This time around, he and his father were in for a pleasant surprise: these people had no intention of exacting self-enrichment in exchange for their daughter. They asked for very little. It seemed so embarrassingly cheap that when the groom’s team withdrew to confer, the two glittering cars swollen in front of them like bizarre money chests, they had no option but to put on a garish display of generosity.
Grandpa wanted to donate a cow and a calf. Serenity, however, wanted something more visibly urgent: a new roof. It was bound to last longer anyway, impervious as it was to nagana and other cattle-killing diseases. There was disagreement between father and son. To help break the deadlock, Mbale, Virgin’s eldest brother and officiating brother-in-law, was summoned. A firsthand torture victim of roof-leakings and of the recurrent youthful nightmare that they would wake up one night trapped in a roofless house, Mbale sided with Serenity. He was then charged with the task of whispering the gift in the family’s ear. Virgin’s parents were opposed to this overt desecration of the temple of matrimonial holiness—their daughter was not a cow to be sold for the glorification of Mammon—but the rest of the family moved in with full force. Who among them had not dreaded family visits in the rainy season? Who among them had not thought of helping the family out by roofing the house forcibly if necessary? This was the occasion to do it. Afterward, when the wedding was over, it would be too late.
The majority won, and the gift was accepted. The interesting part was watching Mbale and a few other men, who knew a lot about roofs and the price of iron sheets, capped and uncapped nails, beams, labor and the like, calculating how much money was needed to complete the job as quickly as possible. Virgin’s parents, dismayed at having failed to kick the traders out of the temple, could not bear the lugubrious look of the crucified Jesus and left the house. They went for a long, somber walk, bemoaning the shameful hijacking of holy matrimony by Mammon.
Serenity loved the histrionics. For the first time in living memory he did not begrudge the shopkeepers their earnings. He could already see the new iron sheets glittering in the sun. There was another fine twist to it all: the spirit of the corrugated-iron church tower he had wanted to destroy had invaded this house, and was about to shatter or dent this family’s very Catholic sensibilities. Here, it would not be a tower, but it would have as much power. Mammon’s profanity was going to shine. Strangers in sweaty overalls were going to invade this place, tear down the dilapidated roof and spray the air with rust, broken nails and rotten beams. Buried in the rubble would be the Virgin Mary, with her dead alabaster smell and promises. Up would go the new roof, proclaiming the rise of the new Virgin and her new wine. Up would go the new roof and the thrust of his new life, power and the glitter of his new dream. The heap of banknotes, a mini-tower in itself, made him feel happy. He was not like those grooms who promised heaven and earth before the wedding, and afterward failed to fulfill those promises, bloated with tactical amnesia. Everything was going to be on time: he was a doer, not a promiser.
Virgin watched the roofers, heard their oblique comments and resented them for sprinkling rust in the butter oil her aunt was rubbing into her skin to super-condition it for the wedding. Local butter oil redolent with a faint milk smell was used because it worked better than industrial products. It made the skin browner, clearer and tighter on the bones. Virgin, like most peasant girls not raised around cows and fresh milk, found the scent disturbing, almost nauseating. The fear of carrying a milk smell in her bridal garments and into her marital bed bothered her. One had to make a perfect first impression. One did not want a niggling imperfection wedging itself into the scheme of more important things. She was gripped by the fear that the baths, some herbal, would not defeat the smell.
Although she felt like exploding in kaleidoscopic displays of violent anxiety, she kept her temper under wraps. She wanted to maintain control of what was going on around her. But how could she manage to achieve that amidst all the hammering, the shouting and the leering of the roofers? How could she remain the center of attention when so many relatives, friends, villagers and strangers were milling about, calling, screaming, barking orders, contesting superior knowledge of decorum, custom, tradition, religion and nonsense? All the villagers who owed her parents a favor and those who didn’t were there, lending a hand, necessary or superfluous, adding to the madness. Most annoying of all, religion had been chucked to the sidelines. Nobody said morning or evening prayers anymore. People all around her were indulging their lusts without a care in the world. Her parents had given up trying to make them say grace before meals. Local beer was flowing down cheerful throats all day. In short: The Devil was winning when this should have been God’s biggest hour. And there she was, unable to do anything about it.
Amidst this physical and mental turmoil, the bride turned her mind to her father-in-law, and she experienced something akin to hot flashes. She did not like the man at all. All the vibes from that direction were wrong. Their two personalities were antagonistic, and yet she was destined to spend a number of years as his neighbor. How was she going to do that? She also worried about Serenity’s aunt. She did not like her either. Who could like a woman suffering from amenorrhea? It was whispered that she had menstruated only thrice in her whole life. Such people were often witches, people to be feared. Their tongues were often potent beyond measure, making things happen even if they did not mean them to. On top of it, the woman had had that buffalo dream. What was she supposed to make of it? How could she make something of anything when she was not in control, when the whole world seemed to be milling around on top of her head?
She could have called off the wedding, but who had ever heard of a peasant girl calling off a wedding? After all this? Who would listen to her? Which fancy reasons would she give? A bride’s sensitivities and anxieties? She knew nothing would wash with this crowd of lively souls. And she did not want to call the wedding off, even if she could. It was her show, her day in the sun. All the impotence and hostility she felt against Serenity, against herself, the roofers, Mbale, Sr. John Chrysostom (her erstwhile Mother Superior), and against the world, was a way of coming to terms with her new position in life, her new powers, her new expectations, her new dreams.
Serenity was in seventh heaven; Virgin’s family were quivering with the thunder of his power. His success felt even sweeter when put into proper perspective. As a typical go-between man, always relying on others to transmit his messages and negotiate on his behalf in matters of the heart, he had suffered terrible anxiety, a condition exacerbated by the second go-between’s long absences and mysterious silences. Had she betrayed him and chickened out? That was how people generally let one know that there was no hope. Such people assumed that it saved your feelings and your dignity a few ugly dents. Serenity always preferred to have the bad news up front: it hurt intensely at first, but the pain disappeared gradually into the mists of fate or in the vapors of another chance arising. Serenity was not the conquering type; unlike his father, he found the fear of rejection too real. He preferred the mediation of others and the time it gave him to digest and weigh all possible outcomes. He thought of himself as a crocodile, ever conserving his energy by waiting and letting the prey come to him. That anesthetized him against the guilt some conquerors felt when terminating relationships. He always felt that the prey had seen it coming. Virgin had delivered herself to him, and the intensity of the fire she had ignited in him, coupled with the psychological lift he had given her, should have canceled out any hesitation whatsoever. So why was she torturing him?
As the nights sat on him and the pressure and the pain permeated every fiber in his body, Serenity went over the course of his preliminary dealings with Virgin. He had surely not forced himself on her. The attraction had been mutual. In addition, he had shown her great respect. He had not blown his trumpet, or said anything to inflate his ego. If anything, he had given her the impression that her opinion was all that mattered. Why, then, was there this horrible news blackout? The weakness of the go-
between system was that it left many questions unanswered for too long. How long was he supposed to wait? The days had now gone into high double digits. Anger and frustration had corroded his patience, his understanding, his hope. When the pain became too harsh, he contemplated dropping her. He could do it because he was a man aware of defeat in life; the feeling would not be new. He could call off the go-between, swear never to see Virgin again and crawl back into his father’s arms. He gave it three more days and nights. However, just as if Virgin had been spying on him, seeing into his mind and gauging his limit, he got a message from her two days later.
Virgin had felt it necessary to hold nine consecutive novenas to St. Jude Thaddeus, praying for assurance that Serenity was the man for her, because marriage was forever, divorce unthinkable. She prayed for fortitude to deal with Kasiko’s devilries, if any, and for enlightenment to guide her through the difficulties ahead. She prayed for happiness and for health. She prayed for twelve healthy, God-fearing children and for the strength to raise them. In the face of the seriousness and the holiness of matrimony, time had ceased to matter. She could have made it ten or more novenas without feeling that she had taken too much time. In her view, a man who had been living in sin deserved to wait however long it took the Lord to answer her prayers. Such an individual had to undergo some mortification in order to achieve the purification necessary to enter into holy matrimony with a virgin.
The wedding of the former county chief’s son gathered friends and relatives, strangers and villagers, from far and wide. The three houses in the homestead and the grass huts erected ad hoc for the wedding were filled to capacity. There were three days of intense activity, which climaxed on the Saturday the bride entered the house of her groom in holy union. It was set to be the wedding of the decade in the area. Grandpa made sure that everything was in order, and that there was enough food and drink for everyone. Great fires kicked up monstrous sparks and punctured the dark night with their glow. The air reverberated with singing, drumming, dancing, arguments, speeches, fights and a panoply of human activity left unrecorded. The smell of beer, meat and banana plantain combined to wrench memories back to the days when Grandpa was still in power and people came to feast at his house every fortnight. This was how it had been; how many wanted it to be; how it might never be again. The lukewarm fingers of nostalgia stroked the hearts of the old, garnishing the smells and the sounds and the fires with old truths turned to dull uncertainties in today’s environment. Many dreamed about their own weddings, long ago when they were still men among men, when a bride had to be a virgin in order to get married and stay married.
Many remembered Tiida’s and Nakatu’s weddings. A daughter’s wedding was a mild affair, because a family member was leaving, given away, taken away to bring life and happiness to another family. Such celebration was lopsided, and did not last deep into the night. Who would want to celebrate when the children the girls bred were going to carry other people’s clan names? But this time, as in all cases when a son brought a bride home, somebody was coming to enrich the family and the clan with children. This was what gave the night its sharp sexual edge, its lewd undertones, its aggressive joy. It was as if everyone were going to marry and deflower the bride, and bite into virgin, undilated, unpolluted meat. It was the reason why the beer went to the head, loosened the tongue and came out in dirty jokes, naughty songs and provocative pelvic gyrations.
For Grandpa this was almost a repeat of his own bachelor-party night. His name was being mentioned a lot around the fires. His old praise songs were being sung here and there. The Red Squirrel Clan anthem was being drummed out at intervals on an old scuffed drum. Prominent clan members and leaders were talking about him, speculating on the remainder of his tenure as clan land administrator, weighing Serenity’s chances as possible successor to the post. Clan politics was the unstated theme of the evening and of tomorrow’s wedding day. By this time tomorrow, the bride would no longer be a virgin, and her character and fecundity would be the next episodes in the drama of her entry into this house and clan.
My parents’ wedding was consecrated in an old Catholic church chosen by my maternal grandparents. There, encased in thick brick walls, amidst dim, colored light falling from stained-glass windows onto a lugubrious Christ, watching the joyous proceedings from his ugly cross; there, amidst pungent clouds of incense which killed off any neurotic insinuations of milk smells and other bodily odors stubborn enough to withstand the fastidious bathing and perfumings everyone had undergone; there, amidst the cheerful smiles and sibilant whispers of witnesses from both families, Sr. Peter Padlock and Serenity became wife and husband.
A good part of the bride’s family never made it to the church, or to her new home, because they had insisted on transporting themselves as a group and had turned down Grandpa’s offer of a bus. The carcass of a bus they hired broke down. The carcass of a truck they replaced it with got two punctures and, having only one spare tire, could not proceed farther. The sorry and not-so-sorry vans they commandeered, with great ingenuity, could take only the most prominent members of the family, vastly outnumbered by their counterparts who, in addition to cars, had two hardened Albion buses at their disposal.
As night fell, a ten-year-old black Mercedes thrust the newlyweds into the vortex of the celebration. The car was mobbed, the streamers parted, and greedy faces peeked inside at the clouds of tulle to see the bride. It took some time to extract the pair from the car, whose owner’s daughter Grandpa, Tiida, Nakatu, Kawayida and some other close relatives felt Serenity should have married. At last, the bride, swimming in tulle, with a white, moon-like crown on her head, orchids in the crook of one hand, Serenity’s hand in the other, waded through the mud-thick ululation, clapping, drumming, singing and gobbling eyes. She could hardly feel Serenity at her side in his small-lapelled black suit, white shirt, dark tongue-wide tie and pointy shoes. A crew cut had made his head look severely smaller, his figure taller and thinner and his ears squirrel-like.
The newlyweds were installed on a wooden dais covered with white mats, and seated in sofas covered with white cloth not so much to disguise their diversity of design or ownership as to cater to uniformity and a sense of conjugal purity. A glittering silver hurricane lamp, unbothered by a single moth, flashed as it rocked gently above them to the thunder of the jubilation. Padlock felt transparent, hypnotized and nauseated by such intense scrutiny, but it was the dancers who gave her an asphyxiating sensation in her chest which, at times, made her afraid that she was going to pass out. To the deep, hard beat of the big drum the dancers made the most profane, most horrifying, most beshaming pelvic thrusts she had ever seen. They had comically accentuated their waists with padded long-haired colobus monkey sashes, making their thrusts look disturbingly larger, bolder and more obscene. Man or woman, they gyrated, ground very deep and, with legs spread in the exaggerated way of somebody getting off a high bicycle, drew back, quivering with sexual suggestion. Swivelling waists in which there was no unoiled bone and moving on feet which barely touched the ground, the dancers advanced toward two poles planted directly in front of the newlyweds, grabbed them and smothered them in diabolically frenzied pelvic thrusts. The crowd, drooling like tortured dogs, went crazy, so crazy that the whole booth shook as people followed suit, grabbing poles near them and fucking them in explosions of unadulterated joy.
Virgin could have covered her face but for the crown and the gloves. The sensation of being grabbed by powerful hands swept over her, making the shame of every thrust a very palpable ordeal. The crowd was fucking her, raping her, deflowering her, gobbling the rivers of blood that poured from her cavities. She would have wished to die, but this was her wedding, her show, her path to the new life and the mission she had dreamed of for so long. She visualized Jesus on the cross, all blood, all wounds, all pain. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them the dancers were gone.
Speeches were in progress. Grandpa, in a white tunic and a black coat, welcomed everyone, thanked them for h
onoring his family with their presence and requested that they stay until the break of day. Other speakers came and went without saying much. Most were more like preachers than speakers. They tried to inflame the crowd with such words as faith, loyalty, forbearance, respect for elders, but they never really succeeded. All these words poured over the bride and the audience like spent bullets. The bride felt like a stonefish extracted from the ocean floor and thrust into a laboratory tank for public display. She had to fight feelings of tension, alienation, irritation and impatience. It was true that she had craved attention, but what she had got was a deluge which made her feel like she was drowning. What were these people looking at so intensely? Her face? The tulle or the crown? Was this happening to her alone, or was it common at every wedding? Had Serenity caused a scandal and were people wondering how she would cope? Or was it simply her mind playing games with her, seeing things where there was nothing? Why, why were they staring at her like that? Christ …
The next thing she saw was the cake and the glittering silver knife. She felt a stiff nudge from her matron. She rose and followed Serenity. He tried to help her with the bridal train and only succeeded in making her balance worse. She stumbled as she tried to keep her eyes on the steps, on the cake and on her groom at the same time. The moon on her head shifted out of orbit. Serenity acted quickly: he checked her fall. The moon returned to its orbit with a few expert touches from the matron. The crowd cheered. The drummer struck a few expert undulating beats. The bride cut the cake in a disembodied haze.
Children with outstretched palms surrounded her, the girls glowing with admiration, the boys alive with curiosity. Suddenly they all looked like Serenity’s illegitimate daughter, and were mocking her, sneering at her, openly despising her for supplanting their mother. Suddenly their mother was responsible for the breakdown of the truck and the bus which should have brought her family to this place to be with her. Suddenly she felt isolated, surrounded by children ready to pelt her with rocks, and adults ready to enjoy it. After the shame of those pelvic thrusts, and of the communal defloration, it had come to this: death at the hands of Kasiko’s diabolical child! Why was this child, and all copies of herself, smiling so sweetly, so innocently? The matron rescued her: she took the plate from her hands and distributed the cake to the jubilant children who, because their parents were hard by, were subdued and very disciplined.
Abyssinian Chronicles Page 5