Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  Isaac saw the ramp unoccupied and made for it. As he walked across the compound, he saw mourners glance at him. It was as if he could hear their thoughts: He’s killed her, poor Nnayiga; she sat at home faithfully while he sniffed under every bitch’s tail . . .

  As he sat down, Isaac’s eyes started to run. He cried not because he too was about to die, not because Kizza was motherless but because he had lost her. He had been weeping for a while when he saw his colleagues Habib, Lule, Kaaya, and Mugisha coming toward him. They squatted around him. For a moment, they were silent as Isaac blew his nose. Lule spoke first.

  “Kitalo, Isaac.”

  “God’s will,” he sighed. “Nnayiga’s turned her back on me.”

  “Word’s going around that your wiring is coming loose,” Habib joked.

  “And you’ve come to tighten it,” Isaac smiled through his tears.

  “No, tighten funeral arrangements, so you can run raving mad.”

  Isaac turned to Lule. “Have you seen her, Lule? Nnayiga’s never looked more beautiful.”

  “He’s seen her, Isaac.” Habib gave Lule a warning glance.

  “Death likes his brides beautiful.”

  “I also hear you’ve not eaten, Isaac.” Lule changed the subject.

  “I’ve got no energy to eat.”

  “You don’t need energy to eat.” Habib stood up. “I am going to get you food.”

  “I had spared her. I swear, I thought I’d spared her.”

  Habib shook his head as he walked away. He had heard the story countless times.

  “When I found out, I said to myself, Isaac, stay away from Nnayiga.”

  “How did you find out?” Kaaya asked.

  Isaac stopped heaving and looked at Kaaya. “How do people find out? You just know. With this thing you just know.”

  “So you did not take any blood tests?”

  Isaac shook his head. “Blood tests bring nothing but certainty. We could not handle certainty. When all you have is a tiny doubt, you hang onto it.”

  “When did you first find out?”

  “About myself? A few months before Kizza was born.” Isaac counted his fingers silently, “Kizza’s four now—almost five years ago.”

  “Why did you suspect?”

  “A woman from the past died. I had gone ‘live’ with her.”

  “Four years ago you still went ‘live?’”

  “It’s too late to be shocked, Kaaya,” Mugisha interrupted quietly.

  “That’s when I decided to stop going with Nnayiga.”

  “Have you shown any symptoms yet?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “So . . . when did you find out about Nnayiga?”

  “She was sickly around Christmas 2002 but we did not take it seriously. Then in January last year she started to freeze and shiver, I am cold, I am freezing, especially at night. Slipping into bed with her, I swear, was like getting in bed with a corpse. From then on, the disease accelerated—night sweats, fevers, fatigue, a funny rash on the left arm, sometimes her mind went, and her feet hurt. She suffered from this, that, everything. Then her weight dropped. Before we knew it she had lost her hair. Then her feet hurt so much, I put her in a wheelchair. From the wheelchair Nnayiga hopped into the coffin—kidney failure.”

  “Maybe, you should’ve told her about your suspicion,” Kaaya said.

  “I wouldn’t do that to her. I said to myself, Isaac, unknown troubles don’t keep anyone awake: leave Nnayiga in peace.”

  “Why not use condoms?”

  “Condoms?” Isaac stopped for a moment. “You know what women are like: she would ask why, when we’ve only got one child?” Isaac paused to sigh. “By the time I stopped, I had given it to her.”

  “We understand your guilt, Isaac, but at the moment, you have to put it away for Kizza.”

  “Besides, someone gave it to you; you did not find out until it was too late. Someone gave it to that person and she didn’t mean to give it to you. What do we do, form a queue of the guilty and hang ourselves?”

  “We’re all dead, Isaac. All of us. It’s a question of who goes first,” Lule said.

  At this point, Habib returned with a plate of food and passed it to Isaac. “Shove the food down,” he said to Isaac.

  Isaac balanced the plate on his lap. Lule asked Habib to keep Isaac company while he and the others made inquiries about the following day’s arrangements.

  “Thank you, people . . .” Isaac said as they walked away. Kaaya turned and said, “Today’s yours, tomorrow’s ours. We’re only helping ourselves.”

  Isaac pushed the food into his mouth and in no time, it was gone. He put the plate down and whispered, “You have no idea what the sight of your woman lying in a box does to you.”

  Habib shook his head and said, “I look at my Zulaika, the way she is with the children, the way she handles the home and things, and I pray to Allah that Alhamdulillah if it is to come, it is to come. But for the sake of my children, let it take me first.”

  Isaac watched as his three friends moved from group to group talking to elders. As they approached his mother, Habib remarked, “Your mother is young—”

  “And beautiful,” Isaac interrupted. “And you’re wondering what happened to me. Go on, I am used to it.”

  Habib was saved from denying this by the return of the others. Lule and Mugisha sat on the ramp while Kaaya squatted in front of Isaac and said, “Everything has been arranged.”

  “Food, transport, church service, and the construction of the grave,” Lule added.

  “Your mother insists that she’ll move in with you for the time being—”

  “To give Kizza some stability,” Kaaya added quickly.

  “My mother?” Isaac asked in disbelief.

  “Yes,” Mugisha said. “She said to us, ‘Don’t worry about Isaac, I’ll take care of him and Kizza.’”

  Isaac stifled a cynical laugh. At forty-three, he was finally going to be mothered. He had long made up his mind that nature was a woman. She stands at the gate of the world and as souls step in to start life, she hands them a bag of tools—loving parents, a stable home, health, brains, good looks, luck, and opportunities. But when he came along, the woman was in a foul mood. She tossed him a bag almost empty, and still he had made life out of the nothing she gave him. But just as he was beginning to make something of it, the woman had snatched his life back.

  2.

  KATANGA, KAMPALA, 1967

  Isaac sat naked on the floor. His buttocks were numb from sitting too long on a cold concrete surface every day. His chin dug deep into his chest as he leaned forward to see past his distended belly. He pulled back the foreskin on his little penis and a pink worm jutted forth. He let it go. It slunk back into its sheath and the wrinkled foreskin pouted. He thrust it forth again. Fascinating: the worm had a mouth. He let go and the foreskin swallowed it again. But he had to see his worm pop out just this once. He pulled back the foreskin, it popped out, gleaming. Isaac was engrossed in this now-it’s-here, now-it’s-not game when a rush of air swept across his face and a slap disengaged his hands. He started as if chilled water had been thrown at him. It was not the pain of the slap, not even the fact that he had been caught at it that made him jump, it was because he had not heard her coming. Isaac lifted his eyes slowly but could only see as high as her knees. He could not risk looking further, the movement could provoke her. His head turned owl-like and went down. A ray of sunshine streaking through the window illuminated his thin wavy brown hair.

  “Stop playing with that maggot.”

  Isaac’s eyes darted back to his penis but it had shrunk beneath his belly. He sighed. This was the end of the peace he had enjoyed that morning. He waited for the next assault. He did not know in what form it would come.

  “If I catch you toying with it again, I’ll cut it off.”

  Isaac’s little fingers did a slow dance with each other like the legs of a dying cockroach. Then he remembered and closed his eyes. His mind chanted, “L
eave the room, leave, leave . . .” His concentration was so intense that he rocked back and forth.

  It worked. The air relaxed and he heard the inner door close. Isaac opened his eyes and smiled. He looked down for something to occupy him. Two thin legs came into view. They wandered from beneath his belly and stretched before him. At the end of the legs were two feet, unused, baby-like. Isaac looked at the legs as if seeing them for the first time. He leaned forward and touched his knees. The scabs, thick from crawling, deadened his touch. He felt his knees distantly. He gave up touching himself.

  The lounge was devoid of furniture. In one corner, pans, yellow enamel plates, cups, and a matching teapot sat on a wooden tray placed on top of a metallic pail. In the corner adjacent to him, mats in dazzling colors leaned against the wall. On his right, two meters away, was the door to the other room, the bedroom. In the bedroom was a single bed, his grandmother’s. At night, the bed brought forth all sorts of bedding and the floor, both in the lounge and in the bedroom, was besieged by sleeping bodies. In the morning, the bodies woke up early, gathered their bedding, tied it into bundles and the bed swallowed them again.

  Each morning, someone pulled Isaac off his heap of rags before he woke up. He was tossed in this place where he watched, through the window, hordes of fruit bats swarming as if someone had thrown them out of bed, too. The rags, always wet, were tossed out to dry making them thicker, crustier, and warmer at night. Isaac had grown so used to the smell that when he was thrown back onto the heap, a sharp wave of old urine hit him and mellowed into a delicious intimate smell making him yawn. He would grope and slither, half asleep, into heavier and warmer rags. A tattered shirt, a dress, whatever, Isaac snaked his arms or legs through. By the time he was through with thrusting and tossing, he was asleep, the smell too cozy, the rags too familiar, the luxury too overpowering to keep his eyes open.

  “Look, he’s peed again!”

  Isaac started. Where did she come from? He looked down in panic. A rivulet snaked from beneath his belly between his stretched-out legs toward his feet. He turned and looked behind him; there was only the wall. It was his water. He sighed as if to say: Guilty, do as you please, and clenched his head in anticipation. The smack did not come. Instead, his grandmother’s voice called from outside, “Take him out and squat him on the latrine. He might shit as well.”

  The girl panicked and wrenched Isaac up.

  “Oh no, he has!”

  She let Isaac’s body fall back into its shit. The pain cut through his numb buttocks. A sharp breath escaped his mouth but he sunk his chin into his chest and strangled the cry. He had not felt his body defecate.

  “You’re going to sit in that shit for the rest of the day.”

  “Tendo, Tendo, TENDO!”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “Clean him right away.”

  “Can’t we throw him into the latrine with his dung?”

  Isaac flinched: falling through the latrine-hole was his nightmare. He had no doubt that Tendo would do it when his grandmother was not watching. He imagined himself spending the rest of his life in the ponging darkness with people dropping dung and susu on top of his head and shivered.

  “I am not laughing, Tendo.”

  Tendo’s legs, their hairs bristling, went out of view. Isaac heard her rummaging in the inner room. Then she was coming back. Isaac looked through the corners of his eye and saw her feet, in thong sandals, come into view. They stopped in front of him. Above his head, paper ripped. Then an exercise book fell on the floor. It opened at the middle and Isaac saw squared pages with figures and scribbling. Then he heard her crumple and wring paper to soften it. He was jerked off the floor, stood on his feet, and leaned against her legs. He bit his lower lip as the crack between his buttocks was savaged. Despite Tendo’s attempts to soften the paper it was a scourer: his crack was on fire. She thumped him back on the floor in a different place and scooped up the shit.

  “Phmnnn, this boy’s rotting.”

  Tendo ran out of the house as if she were carrying a spreading fire. Isaac heard her spit heavily on her way to the latrine. Then she came back with a rag, soap, and water. She scrubbed his behind with the wet rag and then mopped the floor. She let him down with a final thud and walked out, spitting some more. When she returned, Tendo stood away from him.

  “You dare shit again,” she hissed, “And I’ll stitch your anus.”

  Isaac sucked in his anus.

  “Did you squat him on the latrine this morning?” his grandmother’s voice came.

  “I did and he had a go. He eats a lot.”

  “Was it loose?”

  “Mother, he’s always running loose.”

  “Remind me to buy Mebendazole. It could be worms.”

  “I’d stick a pin into that balloon belly of yours,” Tendo whispered to Isaac, “But shit and worms would explode everywhere—phroooooo!”

  Isaac saw fragments of his stomach, like a balloon’s, scattered all over the floor.

  Tendo walked back outside.

  “I don’t understand it,” his grandmother’s voice was now faint. “Six years old but he stays mute and unable to walk?”

  “He’s not unable, Mother. He doesn’t want to. The doctor said there’s nothing wrong with him,” Tendo said.

  “Then we shall be patient.”

  Isaac crawled back to where he had fouled earlier, sat in the exact place, and settled down to exploring his body again. He sunk his index finger into his navel and felt crusts of tight dirt lodged in secret creases. The finger nudged and teased until a sliver of dirt came loose into his nail. He pulled the finger out. He prized the dirt from under his nail and rolled it between the balls of his thumb and forefinger. He lifted the finger to his nose and sniffed. The smell was deep, ugly, and intimate. Isaac rolled his eyes in shocked pleasure. He exhaled the smell and snapped the dirt into the air. He sunk his finger once more into the dent, seeking more folds, more old tight dirt.

  Thus Isaac passed his time exploring rotten parts of his body, carrying their decay on his finger to his nose. There was so much ugliness on his body. From behind his ears to between his toes he explored every crack, crevice, and fold until the smells stopped shocking him. Other times, he amused himself with insects that trespassed on his floor. Insects, especially ants, made him feel powerful. He crawled after them, sometimes getting on his feet without realizing it, to catch them. Usually, he plucked the hind limbs and let them go. He marveled that when dismembered, ants never opened their mouths to cry out. Instead, they dragged their bodies, now moving in circles. Sometimes, he squashed the abdomen and watched as the insects did a chest dance. Other times, he flooded them with his urine and watched them wading, gasping until they drowned. If he didn’t have urine, he put the ant in his mouth, closed it and flooded it with saliva. Then he listened as it wriggled on his tongue tickling it in its death throes. Sometimes, an ant squirted something disgusting on his tongue in revenge. As soon as it stopped kicking, he spat it out. Then he waited for dusk when multitudes of fruit bats filled the sky, happy to be free in the air, going to a feast.

  3.

  Isaac had no excuse to come into the world, except if you count his mother Nnamata’s backside, as illustrious as a 1957 Plymouth’s and as round as an earthen pot, a reason.

  In the early 60s, Nnamata was her father’s favorite child because out of a litter of six, she was the only one with a “bright future.” Nnamata’s parents, Ssemata and Ziraba, were as ambitious as any Ganda commoners who had grown up under the British Protectorate. You found yourself on earth without design on your part and there was no option but to grow up. Along the way, you found out that there were three human species in the world and that you belonged to the worst. You were told that if you got baptized, then confirmed in church, you might have a chance. You got baptized in case the Europeans knew what they were talking about. Some children, mostly boys, had a stint in school. Royals, governors, and the children of proper Christians stayed on, while for commoners,
for whom school was a waste of time, the only thing left to do was to get married. A woman then dropped as many children as she was fated. Every child was born with its peculiar luck. Parents showed their children the right way and watched as each child’s destiny manifested depending on how the child interpreted the world.

  Ziraba and Ssemata abandoned rural life in the 40s for the opportunity of a better life in the city. But because Kampala was looking for skilled people, they fell into Katanga—a fissure between Makerere, Nakasero, and Mulago Hills—and formed a family. Whenever it rained and the water from the hills overwhelmed Katanga, Ziraba would say, “God is sweating. We’re armpit hair.” Katanga was so named by Makerere University students. To them, the valley was as rich in female flesh and cheap alcohol as Katanga Valley in the Congo was in minerals. Katanga serviced and watered the largely male students at the university.

  For a long time, Ziraba gave birth to boys until Nnamata came along. Then, a friend led her to a traditional healer who “tied” her womb. All the healer, a woman, asked for was a pad soiled with menstrual blood. Ziraba never saw exactly what the woman did with the pad but she was eventually shown where it was buried in case she changed her mind.

  After independence, Uganda—a European artifact—was still forming as a country rather than as a kingdom in the minds of ordinary Gandas. They were lulled by the fact that Kabaka Muteesa II was made president of the new Uganda. Nonetheless, most of them felt that “Uganda” should remain a kingdom for the Ganda under their kabaka so that things would go back to the way they were before Europeans came. Uganda was a patchwork of fifty or so tribes. The Ganda did not want it. The union of tribes brought no apparent advantage to them apart from a deluge of immigrants from wherever, coming to Kampala to take their land. Meanwhile, the other fifty or so tribes looked on flabbergasted as the British drew borders and told them that they were now Ugandans. Their histories, cultures, and identities were overwritten by the mispronounced name of an insufferably haughty tribe propped above them. But to the Ganda, the reality of Uganda as opposed to Buganda only sank in when, after independence, Obote overran the kabaka’s lubiri with tanks, exiling Muteesa and banning all kingdoms. The desecration of their kingdom by foreigners paralyzed the Ganda for decades.