Yes, money. The fight against the Mau Mau was fun, but there was no big money in it. Part of him was spoiled now and he craved thousands, hundreds of thousands. He wanted out; let the blacks and the whites settle their problems. At about that time, a British intelligence officer offered him the chance to become a spy. He could go to Rhodesia, Namibia, South Africa. Southern Africa beckoned because of the diamonds and gold. A deal or two and he would be done. The end of the sixties found him in South Africa, the beginning of the seventies, in Rhodesia. The fighting was good, the diamond trafficking legendary. The celestial trinity of danger, death and money was as seductive as ever. He took his time and made one big haul. A kilo of uncut diamonds landed in his hands after a year’s planning, and then there was a monstrous shoot-out. He was shot in the leg, and he crawled and limped past corpses, and wandered for four delirious days. At one time, he even vowed to stop with adventure-seeking. A white farmer picked him up in his tractor, and later he was flown to South Africa, where he fell in love with Cape Town: its magnificence, its history, its wine. A year later he flew to London.
It was in London that he heard of Amin, a real animal. He started collecting newspaper cuttings about him. He went to the library and looked for more information about Amin and Uganda, reading Winston Churchill, Speke, Burton, Baker and Stanley. Gradually, his resolve to stop running after adventure slackened, and he now craved a massive fix, one last fling. Uganda seemed like a very good spot for it. His burgeoning plans were, however, poisoned by the mass expulsion of expatriates in 1972. He went to the airport and refugee camps, looking for eyewitness accounts of what was happening in Uganda. He was convinced that he would be the lion-tamer, the man to control Amin and enjoy that peculiar brand of fame. What he needed was a plan. He roamed the streets of London in a daze. He tried the British Embassy; they did not need him. He tried five missionary societies, both Catholic and Anglican; they rejected him. He became depressed, redundancy gnawing at him. Hijackers, terrorists, Cold War–mongers, were all having their time in the sun, yet life was passing him by and he was not becoming any younger.
The Irish Republican Army offered him a golden opportunity when they bombed the Grand Empire Hotel, killing members of the ruling Conservative Party, maiming others and causing terrible damage to property. News broke that Herbert Williams, the mastermind, had escaped to Africa. Many believed he was hiding in Uganda because Amin was flirting with the IRA, Black September and other nationalist organizations. The intelligence officer who had sent him to Rhodesia came to his aid; he was looking for somebody of his age suicidal enough to want to go to Uganda and check out the Williams rumours. Ashes signed immediately; soon he was part of a bogus British business delegation.
It was love at first sight between him and Marshal Amin. A month before, Dr. Ali had read omens from the livers of ten white bulls and promised the Marshal a saviour from abroad. The moment the delegation arrived, Marshal Amin knew that Dr. Ali had been right as usual. It turned out to be a meeting of kindred spirits. Marshal Amin needed support as his friends became fewer and his paranoia swelled to the size of a cathedral. Robert Ashes got the Anti-Smuggling Unit draft because of his knowledge of boats, and he advised the Marshal to build a navy. They discussed weapons, whisky, music. In due time he honed the Marshal’s paranoia and told him which general to demote, or send abroad as ambassador or place at the head of a phantom coup plot. He married a black woman and settled.
VICTORIA WAITED TWO MONTHS before breaking the news: the miracle had happened; she was pregnant. They were at the lake walking side by side on a Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining brightly, and apart from the noise of the birds in the trees the place was quiet. She held Bat’s hand, turned her head to look him in the eye and broke the news. He looked like somebody woken from a dream-laden sleep, the eyes slightly unfocused, the mouth a bit ajar, the brow creased pensively. His face wore a puzzled look, then relaxed into a neutral expression, neither happy nor sad, as if saying, What do you expect me to say?
“Pregnant.” The word seemed to stay in the air for a long time.
“Yes, I am two months pregnant,”she said cautiously, valiantly trying to dam her ecstasy.
“Why did you wait this long to tell me?”
“I wanted to make sure.”
“What do you want to do with it?”
“To keep it, of course.”
“Abort.” His voice seemed to come from afar, slightly tremulous, as if calling back his university days, when he had given such an order and it had been obeyed. His heart was pumping hard and he felt slightly out of breath.
“I want to keep the child.” Victoria’s voice was high, plaintive, her face troubled.
“The situation is too hot. People are getting killed every day. Can you guarantee the safety of the child?”
“You talk like a mathematician. There are no guarantees in life.”
“I want to limit the risks. I don’t want to be at the office and at the same time wondering if my child is safe.”
“I want to have the baby.”
“It would be best for you to return to your home. I will give you financial support.” Bat’s heart was beating even harder; not only was he facing rebellion from the person closest to him; he did not know what would come of all this.
“I want to stay with you. I have no family,” Victoria said, infusing her voice with genuine desperation.
“You have friends. You can always hire help.”
“It is not the same thing. I want to be with you, cook for you.”
“I already have a cook. All I need is space to concentrate on my work. If you insist on staying, well, it is a big house. You will get bored to death. If you decide to leave, inform me.”
It was not terribly romantic, but she wanted a foot in the door. Some dreams needed a little pushing along the way. “It is fine with me. I want to stay and share God’s blessing with you.”
A WEEK LATER Bat received news that the Professor’s brother had been found dead near his home. He drove to the Professor’s home located on one side of Makerere University Hill. The journey brought back memories, his university days, the post-independence political situation, especially the bombardment of the king’s palace in 1966 by Colonel Amin on the orders of President Obote. It was the longest and most frightful gun battle he had ever heard. At one time he thought the whole city had been bombed to the ground.
He parked outside the Professor’s house, took a long breath and got out of the car. His friend came out to meet him, his teary eyes red. As he hugged him, he felt the Professor’s arms shaking. They sat down on the veranda and looked into the distance.
“If things continue this way, I will seriously consider emigrating. What sort of country is this where people get killed for no reason? State Research Bureau boys found him walking home, accused him of supporting dissidents, took his money and watch, and when he resisted, they killed him. In broad daylight!” the Professor said, hardly able to contain his rage.
Bat found it hard to mount a response. “I am sorry about this. I wish there was something I could do. I would really not blame you if you decided to go abroad. The country has become a snakepit. It is a shame we have not yet found a way to get rid of the vipers.”
“I have lost the most precious thing: pleasure in work,” the Professor lamented, shaking his head vigorously, like a drenched zebra. “I often think that many of my students are members of the Bureau, ready to twist my words and get me killed.”
“Maybe you should leave the country,” Bat suggested again, wondering how his friend would fare abroad. Settling in, getting a job, balancing a new identity with the old one.
“I have thought about lecturing in Kenya or Zambia. I have colleagues there. If it hadn’t been for you and the Kalandas, I would have left already. But somehow I don’t want to go. I keep thinking it will get better.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t help you make up your mind,” Bat admitted, “but whatever decision you take, I will be behind
you.”
“I will think about it after the funeral.”
Bat took the afternoon off to attend the funeral. He perused the day’s newspaper in the car. It read like Amin’s diary. The day before, Amin had met the new Libyan ambassador, visited a hospital, distributed sweets to limbless children and also made a speech at a graduation parade for police cadets. The rest of the paper was full of advertisements by astrologers promising miracle cures for anything from poverty to psychosis to psoriasis. The advertisements were never edited, resulting in the most deplorable spelling mistakes he had ever seen: “pavaty” for “poverty,” “cyclesis” for “psychosis,” “sorryasis” for “psoriasis” and the like. It was so bad he started chuckling. He threw the paper in the back of the car and hoped the cook would use it to light the Primus stove or to wipe his ass. He remembered the Learjet at the airport and wondered who Dr. Ali really was. He had attended many government functions, but he had never met the man. As he got onto Jinja Road, it struck him that Dr. Ali was a very clever man; he was milking the regime without showing his face, the kind of man who could walk down the street unrecognized. One thousand dollars per consultation was not bad. No wonder his followers called him God. It occurred to Bat that if there was anybody who could kill Amin and rid the country of the scourge, it was this mysterious man.
At the entrance to the Mabira Forest, chills went down Bat’s spine. The density of it, the height of the trees, the possibilities for robbery and carjacking. Rumours had it that soldiers dumped bodies somewhere in its depths. He put his foot on the gas, adrenaline pumping. Many kilometres later, the sky cleared and he gave a sigh of relief.
The deceased had been a builder, and his house was a stout red-roofed brick structure. The place was crawling with mourners dressed in every colour under the sun. Burials always put Bat on edge. Caught between the corpse and the raw grief of the bereaved, some of whom seemed out of their minds, he felt redundant, an intruder. Words of consolation felt so weightless, so hackneyed. Each time, one was confronted with the fact that people never got used to violent death: it still shocked, the lamentations pierced with genuine sorrow. His feelings were now complicated by the fact that he was expecting a child. It made the insinuation of death in his life more poignant. Before, it had been him against the world; death on the job had seemed heroic, even glorious. But now he felt responsible for the baby; he had to protect it, provide for it. It was the impossibility of protecting anybody with any degree of certainty these days that bothered him most.
Among the mourners were some saying that the killing had a business motive behind it. They claimed that a competitor had hired the killers to get rid of his rival and take over his business. There were cries of “eye for an eye.” The Professor wisely kept out of the commotion.
The deceased was lying in the sitting-room, his jaw tied with a white cloth, his nostrils plugged with cotton wool. The sight of his orphaned children made Bat wonder what words of wisdom a parent could offer a child nowadays. Turn the other cheek? Do good when evil men were having their way? Be sensible when sense was being rewarded with punishment? The legacy to be left for the next generation struck him as one of the hardest things his own generation had to drum up. He had the impression that everyone had been touched by an evil wind, whose chill would grind on into the next generation. Maybe even beyond. How would a generation of passive parents and confused children affect the future?
The burial ceremony ground along for an hour. Bat’s attention was beginning to wander when he saw a young woman he had noticed earlier on. When he first saw her, she looked as if she was waiting for somebody. Maybe him. Why he thought that, he could not tell. She was wearing a skirt and a blouse and flat shoes. She had a good shape, soft features and an open face. She seemed the exact opposite of him, but he felt something when he looked at her. He called a boy who was passing by and told him to fetch her. Why did she look surprised? She looked stiffly in his direction as if peeking at something forbidden, but she finally came.
He was leaning against his car, arms on his chest. He liked the warmth of her voice, her rapt attention. She listened carefully, as if looking for faults, lies, inconsistencies in a sworn testimony. It soon started to rain. He took shelter in his car and watched as she got soaked, making up her mind whether to follow him in or seek shelter elsewhere. She sat in the back and he watched her in the driving mirror. Her name was Babit and she had two brothers and three sisters, she said, cracking her knuckles with nerves. As he listened to her voice, he dreamed of taking her with him. Did he want to listen to that same voice year in and year out? Probably. See the same face, lie next to that same body? Probably. How long would it last? Probably very long. Who would give in first? Probably him. Would the good memories outweigh the bad ones in the end? How would he remember her? As a shadow, a feeble sensory perception? A lovable entity? A voice? Or simply as Victoria’s successor? How would she remember him?
VICTORIA HAD SEVERED her bonds with General Bazooka and no longer reported to him, partly because there was nothing to report, partly because she knew that if he was serious he had to have other spies shadowing Bat. She was too wrapped up in the world of pregnancy, motherhood, the future, to take much notice of what Bat or anybody else did officially. She loved the feeling of freedom she had. She woke up in the morning with the day to herself and engaged in fantasies. This was the best time of her life. By answering her prayers, God seemed to have forgiven her. By the time the baby arrived, she felt rejuvenated, purged, in sync with the living.
The birth of his daughter thrilled Bat in ways he had not expected. He had wanted a boy, but the sight of his daughter lying there, bunching her fat fingers, ignited something in him. A girl would definitely mean more work for Victoria, role-modeling and all. He was surprised to be confronted with this embodiment of innocence. She looked so helpless, so much at the mercy of forces around her. Here she was, an oasis of purity in a desert of madness, a demarcation of what had gone wrong and what could have been. He then felt sad. How was he going to protect her interests? He felt exposed: his character, his limitations. He felt inadequate in relation to the rampant gun-wielding madmen. He was now participant in the eternal rite of passing on the torch. But here he was, devoid of knowledge and wisdom to impart. He had fallen from his lofty sense of independence and superior aloofness. He was now like the very countrymen he had tried to flee, dependent on uncontrollable forces, making stupid mistakes, hurting others out of the weakness of failing to say no to superiors, to temptation, to the possibility of upward mobility, to the susurrations from deep inside the snakepit. Did I return partly to seek common ground, however indirect, with the people, the country? he asked himself. He felt the tender emotions most parents felt, but what would he do with them? He held the baby in his arms and smelled its scalp. It struggled against him, then gradually calmed down; his blessing, his curse. In its searching eyes was something calming, the ability to charm and soothe him. It was his antidepressant.
Whenever Victoria saw Bat holding the baby, her love for him multiplied, surged and kicked in her breast. He seemed so unaware of what he had done for her, the drought he had ended, the suffering he had eased. At such moments she wanted to put herself at his mercy, come clean, confess the sordid past, explain everything. But it was too great a risk to take. She might disgust him. He might never want to see her again. The weight of her secrets compromised her joy at such a time and injected doubt in the proceedings.
She felt blessed because Bat’s parents rejoiced when they saw the baby. His father was especially supportive. His mother, however, wanted to meet somebody from her family. Bat’s brother showed little enthusiasm. She did not know why she was afraid of him. Was he too silent? He looked like a man sitting on a barrel of secrets. In his silence, he seemed to know everything about everybody, including her, and in his superior knowledge everybody bored him. At the baby’s baptismal ceremony he gave the baby a pair of white shoes and then handed Victoria a red Bible. She was shaken: What did he
mean? Was it a warning? State Research Bureau identity cards were red; was he telling her that he knew her secret? She remarked to Bat that his brother was mysterious.
“He loves cars too much,” Bat replied.
“But you also do.”
“He is obsessed with them. I am not, but I can sympathize. Machines are docile as long as you treat them nicely.”
“Is that the reason why he is unreachable?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Bat said, turning to look at Victoria for a moment. “But then again, look at the state this country is in. What has a young person got to hold on to, to obsess about? Family? When people get killed and soldiers can force a father to fornicate with his daughter for all to watch? Religion? When God is passive and astrology is the only growing faith? Education? When educated people are the enemy? I can understand what he is going through.”
“Yes,” Victoria said noncommittally.
“Did you like his fireworks?”
“How did he get a licence?”
“Possibly through the good offices of a friendly general. Soldiers love spectacles and the boy is a genius.”
“He is good,” Victoria said worriedly. Her guess was that he was a member of the Public Safety Unit. She had looked for his file at Bureau headquarters, in vain. It could of course mean a few things: Maybe he was known by other names. Maybe his file had been misplaced in the sewers of the Bureau’s inventory. She hoped that he wasn’t with the Public Safety Unit, the arch-enemy of the Bureau, which would make killing him easier if he blew her cover. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything foolish, as she had no wish to impede her rehabilitation.
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