At the end of the day he received a prison uniform: a coarse white cotton shirt and shorts. Also, a pair of sapatu, thin bathroom sandals. Routine set in: Thin porridge for breakfast. Posho and beans on an aluminium plate for lunch and supper. Time started to sit on him, crushing him, like the ass of a hippo, he thought.
THE NEWS of Bat’s disappearance did not break; it just seeped drop by drop into the consciousness of those concerned. Babit felt it as the sundering of a now familiar routine. They used to wake up each morning at six. She was usually the first. She would greet him, remove his hands from her body and go to the bathroom. He would roll off the bed, draw the curtains, stand at the window to see what kind of morning it was. He hated rainy mornings because of the mud. He didn’t want his XJ10 bespattered. He would stand there yawning while she prepared his bath. She insisted on scrubbing his back, launching him into a new day with firm fingers. While he completed his bath, she would go see to breakfast. She wanted to make sure that the cook had boiled four green bananas in salt water, with a tomato, to the right softness. She would see to the tea, the boiled egg, the greens. By the time she was ready, she would hear him calling her to check if he looked good, if the tie was straight, if it matched the shirt and the shoes. She would give her approval and announce breakfast. The bananas would arrive on a plate swimming in meat soup. She would sit opposite him and watch him eat, drinking a cup of tea to warm her stomach.
On his feet again, he would thank her, fuss her hair as he left the table and head for the bedroom. He would take his briefcase to the garage and park the XJ10 in front of the house. She would stand in the doorway, dressing gown wrapped round her, hair fanning out, and see him off. The flamboyance of the car worried her sometimes. Didn’t it draw too much attention, too much envy?
The rest of the day was hers to do with as she liked, freed like a parish priest after the bishop’s visit. She would bathe, do her hair, and prepare herself for the day. She would breakfast, note things to buy, clothes to be washed, surfaces to be cleaned and polished. In the afternoons she sometimes went to town, visited friends, had a siesta or did some reading in preparation for a teaching course she wanted to take some time in the future.
They had recently agreed that on a day or two each week he would drive home for lunch. On that particular day everything was prepared early so that by midday the food was ready. She would put on her best clothes, jewellery, shoes, and wait for him, like a bride expecting her groom. The car’s distinctive sound would fetch her to the door. She would see him rush in, tie loosened, the first two shirt buttons open. A quarter of an hour later they would sit down at table and eat. He would tell her jokes, stories about people who had showed up at work, how they spoke or behaved. If she had stories to tell, he would listen. If not, he would dominate the conversation, teasing, entertaining. Time often cut him short. She would see him off, exhaust heat from the car leaving a hot spot on her leg where it puffed at her, burning fuel lingering in her nose.
The afternoons were slow. There was so much time before he returned. They usually ate supper at ten. If by then he was not yet back, she would eat alone. This time when he did not show up, she expected to see him in the morning. She assumed that he got caught up, what with meetings with ministers and so many things to do. By midday the following day she was restless, wondering whether this was going to be the first of many strange and unfamiliar hours. She called his office again; he was not there. She called Mrs. Kalanda. Mrs. Kalanda contacted Bat’s office and was told he was not there. She reported the case at the Central Police Station in Kampala. Babit contacted local police in Entebbe.
Nobody expected much from police nowadays. Corruption and impotence were rampant. Arrestees could be freed through army intervention. The justice system was groaning under gross interference from government. Judges had been killed, intimidated, pushed out of the system or the country, and others were afraid to pass sentence against elements of the security organizations. The missing people’s desk had lists choked with names, all that was left of people nobody expected to see again. The officer in charge wrote down Bat’s name and promised action.
Babit travelled to Kampala to join the Kalandas with little idea of what was happening. She needed the comfort of movement to reassure her that something was being done. In the city, she changed vehicles. She was dropped near her destination, among houses surrounded by wire fences and swallowed by thick walls of cypress. She walked right past the house, realized her mistake, doubled back, collected her thoughts, and knocked on the door.
Mrs. Kalanda did her best to be positive, hiding her confusion with heartfelt optimism. Babit had already started blaming herself for everything, echoing Victoria’s accusations. She seemed to think that she had brought bad luck with her. Otherwise, how could he disappear so quickly after their union? Mrs. Kalanda told her to pull herself together, to get ready to fight and not fall apart so early in the game. This was a national catastrophe striking families everywhere, she said. But Babit wouldn’t see it as anything but a curse: first a glimpse of heaven in the life she wanted; then this hell. Mrs. Kalanda let Babit exhaust herself. It would take much longer for sense to show itself in the young woman’s troubled mind.
Mr. Kalanda found the two women struggling with what to do about the situation. He hardly knew what to say. They talked about informing Sister, then Bat’s parents. They started listing everybody they knew who might know somebody in the security agencies. It had become clear that running round the city in a daze would not do. It was better to set the bloodhounds on the scent. Insiders were more likely to solve the problem. Few names, however, fell into the hat. And when contacted they cautioned against too much optimism; a familiar refrain to an old song.
Efforts to contact Sister failed. She had no phone. Babit volunteered to inform her in person. She was relieved to be on the road again, feeling the world whirl about her. Kabasanda was a small town, reminiscent of an outpost town, situated in a wedge of land between two big tarmac roads. It was a link in a chain of towns which fed the city with supplies.
As soon as she saw Babit, Sister knew that something was wrong. To make matters worse, Mafuta was away on business. She questioned Babit in detail, going over everything. The car had not been found, a worrying sign. Dealing with disappearances was like working in the dark. Sometimes details meant something, sometimes nothing. Why hadn’t anybody at the office called, volunteered anonymous information?
As the gravity of the situation sank in deeper, Sister feared for her brother’s life. It felt strange that she was privy to secrets Babit didn’t know. She weighed what to reveal and what to keep to herself. The fact that she and her brother didn’t see each other much made the gravity of the trust more poignant. She knew that she held the keys, some of the keys, to his freedom. The weight of this knowledge had a searing effect on her nerves.
On the day Bat told her about the deal money, she trembled, and it made her look at her husband in another light for some time. It happened at a time when things were going badly for her Mafuta, the former planner of fantasy towns. She could not help comparing, feeling somehow let down. But she had also soon realized that her brother was operating on another level, in a different hemisphere, in a world of absolute power. She had almost told Mafuta. Now she stood on the brink again, wanting to share the burden with Babit. It hurt almost physically to maintain the load of trust in such a dire situation. It seemed as if Babit should know, but what if it backfired? She would lose her brother’s trust and incur Babit’s displeasure. She decided to grit her teeth a little bit longer, drawing strength from remembering her confusion when she heard that her brother was coming back after his stay at Cambridge. Why was he coming back at a time when many intellectuals were leaving? she asked herself at the time. She had been of the opinion that it was better for him to get a job in Britain. But within two weeks of his return he had landed a terrific job. She remembered how surprised and elated she became. It helped her to hold on to his trust.
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sp; That night, however, Sister got a severe attack of cramps; it was as if the baby were forcing its way out. Her world seemed to be collapsing on the ruins of her brother’s life. It was a harrowing night spent between states of mind, but the storm eventually passed.
In the morning Babit returned to the city. She hoped to find new developments. Unfortunately, there was no change in the situation. All leads were dead, oozing pessimism or euphemisms to cover inaction, failure. She fled to Entebbe, hoping to find solace in familiar surroundings.
The house felt strange. It lacked warmth, the casual reassurance of days gone by. The house staff seemed to be locked in a muddy inertia, as if awaiting their missing boss. They eyed her suspiciously, as though it was she who was keeping them in the dark. The lake was bereft of its consoling powers, the tireless waves a torment. She sat down on a rock, feet in the water, thoughts all over the sky. It was the wrong thing to do; she kept hallucinating about being swept away. She returned to the house. The cook had informed her that Victoria had called more than a dozen times in the past few days. She decided to pack quickly and flee. She paid the staff, just to make sure that they would stick around, and made ready to leave. Then the phone rang. It kicked off a gong in her chest. She snapped up the receiver.
“You are responsible for this. You are going to burn in hell for it,” Victoria shouted at the other end.
“For what?” Babit shouted back.
“You have destroyed this house. It is your kisirani; disaster follows you around like a bad smell.”
“I have the feeling that you engineered this just to punish him for throwing you out.”
“I would never do that. He is the father of my baby, remember? I love him. It is you who needs to be put down.”
“You will go first.”
“It is barren women like you who deserve that. What have you got to show for yourselves?”
Babit suddenly felt weary; she was consumed by pain. She was no good at this. She had never learned to fight mean and dirty, and she always took the bait. The fact that two of her aunts were barren made her feel tremors of uncertainty, fear.
“Have you suffered a heart attack? Why do you not speak?” Victoria taunted.
“You are a sick, demented woman. I have no time to waste on you.”
“Poor you. All my time is devoted to you. You are my project. I designed you, I implemented you. I am going to monitor and evaluate you to the end. If he stays away for a month, I am going to call for a month. If it is a year, I will be on your case for a year. If he never returns, it will be you and me for the rest of your life. If I were you, I would leave for good.”
“You will have to lie with your father before I go.”
“He is dead,” Victoria said in defeated tones.
Babit kept thinking that she was no good at this: “What do you expect from me? Flowers?”
“I will let you know in due time,” a sober Victoria said.
Babit slammed the phone down and saw the cook looking at her. She was old enough to be her mother, and it looked as if she wanted to overstep the boundaries and proffer advice. They locked looks for one long moment, then Babit walked away feeling confused.
The trouble with living in posh areas was the lack of public transport. The nearest bus stop was two kilometres away. Babit reluctantly called a taxi. How long would the money stretch? She had been the one who refused a joint account, for fear that he might be testing her to see if she was after his money. He had offered to open an account for her, but she had stopped him. He will be back, she said to herself as the taxi drove away. Deep blue skies, green leaves, red flowers gripped her imagination.
Babit’s arrival at her parents’ home was an ordeal. The beaming faces, the glinting eyes that came to welcome her were to be slashed to ribbons with the news. She had fortified herself with the words of the Bible, but in the end she gave in and cried. Her father looked on, mouth open, perplexed. It struck him that if Bat had married his daughter she would be a potential widow. The family sat down and went over the details. The uncertainty seemed to temper all emotions, cautioning against extreme reactions, outbursts. They remembered the first day he came to visit, exuding the kind of class every parent wished on his or her children. They remembered the recent feast, the gifts from Arabia. They remembered the time he appeared on national television, seeing a dignitary off at the airport. Babit’s father had talked it over with his friends. Television was only for those with status, power, and knowledge, something to say or show. He had felt a bit afraid, as if his future son-in-law had become too visible.
Two
In the Morgue
General Bazooka’s favourite method of break-ing the tension knotted inside him by paranoia, too much work, and the unending pressure of power and responsibility, was hosting orgies. This was the time when he indulged himself and did whatever came into his head. The house, a huge bungalow lighted like a burning ship, would be full of his friends, who would drink, smoke pot, gamble, fornicate and swear deep into the night. His favourite trick was to shoot beer bottles placed next to his friends, and, to perfect the skill, he practised assiduously every week. In the migratory season he often challenged them to shoot birds flying over his house for five hundred dollars per bird. He won most of the time because even if he was drunk, his aim was steady and his friends became reluctant to accept the challenges.
“Come on, Major,” he would say playfully, knowing that nobody could refuse, at least not on two separate occasions, “what will you tell your grandchildren? This is the only occasion we get to spend money meaningfully, I can assure you.”
“All right, General, we shoot two birds and only two and then resume our drinking,” the victim would say to all-round approval and raucous laughter.
As always, they would get carried away as soon as they handled the gun, miss a lot and eventually a heap of dollar bills would pile up at the General’s feet.
“I told you,” General Bazooka would say, “the best man wins, I can assure you.”
In the middle of the night, with every guest drunk or stoned, with nothing to aim at except the trees, the whole group would go outside and start shooting at the stars. There were often Russian roulette competitions, beer-drinking contests and duels fought out in bulletproof vests. The General loved holding beer in his cheeks and spraying his guests, especially his dates or pickups. At other times, they all pissed in the bathtub all night long, rolled the dice at the end of the party, and the loser would be made to strip and bathe in the piss. During those moments of wildness, with guns blazing, beer frothing, drugs smouldering, he would imagine somebody, a rival general, an officer from the Military Police, stepping in to interrupt the meeting. He always wondered how the encounter would end. Most probably in a fatal shoot-out.
“I am a prince,” he always said when he became drunk. “I can do whatever I want, I can assure you. If I want somebody’s eye, I pluck it. If I want somebody’s arm, I harvest it, ha-ha-ha. It is what the princes of old used to do, ha-ha-ha.” And the whole group would join in and cheer.
“This is what we fought for,” a general or colonel would say.
“That was before that reptile came,” a brigadier cut in one evening, shutting up every guest, all of them afraid that General Bazooka was going to erupt or reach for his gun.
“Forget about the reptile, Brigadier. When we are here, it does not exist, I can assure you.”
“Long live Marshal Amin Dada.”
There were times when General Bazooka drank and pissed and shat his pants. He would command his date to disrobe him and clean the mess. He would watch as the woman struggled not to show outward disgust, now and then firing his pistol and swearing. His bodyguards enjoyed the fuss and could be heard laughing in adjacent rooms.
For the orgies, the General had two houses in the suburbs. For decent parties, when he entertained normal guests, he went to his first wife’s home. He had given her a mansion at Kasubi, a place famous for the tombs of the banned kings. Driving pa
st the tombs in his fleet of Boomerangs, headed and tailed by Stingers with soldiers hanging precariously on the sides like fruit bats, gave him untold satisfaction. At such moments he felt linked to the old kings, whose centuries of absolute rule he had played a part in ending, first with the attack on the palace, then when Marshal Amin refused to reinstate the kingdoms. As he rolled by, he would think back to 1942 when the last king was crowned. This man with titles such as the Professor of Almighty Knowledge, the Father of All Twins, the Cook with All the Fire-wood, the Power of the Sun, the Conqueror, had fled when he, Colonel Bazooka, had attacked his palace. The Conqueror had been in exile when Marshal Amin, King of Africa, created the new line of kings and princes now in power. It felt sublime to be the man of the moment.
When the body of the Conqueror was brought back to Uganda for burial in 1973, he had been the officer in charge of security at the airport, at Namirembe Cathedral, at the burial site. It was as if the Marshal wanted the people who had begun the demolition of this institution to hammer the last nail in its coffin. He liked to think that his father would have enjoyed seeing his son wielding so much power. Sleep well, old man, he would think, I hope there is a lot of booze where you are.
The only thing the General envied the old kings was the loyalty of their subjects. However grotesquely they misused their power, however many people they killed, people still loved and obeyed them, ready to give their lives for them. He remembered the lines of mourners filing past the coffin, orderly tear-sodden kilometres peopled by men and women who would have braved the hottest sun or the heaviest rain just to have the chance to peek at their king for the last time. As a non-monarchist, the sight made him sick. More so, because now he knew that not many southerners would mourn the passing of Marshal Amin’s regime; but then again, no one came to power in order to court a grand funeral procession. Power was there for more basic things, like a fleet of Boomerangs, money, the ability to hammer your word into law.
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