by Vamba Sherif
The portrait dominated every aspect of the bedroom. The president must have been wrestling with a rage on the brink of an outburst when the picture was snapped, for his thick lips were pulled tight, his jaws were puffy and his eyes were boiling over with emotions that could only be interpreted as violent.
For years William had longed for an audience with the Old Man. This avuncular appellation had been adopted by the entire country the day the president swept to power while still in his thirties. Convinced like many others in the government that the Old Man closely followed his career, William had distinguished himself. Meanwhile he waited for fortune to smile on him. Then some days ago his dream had been realised with a single telephone call. It was from the Old Man himself. He was entrusting him with the task of journeying to the interior to inquire into Tetese’s long silence. This request was not unusual because the Old Man was not unknown to maintain personal contacts with some paramount chiefs. That way, it was believed, he could keep his hold on the country.
William, who believed he’d been chosen on merit alone, promised not to disappoint the Old Man. On the phone, the Old Man’s voice had been crisp, betraying no emotion. But at the end of the talk, just before hanging up, came a gentle laughter in which William thought he noted tenderness. Now he found himself smiling back at the portrait.
What made his heart sing with joy was the reality that he was one of the few to whom the Old Man had revealed a soft spot.
Mosquitoes buzzed about him, and he sought refuge under a net suspended above a king-sized bed, but the parasites clutched at it, waiting like hunting dogs at the mouth of a burrow. A sudden unease came over him when the lights went out. He sweated as if he’d come down with a bout of malaria. In the moonless darkness, an image, the cause of his discomfort, gradually rose before his mind’s eye: it was Makemeh. She infected his mind with a feverish longing so tormenting that it denied him sleep. But as the hours wore on without a wink of sleep, the thought came to him that were she to materialise before him and slip out of her clothes, she might disappoint him. She might turn out not to be endowed with any particular beauty.
Yet, before him, he saw her smile which, as it spread on her face, took shape on his lips and teased his senses towards a climax that resulted in a brief but furious act of self-gratification.
In the darkness a hand reached out and touched him. He was glad Makemeh had come and had slipped into bed with him, naked and as desirable as his longing for her. He mounted her, and as he did so he recalled the first time he saw her standing at the door with the sunlight bathing her, her gaze locked with his own, a gaze so utterly consuming that he could not remember any woman staring at him with such intensity. How could he tell her then that her fate was inextricably linked with his own?
William explored the depths of her slender body, he caressed its firm curves, licked its salty surface, his imagination as sharp as though he were seeing her in broad daylight. And then Makemeh changed position, and her smell wafted to him. All of a sudden he realised that she did not smell of a fresh virgin bush, that her body was not as slender and as firm as he had supposed.
It took him a while to register the fact that in bed with him, clinging feverishly to him, was not Makemeh but Old Kapu’s wife Hawah Lombeh. She had not left the mansion. She must have been in the room all the while, listening to his moans, and she must have got used to the darkness and had undoubtedly seen him panting with pleasure in bed. She repulsed him. So he wrenched himself furiously from her grasp. But Hawah Lombeh clutched at him, grabbing him around his waist. When he failed to wrestle himself away, he dragged her along the floor, kicking her to free himself.
‘Please forgive me,’ she pleaded.
How could he forgive her when all he felt was a fury of an unusual type raging in him, his whole body trembling to it?
‘Don’t make me hurt you,’ he hissed.
He was conscious of Old Kapu in one of the rooms, perhaps eavesdropping on them. So he shoved her off him, quivering with a rage fuelled by the unbearable thought that she had seen him performing that most private of activities, the first time a woman had done so. It was this, more than anything else, which angered him.
Hawah Lombeh, as if to justify herself, said: ‘All my life no man has ever touched me, and you did that last night. That is what brought me here; that is what led me to you.’
‘But you are married!’
She was silent, and he could feel her hands reaching out to touch him in the darkness. There was hunger in those hands as they tried to overwhelm him with feelings to which he remained indifferent.
‘Leave now,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.
‘I can tell you about Tetese and Old Kapu.’
She sounded desperate, he thought, a way of drawing his attention. Once again, she flung herself at him.
‘Old Kapu is here, he might hear us. What do you think will happen if he knows what you are doing?’ he said.
She was so close to him that he could see her eyes, and it seemed as he stared into them as if they reflected a torch of flame.
‘Something happened in the past before Tetese was born…’ she went on.
‘That does not interest me,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone.’
But she refused, and he had the maddening urge to hurt her, which was exactly what he did. He grasped her arm, which was bony, cracking under his tight grasp, and tugged her to the door, while she resisted. He then threw her in the hallway, not caring whether her husband was awake.
He expected to hear her cry or the door to open, but he did not even hear her footsteps on the gravel. Hawah Lombeh left as silently as she had come. William berated himself for letting things to get that far with Hawah Lombeh. He cursed and swore while the night listened.
CHAPTER 8
Sleep continued to elude him that night. At a certain point he left the bed and paused before the president’s portrait. In doing so he felt the Old Man’s strength slipping into him and saw himself being armed with the certainty that despite all the odds he would bring the investigation to a successful close.
Suddenly, a voice interrupted him. It rose to a dirge similar to the one he had heard during his first night in Wologizi. Gradually it evolved into a single scream which came from down the hill, gathering pitch until it gobbled up the silence of the night. Then it abruptly ceased. Soon hurried footsteps populated the gravel ground of the house front. William could hear loud beating noises as of bodies clashing against each other, or as if someone was being tortured beyond imagination. Accompanying this clamour were anxious whispers, followed by the raucous laughter of a man, and then the high-pitched scream again, now a single sustained thrill, a heartrending squeal of such shattering impact that William felt his inside contract, as though his intestines would burst. The corrugated iron roof shook to the steady accumulation of sounds. The president’s portrait fell over. The mosquito-net collapsed on William. The darkness around him became profound, and the room smelt of death and centuries-old ruins.
He hoped for dawn, and waited on his feet, tensed like a trap, and at one point when he could not stand it any more he bolted to the other room. But it was empty; Old Kapu had gone. He raced back to his room, locked it and waited for sunlight. When it came, he embraced its golden shafts that streamed through the chinks in the curtains. The light exorcised the experience of the night and emboldened him to leave the room and climb down to see whether the outside world had been affected by the incident. He had not left the room one minute when he was frozen in his steps by similar sounds from inside the building itself. It was a low incessant chant but of such harrowing intensity that, in its devastating effect on him, surpassed that of the night. Like a nocturnal frog that braves the daylight to escape the fangs of a venomous snake, William left the mansion and raced down the hill to the police station to see Corporal Gamla.
The policeman was sitting in a creaking chair, leaning against a peeling wall, his hands folded behind his nape. The foul odour of his sweaty armpits was
oppressive in that tiny office of the police station.
The sun had risen with the heat, and because the office faced its path, bars of light poured through the glass window and fell on the corporal, soaking him in fetid sweat. On the wall behind him was a sepia portrait of the president with a pipe in his hand. The Old Man was flashing them a knowing smile, as if present in person.
There was a man with the corporal, the same man William had been with Makemeh on the street the other day. Cultivated mischief lingered about the man’s lips, a leer of sorts that transformed his face into that of a conman. William hesitated in telling his story before the man, but Gamla assured him that a witness was necessary with such a serious case.
‘But you are a government man, and I don’t have to tell you all this,’ he added. ‘Carpenter Seleh can be trusted.’
Before William could begin his story, the carpenter told him that he was hard of hearing in one ear, so William should move to his left side. William ignored him and told his story.
‘Carpenter Seleh,’ the policeman said when William was finished. ‘Perhaps you can help Mr Mawolo and me by telling us whether you heard any strange sound last night.’
The carpenter turned to William and laughed, revealing a gap between his upper front teeth, an imperfection that was however regarded by women of that forest region and beyond as the most attractive aspect of a man’s face. William despised him.
‘I slept uninterrupted last night, Chief.’
They were making fun of him. This carpenter, who knew little or nothing at all about him, was now calling him Chief, and William was offended because he believed it was a mocking title.
Corporal Gamla leaned forward. ‘They call me the Town Crier simply because I’m often the first to know about every notable event in this town. I was one of the firsts to see you get off the bus two days ago, Chief. The whole of last night I was patrolling the town, like I do every night, in search of misfits who abound in this place.’
William realised that he had failed at imparting the full horror of his experience to the two men, so he decided to try again. But Corporal Gamla shook his head, saying that he would not pursue the case if the Chief did not come up with a witness. William stared the policeman square in the face and told him what had been nagging at him since last night.
‘It must have been the work of the Poro,’ he said.
William had taken the two men by surprise, so their first reaction was that of stunned silence. Then the carpenter laughed.
‘You mean the Poro secret society?’ he asked. ‘You know as well as I do that the role of the Poro nowadays is merely ceremonial.’
‘The ancient tradition is dead,’ the corporal said. ‘Perhaps where you come from. . . ’ He was interrupted by a strangled howl from a nearby room. William hurried to its source, having decided to play the role of their ‘Chief’. Then he saw huddled in a corner, hands crowded about his chest, his face wrinkled with anxiety, the beautiful young man he had encountered the day he stepped off the bus.
In that environment – which reeked of faeces and urine – the young man had lost nothing of his beauty.
‘Why are you shouting like that?
‘There are forces out to suffocate me, sir,’ he said in a voice choked with fear, his eyes dilated as though he’d been confronted with something terrible in that cell.
‘What forces?’ William asked.
‘Look around you, sir, they are everywhere.’
William, surprised to learn that the young man he had assumed was deaf when he first met him the other day could talk, was silent.
‘Beware of Gamla and the carpenter, sir.’
That the corporal was standing behind William escaped the young man. On hearing him, the corporal shoved William aside, opened the cell, stepped in and locked it behind him. Using a baton fashioned out of the hardest tree in that forest region, he confronted the boy. The blows fell like the relentless strikes of a woodcutter. Every attempt on the young man’s part to dodge the blows and his heartrending cries only inflamed Gamla. Every time he fell, Gamla would gather him up and flatten him against the damp wall and begin anew, until the young man’s cries turned into a surrendered silence. Only the dull thudding of baton against flesh was heard now.
Meanwhile William had grown agitated. ‘Stop it,’ he called repeatedly, but the policeman went on. So William rushed to the office and took the president’s portrait, flashing it before the policeman.
‘I represent the Old Man,’ he shouted.
The effect was tremendous. The corporal jumped to attention and saluted him with a loud click of his boots, exactly as William had expected. Though aware of his role as a law-enforcement officer, Corporal Gamla worshipped the mysterious, the powerful. That was why he decided to obey the stranger, the Old Man’s representative.
‘So you are not here to repair our generator, Chief,’ the carpenter said. ‘Then you’ve come to the right place. There’s no town in the world as full of liars as Wologizi; a place where you would meet a man tapping palm wine only to tell you he’s cutting firewood.’
‘Shut up,’ William snapped, and turning to the policeman he said with determination in his voice: ‘Unlock the door, Corporal.
William entered and gathered the young man in his arms. And as he helped him to his feet, he thought he saw profound gratitude in his eyes and something else he could not place.
‘You have to admit, Chief,’ the carpenter said, ‘that a beauty such as his is rare even among women. Just look at him. I thought so once upon a time, but he’s a common thief.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why do you think he’s here?’
‘The young man is the carpenter’s houseboy, Chief,’ corporal Gamla said. ‘I caught him last night sneaking away with one of his boss’s treasured possessions.’
‘My most treasured possession, Chief,’ the carpenter said. ‘Over the years I’ve designed many things for many wealthy people, and I’ve furnished hundreds of houses including our “mansion”. But my most treasured and most beloved work of them all is this sculpture.’
The sculpture, which lay on the table, was of a hand, slender and smooth as marble. William had to own that it was of an extraordinary craftsmanship: the wrist was designed in the form of a plaited head of a woman. Evidently it had taken the carpenter a lot of time and effort to carve the sculpture into an almost natural form.
William turned to the youth for some kind of explanation, a defence of sorts, but he was silent, his gaze conveying nothing.
‘Just let him be,’ he finally told the two men.
Carpenter Seleh broke into a raucous laughter. As his voice filled the small space of the room William thought he had heard it somewhere else, and then it struck him: the laugh was similar to the one he had heard last night. The carpenter had been there.
‘You don’t know the rules that govern this town, Chief,’ the carpenter said, facing William, as if blocking his way out.
The two men, the carpenter and William, were of the same height, but while the carpenter was broad-built, intimidating in his elegance, William was sinewy but armed with the conviction that he could thrash the carpenter in a fight. The carpenter seemed taller, however, and every time he addressed William he emphasised this difference by seeming to stare down at him. This enraged William.
So he drew himself to his full height.
‘I say: release him,’ he ordered.
Corporal Gamla obeyed without reluctance. The young man, who until then had not been sure that William would have the upper hand, fled out of the police station as if he was being chased.
‘Whoever breaks the law must be punished, Chief. Someone who works for you and betrays your trust deserves the prison. You are making an enemy of me, Chief, and no one can afford to make an enemy of Seleh because I’m a difficult man.’
‘You were there last night, weren’t you?’
‘What are you talking about, Chief?’
‘The sounds, last
night.’
‘You must have been dreaming.’
Stung by this remark, William charged at the carpenter but the man dodged him. The two men faced each other. Everything happened so quickly that William could only recall a sharp tool slashing across his face. The world whirled about him and he fell with a heavy thud. Later he awoke to find himself in the Lebanese’s shop, stretched out on a collapsible chair, with the man bandaging his wound. Corporal Gamla looked on from a prudent distance.
Whatever it was, the tool had cut just under the surface of William’s skin around his chin, but blood still poured out of him. He could not believe he had lost so much blood. It was everywhere: on his shirt and trousers, and on the floor.
‘Baldhead is the only one in Wologizi with a first aid kit, Chief,’ Corporal Gamla said. ‘And the hospital is miles away.’
The Lebanese nodded.
‘They bring their sick to me, and not only do I sell them my products but I doctor them as well – imagine that, Chief.’
The Lebanese held him down and tended with an unusual zeal to the wound. Even after bandaging the wound, he fussed about him. Fed up with him, William asked him to fetch him some fresh clothes. He was still dizzy when he sat up to put them on. Touching the bandaged chin, he realised that the forest town had marked him forever.
Meanwhile the Lebanese ranted on about the danger that was the carpenter. ‘Over the years carpenter Seleh has managed to make an enemy of everyone in this town.’
‘Don’t listen to him, Chief,’ the corporal said.
The presence of William, whom the corporal reverently addressed as “Chief”, emboldened the Lebanese, and so he said, ‘Everyone knows that you worship the carpenter.’
‘You are doing the same thing now, Baldhead.’