscure storyteller could go on to hold the highest office in the entire forest region,’ the Lebanese said. ‘Look,’ he leaned across the counter again, his large, bloodshot eyes fixed on William. ‘I’ve lived among these people for more than thirty years. I’ve tolerated their unusual ways, I’ve seen strange things, but the most remarkable of them all is the case of Tetese, the well-known drunkard, the idler, the man of no consequence, the outsider who surprised us all with his paramount chieftaincy. This crowns them all.’
The Lebanese told William that the man who would later chop off his fingers without remorse had come to see him two years before. Heavy rain had caught up with Tetese, and when he entered the shop in large army boots which he claimed he had inherited from an uncle, he had left large patches of mud on the well swept-floor.
‘Just because the storm has done such a wonderful job with your roof does not mean you have to dirty my floor, Tetese,’ the Lebanese had said.
‘I have a problem, Baldhead,’ Tetese had said.
‘What must I do to convince you people once and for all that my father, peace be upon him, had named me Gibril?’
‘If you were to give me fifty pieces of zinc for a new roof I would make sure no one will ever call you Baldhead again,’ he’d said, and the firm tone of his voice had thrown the Lebanese off his convivial balance.
‘No way you could repay me.’
Tetese had tried by all means to persuade the Lebanese that he would get the money. And as he spoke, a mischievous smile had slowly crept over the Lebanese’s face, and he had planted a kiss on Tetese’s cheek.
‘You could do me a favour in return for a new roof.’
A bewildered Tetese had nodded.
‘You could tell me your best stories!’
‘I could start right away.’
‘I give you a week to prepare.’
Tetese had clicked the heels of his large army boots and had saluted the Lebanese, thrusting his chest forward and clasping his fingers. Meanwhile, the rain had gone on pouring in buckets, gurgling as it filled potholes and dragged along the town’s refuse, depositing it in dark and seeming
ly impenetrable valleys.
‘There are conditions attached to it though,’ the Lebanese had warned. ‘Once every week you come to me in clean clothes. There are to be no other audiences. The stories are told to me and only me.’
Tetese had nodded his consent.
As a token of good faith the Lebanese had given Tetese some pieces of corrugated iron for his roof.
‘Then I watched him step in the rain, bearing the bunch of corrugated-iron on his head as cover, Mr Mawolo.’
‘Did you live up to the bargain?’
‘I should have if Tetese had done the same.’
‘Was it then a question of revenge?’ William pointed at the ghastly stumps.
The Lebanese, clearly disappointed, said, ‘You must have been listening to rumours,’ he said.
The day he came to see him, the Lebanese told William, Tetese was already a changed man. The man who often sat before his shop with his kora, waiting for a customer to praise his name to the skies, and who was often drunk, or humming a tune from one of his stories, was not the same Tetese with whom he’d closed that bargain.
‘But the townspeople, from want of an explanation, have blamed me for triggering in him the man he later became.’
Every aspect of his chubby face, the anxiety that clouded it and the sweat that drenched it were all variations of a single longing to be believed. For the Lebanese was afraid that the townspeople might end up telling terrible lies to William about him, thereby turning the stranger against him. So, he hoped that by revealing more about Tetese he would cultivate William’s trust. He went on to describe Tetese as a man of average height, light-skinned, almost yellow, but with patches of dark and grey spots strewn all over his body, a skin disease regarded by many in that forest region and beyond as peculiar to men with the extraordinary ability to be cruel.
William, who viewed this description as a desperate attempt on the part of the Lebanese to win him over, ignored it but listened on.