My faith in him, though, became dented very quickly: I have never been a man of faith. Weeks passed and the diet remained as revolting as before. My view was that any new leader worth his salt seized the initiative quickly, effected changes, even if only cosmetic, and swung people onto his side. The principle remained that a dictator was only as bad as his successor, but Lageau showed no sign of improving things, which was both very strange and sickening. Where was the money? Had he come empty-handed? If so, what was the difference between him and Mindi?
Just as discontent set in, Lageau seemed to divine the situation, and he deigned to ask what we thought about the seminary. I almost felt ashamed for having doubted the man’s democratic credentials. Since I had been bred on tyranny, my belief that all authority contained in it the seeds of tyranny could be excused. I noticed that my coseminarians were reluctant to open their mouths and speak up. I raised my hand, proud to be fearless. I went for the jugular. “Mens sana in corpore sano,” I said, quoting my Latin teacher. “My belief is that the bursar is aware of the deplorable food we eat every day. The beans are weevilled, tasteless and far from nourishing. The maggots in the maize flour have become very fat and look fatter on our plates. We would like to have better, more nourishing meals. We would like to have a more balanced diet. We would like the nuns to take more care with our food, especially on Sundays, when the rice is usually half-cooked and has pebbles in it. We would also request the bursar to buy the seminary a water pump to get water up the hill during the drought.”
Lageau, clad in light blue attire, looked at me and narrowed his left eye to a slit. I felt a bit uncomfortable. He then raised his eyebrows, as James Bond does before setting off an explosion with a remote-control bomb activated by his wristwatch. The thunderclap followed soon after: “Do you think that money grows on trees or runs in gutters in Europe? Let me tell you this: your total school-fees contribution amounts to only eight percent of the annual budget. We pay the lion’s share for your stay here. If anything, you should be grateful that budget cuts have not been effected over the years. I came here to work out a compromise deal between the seminary and its financiers and to make sure that the seminary does not close down for financial reasons. Thanks to sources in Europe, I cannot see that happening during your time.”
I quaked. My knees went rubbery, and my armpits trickled with sweat. If I had not been backhanded and guava-switched for challenging authority before, I would have gone on to ask him what the fuck his flamboyance was all about. Europe, his financier friends and his wealth did not mean a crock of shit to us as long as we ate pig food. Good food was the least he could do for us. We could always fetch our own water—many of us had done that all our lives. But the food! I could feel public opinion turning against Lageau.
The news spread quickly. His attempts to solicit opinion from other classes were met with indifference. There was an element of local wisdom in it too: people who just talked for the hell of it were never respected, especially if boasting was part of their repertoire. Lageau was now being seen as an empty braggadocio who did not even have the decency to make good his boasts by at least rewarding us with good meals. Lageau’s popularity sagged, and Kaanders, in his faded glories, regained his.
The immediate result of Lageau’s revelation was to drive me deeper into the library. What did I need from these fake people? It struck me that one of the worst aspects of dependency was the deplorable company one had to keep. General Amin, whom I had neglected for a long time, suddenly surfaced like a leviathan. He still preached self-empowerment. I realized the importance of making my own money. I was happy it tied in well with Grandpa’s exhortations that I become a lawyer, but maybe I would not be a lawyer and would instead raise turkeys and broiler chickens like Uncle Kawayida or brew liquor like Aunt Lwandeka. I was determined not to live like the priests. I was determined to beat dependency, and all the humiliations that came with it.
To be honest, I was one of Lageau’s few detractors, for despite his apparent uselessness, many boys still admired him. In a defeatist kind of way, he was held high: He was at least richer than our clergy. He acted like a star. He enjoyed all the arrogance and the privilege many seminarians dreamed of exercizing on the lowly faithful after ordination.
“Look at our priests,” Lwendo said to me. “Aren’t they pathetic? Aren’t they asking him to buy them cars? Aren’t they asking him to get them rich benefactors?”
“Well …”
“They envy him his power, don’t they? Lageau has repaired those lawnmowers which lay dead in the tool room. The seminary no longer spends money on electricians. How much can one person do?”
“I don’t care how much the seminary spends on anything. As long as the food is terrible, it is all wasted money.”
“I work with him. The electrical system is as good as new nowadays.”
“You also admire his shouting as if everyone were deaf? Or is he deaf himself? Sometimes you hear him from a kilometer away, just asking for a hammer.”
“We are a slow people: boys do not often react quickly enough to his demands. They should know better.”
“I do not care for his manners or his fortune,” I insisted.
“The problem with you is that you are just as bad as he is: both of you have got egos too big for your own good,” Lwendo divined.
“My ego is not the problem. It is the glass-balled attitude of people around here. Have you noticed how quiet the black priests are when Lageau is around? It is as if they are afraid to make mistakes. They are like women who gladly let men bully them, waiting, in turn, to bully children.”
Lageau had replaced Mindi as the patron of Vatican dormitory. He was a fantastic volleyballer, and Lwendo pointed that out to me. “See how he has breathed life into volleyball, a game which was dead. It has become the second most popular sport. Imagine!”
I enjoyed watching a spectacular volleyball game, but I valued a good meal more.
“Look, the man does not spy on anybody. He lets us break the rules as much as we want.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” I said tersely.
“I wonder what really happened to Mindi, though. He lost steam too quickly. People don’t change so suddenly.”
“He was, er …” I stopped short. “Oh, maybe somebody put a knife to his throat and scared the goo out of him. The same might happen to Lageau if he does not stop boasting emptily as if he owned the whole of Europe.”
“Nonsense. Nobody can touch him. Where will they find him? I seem to detect double standards here. You are sore because a white man is boasting, but let me ask you what you did when Mindi was lording it over us?” He laughed.
“I hid behind a fence and …” I almost said it.
“Hiding, hiding, hiding. You did nothing special. All we seem to do is hide.”
I gave up.
My attention had started wandering homeward. A loyal shitter kept me informed about developments there. He wrote describing Serenity’s old craze: Muhammad Ali fights. Serenity was spellbound by his hero’s comebacks. The Rumble in the Jungle fight had taken place in Zaire. Ali had become world champion again, and Serenity could not stop praising him.
On fight nights, Serenity hardly slept at all. He woke up after midnight and waited in the sitting room, watching previews and interviews till four in the morning, when the fight started. He marveled at Ali’s generosity and outspokenness but worried about his health. Padlock was sick to death of Serenity’s daily boxing monologues.
I had done my best to avoid Serenity and his Padlock, but events in the Catholic world finally brought us together. One Sunday morning, when Lageau had become just one of the main actors on our center stage, the rector broke news which had already whipped Catholics across the country into a frenzy. He announced to placid-faced seminarians, most of whom were thinking about the pig food awaiting them at lunch, that the Holy Father had declared 1975 a Holy Year and called upon Catholics all over the world to join a pilgrimage to Rome and the Holy Land. The rector, who had
already found a sponsor and was going to represent the seminary, explained that the Holy Year was announced once every twenty-five years. He promised to offer special prayers for us during his pilgrimage. As if most of us cared. Registration of potential pilgrims had already started in every parish, and the rector asked us to pray for the archbishop and for all those involved in organizing the pilgrimage to do a good job. Big deal.
In order to limit discrimination, bribery and foul play, every diocese had been allocated a quota of pilgrims. Chances were good for the rich from poor parishes, because most peasant farmers and civil servants could not pay for the journey and didn’t bother to register. Serenity registered himself, and his chances were good. Padlock wanted to go too, but her efforts ran into trouble because one had to register in one’s parish of birth, and only one person per family could register in each parish: Mbale, her younger brother, had already registered in theirs. Her situation was further complicated by the fact that even if she managed to secure a place, there was no way Serenity could finance her journey as well as his own without filing for bankruptcy.
Padlock dreamed of being the first person in her family to kiss the hand of the pope, to be pictured with the Holy Father, to step on Holy Land, and to touch and taste and feel the soil Father Abraham, Joseph, Mother Mary and Jesus Christ had walked on. She wanted to be the first in her family to breathe the air that had carried inspiration to the authors of the Holy Book, but once again Mbale seemed about to sabotage her plans and poison her dreams.
Padlock’s mood swings came back with a vicious bite. She brooded and filled the house with the stench of her depression. She felt like a bobbin trapped inside its slot, unable to get out unless somebody decided to remove it. She had attacks of hyperventilation. She feared she was about to burst or explode. She remembered the bitter prayers and fasting she had offered at Mbale’s home soon after being regurgitated from the convent. She wanted to fling herself on the cold floor and claw it with her fingers till the nails bled. She could not now go into voluntary solitary confinement and offer novenas, because she had a family to lead. She put her arms on her chest and entrusted her burdens to God. In the meantime, she hammered the shitters with guava switches whenever they transgressed, and put Serenity on emotional tenterhooks.
Serenity was pinned firmly by the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, he wanted to give the mother of his children a chance, because he knew how much it meant to her. On the other hand, he wanted to surprise his wife’s aunt with a gift all her former lovers could not: he wanted to fly her to Rome and Jerusalem and tattoo his name forever in her heart. Serenity had insomnia attacks. He tossed and turned in bed. He listened to the sounds of the night and became infuriated that dogs howled so much when mating. He felt disgusted with his financial impotence and his inability to please both his wife and her aunt. He got out of bed and consulted his library. He revisited Godot and other characters, wondering what they would have done in his predicament. He got angry that Muhammad Ali could have so much money, when he, a loyal fan, was writhing on the torture rack of poverty, unable to exploit incoming chances. Serenity was wrapped in his reveries for weeks, sauntering through life with dreams cooing on one side and reality heckling on the other.
Serenity’s sisters, Tiida and Nakatu, had in the meantime kicked up a storm of controversy in the village. Largely uninterested in Catholicism, they had no ambitions for themselves; but in a bid to turn the tables on all families in the village, especially the formidable Stefanos, they had decided that Grandpa should go to Rome. Both women’s Muslim husbands had promised to contribute to the pilgrimage fund, and so had Uncle Kawayida, who was doing very well in business. Grandpa’s chances of securing a place were good, for the local people were generally poor and places were left over after the initial registration heat had died down.
Tiida and Dr. Ssali had won their battle with the Conversion Committee about a year earlier. They had been awarded an oily-white Peugeot, which was washed daily and looked after like the sole remnant of an endangered species. Tiida enjoyed being chauffeured to important meetings in the car because it was new and elegant, and also because the leathery smell of its cool gray upholstery imbued her with the heady feeling that she was as tough as leather. One day her husband drove her to Serenity’s home during his lunch break. She stepped out of the car full of the leather smell, feeling that her opposition had virtually no chance. Her mission was to pressure Serenity into contributing to Grandpa’s pilgrimage fund. She could have met him at the office, but she had decided that her larger-than-life presence in the pagoda would be the best way to clinch a resounding victory.
As Tiida surveyed the pagoda, with the chaotic events of the Indian exodus bubbling at the back of her mind, she felt proud that her family had done well. Here was Serenity, or Mpanama, as she fondly remembered him in his short-trousered, tall-women-accosting days, in a house built by Indians which was indeed a far cry from the obscurity of his bachelor cottage. Here he was in the middle of the city, abreast with new developments and furthering his ambitions. The postal union move had been a very brilliant maneuver, she conceded. At one time when they were growing up, she had worried that Serenity was too sleepy to come to much in life. She had feared that he would end up poor, with patches in his trousers and debts up to his neck, simply because he didn’t seem smart enough to put winning moves together; but now, after all those years and all the changes in the fortunes of the family, she felt that they were better off than the Stefanos. Here were father and son about to go to Rome, and Kawayida and she both owning vehicles, and Serenity involved in the leadership of the Postal Workers’ Union. The Stefanos were now a family of the past. Old man Stefano was battling the ravages of a stroke that had left him paralyzed on one side. The star of the scions of the Stefano family had stopped rising.
Aunt Tiida knew that Serenity did not espouse this kind of family rivalry, but she was ready to work on him, to stir guilt in his heart and make it clear that he owed his father this last favor as a show of gratitude for all he had done for him. She would remind him of the land Grandpa had donated for him to built his bachelor cottage, and the role the old man had played in organizing his wedding. She felt that she had Mpanama in her grip. She had left nothing to chance. It was the reason she had come to neutralize his wife and pin her down in her pagoda. This village girl, whose parents were saved from the terrors of a rotten roof by her brother, could not defeat Tiida. She was ready to put Padlock in her place—at the bottom of the pile, where she belonged.
Like most people who have just acquired new status symbols, Tiida believed that the brand-new Peugeot had given her a sharper edge in relation to everybody else, and it was true that the village girl her brother had married had nothing in her possession with which to counter the glitter of the French-made machine. It looked very unlikely that Serenity would ever buy himself a new car. Not with so many children, not with so much responsibility. All this made Tiida feel high up in the air.
What she did not know was that Padlock had not changed over the years. She still was indifferent to material goods, she still felt utter contempt for shamefully acquired possessions, and anybody who exchanged his foreskin and his religion for some spray-painted piece of metal was utterly despicable in her eyes. In her scheme of things, the Peugeot had been acquired from the Devil, by devilish means, and its owners deserved no respect and would never get any from her, least of all in her own house.
Padlock greeted Tiida with insulting politeness, as though she were a lunatic to be handled with great care. She played the cowed village girl in the presence of visiting royalty. She blocked avenues of conversation with terse, very polite replies. She retreated to her bridal tactics of unapproachable gentility, which left Tiida stranded and looking for ways of lifting the blockade. Tiida was not intimidated—she rarely was—but she felt embattled, confused, unable to operate in these icy conditions. There was a kink in her cable which blocked the flow of her power, her charisma, her ability to stun. This wa
s not the kind of woman who normally fazed her. On the contrary, it was only richer women, more elegant ladies or younger sophisticated girls who made her heart pump, and even then she fought back. The strange thing was that she suddenly felt as if she had done something wrong in the past for which she was paying now, but in her living memory she felt she had never double-crossed her brother’s wife. In fact, she was one of the few people in the family who ever defended Padlock, usually pointing to her fecundity.
Refreshments were served with great care amidst a silence that seemed to howl and oppress both the house and the afternoon itself. Tiida looked in her glass and saw minute pieces of squashed orange swimming in the yellow liquid. It occurred to her that her mind was in the same liquid state, unable to form a plan of attack or defense. It also occurred to her that her brother’s wife had not even asked about her children. Was this because they were now living in the city, where village civilities didn’t rule, and where housewives behaved like little queens? Or was it because Tiida was married to a Muslim and her male children had been circumcised, and her brother’s Catholic wife did not approve? This kind of treatment was new to Tiida, and it made her very angry. She remembered that a certain nurse at the hospital where her husband worked had tried to disrespect her and to undermine her position, possibly with fancy dreams of taking Dr. Ssali off her hands. Tiida had confronted the woman only once. The next she heard, the woman had asked for a transfer. All she had told her was to keep her dirty hands off the good doctor if she treasured them. What did the woman think? That she was going to chop them off? Anyway, it had worked, but nothing seemed to work now; even her mounting wave of anger seemed self-defeating.
Abyssinian Chronicles Page 28