Abyssinian Chronicles (32 page)

It was remarkable that Kaanders never forgot or confused French grades. It seemed as if his mind went out of its way to accommodate French. He spotted each and every mistake and underlined it in red ink and penalized it with half a point. He taught us the following seven French adjectives in song form, which became his nickname:
“Bon mauvais méchant / grand petit joli gros.”

It all went well when the boys were in the mood for such little songs. When they were not, especially before lunch, they would deliberately mess up the sequence of words and almost drive him crazy with red-faced, foot-stamping frustration.

Every other afternoon at the library, at opening or closing time, he would ask me my name and spend a minute or so turning it over in his head, stretching every syllable phlegmatically in an attempt to wrestle it down, but there were so many small holes in his sieve-like brain that, come next time, he would ask me again what my name was. He memorized my face, though. That was not too difficult, since every other day, during manual labor time, I went to the library, swept, checked in books returned, made a list of those overdue and set aside those destined for repair.

As other boys toiled in the fields, mowed grass in the compound, scrubbed the refectory floor, hunted cockroaches in the scullery, killed
rats in the food store and did one hundred and one other chores, I nursed the books and ministered to the needs of the library.

At first I was bored. I had achieved my goal. I did not really like books. The dust tended to get on my nerves by irritating my nose and making me sneeze. I dreaded the time when Kaanders repaired worn-out volumes: all the measuring, the cutting, the gluing, all the pressing and the caressing and the breaking of dry, crisp, newly repaired volumes consumed so much time and energy that it drove me crazy. Kaanders’ eyes watered slightly when he surveyed the work of his hands. He had given a new lease on life to a mutilated object. He had given an anonymous treasure hunter a chance to dig into those refurbished volumes. The perverse joy of it made him whistle and stroke the books like lapdogs.

In the meantime, I was busy hatching a scheme to get rid of Lwendo. I wanted to blackmail him and maintain a stranglehold on his dirty neck. I eventually intended to focus my attention on some particularly nasty staff members, whom I was deliberately ignoring for the moment because I wanted to set my house in order first. It was my belief that as long as I was dominated by that shaggy rat Lwendo, I could not be free to do other things.

Long before I was asked to work in the library, Lwendo was in charge of the charcoal store. This made him a very important person, because we all needed his services on Saturday afternoon, when we ironed our clothes for Sunday mass and the whole week. We all flocked to his barn, a small, faded brick-red building with a large rectangular chimney, which had been a kitchen in the days when seminaries were seminaries and priests had balls of steel. Lwendo, the man of the moment, had to fill everyone’s box with live charcoal, but the demand was usually greater than the supply, and both competition and discrimination were high. Second-year students got first priority, those they recommended second. The Bushmen who had no one to vouch for them got the last small half-dead charcoals, often served with more ash than fire.

Whenever he wanted a bit of fun, especially on wet days, when he found it hard to gather enough wood to make enough charcoal for everyone, Lwendo would withdraw after serving the privileged ones and let the Bushmen jostle and nudge and fight over the remaining
half-dead coals. He would stand outside in the trampled grass, spade in hand, sweat dripping down his face, and watch the scrum and laugh till tears trickled from his eyes. “The Bushmen are killing each other over charcoal, ha ha ha haaa, hehehee …,” he would go, joined along the way by a few other second-year students whose ironing needs had already been catered to by newcomers in return for protection. Lwendo was lucky that no one got seriously burned in the scrums, and that the boy who got pushed into the hot ash never put the blame on him.

Lwendo’s job gave him freedom and brought him in contact with the nuns who cooked for the staff and for us. During manual labor he was to be found in the kitchen chatting up a nun or two, pretending to be making plans for his Saturday chores. In between visits to the kitchen, he would gather firewood, old sticks of furniture and anything else he needed, or pretended to need, for lighting the Saturday fire. Lwendo also spent much time with the pigsty gang, boys who looked after the seminary’s pigs and were responsible for slaughtering them on chosen Saturdays for the fathers’ table. Leaders of this group kept back some pork and smuggled it in buckets to Lwendo’s barn, where it was later roasted and devoured. All this was illegal and could lead to one’s immediate suspension or expulsion, but no one was eager to report these crimes.

Rumor reigned supreme here. If one needed the truth, one had only to follow the noses of the gossipers. One such character linked Lwendo to Sr. Bison, a fat little black nun with very round legs, very round arms and a very ample behind on which fantasizers said one could stand the fat Jerusalem Bible without its falling off. This same nun was linked to the Rev. Fr. Mindi, the disciplinary master. I was only interested in the former connection.

I started shadowing Lwendo in the evenings, in the hope of nabbing him while he was eating the forbidden fruit. If not, I wanted to catch him in some very compromising situation. I failed. What I knew was that whenever the food was bad, and it often was, he would go to the kitchen and eat leftovers from the fathers’ table after supper. During the cooking weeks of nuns with whom he did not particularly get along, his visits to the kitchen were less frequent. I had two options: either to link him with stealing pork and roasting it in his barn, which meant enlisting the cooperation of an interested priest, or to catch him fucking Sr. Bison or some other nun.

It took me eight weeks to nail him. I shadowed him every evening during the night study, which began at 9 p.m. One evening he was not in class or in his barn or in the library. He could only be in some father’s office or in the kitchen. I went to the kitchen at 9:30 and found it vacant, the sooty boilers staring dolorously through the grimy windows. I stood outside the kitchen and thought hard. The food store, a long, cold room full of sacks of maize, maize flour and bad beans, was to my right. Normally, its heavy wooden door bore the weight of two large fist-shaped padlocks. I looked. The door was closed but not padlocked. I decided to chance it and go in. This room was out of bounds, except for those with special permission. I did not wait for permission. I was the librarian, after all. I could always say that I was looking for Fr. Kaanders, or that he had sent me to the bursar to see if some books had arrived.

A thick, weevil-impregnated smell befouled the still air, making the long, cold room feel smaller and more forlorn. The pregnant gunnysacks on their stumpy wooden stands reminded me of Grandpa’s sacks of coffee, stuffed and ready for the mill at the top of Mpande Hill. The sacks, like the beds in Sing-Sing, were lined against the wall, creating a wide cement corridor in the middle which looked like a long, dark tunnel into a big hill. I stood and listened, fighting the sudden need to sneeze, afraid to be found here alone in the darkness. It was very quiet. A dead stick fell from the trees near the convent onto the corrugated-iron roof with a long, thin scratching sound. I started as though jabbed in the ribs.

I thought I heard other sounds, this time coming from the back of the tunnel. They were more like squeaking rats. Maybe there were other prowlers in here. I thought I heard a dog sniffing repeatedly. The sound was sharply controlled and entered the body like needles or tongues of fire. Lusanani suddenly came to me, her bosom drenched by a leaking jerry can, her nipples erect under her cotton blouse. She suddenly filled the darkness, although this was certainly not her song. Hers was a more sophisticated rendition, garnished with a staccato chorus and blessed with flowery, praise-laden stanzas. This sound was genuine, clean, urgent and maddening. On tiptoe, the burden in my trousers a sweet hindrance I vaguely thought was donging like a church bell, I advanced toward the sniffer dog.

Lwendo stuffed the nun with powerful, deliberate, loaded thrusts.
A cheeky ray of light from a choked ventilator fell dully on red panties heaped around a work-conditioned ankle. Lust-glazed nunly eyes saw me first, and the gasp that burst in the darkness tore through my groin with the corrosion of sulfuric acid. Lwendo, well aware that the damage had already been done, would not be denied. He pressed to the juddering end with the preening insolence of a stud in a corral. Realizing that it was not a priest but me, his lackey, he laughed, and in his eagerness he tried to shake my hand.

I had bought my freedom and his friendship, on top of helpings set aside from the fathers’ table during the grateful nun’s cooking week. In my excitement I thought of Uncle Kawayida, the magician, the charmer, the storyteller, and of his story of the man with the three sisters. I would have liked to tell him about this coup, and about seminary life in general, but communication between us had faded badly since I left the village. Did he read books? No, he was too busy running his business, raising turkeys and broiler chickens. Had he forgotten about the old days? I didn’t think so.

I was a free man now. I toyed with the idea of going after a bully or two, but the bullying had cooled down. I decided to go after people larger than me, the real bosses of the place. I still found no pleasure in beating people of my level. I relished the challenge of reaching above myself and winning, albeit with more bruises. My attention had already been drawn by Fr. Mindi, the disciplinary master, and now probably solo fucker of efficient Sr. Bison. This man not only caned boys, but also went after them, hiding in bushes and behind buildings, high walls and fences, everywhere, to catch those breaking stupid rules like talking during silence time or eating between meals. He knew all the paths used by truants, and often hid behind the acacias overlooking Sing-Sing in the hope of catching hungry boys who escaped and returned to the seminary with bananas, corn, pancakes, sugarcanes, anything to keep hunger at bay. Some truants had a business instinct: they took orders and delivered foodstuffs at a profit. Fr. Mindi went after these “traders in the temple” with missionary zeal. He called them to their dormitories at odd hours in the hope of finding contraband or money in their boxes.

Officially, all pocket money was kept with him, but many boys hid most of it in places where they could get at it freely, without first
going to Fr. Mindi and explaining why they needed it. Sing-Sing suffered most of Mindi’s money-hunting “police checks,” as they were called.

Die-hard truants and money hoarders fought back. They spread rumors and set him on the trail of the wrong people. With Mindi thus diverted, they made good their escape. He fell into this trap a number of times, till he discovered that boys were laughing at his gullibility. He caught some of the pranksters and punished them harshly. Information about police checks somehow leaked from the fathers’ dining room, and many of his raids were pre-empted, with the result that on days when he planned to surprise the real criminals, he found their lockers and suitcases empty.

The role of disciplinary master hinged on his self-image, and on the perceived image the boys had of him. As far as Fr. Mindi was concerned, both were poor. This only served to make him harsher.

I often wondered why this educated man couldn’t see the ludicrousness of his position. Boys fed on bad
posho
(corn bread) and weevilled beans stayed hungry and had to supplement their deficient diet. Wouldn’t he have done the same? Couldn’t he see that he was enforcing impossible rules? Couldn’t he see that he was the Pharisee who preached total rest on the Sabbath, yet rescued his donkey when it fell in the ditch on that day? It was easy to say that no one should eat between meals when your stomach was full of pork, fish, Irish potatoes, greens and the other goodies priests ate.

I also hated the lack of self-control this preacher of self-control exhibited when he caught his man. If he was indeed enforcing impersonal rules, made in Rome and imported by the bishop into the country, he had to exhibit some impersonality and impartiality. On the contrary, he enjoyed his successes, especially when inflicting pain on miscreants. It was personal after all. He was demonstrating that although some got away with it, anyone caught would pay a high price. Pride, ambition, future career prospects and power were in it for him.

Fr. Mindi was the most hated man in the seminary. Boys called him the Grim Reaper, and they prayed for him to get into a car accident and live the rest of his life in a wheelchair. They prayed for him to become blind, to get cancer and to be afflicted with every purulent disease on earth. The feeling was that as soon as he left, things would improve dramatically, for it was believed that he was deliberately
keeping the situation bad. Nobody could understand why the food remained terrible when there was land, and possibly money to develop it. We had come to believe his philosophy was that bad food made good seminarians and ultimately good priests.

“He should die,” boys often said, especially when they watched him dribbling the ball at the football field. He could move with beguiling swiftness. He was the patron of Vatican dorm, and thanks to his participation and coaching, they won most annual inter-house competitions. Whenever they won, Fr. Mindi would allow two pigs to be roasted and would give us abundant food for one weekend.

“No, no, noo,” others replied. “He should live and suffer forever and ever.”

“What should we do about it?”

There was general agreement that the man should be left in the hands of the gods, who should see fit when to break his leg or inflict a car accident or subject him to armed attack.

Fr. Mindi penetrated my thought patterns. I tended to think of him as a brother to that constipated gorgon Padlock. Both had had a religious call. Both had responded to it. One had dropped out to become a real parent, while the other remained behind to become a symbolic one. Both believed that the harsher, the meaner and the more mysterious you played it, the better your children turned out.