Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  “Maybe I took him back to school too soon,” Isaac said.

  Nnamata weighed her words carefully. She knew Isaac’s paranoia was looking for the new death’s symptoms. On the other hand, she was lucky he had spoken to her at all. Finally she said, “Why don’t you take him back to Dr. Tembo for a checkup?”

  After a physical examination and a few blood tests, the doctor found nothing wrong with Kizza. But when, two days later, the school rang to say that they suspected Kizza had mumps, Isaac took him back to Tembo. The doctor confessed that he was not sure what was wrong with the boy, but ruled out mumps. He recommended that Kizza be admitted in hospital for overnight observation. The following morning when he came on the ward, Dr. Tembo asked Isaac for Kizza’s HIV status.

  “His mother died of it, so we can safely presume.”

  “I can’t safely presume,” Tembo smiled. “I’ll do some tests. I suspect meningitis. If it is, we need to start treatment immediately but I need his HIV serostatus.”

  For Isaac, Tembo might as well have confirmed that Kizza had it. It was obvious, even to the most optimistic, that meningitis was an HIV symptom. Looking back at the last month, Kizza had shown many typical symptoms.

  Isaac was calm as he left the hospital. His wish had been granted. He was confident that after the cold and cough, meningitis would find Kizza a dry twig to snap. By the time he arrived home, Isaac was planning Kizza’s funeral.

  It was with some dismay then, that Isaac watched Kizza pull through. He pretended to be relieved. Privately, he reassured himself that death can be deceptive: Kizza could seem to be recovering only to be snuffed out suddenly. But then one day, after a week, Isaac came to the hospital to find all the tubes through Kizza’s nose removed. Tembo and his mother beamed at him. A week later, Kizza was discharged.

  The day Isaac took Kizza back to school he sat in his office dejected. He ignored the two letters on his desk. Instead, he contemplated future hospital runs, Kizza’s schooling disrupted and the boy’s pain and suffering. What if he died first and left Kizza, sick and at the mercy of the world? He had seen what happened to Nnayiga and he was not willing to go through the same. Who would look after him the way he looked after Nnayiga? Isaac decided that he was not going to be tossed about by nature anymore. He would decide when and how he and his son would vacate the world.

  Then, shaking himself free of the melancholy, he turned his attention to the letters on his desk. One was from the Joint Research Centre: he put it aside without opening it. The other, in a brown envelope, was addressed him in Luganda. He opened it. It summoned him, as the only son of Puti Kintu, to represent his father at an elders’ council for a family reunion. Dates and venues for the meetings were provided. The reunion was scheduled for the Easter weekend in April. After work, Isaac carried both letters to the car and dropped them in the glove compartment.

  BOOK FIVE

  MISIRAYIMU (MIISI) KINTU

  1.

  KANDE, BULEMEEZI

  Monday, January 5, 2004

  At four o’clock in Mulago Hospital mortuary, the attendant starts to work on the day’s new arrivals. They are all still lying on trolleys waiting to be treated, for the lucky ones, and then shelved. First, he arranges the bodies in rows and tags them. He starts with those who had been patients—patient number, name, and ward. Then he moves on to those that he calls the “to whom it may concern” non-patients, unclaimed. In his view, there is nothing as sad as having fussed over your name all your life—my name is . . . I was named so because or after my . . . only to be tagged “unknown” in death just because you can’t say it.

  Kamu has a name, place and date of death. He writes, Kamu, but after a cheeky thought he adds, Kamugye, because it sounds right. He adds, Bwaise, D.O.D 5/1/04. He smiles at his own humor and the parallel he has made between Kamu, a thief, and kamugye the squirrel. He slips the string of the tag over the ball of Kamu’s dusty big toe: it settles like a necklace and he tightens it.

  Kamu arrived at Mulago Hospital two and a half hours ago on the back of a police pickup truck. The police picked him up from Bwaise at one o’clock, five hours after his death. On arrival they had inquired, half-heartedly, in the market and nearby shops whether anyone had seen what happened. Everyone said that Kamu was lying there, dead, when they arrived at work that morning. The police were only putting on a show. They knew no one would tell the truth: who would want to testify in court? Nonetheless, they took down notes in case someone rich or powerful turned up and was related to the deceased and the CID would be involved and people had to be arrested and there would be money to be made from both the bereaved and the suspects. After the inquiries the policemen put their guns down and hauled Kamu’s body onto the pickup. They laid him between the benches on either side, climbed on, sat around him, and drove away.

  That same afternoon, in Kande where Kamu was born, nature played out a drama so bizarre that Miisi’s wife and his sister looked to the supernatural. But not Miisi, Kamu’s father. He was rational. There had to be a logical explanation.

  The sun had been so high all afternoon that looking through the radiation in the air, nature seemed to be trembling. Miisi was sitting under the lime tree in his backyard, munching roasted groundnuts, watching time go by, when suddenly the sky turned gray. Then a droning noise came. It was not only heavy but it was getting louder. Miisi looked up: there was nothing in the sky yet the droning seemed to be coming closer. He tossed some nuts into his mouth, stood up, walked to the center of the yard, and scanned the sky. Then he saw it. A swift cloud was sailing toward him, droning. As it drew closer, it dropped altitude. It seemed to be heading for his house but Miisi remained rooted to the spot.

  As the cloud approached, Miisi saw that it was a swarm of bees. He could even see the individual bees. Each bee flew in its own circle pushing ahead, returning, and pushing ahead again. Yet, in spite of this dizzying flight, the swarm moved forward as one. It continued over the outdoor kitchen, across the backyard toward the main house. For a moment it seemed to head for the back door but then it veered to the right. At the edge of the house, it turned toward the front. The narrow corridor between the house and the hedge forced the swarm to slow down. The bees abandoned their circuitous flight and surged forward, their hum dense and heavy. The window of the outer bedroom on the first floor was open. As if ushered in by an invisible hand, the swarm rose and flew in as a whole.

  A child ran out of the house screaming, “We’re dead! Bees in the guest room!”

  Miisi broke out of his stupor. Muttering, “let me see,” as if he did not believe the child, he ran to the house. Inside, the buzzing upstairs was so heavy it felt like walking into a colossal beehive. Miisi ran upstairs. He gingerly opened the door to the balcony and peered in. Thankfully, the door to the guest room where the bees had camped was closed. For a long time, he stood at the door, reluctant to step onto the balcony. Gradually, the droning started to wane. Individual bees buzzed sporadically as if they were finally settling down. That is when Miisi summoned the courage to tiptoe across the balcony to the deck railings and lean forward. He looked below on the ground, then above in the sky and all around to see the reason for the bees’ behavior but there was nothing remarkable in the air. Just then the grayness in the sky lifted, and the sun came out and grew hot again. Miisi stood on the balcony, baffled.

  2.

  Miisi had returned from checking on the bees and was settling under the lime tree again when he was gripped by a bout of sneezing. When it stopped, the depths of his right ear itched. He stuck a finger inside but could not reach the itch. He shook the finger inside his ear until the itch ceased. He decided to go back indoors even though night had not fallen yet. When he got to below the stairs, he looked up and sighed. Why had he not thought about old age when he built the main bedroom upstairs? He lifted one sixty-five-year-old foot up and a pain like a current shot through his right hip. He did not even look forward to going to bed.

  Miisi was not an insomniac, in fact, he
slept deeply. But in his dreams, his mind broke loose and roamed realms strange and familiar. His childhood was a favorite destination, although sometimes he stumbled into places he had never been in real life. Miisi knew that this relentless return to his childhood in dreams signified something disturbing, but he never revisited the dreams when he woke up.

  As a child growing up in a Catholic seminary, Miisi was taught that consciousness during the day, sleeping in the night, and waking up in the morning were pictures of life, death, and resurrection. Sleep was death and death was sleep. At the time, when he slept and his mind roamed, he concluded that his dreams were the image of the restless dead, the ghosts and spirits. This imagery, plus his shadow which stood by him in those frightening days when all that was dear and familiar went away, helped him come to terms with his loss as a child.

  Now Miisi hoisted himself up the staircase, wondering why his hip had not bothered him when he had run upstairs to see the bees earlier. He arrived at the top landing and walked along the corridor until he came to the door opening to the balcony. He stood and listened: the bees’ hum was low as if they were falling asleep. He opened the door and stepped onto the balcony. In the narrow aperture between the floor and the door, he could see some bees. They seemed lethargic.

  Miisi slumped into a basket-chair tucked into a corner. Below him, his two-acre compound rolled down to a sudden drop at the main road. Dusk was gathering under the trees. Just then, a file of children appeared from the patch of flat ground, east of the compound, where boys played football. Each child carried a jerrican of water on his or her head. The older girls, teenagers, led the way carrying a twenty-liter jerrican each while the younger ones took the rear. Now they were so close below that looking down at them he could only see the jerricans lying horizontally, moving. One by one, the children disappeared into the lower house. He could hear them booking who was using the bathroom first, whose turn it was to wash the dishes and who should light the lamps.

  He had made the right decision to bring all his grandchildren under one roof, Miisi reassured himself. Now all his grandchildren would grow up as a family. None would ever feel isolated. He might have failed to bring up his own children but if he was careful with his health, this generation would be all right. Every time a son or daughter of his was brought home to be buried, Miisi would ask for the children to be left with him. When he was lucky and found out that a daughter or son was ailing, he visited to talk. It was good for the children to be with their parents but it was not good for children to watch their parents melt away before dying. With this death, even if the spouse were still alive, it was best for them not to worry about the children while they struggled with their affliction.

  Just then a stampede came up the stairs. Kidda, his eldest grandson, arrived first. He stopped dead at the door when he saw his grandfather, but the others coming behind him bumped into him, pushing him further onto the balcony. Kidda tried to stem the flow of his cousins and to sound responsible by cautioning, “Stop running in the house,” as if he himself had not run in, but the others clambered past him to see the bees.

  “Jjaja Nnamuli says that bees have come to visit,” Kidda stated. Now everyone crowded the balcony, curious.

  Miisi laughed. “Bees coming to visit indeed! Well they made themselves comfortable in that room,” he pointed.

  Now even the teenage girls had arrived and they stared at the aperture. Little ones knelt on the floor and peered. Suddenly, Kidda made as if to open the door and all the children shrieked and he laughed at their fright. This was Kidda’s way of asserting himself as the fearless oldest boy in the house, and Miisi did not tell him off. Instead he listened and watched as each shared their rationale for the bees.

  “I think there was once a beehive in this place and Jjaja, I mean the builders, destroyed it when they built this house but now the bees are back to claim their territory: don’t joke with them!”

  “No,” six-year-old Nnattu shook her head. “They came to commit suicide. Wait for tomorrow, they will all be dead.”

  “Commit suicide? Tsk! But where does Nnattu get these ideas from? As if bees are human!”

  “Wama Jjaja,” Nnattu appealed to her grandfather. “Don’t bees commit suicide?”

  Miisi was caught. He was not about to crash Nnattu’s creativity but at the same time he could not back such an outlandish idea.

  “They are possibly going to die.”

  “See?” Nnattu turned to the others but now even the older girls joined in. They were not allowing her to win.

  “Not everything that dies commits suicide; the bees will die because it is their time.”

  Miisi watched as the children, now having lost interest in the bees, filed out. He was aware that he had ten grandchildren living with him but he would never consciously count them. Sometimes he mentioned their names one by one, talking about their ages, telling about their school progress—Walime is the quiet one, Nnabaale is very caring toward the little ones, Nnakidda speaks above everyone, Baale can sprint, Nnattu, oh, Nnattu, she must win every argument—but that was not counting. If anyone asked how many grandchildren lived in his house he would say, “Oh, how many shall I say? I am rich in blood.” Now he sighed contentedly. While death took his children, it had brought his grandchildren close to him. They kept him young and he was grateful for that.

  After a while, a boy came upstairs to ask whether Miisi would join the family for supper downstairs.

  “I don’t have bones to grind up and down the stairs,” he complained. “Ask Jjajja Nnamuli and some of you to come and eat with me.”

  Jjajja Nnamuli was Miisi’s sister, who had arrived two months earlier and announced, “Is marriage a prison sentence? Maama, I need to take a break too!”

  Miisi suspected that she had no intention of going back to her husband but asking about her return would seem like asking her to leave.

  Presently, Nnamuli arrived carrying the basket of food. She came with five of Miisi’s youngest grandchildren. She was dark and petite where Miisi was light-skinned and tall. Miisi’s wife had once remarked how the two were so unalike. Miisi, who had heard that comment all his life and was fed up with it, had answered that it was not uncommon for siblings not to look alike. Perhaps his sister looked like their father while he looked like their mother.

  As they ate supper, Nnamuli, agitated over sitting too close to the bees, whispered, “Do you not fear . . . the visitors?”

  “Visitors?”

  “The bees?”

  “They are harmless,” Miisi smiled.

  “Still, we should keep a respectful distance. We don’t know what they want.”

  “I doubt they’ll be joining us for supper. Is any food left in the wraps?”

  Nnamuli looked inquiringly at the untouched food on Miisi’s plate.

  “The children need more food,” he explained.

  His sister grunted as she made a show of searching the banana leaves. She found morsels of matooke and gave them to the nearest child. Then she scratched the pan with the ladle for crusts of groundnut sauce that clogged around the rim and tossed it on the same child’s plate. The child attacked the food with the gusto of someone starved. Miisi despaired. He took the food from his plate and distributed it among the children.

  “Stop it, I say stop it now!” His sister looked at the children fiercely. “This is why we don’t eat with you. These children are drains: they don’t realize when they’ve been fed.”

  “I’ve had enough, my stomach has shrunk. Here, Magga, have this.”

  “Why wouldn’t it shrink if it’s starved?”

  Despite Jjaja Nnamuli’s severe look, the boy called Magga stretched his arm toward his grandfather’s generosity. Miisi licked his fingers and sat back satisfied. “At this age food is wasted on me, but these . . .” he waved his hand toward the children, “they need to eat until food packs down their legs.” Seeing his sister’s irritation, Miisi tried to humor her.

  “I bet you’ve already done some
thing about the bees. I mean, the visitors. They’re already passive.”

  “Hmm.” His sister would not be drawn in.

  “Did you pray or give thanks?”

  Unfortunately, a slick of sarcasm floated on Miisi’s voice.

  “That’s the way with the world,” Nnamuli’s own sarcasm was barely veiled. “Some of us are simple and insecure where others are intelligent and sure. Luckily, the world needs all of us equally.”

  After the meal, Nnamuli stood up gathering the food-wraps and went downstairs. Miisi went to bed. As he waited for sleep to take him, his mind cast back to the bees. It was peculiar. The year 2004 was only five days old but so far it had thrown up drama after drama. He wondered what it had in store for the future.

  When midnight launched the New Year five days earlier, Kande had risen up to resounding applause—drums thundering, people screaming, and others ululating. For more than ten minutes, the village was covered in noise. Village youths had converged at the crossroads near Miisi’s house dragging dead Christmas trees decorated with cotton wool and toilet tissue. At midnight, they set the trees ablaze to make a bonfire. At first, Miisi sucked his teeth at their parents’ negligence but then he remembered that to some children having parents was a myth, some homes were run by twelve-year-olds and children grew up like weeds.

  As the uproar died down, Miisi heard youths hurl insults first at the departing year then at the new arrival. Even to him, the New Year was a troll sitting on the horizon surveying the residents. In time, it would sweep into the village to weed out the luckless and the careless. At the end, another year would sit in the same place and survey its crop. The old year, 2003, had whisked off a daughter and a son from him. Out of the twelve children Miisi had had, only Kamu Kintu and Kusi Nnakintu remained.