by Vamba Sherif
‘What did the Lebanese have to gain by Tetese’s disappearance, if I’m to believe what you’ve just told me?’
‘Maybe Baldhead wanted to lord it over us?’
‘Maybe, maybe – that’s the only thing I’ve been hearing for the past days: everyone trying to lord it over everyone else.’
‘I tell you. . .’
‘Shut up, and let Makemeh talk.’
‘My opinion is no of consequence, Mr Mawolo,’ she said.
She sat bolt upright, her forehead furrowed with intense concentration, gazing at him. On seeing William enter the room, trembling with rage, Makemeh had realised that things were not going according to plan, for she had pinned all her hopes on a man whose constant outbursts were clouding his judgement.
‘You claim never to have been at the carpenter’s.’
‘So you went out to disprove me.’
‘Were you or were you not at Seleh’s?’
At this point Boley stood up and gestured to his granddaughter to leave with him. ‘She’s suffered enough tongue-wagging,’ he said.
‘What tongue-wagging?’ William asked.
‘That you are, among other things, using her.’
‘You know it’s not true?’
‘We judge only what we see, Mr Mawolo.’
Once again he turned to his granddaughter.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
‘Makemeh,’ William said, ‘I want to talk with you, or else I wouldn’t be able to believe you any more.’
Makemeh sat down, telling her grandfather to leave without her. Boley walked out of the room disappointed.
‘You have to tell me what you know about your father,’ William said, refraining from mentioning the incident with the carpenter in the police cell.
Outside the militia pounced on Boley, threatening to bleed him dry of the wealth accumulated through the hard labour of many in Wologizi. One of the men reminded him of the theft of sands belonging to him. ‘You are the rogue and not the Lebanese.’ Sounds of struggles were heard and a strangled cry for help. The men were battering Boley.
‘Let him go,’ William said.
Makemeh was in tears.
‘Tetese was my father, Mr Mawolo.’
To William it sounded like an admission of guilt to something for which she was not guilty. In fact Makemeh wanted to smooth the way for her most important revelation by sharing with him her early years with her father. Suppressing further tears, she recalled childhood memories punctuated with precious moments of joy, especially when her father told her stories. She remembered him taking her to tap palm wine one morning. He had climbed the palm tree, using a taut rope he had tied around the tree. With his back against one end of the rope and the tree at the other end, he had climbed by grasping the rope with both hands and pushing it upward, pausing at every forward thrust until he reached the top. He had collected the tapped wine in a gourd, had tied it to another rope and had sent it down to her. Then he had taken a place under a palm tree beside her and had begun to sip the palm wine. Gradually his tongue had loosened, not into a rash of insults but in enchanting tales. ‘I know people in almost every port of the world,’ he had boasted to her and had told her their stories. Those tales were actually journeys that transported her beyond the confines of that forest town and into strange and fascinating worlds.
‘My father was not as he’s been portrayed by the townspeople, Mr Mawolo,’ she said. ‘People judge others through narrow prisms of their limited worlds. They accuse others of cruelties which are in fact reflections of their own characters. They call my father a tyrant when they are the tyrants. They say he tortured them when they were the ones who tortured him for years. The father I knew was a loving man, Mr Mawolo. He was also sensitive. He dedicated his life to perfecting the art of storytelling. On more than one occasion, I heard him express his love for Wologizi, despite everything it had done to him.’
‘Yet he killed your mother.’
‘That’s not what happened.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was present when my mother died. She was gravely ill long before my father returned. So there was no question of murder.’
‘But your father tortured and maimed and killed others.’
‘Wologizi deserved what it got, Mr Mawolo.’
For the first time Makemeh revealed the most powerful force that had driven her since her father’s disappearance: the hunger for revenge. She remembered her father telling her how, during his trip around the world, he’d longed for Wologizi. The town had been a love song whose lyrics varied with the days: now joyous and strong, then sad and nostalgic, tearing at his heart, calling to him, wanting to see him. When he returned to it, having sworn never to betray it, Wologizi had betrayed him. It had ill-treated him, a pattern of behaviour that went back to his mother, who had been scorned because of her choice of a stranger as her man. The daughter cited numerous and various instances when her father had been humiliated by the very people whose lives he had brightened with his passionate stories.
‘It’s this hypocrisy that I loathe, Mr Mawolo.’
The tenderness and the compassion with which she talked about her father touched William, and he thought and even believed that it was impossible that she could be a murderer. Carpenter Seleh had lied to him. But at the same time he wondered whether she was not blind to the terrors her father had practised.
‘How can you justify his cruelties?’
‘Because he was my father, and I had no choice.’
‘Yes, you did,’ he said. ‘You went to see the carpenter.’
‘I was never at Seleh’s,’ she insisted.
‘I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anyone in this town,’ he shouted. Makemeh tried to quieten him, for it was important that he remained calm, for only then would he listen to her and perhaps believe her. She had to make sure that he believed her.
‘You killed your father.’
For a while she did not stir, and he approached her and loomed over her, terrible and threatening, blocking the candlelight.
‘I did not kill my father, Mr Mawolo.’
He stormed out of the room. She heard him instructing the militia to defend the mansion against any intruder. With those men he sounded confident, powerful, and for a brief moment he was her most effective instrument in her fight against the townspeople.
He re-joined her in swift and certain strides, and when she saw him she was convinced that she could make him listen to her. Her heart skipped a bit at the prospect. Men, she’d learned, were always intimidated by a cool, collected woman, and she had chosen to be such a woman ever since she came to understand her feminine powers.
She stood up, aware of his intense gaze, which burned every spot of her body on which it dwelled, and then she made for the door.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I’m leaving, Mr Mawolo.’
‘There’s the question of the carpenter.’
He went to the door, bolted it, and stood before it.
‘You have to persuade me that you were never at his place, were never what everyone in Wologizi thinks you are.’
‘What am I, Mr Mawolo?’
She yielded to instinct by approaching him and in a calm voice intended to persuade him she said: ‘It is my testimony against theirs.’
She hoped that in those words he would discern her essence, her true self, and she moved towards the door but did not budge. For a moment she thought of telling him about the myth that her father was fathered by the road- builder, who was the Old Man, the president himself. But he would never believe her, would laugh at her, or at worst slap her.
Then her thoughts ceased because suddenly he was upon her. He pulled her by her arms and led her to the sofa.
All his longings for her, all her lies and deceptions, all her manipulative skills, and finally her beauty, so terrific even as he faced her, overwhelmed him. He pounced upon her, cupped her smooth, nervous face in his hands, and parted
her lips to reveal ivory-white teeth. She breathed like a conquered animal: quick, hard, and resigned. His hands reached for her breasts, and he found them pendulous like a woman’s with a child or two at home. ‘So, she’s been lying to me all along,’ he thought, and at that very moment it seemed that her breasts heaved up, erect and proud, provoking him, playing with him, with his feelings, enticing him, challenging him. In her silence, in the tightly closed eyes and limp body, he perceived acquiescence. He undressed her and parted her legs: a bitter-sweet smell invaded his nose, and he lost himself in that odour until he encountered a membrane of resistance. Still dizzied by the odour, the bitter-sweetness as repelling as it was appealing, he thought that the resistance was due to his own clumsiness, and he went on to break the membrane, as though it were a challenge to his manhood. Blood trickled down the grey sofa, which glinted as brightly as her sweaty face. He had deflowered her. Suddenly his member went cold. The world collapsed on him. Under the weight of guilt and self-loathing, William held his face in his hands, remaining so until the dawn of his third day in Wologizi.
Makemeh had disappeared. No one had seen her leave the house. William raced down the hill with his men running after him. He would find her. He would fall before her and apologise to her, tell her that Wologizi had lied to him. Noon met him on his feet, going up and down the dusty streets, all the while fearing an encounter with Makemeh but knowing full well that he had to do it for his own sake, for his own peace of mind. He combed the entire forest town, and when he was tired and could hardly walk, he went and sat down under a cotton tree on the roadside.
Only then did he realise that he would never find Makemeh because she did not want to be found.
CHAPTER 19
Someone patted him on the shoulder, and when he turned he saw it was Hawah Lombeh. She had brought him water. She sat before him in the dust under the cotton tree, and when a dry seasonal wind started and a down of cotton landed in her hair she made no effort to get rid of it. She was gazing steadily at him, as if bewildered by a man she cared for deeply but who continued to astound her with his behaviour. ‘Drink,’ she said, and William did. In spite of the fact that her presence always suffocated him, he was grateful at that moment that there was someone within reach to console him. ‘Now, Mr Mawolo,’ she said, her voice deprived of any emotion, ‘it’s about time you left our town. It wears you out, and by the look of it, it will only bring you more trouble.’
‘I cannot leave,’ he told her in the same matter-of-fact tone with which she spoke to him. ‘There are questions to which I need answers. Until I find those answers my fate is entwined with Wologizi’s.’
She nodded and said: ‘Then I will let you two be.’
Hawah Lombeh stood up, tied her waistcloth tightly about her and then took the main road. Not once did she look back. He stared after her, her steps awkward, her clothes worn out – an unremarkable woman in every way, and he pondered on her unusual affection for him. What was it in him that she found so attractive, so invaluable that despite everything he had done to her she still remained generous to him?
Had Hawah Lombeh waited longer he would have told her that he could not leave now, not after everything Wologizi had done to him. The forest town had brought out the worst in him. It was to blame for everything, and the more he thought about its nature the more he was convinced it was sinister. William could not remember ever being violent, and although he was an ambitious man he had climbed up the ladder to his present position in the government without hurting a soul. But Wologizi had made him a violent man with its lies and deceits, had made him commit a heinous crime, destroying forever what was most dear to him: his love for Makemeh.
But it was not too late. He stood up, knowing exactly what he had to do. The clouds had concealed the sun in such a way that it suggested the approach of rainfall, and the heat had eased. The border town looked empty when he walked the main road with his men, as if people were watching him from behind closed doors and windows. Because he was fed up with all the spying, the constant tricks, and the hide-and-seek, he sought out the houseboy in daylight, for he intended for the forces behind the auditory phenomenon to see him doing so. He found him filling up a cistern with water from a well in that swampy quarter. He moved with a lithe soft step, and he bore the bucketful of water on his head with refined grace. William watched him bow over the cistern and carefully pour the water. Then he straightened up, lean and slender like a cane.
The houseboy was visibly shaken on seeing him.
‘Sir, I cannot be seen talking with you in the day time,’ he said, his slender figure trembling. ‘You are endangering my life.’
‘Calm down, don’t be afraid,’ William said.
But he could not get him to calm down. In fact the panicked youth ran from William and closed the hut door behind him. From the hut, his pleading voice flowed, pregnant with fear. ‘Please, sir, leave.’
But William did not leave. There were banana plants that surrounded the hut, and he sat with his men in their shade. He could have entered the hut and compelled the young man to tell him everything he knew, but some instinct told him to wait until it was night.
The rain had failed to fall. Instead the sun had brightened once again, heading west now but still fierce and relentless.
The men played checkers in the dust, shouting at each other and cursing. In this way evening closed in on them.
The girl who had been with the houseboy the other night came up the greyish-black path. Scarcely clothed in a ragged shirt that fell to her knees, she walked in jerky steps, as if her legs were incapable of bearing her weight and she would fall any moment. His face lit up as she approached, but she sauntered past him into the hut without a word. Once again she had insulted him with her insolence, with the hate he saw in her eyes, and this confounded him. Later, she emerged with the hurricane lamp and followed the path to town. He thought of following her, but was not convinced it was necessary.
Corporal Gamla asked permission to go with his men to find some food, and although he was hungry William was resolved not to eat until the secret was revealed. He gave his permission, and when silence fell on the hut, he entered it and confronted the young man.
‘I have to know,’ he insisted.
The young man sighed warily.
‘You have to guarantee my safety, sir,’ he said.
‘Your safety is guaranteed.’
‘No, you don’t understand.’
He was angry with William for downplaying the gravity of the moment; he toyed nervously with his fingers, and he sweated. It took him a long while to muster the courage to speak again.
‘You have to take me away from here, sir.’
‘Take you away from here?’
‘Make me your houseboy.’
‘But I don’t need a houseboy.’
William stirred uneasily.
‘I saw something the night of your arrival in Wologizi. You see, I was outside when someone of my gender was not allowed to be out.’
William could not follow him.
‘I’m considered a woman here in Wologizi, sir.’
Only then did the possibility dawn upon William that the houseboy might not have stolen the carpenter’s sculpture, and that he had been punished because he had been out when the masculine forces behind the auditory phenomenon were in town. The young man had seen what was forbidden to a woman’s eyes.
‘That’s why Gamla is so intent on punishing you?’ William said.
‘Gamla is the worst of them all, sir.’
The houseboy told him that the corporal had once been the head of all the militia in the forest region. At that time, he was endowed with such powers that everywhere he went he was borne in a hammock.
‘They called him ‘‘Gamla the Torturer.’’
‘But I thought it was Tetese who had that name.’
‘Beware of Gamla, he’s dangerous.’
William had toyed with the idea early on that Coporal Gamla was playing the subordina
te in order not to arouse the suspicion that he was spying on William, but he had not acted on this idea.
‘Will you take me out of here?’
‘I’ll take you out of here.’
Suddenly the young man reached out in the darkness and touched him, and William flinched. Never before had another man touched him, not in that way. The touch, however, was reassuring, the slender hands surprisingly hard but also tender as he held him.
‘It’s the Poro secret society, sir.’
‘The Poro secret society?’ William had excluded that possibility after what he’d seen and experienced. ‘You are mistaken. The Poro does not behave in such a way; it cannot be the work of the Poro.’
‘Not the ceremonial one of today,’ the houseboy explained. ‘Not the one you and many others in this country and neighbouring countries know and into which boys are initiated. I mean the most ancient form of the Poro, the one with which the fate of kings and those who had wronged society were decided. It’s still practised in this region. That’s why no one would talk to you. The border region is governed by the code of secrecy. It’s bound to it.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Everyone in this region knows.’
‘How can I defeat it?’
‘That I cannot say, sir. You have to find a way to do that. Meanwhile, you’ll take me with you wherever you go.’
‘I won’t leave you alone,’ William said. But, because he found the prospect of being in the company of the young man unattractive, he added: ‘I’ll sleep here tonight, before your hut.’
The young man sounded pleased.
Even now, as he sat in that hut enveloped in darkness with the young man, he knew he was being closely watched. This was exactly what he intended. If ever there was a place to meet face to face with the forces behind the auditory phenomenon then it would have to be right before the young man’s hut. There, on these swampy grounds, on that unlikely border between the old Wologizi and the new, the battle would be joined.