Abyssinian Chronicles (24 page)

Serenity returned to the boardroom. The meeting was already in progress, but it all washed over him. Nothing could interest or irritate him now.

A millstone of anxiety kept my mood oscillating between jubilation and dejection: I was ecstatic at the realization that I had the wits and the discipline necessary to beat opponents larger and meaner than me; I felt oppressed by the irrational fear that Serenity had found out what I had done and was going to do something really terrible to me.

As I pounded groundnuts in a mortar with a wooden pestle polished to a red sheen by years of use, I tried to place myself in Serenity’s shoes. What would I have done? There was the possibility of fighting fire with fire, say, by leaving women’s underwear in my pockets or taking a woman or refusing to pay bills for some time.

Padlock did not strike me as a woman quick to run away; breeders like her rarely did, which meant that she would try her best to find out what was going on before taking any form of action, and despite my part in the drama, and my hatred for this woman, I did not really want her to go. She, in a crude sort of way, represented stability, provided me with a target for my attacks and chances to hone my wits.

As the eldest child in the family, I knew that my position would
not change much even if Padlock left and another woman took over. I would most likely still do the shit jobs, wash, clean, cook and fetch water. But I would definitely never allow another woman to beat me, or to make me kneel in front of her. Was Padlock leaving? Was she even contemplating the same? Or was it all in my head?

Suspended in ignorance, Padlock was akin to a door on a single hinge. She acted with the restless and brittle charm of a buffalo with bees in his ears. She thought that Serenity had decided to break with habit for once and had gone straight to his friends without first reporting home, but he was not at the gas station.

I played along, enjoying the panicky rusty-hinge squeak of her voice and the seized storm of alarm which raged in her bosom each time I informed her that Serenity had not yet come back from work. Her sense of alarm was easy to fathom: a decent, reliable man staying away or returning home late meant trouble. Either there was a prominent death in his family, with all concomitant financial hemorrhage, or something nasty had occurred, say, an accident or a mistaken-identity arrest. Serenity was one of those men who informed their wives about their plans and movements and would never go off without sending a message home.

As night fell, Padlock’s face took on the sad expression of a tormented, short-tempered rhino. I fought hard to resist the unfortunate tendency to feel sorry for this woman, because at the center of it all, I wanted her to suffer, to wallow and howl like a bitch in hellish heat.

On the second night, Padlock looked vanquished. The alabaster crust of her face had been replaced by the broken-lined, brittle expression of an adolescent reeling under jilted love. She eyed me with the sneaky, quasi-conspiratorial look of somebody gathering courage to share an ugly secret. Pinned and writhing like a cockroach on a nature-study board, she drew on one’s reluctant supplies of pity. Expressions like “volcanic love” and “mellifluous eyes” rang in my ears, amazing me once again with the magic of their success: at school they turned adolescent hearts and earned me pocket money; now they were turning a despotic system on its head and making a despot dance on the hot spikes of her fears. I found myself appraising Padlock to see whether I had exaggerated too much, but she was too immersed in the cauterizing dust storms of her nightmare to be worth appraising. In writing
the letter, I had only had Lusanani and the girl I had intended to give
Treasure Island
to in mind.

The sight of Serenity entering the compound, bag in hand, sent chills down my spine. His face looked tranquil, as if he had no worry in the world. I could not tell whether he had put two and two together or whether he had bought the stuff wholesale. He responded to my greeting neutrally and entered the library of his fantasies. I waited with bated breath. In the meantime, I noticed that Padlock’s two-day-old stoop had suddenly disappeared, venom had returned to her face and there was an angry snap in her gait. I felt I had done the right thing: this woman was not going to change. If anything, my struggles with her had just begun.

It was evident that there was trouble in the air. For once, the connecting door was locked and gagging rags peeped like petticoats from the space underneath. Serenity had given nothing away all evening, content to hide behind
Godot
as we ate. Padlock had shimmered all evening with a barely disguised rage, which had for once made her night-prayer tremolos sound faulty. For the first time in her married life, she dropped Serenity’s plate as she poured soup on it, and she could barely bite back some form of adulterated curse. From behind the papery walls of
Godot,
Serenity did not move a muscle. He was too busy ruminating on the events of the last three days and two nights to mind his wife’s tension.

I left my bed at around one o’clock and placed my ear on the keyhole. I heard only whispers. I slipped out of the house and stood outside the bedroom window. Mosquitoes buzzed cantankerously, moths collided against naked bulbs suicidally, a pack of dogs howled lustfully. I ignored it all, plus the robbers and the ghosts and the soldiers on the prowl. Voices rose and fell, and finally my reward came.

“I stayed away for your sake.”

“For my sake? How could you say that?”

“My first impulse was to come home and kick your head in.”

“What?”

“You have seen the letter. Now stop insulting my intelligence with that innocent-girl stuff.”

“It has nothing to do with me.”

“A boy calling you Miss Singer is nothing! Your stooping to that stupid boy’s level is nothing! And your denying all responsibility is
nothing! Your cheating in my house is nothing, eh? It is all nothing, nothing, nothing.” Serenity’s voice had thinned dangerously, like an icicle.

Realizing how fragile the ice she was skating on had become, Padlock tailored her despotic immunities and said, rather plaintively, “Why can’t you believe me?”

“I can walk away, you know that. You are not the only woman in the world.” He stopped there, unwilling to reveal the juicy bounty of his escapade. Padlock’s aunt had given him the blissful attentions of an experienced mistress in her fastidiously scrubbed little house. The relief of not having to explain himself, because she had always known that he would turn to her! Serenity could almost hear himself thanking Nakibuka’s former husband for beating her, thereby opening her eyes to gentler forms of love, his specialty.

Serenity and Nakibuka’s impromptu conversation had taken its own course, meandering and coming back on course to concentrate on them. It was untainted with hurried confessions or forced intimacies. The letter had nestled itself very late in the web like a casual thread, till it was drenched with the saliva of laughter, the pangs of anger and sadness severed by mutual understanding. Mythical mellifluous eyes and felicitous neck and volcanic love were transferred from half-red, halfblack print to the winsome character of the bridal aunt. By the time the volcanic crater of holy juices was explored, both parties were giddy with passion.

“Somebody wants to destroy me,” Padlock said, interrupting Serenity’s sweet lapse of concentration.

“Have you created that many bitter enemies? Or is it Mbaziira the Great’s girlfriend driving an old rival off her patch?”

“I don’t appreciate such crude language.”

“Well, what is so refined about an old woman pining for young blood?”

There came noise of a scuffle and long, sulky squeaks from overburdened bedsprings.

“What are you doing?” Serenity said with alarm. “Give me back that letter now. Don’t eat the evidence. Are you mad?”

Padlock was lucky that Serenity abhorred violence; otherwise she would have suffered a broken jaw. Serenity swallowed his anger and concentrated his thoughts on Nakibuka. His crucifixion on the joyless
cross of a monogamous relationship was over; his thirst was not going to be mocked any longer by the sponge of his wife’s vinegary sex. Given a choice between fecundity and beauty, his wife had opted for the former, her aunt for the latter. Two children later, Nakibuka’s body was still taut, supple and undeformed. He now desired her more than ever. He dreamed about her and wanted to be with her. She was the best thing that had happened to him in a very long time.

As mosquitoes terrorized my silent vigil, making me think of retiring, Padlock’s voice pierced the night: “Where did you spend the last three days?”

Silence.

“Tell me where you spent the past days.”

Silence.

“I want to know where you were.”

The passionate whinings of mating dogs drooling with the lust of a nocturnal orgy drew nearer. The rustling of dogs’ feet, accompanied by sharp panting and heavy sighing, passed two houses away. Somewhere in the darkness were about twenty dogs at the mercy of their hormones, watching or mating or drooling. These were dangerous dogs. A few days ago, an orgy of frustrated canine lust had resulted in the mauling of a drunken man, too heavy-legged to flee, who had run into the pack. I didn’t wait for more warning. I entered the house. As I tried to sleep, many long minutes later, shots rang out. The orgy whined dementedly, almost climactically, and then fell silent.

Padlock, I had to admit, was possessed of an intuitive intelligence, but she lacked style. A few days later, she called me to her Command Post and, without looking at me, asked if I happened to know somebody with a typewriter. Apparently, a friend of hers wanted some important documents typed out for her. Expressing fake surprise at being involved in such high-caliber matters, I replied that I knew nobody rich enough to own a typewriter. I hinted that Serenity had access to a typist and a typewriter too. Defeated, she was grabbing at straws to thatch her embarrassment when a customer called. I vamoosed.

Days later, I noticed that somebody had developed the sneaky habit of going through my geometry set and exercise books, and my clothes too. At the same time, I noticed that Loverboy had not appeared in the compound for some time now.

A fortnight later, I discovered that the searches had been extended to my bedding: the mattress was out of place, and had been left like that on a number of occasions. I developed the little habit of pasting old glue and chewing gum residue on my geometry set, on my bed and in the corners of my suitcase.

There are two pits despots naturally fall into: stereotyping and scape-goating. Padlock was no exception. She dropped hints that she knew who the criminal was, which was another way of saying that I was responsible.

Now, if there was something I was raised to despise, it was stealing, especially from parents and relatives, but Padlock did not know this, and she continued suspecting and holding me responsible. Of course, I had stolen
Treasure Island,
but not for money. The interesting thing was that more and more books went missing, and the more it occurred, the more my property was searched. Many shitters complained, constantly, that their pens, pencils and exercise books had gone missing. The truth was that some shitters lost these things at school, as did many other kids, but because of the stiff punishment that accompanied declarations of such careless losses of property, they took the shortcut and made use of the scapegoat.

Brought up on blood sacrifices, I decided to sacrifice myself in a bid to thank the gods who had saved my skin by keeping my name out of the Miss Singer scandal, at least as far as Serenity was concerned. At the back of my mind, I had the feeling that Serenity suspected me but had decided to ignore me because I had accorded him the opportunity to pursue the object of his desire. In sacrificing myself, I also wanted to thank Padlock’s gods for their role in my victory. At the bottom of all this, I wanted to reclaim my former constituency, the shitters, who still saw me as a cross between a criminal and an outcast of sorts. I wanted to become their hero and weaken Padlock’s hold on them.

Ergo, on two occasions I implicated myself in the improbable pilfering of two pens. Glad that the criminal had been revealed by the working of God’s grace, Padlock gave me twenty guava-switch strokes on each occasion. Every stroke was invested with all the past angers, past frustrations and past suspicions, and if I had not been toughened by my mission, I would have incurred serious damage, but on both occasions I acted tough as nails. I did not cry out; neither did
I shed a tear. She swung at sensitive parts, and to divert my mind from the pain, I concentrated on my heroic role, and the tears remained safely in their ducts. I saw the eyes of the shitters widen with admiration, and my face turned cold as stone, veneered with a hero’s insouciant arrogance. I was their hero. It felt good. I was back on top. Convinced by now that I would not shed a tear even if she removed my eye, Padlock let me go. I swaggered like a cop after flooring a troublesome criminal. I swaggered like Amin after winning with a huge knockout in a boxing ring. Padlock could not stomach it. She called me back and cut me thrice with the switch on my right calf. It just made me swagger more. She finally gave up.

Furnished with a heroic criminal, the thief did a better job. I started enjoying the game and my part in it. Padlock’s wallet was raided a number of times. The thief’s sense of timing became spectacular. When Padlock left obvious baits, he humiliated her by ignoring them. He wanted to hunt his prey and work for his booty. He surely knew that only gods expected and accepted sacrifices. When Padlock hid under the bed in a bid to nab him, he never showed up. The house swelled with the pungent arrogance of a clever raider and the bad blood of his frustrated tracker. As if to provoke his tracker even more, the thief extended his finger to “tooth money,” sometimes called “rat money.”

When one uprooted a milk tooth, after many threats and gruff shakings by Padlock’s rough fingers, one deposited the bloodied thing behind the cupboard for the “rat” to find and replace with hard cash. It was that money that the thief started targeting. Padlock was especially annoyed because she had, on two occasions, used silk thread and yanked teeth with such force that the bleeding was so heavy, everyone feared she had cut into the gum. With blood guilt on her mind, she went berserk when she discovered that the rat money had been stolen. In respect for tradition, she had to replace the stolen money on both occasions. In addition to that, she observed that both “robberies” were committed while I was away. So somebody had surely been insulting her intelligence! Ergo, the property of the shitters got raided.