Abyssinian Chronicles (44 page)

The letter she wrote to her former housekeeper had to be rewritten several times, each time diluting its venom, but she refused to erase certain elements; for example:

The policy of opening foreign mail had reached its zenith about then, and overzealous underlings, eager to impress overbearing bosses and win scanty favors, fell upon Dr. Wagner’s letter like a famished pride of lionesses on a giant buffalo. Within a day, they had traced Aunt’s whereabouts. She was still at Nsambya Hospital, where the letter was addressed. They rushed to the junior staff quarters, pulled her out of bed at 3 a.m., tossed her into the boot of a car and drove her two kilometers to Makindye Barracks, where they had an office.

Aunt Lwandeka ate all the threats as they were served to her. She had already realized that hers was an important case, one most likely to be tried in court as a testimony to German infiltration, spying and slander campaigns. It would bolster the claim that mission workers and others in the employ of the Church were spies for foreign governments. Aunt’s captors wanted a confession obtained without visible bodily damage to her, because she had to appear in court, but the confession was not forthcoming. Tempers became dangerously inflamed.

Normally, women talked quickly, but Aunt would not talk at all. She kept swallowing their insults and threats with a calm, almost vacant look. The “tall man” asked his men to strap her onto a table faceup. He drew his knife and threatened to cut her up, in vain. He then pulled a spitting cobra out of an iron box. He put it at her feet, and it bit her several times. That really unhinged her. She remained conscious by an act of will pinned on the belief that the fangs had been blunted and the poison milked. The horror made her scream, and the men laughed and stroked her face arrogantly. The snake bit her again
and again, but she still had enough willpower not to tell them anything. Mad with rage, the man picked up the snake and slid it inside her clothes via her cleavage. She started shouting like mad. She tugged at the ropes, and the men laughed and slapped each other on the back. They danced around, shouting,
“Amin oye, oyeee! Amin ju, juuuu!”
At one time Aunt thought she was going to faint. The reptile kept wriggling as though entering the depths of her body in order to terminate her and her future children with its lethal poison. All horror had a limit, and the thugs knew that. The man at last retrieved the reptile and petted it. He rubbed it in her face one last time and asked her to talk. He wanted answers to the following questions: What were the names of the spy organizations Dr. Wagner worked for? What kind of spies was she recruiting? What sort of military aggression was her group planning? Was she at all linked with the failed 1972 guerrilla incursion into Uganda? What kind of secret information did Aunt send the German spy? Which of the remaining hospital staff were spies? How long had this spy ring been in existence?

Aunt refused to talk. The knife was now brought close to her face, but her lips remained sealed. She knew by now that they would not cut her. She, on the other hand, was working out when to spring a surprise on them. When she felt that the time had come, she asked them to talk to a famous brigadier. Immediately.

Who the fuck did she think she was? Who the fuck did she think she was talking to? Who the fuck did she think this brigadier was?

She said time and again that she worked for him. Baiting dissidents, foreign spies and their benefactors.

Why the hell hadn’t she said so before? There was plenty of confusion and suspicion and a touch of fear. Longevity in the security agencies, as the tall man and his cohorts knew, depended on not stepping on big men’s toes, and on knowing when to relent. However much the tall man might have liked to teach this woman a lesson, he knew that it was suicidal to press on, especially if her claims were true. That was Aunt’s salvation. Even if the brigadier took time to do something, Aunt knew that she had already frightened the thugs enough to be left alone.

The brigadier ordered her captors to take her to court. She was taken dressed in flowing robes to cover legs swollen with snake poison. The case files, however, were stolen or lost or both. The letter also disappeared.
The judge got angry that court time was being wasted. The case was dismissed after a fortnight. Aunt’s brothers and sisters, with the help of Padlock’s money, bribed the thugs and the policemen to drop all “investigations.” Aunt was released a week after. The brigadier later defected to Tanzania to join the exiles and guerrillas.

Padlock and Kasawo used the incident to implore Aunt to turn her back on politics and involvement with dissidents. As a survivor of an attack on her life, Kasawo believed that she was a credible expert on how to survive in hard times, and she expected her younger sister to swallow her admonitions and advice whole. Kasawo also believed that her younger sister’s involvement in politics was a form of compensation for failing to find a man to marry and settle down with.

As a good younger sister who had just escaped the jaws of death, Aunt Lwandeka did not defend her position, showing the expected deference to her elder sisters. She let them exhaust themselves with talk.

“You must stop all this political nonsense,” Padlock ordered.

“We were worried sick about you. We were afraid that something terrible was going to happen to you. Have you got no feelings for others? How can you even think of dragging us through the same nettles by saying that you cannot give up?”

“Get a man, marry and settle down.” Kasawo dropped her favorite line with a smile. “If your own children are not enough for you, go and care for orphans.”

“Stop writing to foreign spies, sister,” Padlock said angrily. “What will that German woman do for you? She was using you all the time she was here, making you wash her knickers and towels. Wasn’t that bad enough? Now she is back in her country and has left you to languish. She doesn’t even know what you have just been through. She doesn’t even care. Can’t you see that?”

“Listen to your eldest sister’s words,” Kasawo said.

“I know you are smart but also naive and unguided. Ever since you gave up religion and stopped praying and putting yourself at the feet of God, things have gone bad for you,” Padlock began, her voice rising without her face muscles reacting. It could have been the miracle of the talking statue. “The first educated man who came along fooled us all, and in the end, he dropped you to marry a more educated woman. What has he done for you and your son ever since? What have
the other men done for you and your children? You work hard for them as if they were orphans. Now you are gallivanting with politicians who will dump you as soon as you have done what they want. Stop trusting people. Invest your trust in the only one who will never desert you: God.”

Aunt took her punishment in silence. She gave her sisters her demurest look but did her own thing in the end. There was no turning back. She considered going to Tanzania to join the NRM guerrillas, leaving her three children with their fathers. She communicated with the brigadier a number of times about it. He wanted her to join him in Tanzania because the NRM could use all the help they could get. A close friend who was also involved in the struggle took her aside one day and warned her that she was putting all her eggs in one basket. He asked her what she knew about fighting, if she knew how long the struggle would last. He asked her if she was sure that the NRM would get a big chunk of power when the struggle ended, if she was sure that she would be given a big post after the struggle. He asked her if she believed that all those guerrilla groups loosely united against Amin would remain united after he was gone. He asked her if she was really determined to throw her life away as though she had no other alternatives. Then he asked her to make and sign her will and hand it over to him.

Finally, Aunt Lwandeka came to her senses and stayed. She saw the wisdom of fighting from inside, giving information to the NRM and housing NRM missionaries before they did their job. It proved a more satisfactory option. It did not take her away from her children. It did not disrupt her life; in fact, it gave her the chance to remain in control.

After being haunted by the wooden faces of the tyrants, it was almost a revelation to be near someone with a living face. Aunt Lwandeka had a fluid face which could project her emotions with ease. She could smile, laugh and cry. Her face could also project seriousness, toughness and anger in telling measures. It was a shock to discover that a woman who had come from the same Catholic peasant womb as Padlock could be so different. She used a warm voice when greeting you in the morning, when talking to you during the day and when asking you about your day in the evening. She played with her children, and asked them what was or was not wrong with them. She told them
foolish stories and sang them meaningless little songs. She put them at ease but also demanded discipline from them.

Aunt bathed all her children herself, scrubbed their backs and examined their feet carefully. She held them and let them vomit in her lap or shower her with diarrhea when they were ill. When they had measles, and their eyes went red, and they refused to eat, and they cried incessantly, she would plead with them, ask them to be quiet and tempt them with nice little things. She would show a high degree of patience even if she herself was feeling very tired.

Ballasted with Padlockisms, I took up arms to save these children from what I believed was the wrong way to be raised. I drove them hard to do their homework. I drilled them to memorize the multiplication tables. I loaded them with spelling tests. I shouted at them to wash up and to move quickly when ordered to do something. I advised Aunt to discipline them, meaning to beat them and to stop them from talking back. I asked her to discourage them from finding excuses for the wrongs they did. I wanted them to be docile, obedient and trustworthy. I wanted them to stop playing ball, throwing things, tearing paper and chasing each other round the house. Playing seemed to liberate a laxity that had no place on the table of virtue.

I took it upon myself to father these fatherless bastards whose only common parental bond was their mother. Where were their biological fathers? Wasn’t Aunt a sort of whore? Wouldn’t the Biblical Jews have stoned her to death? Deep down I must have been titillated by the word “whore”—it made me remember Cane’s nudes, labias gaping and beckoning to both customers and voyeurs. Aunt was doing it with many men, I thought. The thought both infuriated and excited me. I loathed seeing her talk to any man. I would get seizures when she talked to her man friend. The way she paid attention and responded to him, even if the subject was as banal as diapers, fever or sunshine! As the “man” in the house, as the “dad” of the children, as the number two in command, I felt both insulted and eclipsed.

I would not have minded if Aunt had been ugly, obese and nasty, but she was petite, elegant and attractive. She made me think of Lusanani all the time. When she smiled, the gums did not jut sheathless in the air, deserted by lips pulled brutally back. Instead, the lips stretched just up to the top of the teeth and stayed there in a controlled, almost self-conscious smile. I wanted her to smile over and over again.
Her smile was the dearest feature I preserved and clung to when the tide turned against her and riddled holes into old dreams.

I started entertaining murderous fantasies when I saw her with her man friend. I wanted him to be crushed by a car. This man lived in his own house, a distance from Aunt’s house. When he came over, he brought good things with him and tried to be nice, but I wanted nothing to do with him. I wished impotence on him, because I knew that after the smiles and the gifts, he would lie on top of Aunt, push his large penis inside her and make her emit silly sounds. I could see him with his hands all over her, dipping his fingers into all manner of orifices, pushing with all his might. I was in the clutches of the impotent anger suffered by the righteous who get trapped in compromising situations.

I felt invaded and demeaned by his presence. Here was a man who could father the fathers of the three little bastards. I did not like the urge I felt to watch myself when he was around. I wanted him to be the one to watch himself, ask himself questions and doubt his self-worth. I wanted him to fall off his pedestal and break his limbs. If not, I would push him off. In order to catch him with his pants down, I took to keyholing. It was at this time that all the morsels I had plucked from library books came alive. I would put my ear to the keyhole, dying to catch a wet whisper, a broken sigh, a sharp moan. I wanted to compare Sr. Bison’s simple, clean, very effective sounds and Lusanani’s elaborate songs with Aunt’s unknown repertoire. Time stood still in boggy confusion whenever I was rewarded with a sound of sorts. Celibate priesthood was in the balance. If this was how a seminarian gathered information and life experience without breaking celibacy rules, it became clear that it was a ship full of holes I was sailing on. I could feel myself drown, snapping for air. I eventually gave up keyholing, feeling lucky that I had not been nabbed.

On such mornings, Aunt would emerge looking radiant and strangely calm, almost apologetic in her niceness. I kept imagining the storm that arose one day while Jesus slept in a boat. After all the humping and grinding and vocalizing, Aunt’s storms seemed to have dissipated. Mr. Storm Crusher himself always emerged looking nonchalant, as though all he had done was swat a fly. Aunt would take extra care with the breakfast, as though she had to appease everybody. A strange unease would overshadow the meal. It was as though something
wrong had happened, and everyone knew the culprit but could not speak out due to conflicting loyalties. Aunt would resemble somebody juggling hats on her head. After the meal, she would change from lover and mother to NRM operative, market supervisor, liquor brewer and church volunteer. Some act. Mr. Storm Crusher’s departure thrilled me.