Abyssinian Chronicles (31 page)

Bullies armed with sticks lined up in front of and behind us, and their leader issued our orders: we had to do pushups, situps and then frog-kicks. We were reminded that we were completely in the hands of these boys, and that the more cooperative we were, the better for us it would be. I kept my head down, determined to survey the lay of the land before deciding how best to go about striking back. The weak and the slow, tormented by cramp and semi-paralysis, got kicked and cracked on the head. The drills went on for a long time because we were generally slow, unused to such rigors. The bullies exercised sadistic patience, making sure that everyone got there with time.

Finally, with leaves and dirt on our clothes and in our hair, we were lined up and ordered to open our flies. “Play the fiddle, Bushmen. The fiddle, you nincompoops. As soon as you ejaculate, you retire to bed.” How on earth could one get even a mild erection? The penises looked like shriveled worms, sprouting mushrooms or coiled centipedes.

Two Bushmen left early that morning, one saying that he had come to become a priest, not a criminal, but the priests didn’t seem too impressed. After all, many were called but few were chosen, and he who loved himself more than God was not worthy of the call. Didn’t the chaff, in the end, separate itself from the grain? Didn’t the dead bury themselves? Ships which broke up after the first storm weren’t fit for the voyage, we learned.

On the fourth night, just as the extravaganza hit its peak, someone pulled my left arm, dislocating it. I screamed. The boys panicked and fled. The infirmarian was eventually called, and I got the necessary attention.
I was haunted by the fear that this time my hand was going to remain paralyzed and would wilt and become totally useless. I moved my things to the infirmary. I exaggerated my affliction and enjoyed temporary immunity. This was my salvation from the horrors of Sing-Sing. Ensconced in the stark pale blue walls of the infirmary, overlooking the woods, I was safe. Nobody ordered me around. Nobody teased me or forced me to do anything for his pleasure. I slept as much as I wanted. I dodged mass and any other activity I did not like. For the first time since my arrival, I had time to think.

I wasn’t very interested in finding out exactly who had pulled my arm. Given the circumstances, it could have been anybody. After all, boys were doing what the staff let them get away with. What could I do about it? How could I lay my hands on the staff? For the time being, all I had to do was survive and wait for a chance to act.

I was already thinking about getting myself a bodyguard, someone like Dummy A or Cane. I had noticed a shabby, loud bruiser called Lwendo. He went after the newcomers with a vengeance, beating them, calling them names, confiscating their things, forcing them to carry his bathwater to the bathrooms, eating their food and making them wash his clothes on the weekend. My uneducated guess was that he was screaming for attention, somebody to make him feel big. I decided to give it to him in exchange for protection.

I went to him one afternoon and volunteered to do for him all the things he found too demeaning for a second-year student. I promised to sweep under his bed, to clean his shoes, to wash and iron his clothes and to fetch him water during the drought.

“Bushman, you are out of your mind,” he said, laughing derisively. “You are a cripple. You can hardly wipe your own bottom, and yet you are volunteering to work for me? How will you do that?”

“This arm is going to heal sooner than you expect. I can already move my fingers. In a fortnight I will be at your service.”

“Go and work for Jesus in exchange for a miracle cure,” he said, laughing smugly.

“I am serious.” Silence descended on us. The first bell had rung for class; within five minutes the second one would ring, and everybody had to be in class by then. Black-trousered, white-shirted shadows wheeled past us with a crunching of shoes.

“I’ve got it,” he said, flaring up. “You are a spy, Bushman. Who sent you to keep an eye on me? The rector or one of those bloody priests? Do you think I am stupid? Get out of my way, Bushman.”

“I am not a spy. I would never even think of it. I swear by my broken arm.”

“All right, Bushman. I accept your offer, but I am warning you. If you fool with me, I will throw live coals on you one good Saturday afternoon, you understand? Now, what do you want from me?”

“I want your mates to leave me alone. One of them dislocated my arm, and he hasn’t even got the decency to come and apologize. I don’t expect him to. But I don’t want any of them in my way.”

“I will see what I can do, Bushman,” he said, smiling victoriously. Behind his back, in the middle of which a trail of sweat showed, I said, “One day you will stop calling me Bushman.”

As soon as Lwendo agreed to swat my flies, I started planning my liberation. I wasn’t going to be his lackey for a whole year. Blackmail was in my blood; it was just a matter of time before it ensnared him. Above all, I didn’t like him, and I didn’t value his company. He was too loud, too shabby and too tactless for my taste. My plan was to use him, abuse him and then drop him in the gutter where he belonged.

I despised manual labor. My stint with the despots had cast my attitude in stone. My next maneuver was to get myself a white-collar job, say, in the library, sacristy, infirmary or laboratory. I needed to find some priest to impress with so much false enthusiasm that he would recommend me.

The priest in charge of the sacristy was too much of an actor to be ensnared by the wiles of an amateur. He did not encourage familiarity either. His big, small-eyed face had an eternal frown on it, and his long frame made him seem as if he were always looking for something on the ground or in the air. Stolen altar wine and steel balls, boys said. He was an incurable grouch who believed that we were having a very easy life. He often said that the seminaries of today were watered-down versions of the old ones, in the days when priests were men. I, like many other boys, detested his sourpuss attitude and kept out of his way. The common joke was that he had pissed all the steel out of his balls because it could not stand the temperature of his displeasure.

My most realistic prospect was Fr. Kaanders, a retired Dutch missionary, who was in charge of the library. The library was not a popular place: most boys would not be caught dead reading a book which was not compulsory. I felt that if I turned on my charm, the old man would eventually be trapped in my designs.

I attacked the library with a vengeance. I was always the first person to arrive and the last to leave. When I entered, I would walk very slowly along the bookshelves, stopping now and then to pick up a volume. I would wipe it quickly, almost absentmindedly, open the pages and pretend to be absorbed. I would look at a picture page, think private thoughts or simply kill time, and hope that Kaanders was watching. When I felt that it was time to replace the volume, I would close the book, carefully part the other volumes and put it back. I would then move to another shelf and do the same thing all over again. After making the rounds of the shelves, I would remove two or three volumes, place them on a desk and read a favorite book. In the meantime, I pretended to consult the bigger volumes.

At other times I came with a notebook and read while pretending to stop and make notes or copy diagrams. I gave every impression that I was squeezing the maximum amount of knowledge from every volume I touched. Whenever I wanted to flee bullies, to think or to nap, I would go to the library. When the bell for class rang, I pretended not to have heard it. I stayed on till Fr. Kaanders came over, tapped me on the shoulder, then tapped on the face of his watch, at which I would start as though I had seen a ghost. I would smile at him, excuse myself, hurry to put the volumes noisily back, collect my things and rush out of the building.

In order to win the library vote, I knew that I needed more support. I targeted the literature teacher. Literature was still not more than an elevated sort of English grammar and composition lesson to many. I myself knew nothing particular about literature, and for a long time I could not even define the word. I looked it up, memorized the definition and lost it again. I knew for sure that hypocrisy would not win the day here. This man was the soberest priest I had ever met. He was also the most educated we had: a priest with a degree from a secular university was still a rarity in those days. This man was viewed with suspicion by some of his colleagues. Why would a university graduate join the priesthood instead of getting himself a good job in the city?
they wondered. This lean, ascetic man had the uncanny ability to look right through you, making you feel that he knew everything about you and that lying to him was useless. It was for this reason that few boys chose him as their confessor or spiritual director. Boys disliked priests they could not effectively fool.

Since I knew that I could not fool him, I decided to take genuine interest in his subject. I asked questions and tried to make him break down this literature mystery for us. I read the books he gave us, and tried to really understand what they were about. Deep analysis was not my forte, but I did my level best and used my Longman dictionary a lot. Somebody nicknamed me Longman Dick, because he claimed that I handled that book more often than I did my penis.

In a subject treated with suspicion, my good marks started to make me stand out. However, I did not try to catch the teacher’s eye. I wanted him to notice me, to court me, to make the first move. I often finished my assignments ahead of time, but I did not hand them over, waiting for the day when they were collected. The strategy bore fruit. Although I was thrilled, I tried to remain indifferent.

Two months into my library campaign, Kaanders came over to my desk one afternoon and said, “You love books, boy. Oh boy, boy.”

“At home we have a library with very many volumes. The only toys one gets at home are books.”

“Books are unpopular here, boy, boy,” he said, surveying the shelves in their cold, straight lines. “Do you want to come and help here, boy, boy?”

“Yes, Father,” I replied, trying not to show too much excitement.

“Good, boy, boy. That will be so good, boy.”

This was the most irritating characteristic of his fading years. He called everybody “boy.” The priests in particular resented it. He would be talking to the rector and would say, “Boy … I was saying, boy.” He would go to the bursar’s office and say, “When will the books we ordered arrive, boy?” At table he would lean over to the priest in charge of the sacristy and say, “Boy, I didn’t find any wine in the side chapel where I say my private mass, boy.” Or, “Would you pass me the salt, boy?” The younger priests with egos as large as houses never got used to being called “boy.” Each time the word came, especially when there were boys around, they looked as if they wanted to cuff the old man. The innocuous look in Kaanders’ time-harassed face would both confuse
and annoy them. It was not a word intended to injure, let alone annoy anyone, but why was the man so obsessed with it? One young priest attempted to correct him and bring it to his attention that he was not a boy, but the very next sentence the old man said began with the word. Everyone laughed, and the priest gave up, and boys called him Boy until he was transferred. There were a few nuns living in a small convent attached to the kitchen and the food store. Kaanders, to everyone’s amusement or despair, also called the nuns “boy” all the time.

Kaanders’ battered body bore the scars of his long battle with the polygamists of Jinja Diocese. In the midst of his running battles with paganism, polygamy and ignorance on the marshy, tsetse-fly-laden eastern shores of Lake Victoria, he had contracted the sleeping sickness. The disease and the nervous breakdown that followed had both been treated and pronounced cured, but in his dotage the tsetse fly struck back, reminding him of its residual juice in his blood. Nowadays he dozed off in mass, in class, on the toilet seat, in the library, anywhere. He could be teaching us French, and out the lights would go. We would watch him with boyish glee, his head tipped precariously forward, loose mouth open with a string of saliva in one corner, arms on his thighs, sleeping. He would wake up as suddenly as he had knocked off, and would say, “Boy, oh boy, boy, that fly … Where were we?”

During mass, especially in the course of a very long Sunday sermon, he would float off to dreamland on the wings of the fly. The sermon would end, everyone would rise and he would stay seated, chin dug into his chest, a puddle of saliva on his seat. Somebody would finally nudge him, and his lips would begin to work. Kaanders was very bad at remembering names, except those of great writers. He hardly knew the names of his fellow staff members; however, he clearly remembered the name of the boy who cleaned his office.

Amnesia made Kaanders the most popular priest with students, and most especially with truants and other chronic rule breakers. Whenever he caught somebody doing wrong, he would ask the name, which he faithfully wrote down and presented to the rector, saying, “Boy, this boy was breaking rules, oh boy, boy.” The rector would make a show of seriousness while suppressing laughter, for none of the names were known to him. Sometimes he was presented with names of army officers, famous singers or other characters the boys had come
up with at the time of their apprehension. Whenever he was in the mood after a Kaanders visit, he would mimic the old man: “Oh boy, boy, I found Captain Jona, Father Adriga and Sister Pants behind the fences … Oh boy, boy, what bad things they were doing there, boy!” He would laugh, hammer his desk with his fists and tap his feet on the floor as he rocked.

On his bad days, Kaanders would totter under a hood of amnesia so strong that he would forget that he had already had his breakfast. He would return to the dining room and ask any priest he found there, “Who has used my cup, boy? Oh boy, boy, nobody has any respect anymore, boy. My cup! I have used it for the last twenty years, and somebody has used it and forgotten to wash it and replace it. Boy, oh boy!” Most priests would just look at him, shrug resignedly and let him simmer in his own quaint soups. He would pace the room back and forth, coming very close to the wall on one side and the fridge on the other, before stopping and saying, “Boy, somebody ate my cheese, too! Oh, boy!”