Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  A voice shouted, “Stay down.”

  That voice was in a dream.

  “Omwana.”

  “The child is fine. Stay down.”

  “Omwana.”

  “He was luckier than you. The car threw him right through the windscreen into the swamp.”

  “Omwana.”

  “Owange,” the voice called. “Bring the child here. His father will not stay still on the ground until he sees him.”

  “That is shock speaking,” the other voice said.

  “Omwana,” Isaac said again.

  Kizza’s head came into view. His hair shimmered in the sun. Isaac looked again: Kizza’s head was covered in little grains of sparkling glass. He wanted to rebuke him for playing with glass. There were small grazes on his forehead. His knees were covered in mud. Isaac tried to sit up, to ask Kizza why he was so dirty. Kizza cried half-heartedly. Isaac held Kizza’s hand as he lay back. He thought, I have spoiled this boy! He is crying for nothing, but he held onto Kizza’s hand tight because he wanted to sleep and he had to hold his son’s hand. He closed his eyes but the voices around him would not let him rest. He opened his eyes and looked around. There was shock on people’s faces when they looked at him. He felt incredibly heavy. Then it felt cold on his right temple as if cold air was blowing just on that spot. He raised his hand to feel it. It was wet. He looked at his hand and saw blood. That was when he got frightened that he was going to die. He now felt that his head had been tied. He lifted his hand and touched a cloth. He gave up because his hand was heavy; he lay down.

  “Yii the rich are not human bannange: none of the cars will stop to take them to hospital!”

  “Kitalo kino! A person will die on the roadside because rich people won’t help.”

  “You can’t blame them. You take them to hospital, police stop you to ask questions, or want money to let you go because you might have caused the accident.”

  The view of the world lying on the ground was funny. People above him looked like ghosts. Voices floated above him. Cars ground the road heavily. Bicycles crunched the gravel on the sidewalks. People’s feet pata pata-ed the ground ineffectively as if they were cats. The sun was too bright. Now noise, further away, of men shouting as if they were heaving something heavy, came. “Push, put it in reverse, nyola zenno.” And then the distinct revving of his truck. Isaac came alive.

  He lifted his head but the ground was a magnet. It pulled the flesh on his left temple off his face. He held his face in place so it did not pour off as he sat up. His face settled back in place once he was upright. He was dizzy and stiff but now he knew what was happening. He held Kizza in one hand. Someone stupid was still saying stay down. He looked for the revving noise but could only see the back of his truck. The truck’s nose was down in a ditch below the road. Someone must be in the driver’s seat, men must be standing in front of the truck trying to push it back into the road, but the mud made the tires, which hardly touched the ground, spin, spraying mud. The truck revved on. The men shouted. I must tell them to leave it alone, Isaac thought.

  Just then, someone excited arrived. “Bring them, bring them, fast. This kind gentleman has agreed to take them to hospital.”

  Isaac was helped up. Now his whole body felt as if it had been padded with weight while he lay down. They were not listening to him about the car. Someone could steal his car. He checked his pockets. His wallet was gone. So was his phone.

  “I can’t find my wallet; I need to call Mother. The car. I need my mother.”

  But the man thrust him toward the car and spoke over him to the driver. “Go quickly, he is getting weaker.”

  It was such a big effort to speak and he was lucky someone was taking him to hospital and Kizza was next to him and Kizza must get in the car first and then he got in. One of the men—he identified himself as a Local Councillor—also got in the car. Isaac gave the local councillor his mother’s number, the digits were distinct in his mind as he said them. The man was shouting into the phone.

  “Mukadde, don’t cry, your son and the boy they are fine. I am here with them. I am taking them to hospital my very self. We are heading for Mpigi Hospital Casualty. Maama don’t cry. Crying for the living is taboo.”

  The LC turned to Isaac and said, “Don’t sleep. Your mother is hysterical. Say something to her,” and he held the phone close to Isaac’s ear.

  “Maama,” Isaac said. “Come, please.”

  As they were about to drive away a man came with an envelope and the car logbook. He threw them on Isaac’s lap through the window and said, “These were in the glove compartment. Take them with you.”

  Isaac looked down and saw the results envelope.

  “What about the bags?” he looked up at the man.

  “Bags? Eh, eh forget those! Let’s focus on saving your life.”

  As they drove away the LC shook his head and said, “Those are our people. They come to help and to help themselves.”

  When Isaac opened his eyes, his mother stood above him fussing over the bedding. The room was crowded with his half-siblings looking disconsolate. He tried to sit up but every inch of him hurt. He fell asleep again.

  The next time Isaac woke up he felt lighter and rested. His mother smiled, got off the chair, ran out and called, “Musawo, my patient has woken up,” and she ran back beaming.

  “The doctor is coming. He told me to call him when you wake up,” she explained as she came to the bedside. “But now how do you feel yourself, inside?”

  “I am fine, just weak.” He raised his hand to touch his forehead. Now his whole face hurt.

  “You banged your head badly.”

  The doctor walked in and shook Isaac’s hand. She smiled and said, “How do you feel, Mr. Kintu?”

  “Just the wound on the head. Everything else is fine.”

  “Good, good. That is very good. We can give the head some tablets to calm the pain down as we wait for the swelling to go down. We need to x-ray everything to make sure that nothing else is wrong. But before we give you any other medicine; do you have any other complications?”

  “Nothing,” Isaac said. Then he remembered. “Oh, I have HIV.”

  “OK,” the doctor wrote on the clipboard. “When were you diagnosed?”

  Isaac sighed and moved his hands in helpless gesture. He knew that he was going to sound foolish.

  “I went for the blood test but I have not—” anticipating that the doctor was going to ask: How do you know then? Isaac added quickly, “In fact the envelope with the results, it must be somewhere, I had it.”

  He turned and saw it in the locker next to the bed. He passed it to the doctor without opening it.

  The doctor looked at the envelope and then at him.

  Isaac smiled sheepishly. “I could not bring myself to open it but you want to know so go ahead.”

  The doctor unsealed the envelope wordlessly. Isaac studied her face. A strip of paper, yellow, slipped out first. The doctor looked at it. Her face was emotionless. She looked inside the envelope and retrieved two folded A4 sheets. She unfolded them and read with an impassive face. Isaac’s heart pumped like it was flooding. He felt blood in his mouth, nose, and ears. The doctor passed him the yellow strips first. The word negative caught his eyes. It was written three times in bold and in capital letters. The doctor passed him the A4 papers and looked at him with a smile. Isaac opened the large sheets but could not focus.

  “Maama,” he called Nnamata who had stepped outside during the consultation.

  She came in and he passed the sheets and the strips to her without a word because he was blinded by tears. Nnamata fidgeted with the slips and papers expecting the worst until the doctor put her out of her misery.

  “Your son is in the clear.”

  And Nnamata scowled at the sheets and then made to hug Isaac but there was nowhere to hold because he was all swollen. She embraced the doctor, rocked and thanked her over and over because she needed someone to hold on to and vent her emotions. The doctor
extricated herself from Nnamata and said, “I will come back when you are composed.”

  She opened the screen and closed it and Isaac and his mother cried.

  Isaac was kept in Mpigi Hospital for five days. He arrived in Kampala via Mmengo. His friend, Kaaya, was driving. It was already dark. At the tipping point, where Namirembe Hill drops into a sharp decline, Isaac asked Kaaya to stop the car. He had never seen the city look so beautiful. He stepped out and crossed the road. He thrust his arms in the pockets of his jacket and stared across the valley. There was no load-shedding, when electricity was rationed, and the whole city was a garden of stars. Kampala’s hills rose and fell before him. Even at this time of the night, a sense of expectation hung over the hills. Kampala was going somewhere and he, Isaac, was going along with it. He could stay here and watch the city all night because he had forever. He thought of Kintu and tears came to his eyes. He did not believe that Kintu had made the results negative but Isaac was sure that his ancestor had swerved the truck to save him.

  He remembered the moment when he rang Kaaya to tell him the good news. Kaaya had not been surprised.

  “Why do you think I was pushing you to have the tests? From the sound of the symptoms you described, I suspected that Nnayiga had died of Lupus but I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

  “Lupus, is that a new disease too?”

  “No,” Kaaya laughed.

  “Is it contagious?”

  “No, it runs in families.”

  “What? So Kizza might have it!”

  “Oh, Isaac! Why don’t you take a breath, recover from the accident and from the HIV anxiety, and then take on Lupus later?”

  “But—”

  “Nine out of ten sufferers are women. Lupus is triggered later in life. Children don’t suffer from it.”

  Now Isaac turned away from the city and walked back to the car. Kaaya smiled with understanding.

  “You know, Kaaya, right now you would give me the most beautiful woman in the world and pay me millions and give me an aeroplane on top but I would not stick it into her without a condom.”

  Kaaya laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

  “I mean it, Kaaya. I’ve been snatched out of a crocodile’s mouth. From now on, it is me and my son. Sex is not worth it.”

  15.

  Wednesday, April 28, 2004

  Suubi’s fingers were puffed and stiff at the joints but they did not hurt anymore. The right wrist still had a niggling pain though.

  She lay on the floor with her head propped on Opolot’s lap. As she had been doing in the last two weeks when Opolot came around, Bweeza had discreetly gone out to check on another cousin, Kalema, who lived in Bukesa. Suubi suspected that Bweeza was one of those bored old women who go around the clan looking for someone to mother. Looking back, Suubi could not believe that in such a short time she had become attached to the old woman. Their initial encounter, foggy moments when she had wandered in and out of consciousness, had been the hardest. Every time Suubi woke up, the same face had come to her whispering, “Nnakato.” In the haze, Bweeza had looked like a stern witch ministering an evil taboo on her. But then Suubi saw the hospital drip from the corner of her eye and a man bending over her. The man wore a stethoscope around his neck. The drip and stethoscope, instruments of civilization, had reassured her and she fell asleep again. Later, when she was fully awake, the man had introduced himself as Dr. Kityo Kintu, an elder. He had checked her pulse and blood pressure and given her some tablets. When she saw her arms bandaged and tied to pieces of wood, she had looked at Bweeza enquiringly. Bweeza, misunderstanding Suubi’s surprise, had explained that Babirye had almost killed her.

  “I knew she would one day,” Suubi said resignedly but she could not remember anything.

  “Babirye only wants you to use your twin name. She’s not a bad spirit.”

  Bweeza had explained that because Suubi had bound Babirye into a stick, which was never burned, Babirye would always be with her.

  “Your twin was furious that you tried to destroy her.”

  Suubi closed her eyes as she remembered the stick. Tears streamed down her face and Bweeza sat down on the bed and held her like a child. Suubi gave in and she wept silently. Bweeza rocked her saying, “Shhh, it is all over now. Babirye loves you. She just wanted to be with you.”

  Unfortunately, Babirye was still bound in the stick. Suubi would have to carry it with her always. “Babirye will be savage if I lose it.”

  “No child, you will not lose it at all. Muganda is going to make the stick easy to carry. Wait and see.”

  Now Suubi looked at the necklaces, bracelets, and a pair of dangling earrings lying on the table. They looked like jewelry out of a tourist shop. They were made out of tiny round pieces, carved out of the stick. Muganda had colored them in black and white, making them look like beads. Suubi was happy about that; they looked like a matching set of traditional bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. Bweeza had told her that if she wished, Muganda could release Babirye from the stick but it would need an elaborate and expensive ritual. But Suubi could not bear the thought of going near anything like that again. Now that Opolot knew everything about her and Babirye, she had chosen to keep the bracelets and necklaces.

  “Here,” Opolot took a necklace and slipped it over her head. Suubi slid the earrings through the holes in her ears. “Aha,” Opolot said appraising her. “You look Karamajong already.”

  “Karamajong is the closest I have got to being Atesot,” Suubi beamed at the compliment. “But who wears their twin around their neck?”

  “So, do I call you Nnakato now?” Opolot asked.

  “I am still Suubi.”

  “You might have twins . . . that would be nice.”

  “Oh no, I am—”

  “Don’t worry, we would give them Atesot names for twins—Opio for the eldest boy and Apio for the girl, Ocen for the younger boy and Acen for the girl.”

  “Call me Acen then. It still means Nnakato.”

  “OK, Acen.” Opolot lifted Suubi’s hands and looked at them. “It must’ve been an awkward fall to break four fingers and both wrists!”

  “Babirye was punishing me,” Suubi said truthfully.

  She had not told Opolot about the transpossession—when it came to witchcraft, Suubi thought, there was a limit to what a woman should divulge to a man she hopes to marry. She looked at the bracelets. It was hard to see her twin in them. The Ssanyu Babirye she saw in her anxiety was emaciated and wretched. Yet Aunt Kizza had told her that Babirye had been a plump and happy baby. Suubi felt guilty that a plump baby had turned into a scrawny spirit.

  “Her name was Ssanyu.”

  “Who?”

  “My twin. She was named Ssanyu, which means ‘happy.’ I was named Suubi which means ‘hope’ because I was so scrawny at birth that they could only hope that I would live.”

  16.

  Friday, April 30, 2004

  When Kusi, her mother, and aunt arrive at Kiyiika, Miisi’s mind is at home. Two days earlier, when the Elders Kitooke and Kityo arrived at Kande with the news that Miisi had been found at Kiyiika, Kityo had prepared them for the worst. “Sometimes his mind is there but most times it’s not.”

  The family had mulled over the information silently. Then Nnamuli had asked, “How is he fed?”

  “A cousin turned up saying that he had been instructed by the spirits to come and take care of the custodian—Miisi is believed to be the custodian. Apparently, the ancients have hauled him back to take his rightful position.”

  Kityo had paused as if expecting Miisi’s family to marvel at the power of the ancients and how they had hauled Miisi, in spite of his education, back to Kiyiika. The family stared their dismay. Kityo continued, “Those who know the legend well claim that Miisi, in his disturbed state, is the very image of our Kintu when he lived in o Lwera. We’re trying to make the shrine as comfortable as possible. Cousins are still coming for ablution. They leave money. There is food. But M
iisi prefers raw food anyway. He sleeps outside among the trees.”

  For Miisi’s family the idea that he was chosen by the ancients lost its novelty at that moment. His being forced back to Kiyiika—because Miisi would not have gone willingly—was cruel and selfish. Loss of mind was death. Miisi had always claimed that to have a mind was to be alive.

  Now as they drive up the hill, Miisi sees them and hurries toward the car. The way he moves suggests that his mind is in sync with his body. He is relaxed, as if he is at his house in Kande. It is clear that he does not realize anything is amiss. There is a benign smile on his face. It is only three weeks since he disappeared but his hair is thick and gray. It is matted with dirt, rain, and dust. His beard and moustache, entirely gray, shroud his mouth. His kanzu is filthy. On top of it, he wears a red waistcoat and a purple coat.

  “Where did the coat and waistcoat come from?” Kusi whispers, but before anyone answers, Miisi stands before her. He bends and places both his hands on the driver’s window. His smile is wider and his eyes are shining. He stinks of smoke. Kusi opens the car door and Miisi steps back. She gets out of the car and hugs him. Miisi asks, “How is my little army?”

  “Asking for you.”

  “Are they in school?”

  “I’ve moved in with them temporarily.”

  “Kusi, you are my heir, kdto.” Miisi clicks his tongue with triumphant defiance. “I am the first Ganda man to elect a daughter for an heir. Put that down in history!”

  Kusi laughs without saying a word. She is not sure whether it is her father speaking or the madness.

  “I had to lose all my sons to realize that my daughter is a better heir than all of them. Now I understand why they died.” Now Miisi raises his voice like a preacher on a pulpit. “My sons had to die so I could see!”

  Again Kusi smiles uneasily.

  “Tell them. If anyone ever changes my will, the entire Kintu wrath will come down on them.”

  “OK. I’ll take the responsibility.” Kusi has realized that the sooner she agrees with her father the sooner he will drop the subject.