What did all this say about us seminarians and the priests we were supposed to emulate? Were we indeed pussy-whipped and glass-balled? Were those wax-faced priests indeed money-awed turds? There they were, sitting, standing, as a fat blue-green fly wiped his feet on their stupid faces, laying eggs in their gaping mouths which would soon be gobbling a rich breakfast as we lapped thin, worm-infested porridge. Was that why they remained silent? Apart from their color, what had they added to priesthood? Had they expanded the vision of life and spirituality? Had they combatted suffering or added to human knowledge in any special way? When they opened their mouths, they merely regurgitated rotting Church rules, worm-infested dogmas and slimy platitudes created in the burrows of the holy armadillo. They were just perpetuating the stink-old order: white, nuclear-warhead-privileged priest above the black, shit-scared peasant priest, who was above the shitty-assed peasant nun, who lorded it over the wormy peasant faithful—man, woman, child. Hundreds of years of Catholic dictatorship later, ninety-five of them home-grown, had come only to this! What a waste!
Lwendo’s reaction to the incident mortified me. I found him at the water tank. He was waiting to draw water in his yellow plastic basin, at the bottom of which was an old loofah brush and a worn cake of Sunlight soap. Ah, Sunlight soap! A triumphant glint touched my eyes when I remembered that long ago I used to draw water and take it to the bathroom for him.
“Many bastards here have no respect for property,” he said. “Do you know how much that boat cost?”
“As if it was Red’s own money! Do you know the kind of stories he told the benefactor who paid for it? And the missionary organization which shipped it here? Yet he acts as if he paid for it all by himself. This is a simple boat, not a yacht.”
“Whatever it is, canoe or whaler, it deserves respect. A priest is supposed to look after the assets of his parish. Charity begins in the seminary.”
“What an original thought!”
“They did not have to injure her.”
“How sensitive of you! And how sensible of Red to shake his little monkey buttocks like that! Next year he might not have anything to sit on.”
“What should he have done? Called us saints?”
“He should have looked for the culprit, found him and dealt with him accordingly. But indulging in collective guilt is like licking his thin monkey lips—it didn’t come to much.”
“But at least you agree that he had cause to be angry.”
“Of course he had, like he had cause to swear at the power saboteur who is still at large,” I said, laughing.
“You talk like a supporter of the bastard.”
“Before he did something, all the fish ended up rotting in the freezer. Now, thanks to him, we get to see some of it on our plates.” I burst into laughter again.
“Maybe you are the power saboteur,” Lwendo said, grinning. “Maybe I should report to Father Lageau that I have caught his man.”
“It is good to see Father Red Indian turn crimson and swear at ninety miles per hour.”
“The bastard will get caught, and he will regret it.”
Lwendo’s conventionality in some respects defied my comprehension. This was the same fellow who used to grab other people’s things and use them without permission. This was the same one I nabbed fucking our very own Sr. Bison. Yet now he was defending Fr. Lageau’s indulgences. Was it obeisance to “might makes right”? Had Lwendo’s wild-man stint been just a type of inverted conformism? His reaction made me think that maybe I was the only person from a screwed-up environment and that I smelled rats where there were none. Why was nobody else experiencing a sense of outrage? Had I originally expected too much from Fr. Lageau and was now just working off my frustration?
I retired to the library. I wanted to stab Lageau and his ego, but which word could I sharpen like Dorobo’s monstrous arrows? Dirty words were out of the question: they would just confirm Lageau’s beliefs about us. Irony was the best ship home across the swirling waves of frustration and outrage.
I stole a cassock-like vestment from the pile used by altar boys, hid it behind the chapel and later moved it to the storage area where we kept old books. No one noticed the theft. A cassock was crucial for night raids: it was the insurance that Dorobo would not shoot you before issuing three loud warnings. Truants had their own cassocks, and often got away with their misdeeds because wandering priests mistook them for fellow priests and did not disturb them. Most priests, however, would not bother anybody roaming the night in a cassock because truants had, on a few occasions, thrown red pepper in the eyes of inquisitive priests in order to make good their escape. Fr. Mindi had been a victim of the trick thrice, though it had not stopped him from snooping.
I rehearsed my moves a few times and struck early one morning. Agatha was in a dangerous spot: she was lit up on all sides. The chances of being surprised by a sleepless priest or even the watchman were great. The hardest thing was to get to the hallway and the offices, which were twenty meters from the chapel, seventy from the classrooms, ten from the refectory and three hundred from Sing-Sing.
The night was pitch-black. I started my journey at the bathrooms, via Lwendo’s barn till I made my way to the back of the chapel, the only place with a winking light inside. Because there were no dogs on campus, I walked without fear of sudden attack. Having come this far, I walked bravely from the chapel to the hallway, opened the door and held my breath when I entered. Agatha was in front of me, emitting an oily whiff, her alabaster skin super-smooth in the fluorescent light. If caught fondling her, I would be dismissed outright, but I did not think about it. I looked at the damage: a faint, timid, tentative line, not the vicious gash I had expected. This was curiosity. Viciousness would have been deeper and louder.
I removed a long nail from my pocket, chose a spot near the middle and went to work on Agatha’s belly, four ribs from the top. My cuts were deep and long. Etching five letters and an exclamation mark seemed to take an eternity. In reality, it was a quick job. OH GOD! proudly stood on Agatha’s belly. I was shaking. I drew back and stood behind the door, listening. I watched the way to the chapel carefully. I followed the same route back to the bathrooms.
Fr. Lageau had his first real migraine that morning. One half of his head, neck and side felt paralyzed. He was too entangled in the web of his anger to think straight. He retired to his bedroom, incensed that everyone was going to see the evidence of his humiliation. The migraine was horrendous—he felt like vomiting, diarrhea grated in his rectum, light hurt his eyes—and he lay down in darkness. “Oh God!” he mumbled. The irony of it! The priest who drove Agatha to the lake took him to the hospital.
Lageau was down but not out. A few days later, he took a bale of secondhand clothes he had received on behalf of poor seminarians to Lwendo’s barn, doused it in paraffin and set it on fire. The flames and the thick smoke drew a crowd of boys and a few nuns who came to see what had happened. Lageau stood in front of the barn, at the spot where Lwendo stood to watch Bushmen fighting for charcoal, and watched without blinking, without saying a word. The nuns put their hands on their mouths when they saw what was burning, but said nothing. The boys stood a respectful distance away from Lageau and whispered among themselves.
That same evening he came to our refectory, and in a calm, toneless voice announced that he was going to catch the culprit even if it meant going to Mars. He said this standing two meters away from my table. Everyone knew that he had burned the clothes in revenge, and many wondered why he was still pursuing the case after releasing his anger in the bonfire. I was not the only one who had fantasies of stoning him with chunks of the loathsome posho we were about to eat.
The literature teacher, who had not attended the fateful Monkey Mass, as we called it, referred to the incident obliquely, by exclaiming “God!” at unexpected intervals in the lesson. We prodded him for comment, but he kept on saying, rather ironically, “I reserve my comments. Silence is golden, speech is silver. I would rather keep the gold.”
The seminary was awash with speculation as to who had shamed Lageau. I kept out of it. Lwendo tried to talk about it, but I showed no interest at all.
The line of investigation Lageau took scared me. He collected specimens of our handwriting and promised to feed them into a computer. I hurried to the library to find out what a computer looked like. I tried to find out how different computers worked, but I got no wiser in real terms. Kaanders noticed my sudden interest in computers and said, “Oh boy, boy, Father Lageau is going to catch that bad boy, boy.”
“It was a shame what they did to Agatha, Father.”
“Oh boy, boy.”
“I hope the culprit gets caught,” I said to test him. “It is probably the same person who steals library books.”
“Yes, yes, boy.”
I asked Kaanders how a computer could be used to catch the culprit, and he said that it would look for similarities in letter patterns. I now had to cover my tracks by sabotaging Lageau’s efforts.
Like most dictatorships, the seminary was locked in a web of rumors and mystery. Days later, Lwendo came and said that Lageau had already caught his man.
“A staff meeting took place last night. But the staff is divided about what to do with the culprit.”
“How was he found out?”
“Somebody slipped a piece of paper under Father Lageau’s door, and it might have helped the computer. The same fellow is said to have been seen entering the dormitory in a cassock some nights ago.”
I was now sure that I was not alone in my hatred for Lageau. This sounded very much like “Fisherman,” as we called the secret power saboteur. I became more and intrigued by this fellow. I suspected that he was a bit like Cane, always out to challenge authority. Had Fisherman really seen me, and was he now just enjoying the game of fooling Lageau? And if so, why was he fingering certain individuals?
“To me, it looks like only bullies get fingered,” I said, feigning indifference.
“Lageau is different from Mindi. Bullies, well, they are the ones who commit crimes, aren’t they?”
I felt I had to do something quickly. There was a chance that the boy would not be expelled. For the moment, though, I was banking on the possibility that Lageau was concentrating on a number of things and would not keep too keen an eye on Agatha.
In the morning, the boy was dismissed. He told his friends that he would be called back because he was innocent. This was unlikely; hardly any dismissals were reversed, except if one came from a very powerful family with diocesan connections, which the boy’s parents lacked. I became more determined to throw a spanner into the works.
This time I first checked on the watchman. He was asleep. I approached the hallway from the refectory side. The smell of Agatha excited me. Agatha, like a sorceress casting her stones for divination, kicked up images in my head. I could see her on the lake and hear winds moaning all around her, above the monotonous purring of her engine. The noise seemed to rise to a crescendo, fill the whole hallway and make the floor vibrate.
I sank onto one knee, ready to gore anybody sneaking up on me in the gut. I etched the words RED INDIAN under OH GOD!, which was still there. Cold sweat trickled down my back and armpits. I rose suddenly, thinking that somebody had tapped me on the shoulder. False alarm.
Relieved, I walked out of the hallway, leaving the rusty nail behind. I had played the same trick twice and got away with it! This time I went via the refectory to the back of the classrooms. The neat rows of desks had something almost divine about them. They represented a little world, complete in itself, with its own rules, rewards and punishments. I could see the acacia trees in the distance. Home, I was almost home. The trees, the squeaky insect sounds, the forest in the distance, all reminded me of the village, the swamps, the hills, Ndere Primary School, the church tower, the nuns and Santo the madman.
The bathrooms were nearer now; I could see them looming like decapitated statues. They suddenly reminded me of the three gas pumps at the service station where Serenity and his cronies congregated. I negotiated the corner of the last building and almost collided with Dorobo. I thought he was smiling, because I could see a white burst in the pitch-black ball of his face. I froze.
“Gud morning, Faza,” he boomed.
“Good m-morning.” I could not remember his name. I wanted to bait him with the sound of his name and acknowledge him with the most unique feature about him, but I could remember only “Dorobo,” the name of a Kenyan tribe given to him by the boys because he was so black. How tall he looked now! He reminded me of awesome American wrestlers in cage matches. I might have been inside a steel cage, slipping and sliding on the sweat- and blood-stained canvas, trying to figure out how to escape this monster. There was not much I could do except to wait for what he had to say, and maybe beg for mercy. What would I trade in return for clemency? Dorobo then surprised me with a touch of humor: “You no sleep, Faza?”
“Ah, I-I sleep …” I was tempted to add the highly patronizing “my son” to my answer, but how dare I? He could book me for truancy, cassock-stealing, raping Agatha …
I suddenly thought of Cane and the corpses: how big Cane must have felt, standing there and showing us the corpses as though they were dolls! How powerful he must have felt while pushing Island’s head down toward the dead woman’s stomach! It occurred to me that there might have been something sexual in it for Cane. Wasn’t that why he lifted the dead woman’s skirt with his foot? I was glad I hadn’t looked. I was glad I had not seen what was underneath.
“You no sleep, Faza, eh!” the giant said and laughed.
I wanted to join in the laughter, but I did not know what exactly he had up his sleeve. “Yes, too much worry about exams.”
I was in for a bigger shock. He said, “Sank you fa Agasa job, he-he-heeee.”
“Ah …”
“Sank you fa Mindi job too, he-he-heeeee.” And he rocked with more laughter.
I was now sure that he was beating me with my old stick: blackmail. But why, if he knew all along, had he waited this long? To gather sufficient evidence and leverage? I knew it. He wanted me to forge and stamp documents for him. He probably wanted a recommendation written out on seminary stationery, stamped and signed in the rector’s name. I could do that, with some degree of difficulty, of course. My guess was that he had found a better job but did not want to alert the staff about it.
“Are you thanking me?” I said, waiting for the bombshell.
“Ya, ya, tough, eh? Faza Mindi no gud. Faza Lago no gud. You? Ha ha haaaa, tough. Otha boyz coward, but you?” He roared again and made me uncomfortable. “Faza Lago ask about boat and I say I watch fa thief not fa writer, ha haa …” The giant doubled up, clutched his thighs and roared away.
My fear now was that some troubled priest who might have heard us was about to catch me.
“Very clever of you to look out for thieves and not for writers!” I unsuccessfully tried to laugh.
“Me writer too,” he said, pointing to his huge chest with the quiver full of his odious arrows. “Me put dem pepaz wid name in Mindi and Lago orfice, he he heeeee.” He went off into one of his huge laughs. This time I joined in.
“You?”
“Ya, fa Dorobo game.”
I laughed hard this time, for now I understood. A group of boys used to tease this man by pretending that they were involved in a sentence-making game.
“I met a Dorobo warrior yesterday,” one would say.
“Did you know that Father Mindi’s mother was a Dorobo woman?” the second would ask.
“What a coincidence! The bishop’s uncle was a Dorobo warrior too!”
Those boys were the ones who took the blame for the damage done to Fr. Mindi’s car. None of them knew who had done them in. The watchman had fooled us all!! It all made sense, because both Fr. Mindi and Fr. Lageau had talked about firing him, but the rector had vetoed the decision on all occasions.
“It late now, Faza. Sleep, sleep.” He made a snoring sound and melted i
nto the shadows. I kept thinking that he was Fisherman, the power saboteur. A real fisher of men. I hurried to the bathrooms. My teeth still clattered as I lay down in my bed.
There was confusion and incredulity when morning uncovered yet another assault on Agatha. While he condemned the action, the rector showed us the nail the attacker had left behind. Fr. Lageau had another migraine attack and ate pills and stayed in bed the whole day. There were threats from staff members loyal to him, for they were afraid that their cars and other properties might be attacked too.
Agatha was repainted, and a German-made monster of an alarm was installed on her. There were rumors that Lageau had put in an order for a ferocious police dog. As if I planned to attack Agatha again! The dog came after I had left the seminary. Years later, government soldiers sent to hound guerrillas from the forest cut its throat and barbecued it.
“Agatha’s alarm could feed you for a whole year,” Fr. Lageau was quoted as saying by his volleyball playmates. We could live with that, because there were no more expectations from him, and the hope that he might improve things had died. Boys now made jokes about Agatha and the dog.
“How is Agatha?”
“Oh, she is fine.”
“Who is Agatha?”
“A little yellow-haired Canadian whore.”
“Where did she spend the night?”
“Whoring and cheating. Her pimp cut her up in retaliation.”
“What did her boyfriend do about it?”
“He bought her a police dog.”
Abyssinian Chronicles Page 32