Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  Both Ruth and Job turned. Job said, “Paulo’s not our brother, he’s our son; how many times shall we tell you?”

  Ruth smiled and came to meet him. She held Paulo’s hand and whispered, “Sorry, they never listen.”

  “Ruth stole that boy,” someone said. “He’s only slightly younger than her.”

  “Where does Paulo go to church?” another asked suspiciously.

  Paulo’s jaw squared. This nosiness was exactly why he hated greeting the twins’ friends.

  “Paulo’s not into church yet,” Uncle Job came to his rescue. “We’re still praying for him.”

  “Come, Paulo, say hello to my friends.” Ruth nudged. Then she whispered in his ear, “Give your uncle a hug.”

  Paulo obliged. After embracing him, Job, smiling with one side of his mouth, his most affectionate smile, looked Paulo up and down as if making sure that he looked fine. Then he said, “I don’t see you often, Paulo.” It was an accusation, as if Paulo were purposely avoiding him. “What are you up to these days?”

  While Paulo’s relationship with Ruth was close and laid back, Uncle Job was a proper father figure. The problem was that Uncle Job left home as soon as he went to University, while Ruth stayed even after University until she built her house in Bbunga. Uncle Job had paid Paulo’s school fees, come to school to check on his progress and behavior, and was always officious with the teachers. Ruth, on the other hand, was more interested in how Paulo felt, how he dressed, what he wanted and, whenever Uncle Job was gruff or being no-nonsense, Ruth was there to say, “But the boy is . . .” softly. That was why hugging and chatting with Uncle Job did not come naturally.

  “I am fine, nothing much,” Paulo scratched his head.

  “Then we should see you more often,” Job said.

  Paulo glanced at Ruth as if asking her to rescue him from his uncle.

  “Go say hello to Aunt Kisa.” Ruth steered Paulo toward Job’s wife. “I’ll meet you in the car in a moment.”

  Paulo’s surname was no longer Nsobya. It was Kalemanzira. He was sixteen when he changed it. He was in boarding school, just before he registered for his O-level exams. The name had been bothering him since that day, when he asked his grandfather who his father was.

  “Your father was a man called Kalemanzira,” Kanani had explained as he cut the hedge.

  “Kalemanzira? Was he a munnarwanda?”

  “Hmm.” Kanani carried on clipping twigs and leaves without looking at Paulo.

  “Where does he live?”

  “I don’t know. He went back to Rwanda I suppose.” Now Kanani started clearing away the cut twigs from the ground. “What I know is that this Kalemanzira worked hard all over this village pushing a cart, helping people to fetch water from the well.”

  He picked up as much as he could carry and walked away from Paulo toward the rubbish heap in the matooke garden. Paulo picked up the rest and followed him.

  “He fetched water?” Paulo could not hide his consternation at finding out that his father was a cart-man.

  “Yes. Unfortunately, he was attracted to Ruth because he thought we were bannarwanda like him. One day, Job got so angry with him that Kalemanzira almost died. When he recovered, Kalemanzira never returned to the neighborhood. Kanani dropped the twigs on top of the heap and rubbed his hands to clear them. He rubbed them for a long time saying, “We searched to tell him that he had a son nga wa!” Kanani blew in his hand and let it fly away. Then he turned to walk back to the hedge.

  Paulo chewed this information like a piece of plastic then followed his grandfather. He was not letting the story go yet because it had not made sense to him. And it seemed to him as if he were chasing after the story; he would have preferred that his grandfather stopped walking and talked to him properly. After a polite pause he asked, “Why was Uncle Job angry with the water-man?”

  “Because he was getting too friendly with Ruth.” Kanani barely turned.

  “Oh,” Paulo laughed. He could almost see Uncle Job’s grumpy face. “And why is my name—?”

  “I named you after Paul, the rock on which Christ built his church,” Kanani snapped.

  But Paulo was not asking about his Christian name. He wanted to know why he had a Ganda name when his father was Rwandese. However, it was clear that Kanani was fed up with the questions. Paulo dropped the subject.

  At sixteen he decided that he could not carry Ruth’s error on his head anymore. But mostly, it was a fraud to be Rwandese and pass himself off as Ganda. That was what bothered him most. In the end, he went to the headmaster of his school and explained the situation. Then he asked if he could change his name. The headmaster explained that he could not until he was given permission by his mother.

  That was first time that Paulo called Ruth mother. He wrote, “Dear Mother,” and explained that he would like to be called by his father’s name and that the headmaster had agreed. But he needed his mother’s permission. He signed with, “Your Loving Son, Paulo.”

  Ruth and Job came together to the school and changed Paulo’s name from Paulo Nsobya to Paulo Kalemanzira. But at the end of the term, when he handed his school report to his grandfather and Kanani saw “Paulo Kalemanzira” as his name he shouted, “What is this name?” Kanani’s hand shook. “Where did you find this name?” he glared at Paulo as if he had stolen it.

  “Ruth, I mean my mother, and Uncle Job gave me permission to use my father’s name. They came to school and changed it. You can ask them.”

  “You’re playing with fire, you hear me?” Kanani’s right cheek twitched. “You, your mother, and whatever you think you are, are playing with embers.”

  Kanani threw the report on the table and went to his bedroom. Faisi walked into the dining room from the kitchen. She picked up the report, looked at it, and threw it back on the table. She did not look at Paulo as she wiped the spotless dining table with her hand. Then she wiped her hands and went to their bedroom. It crossed Paulo’s mind that his father was a bad man: the way he had disappeared like wind; the way he left no traces of himself like a ghost; he must have done something terrible for Kanani to hate him like that. Nonetheless, he insisted on being called Kalema if Kalemanzira was too much for his family.

  Presently, Ruth came to the car.

  “It’s funny with church,” she sighed apologetically as she sat down. “You can’t wait for the service to end, but once you step outside you can’t pull yourself away. Can you imagine we used to sneak into this church as children?”

  “You’ve told me.”

  “But everything has changed now. The whole of this,” Ruth waved her hand over the place, “Was just bush. Down there was all swamp and yams. Over there was a well; now it’s all dry—look at the houses. People should not build on the flood areas. But tell me, how are He and She?”

  “Grandfather was stopped from working.”

  “Oh,” Ruth said unconcerned. “To be fair, he stayed on too long.”

  “He’s lost. I don’t think he knows how to live without his job.”

  “He can join her in sowing.”

  “You don’t care about them.”

  Ruth laughed.

  “I care in my own way, especially for him. But mostly, I am proud of you for loving them.”

  “They’re not that bad.”

  “Hmm!” Ruth was cynical.

  “I know Grandmother seems like a wall sometimes but she’s not forced me to take on their way of life.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I don’t care why,” Paulo laughed.

  “She thinks you’re already damned.”

  “I know, because I don’t go church.”

  “You’re generous,” Ruth looked out of the window, leaving silence to settle in the car. As they came to Bat Valley, she sighed as if regretting the silence. “You know, the whole of those kalitunsi trees were once covered with millions and millions of fruit bats. Even the traffic couldn’t drown their chatter. These slopes were open fields.”

  “What
happened to them?”

  “War. Bats don’t like gunshots.”

  “It must have been tough for Grandmother. That childhood, moved from one family to another.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Grandfather. First, she was adopted by a Dutch family but when they were returning to Europe they passed her on to a German family and then a British one. She ended up with an Awakened family.”

  Ruth yawned. “I thought she grew up in an orphanage. In any case, she is only too happy not to have relations. Ask yourself: how many times does she ask you about me or your uncle?”

  “She is indifferent but not in an evil way. It is bizarre though. You would think that she would be used to my presence by now. Sometimes she stares at me peculiarly.”

  “How does she look at you?” Ruth’s laid-back air was gone.

  “I don’t know—never straight. I catch her staring and she looks away or she leaves the room.”

  “Wait till I tell Job.”

  “It’s not malicious,” Paulo tried to reassure her. “I suspect she still sees in me evidence of how her daughter was forced to have a child before she was ready.”

  “Ha, Faisi worrying about anything else apart from her place in heaven!”

  “I don’t know about that.” Kalema was unconvinced about Faisi’s selfishness. “I mean, she cleans and tidies my quarters every day.”

  “Does she?”

  “Washes and irons my clothes too.”

  “Maybe she’s getting senile; maybe she is bored. She was never like that with us.”

  Ruth did not say another word until they came to Bbunga. They turned into the murram road off Gaba Road leading to her house. When they came to a shopping center, she asked Paulo to drop her at a bar where she normally went to drink in the evening. “I don’t fancy going home on my own now. Don’t worry,” she quickly added when she saw guilt spread across Paulo’s face, “My friends will drop me home.”

  As Ruth stepped out of the car, Paulo dropped his hand in frustration. He had upset her by his defense of his grandparents but he did not know how to soothe her.

  “Mother,” he called.

  Ruth stopped.

  “What did they do to you?” Paulo was close to begging but there was a tinge of exasperation in his voice.

  Ruth smiled at him like he was a child. For a moment it seemed as if she was not going to answer. Then she changed her mind. She returned to the car, bent low at the window, and asked, “Have you ever sat on a bus and listened to your mother confess to strangers, to being a slut, to abortions, and to killing innocent children? Have you ever sat in a school chapel with the whole school present listening to how your father started his sinning career by stealing eggs, then chickens, progressed to bestiality, and graduated to raping women?”

  There was a long pause.

  “When you have gone through all that, come back and tell me how to love my parents. Now go.”

  Paulo did not drive away. He did not go after his mother either. Ruth was on the verge of tears; it would be stupid to follow her for she would explode. He stayed in the car. Having grown up in boarding school he understood that his grandparents came from an old, austere school of Anglicanism whose approach was old-fashioned. Despite that, they had been good to him. Just the other month, because he had no father to give him ancestral land, Kanani had told him that when they passed on, their land and house would go to him. That never happens among the Ganda. Daughters’ children never inherit land from their grandparents. But when he told Ruth about it she had only shrugged her shoulders. Another mother would have said, “Oh, how generous of them,” or she would have gone over to her parents to thank them, but Ruth had just sighed, “We don’t have any sentimental attachment to that place. You can sell it if you want.” It was that kind of insensitivity on the part of the twins that had made Paulo protective of his grandparents. It was the reason he was willing to stay with them through their old age.

  Now he was conflicted.

  He got out of the car and joined Ruth outside the bar where she sat drinking. She looked away from him. They drank in silence. Paulo was too contrite to break the silence. All he asked was, “Another one?”

  And Ruth would nod and look away from him.

  When it came to alcohol, the twins were the proverbial pastors’ children who drank on behalf of their parents. But the thing that puzzled Paulo most was why they kept going back to church when it was clear that they were not really Christians. To him, the twins’ Christianity only went as far as turning up for service on Sunday. Unlike other Christians, they never talked about their love for God, or witnessed about the wonders Christ had done for them; they had never asked him to get saved and he had never seen them pray outside the church. Mostly, they had utter contempt for the zeal of new converts: “They’ve only just met God—they’re wont to overdo their love,” the twins would sneer, turning their noses up at the enthusiasm of new church members.

  When Paulo asked her why they didn’t just give it up Ruth was surprised.

  “It is our tradition.”

  Paulo had nothing to say to that.

  Now, as he returned from getting Ruth her Nile Special she said, “I know you’re itching to ask more questions, so go on, ask.”

  Paulo smiled. “No, I thought I should just stay with you tonight.”

  “I mean it, ask. I am not angry with you.”

  Paulo considered his mother’s state. Perhaps she was getting tipsy. Perhaps this was the right moment. He tendered, “Hmm, was my father Tutsi or Hutu?”

  There was a long pause as Ruth stared at him. She sighed and lifted her bottle. She took a sip and put it down. She sighed again.

  “Where did that come from, Paulo?”

  Paulo spread his hands and he adjusted himself in his seat. “I am not just a munnarwanda, I am something specific.”

  “I guess he was Tutsi from the look of him.” Ruth picked up her bottle and sipped looking up at the sky. When she put it down she asked, “Why ask now?”

  “If I am to start a family I’ll need details.”

  “You’re half-Ganda: give the children our names.”

  “I am not one of those Tutsis who hide their ethnicity.”

  “You don’t even speak the language.”

  “How old was Kalemanzira?”

  “I guess twenty, twenty-five, I am not sure.”

  “He was young!”

  Ruth turned in surprise.

  “Yes, well, you could say ‘young’ now, but for me at fourteen, twenty-five was quite old.”

  “All along I had this picture of a rough, burly man stinking of sweat. Did he live alone?”

  “I don’t know, I was not his friend,” Ruth said. “I only saw him in the morning when he came to collect the empty ndebbe and returned them filled with water.”

  “That’s what I find most exasperating: no one knows anything about this Kalemanzira. Not even Grandfather who employed him.”

  “He was a freelance water-man.”

  “Then more people should know him.”

  “But you know how foreigners keep to themselves. If anybody knew anything it would be fellow Rwandese.”

  “So where are they?”

  “Remember I was only a schoolgirl at the time,” Ruth said.

  “I am sorry he forced you.”

  Ruth stopped. Paulo was mortified. “Forgive me, I shouldn’t have brought that up.” Ruth remained silent.

  “I am sorry,” Paulo said again.

  Ruth burst out laughing. It was clear the drink was taking effect. “He apologizes for his father!” It was such a deep laugh that her stomach shook. “I am not!” she said. “Look what I got.” And she waved her hands over him.

  Paulo rubbed his nose.

  “It’s Nyange, isn’t it?” Ruth said. “She’s pushing you to marry her.”

  “No, it’s not her . . . Yes, it is about her I suppose. I’ve told her I am Rwandese,” he smiled. “She thought Kalema was the royal name.
And you know how bigoted people are. My own family can’t bear to call me Kalemanzira. We must Gandarize it to Kalema.”

  “I don’t care what you call yourself. You insisted on that name.”

  “But if I ask Nyange’s family to marry her, I must name at least four generations of my paternal grandfathers.”

  “Paulo, you’re Ganda. I am your mother.” Ruth held her heart as if Paulo did not believe her. “Job has been your father in every sense of the word. What more can we do?”

  “I appreciate Uncle Job, but he’s your brother.”

  “But where your father is not, Job is. If you’re my son, Paulo, then you’re Job’s son. We’re one person.”

  Paulo shook his head, but Ruth continued.

  “You’re the one who insists on this Rwandese thing. You can start your own Kalemanzira clan. You can buy a plot of land in Kigali if you want and spend some time there. But don’t dig this up. Many Tutsis are without roots but they have sprouted their own and made a life. Immigration is like that. It breaks things up—tribes, families, even races.” Ruth took a breath and then asked cheerily, “So are you planning to marry Nyange?”

  Paulo shrugged his shoulders. “I am thinking about it.”

  11.

  Sunday, February 22, 2004

  Paulo had heard a lot about Magda, a cantankerous heathen according to his grandparents and a radical traditionalist according to his mother. Since nothing had been heard of her since 1971, it was presumed that she had died during the bush war of the 1980s. Thus, he was surprised to open the door to a woman so like his grandfather. She looked startled to see him as well, as if she had not expected anyone to be at home.

  “Are the elders in?” the woman asked.

  “It’s Sunday, they’re at church. Please come in and wait for them.”

  “Wait for them? No, blood relatives don’t wait in this house. I’ve only brought a letter for my brother.” She gave Paulo a brown envelope and insisted, “Make sure you give it to the husband, not to the wife.”