Snakepit

by Moses Isegawa

  General Bazooka took the insult like a hardened soldier, although he would very much have liked to gouge out the man’s eyeballs and made him eat them. He hated the Marshal for humiliating him through this man, this reptile, this scavenger who had come when everything was running smoothly. First he had taken his job; now he had paralyzed his ministry for weeks.

  “I will release the bastard, but I want my men freed first.”

  “I am the one squeezing the trigger. You kidnapped the man from this building, then you disappeared. Now you are expecting me to take your word, as if I were a whore you could fuck any time you wanted. No way. Deliver the man to me and then, only then, will I free your men. They have been well treated; they only need a good bath,” he said, creasing his nose in mock disgust.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “I don’t enjoy this any more than you do, General,” he rubbed the salt in Bazooka’s wound, “I am a very busy man, you know.”

  The General rose to go. Ashes watched him coldly, as if looking at a cockroach crawl into a shithole, satisfied that he had won the little duel. Not a bad afternoon after all, he said to himself; first this sweet drama, then a swim in the lake.

  ON THE DAY of Bat’s release, they dragged him from the basement where they had dumped him. They tore the clothes off his back and hosed him down in the compound like a car, scrubbing him with a stiff brush. They scrubbed and hosed and laughed till he felt raw all over. The soap suds went into his eyes, making the soldiers laugh harder. They let him drip dry like a shirt on a hanger, gave him a pair of trousers and a shirt and no underwear, and a pair of used Bata shoes with no socks. They put him in a Stinger and started driving round. They moved from lane to lane in an unfamiliar place of trees and shadows. He had spent the last days sleeping on gunny sacks next to old tools, broken televisions, and chairs. Now it seemed his ordeal was over, but he dared not celebrate. They stopped in front of a mansion hidden behind a steel gate and a tall wall. He was ordered to get out.

  It was a grey day from yesterday’s rain. It felt as if he were walking into a trap. The guard at the gate opened it for him without asking questions. The compound was huge, and he walked on gravel flanked by patches of well-cut grass. A soldier opened the front door for him. Robert Ashes appeared and stood in the doorway. Bushy eyebrows, large forehead, thinning hair, close-together eyes, wide mouth. He looked mean and dangerous as always, a grenade about to go off, a pit bull terrier about to bite. He grinned at him and offered his hand. They exchanged greetings and he was invited inside. Large sofas, big carpets, hunting trophies on the walls: buffalo horns, a leopard skin, a lion’s bearded head, crossed elephant tusks, a rhino’s face, a stuffed eagle, and a three-metre python. He sat down and moments later his fomer colleagues walked in. They exited without saying a word. He was relieved because, in his ill-fitting clothes and shoes, with hair down to his shoulders, he did not have anything to say to them.

  “You are free now. Aren’t you happy?” Ashes asked effusively, which looked odd on a face so morose.

  “I am very excited.”

  “You certainly don’t look it. By the way, where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I am going to meet Marshal Amin to give him the good news. The crisis is over.”

  “What crisis?”

  “A British politician contacted us saying that a friend of his had disappeared. Marshal Amin gave me the task to free the man, and here you are.”

  “I am very grateful for your efforts.”

  “We can go together. The Marshal would be glad to see you. And you never know, he might promote you as a way of saying sorry.”

  “I appreciate the offer. But I would rather make my way home to digest this. I haven’t seen my people for half a year. They must be worried sick. Thank the president for me.”

  “My driver will take you home.”

  “That is very kind of you.”

  Ashes shook his hand and left; he heard him drive away. He drank a cup of tea he had been served. A man in civilian clothes came and introduced himself.

  “I am your driver, sah.”

  “Just give me a moment, please,” he said, wondering where he should go. To whom should I reveal myself first? he wondered. He felt like a dead man come back to life, realigning his vision, his alliances, adjusting his expectations. Lazarus. Burial clothes unwrapped. Death stink washed off. Outlandish nails cut. Getting used to his skin, his voice, to the world he had left behind.

  The driver dropped him at the brick-red YMCA building because Bat did not want to show him where the Kalandas lived. In fact, when he got out of the car, he rushed into the building. He went to the toilets and looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in months. He was shocked: he looked ghastly, cadaverous. He made a quick exit and walked the few hundred metres to his destination, keeping close to the fences. It was still early; the Kalandas were not yet back for lunch. He sat on the front steps and looked through the gate. He could see a small portion of Wandegeya and Makerere University. The Professor was there, busy lecturing, dreaming of getting away.

  “Is that you? My God, Bat, it is you! I hadn’t recognized you, can you imagine that! I thought it must be some madman or lost person. Christ, I am so happy to see you back,” Mrs. Kalanda said, crying. They embraced: she heartily, he stiffly, too much aware of the smell of soap on him. She let him into the house and walked up and down, unable to decide what to do next. She rushed into the kitchen to prepare food but kept coming back to ask questions.

  In the meantime, Bat decided to take a long bath. He put on Mr. Kalanda’s clothes and shoes and slapped a generous dose of aftershave on his neck. He could hear Mrs. Kalanda on the phone spreading the good news. Mary Magdalene and the Saviour. He had saved them from further anxiety, expenditure, fruitless searches. Were they disappointed that he had no brutal scars or wounds to show for his half year away? Locked away in basements and other dark places for that long, he now found the fuss strange, hard to take. It was good that she was doing the talking; otherwise, he would not know how to break the news himself. He would end up sounding as casual as somebody announcing rain in a wet season. From Mrs. Kalanda, he heard that Babit was not at Entebbe. Where was she? he wondered. Had she changed, been dented by recent events?

  Kalanda arrived in the afternoon with the Professor. The two men hugged him, squeezed his reduced form, and made fun of his appearance.

  “Not all Amin’s men are bad; at least they are considerate to the undertakers. You must be weighing the same as a baby gorilla,” the Professor said deadpan, tapping him on the shoulders. “I have never touched sharper shoulderblades. Maybe that is why they call them that: blades they are indeed.”

  “When I came in, I thought my wife had taken on a starving gardener. Then I saw my clothes on the fellow. Lice, I thought, he must have lice. Then it struck me that you were not yet dead.”

  “For that you will have to be a little bit more patient,” Bat said, grinning. He was relieved that the men made light of the situation. Nothing worse than a heavy, wet reception.

  “Where are the drinks?” Kalanda shouted. “Bring the drinks and the fattest pig. My prodigal brother is back.”

  “We were scared boneless, man,” the Professor confessed. “I said to myself, If they can squeeze his balls like that, they can push ours in our ears any time, any place with impunity.”

  “I was already thinking of emigrating to Australia or America,” Kalanda confided. “We searched for you all over the bloody place. Nobody talked. We bribed and bribed and bribed; the dog-fuckers kept taking the money and revealing nothing.”

  “The language, the language, please,” Mrs. Kalanda protested.

  “Our brother is back from the dead. I am sure he has heard fouler language on the other side,” her husband retorted.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Bat said awkwardly.

  “Oh, please. It is always bad. They are like anacondas; just smelling their halitosis gives you ulcers. Y
ou are lucky they didn’t shave your pubic hair with broken bottles,” the Professor cut in.

  “Boys, boys, boys,” Mrs. Kalanda cried ineffectually.

  “You have given us hope and happiness, you bugger. Let us drink to your return from the morgue,” the Professor said, looking around as if he expected opposition to his toast.

  “When did you last see a woman?” Kalanda teased. His wife looked embarrassed.

  “I had my faithful chamber-pot.”

  “You always hear stories of prisoners bribing guards,” Mrs. Kalanda mused.

  “To fuck them or to bring them rutting dogs?” her husband bellowed.

  “Jesus Christ, what is the matter with you?” she said rather hotly.

  “We were just talking about bribery, fucking dogs, and . . .” Kalanda said, rubbing his chin as if he did not remember any more.

  “I only had God to bribe, but the bastard was not at all interested. I knew that He could turn me into an insect and let me walk out, even crawl onto the boots of a soldier, but He refused. I even thought about Dr. Ali. Anything. I wanted to turn into a turd, get flushed and rejoin the living in the sewers of life, but I could not digest myself.”

  The men laughed, but Mrs. Kalanda feebly protested, “The children, boys, the children.”

  “They are living in Uganda. They had better get used to turds,” her husband said with paternal licence.

  Beer flowed in an effort to wash away months of anxiety, despair, bleakness. The afternoon was slowly sinking into the mellow shades of colour, which then dissolved into evening and night. Everybody agreed that it was the most beautiful afternoon they had had in half a year or longer.

  “How does it feel to be back?” the Professor asked blandly, betraying growing intoxication. He had never been one to hold alcohol well.

  “Feels like fuck. I don’t have a job to wake up to, no home, no guards. I am a bit afraid of soldiers now. I am a bit afraid of you. I am a bit afraid of myself. It is great, isn’t it?” he elaborated, smiling, and then burst into drunken laughter.

  “I could do with joblessness for a while,” the Professor confessed. “I need a break. If only I could afford it.”

  “You should have thought about that before choosing to become a teacher,” Bat joked. “You should have gone into banking like the Honourable Right Reverend Mr. and Mrs. Kalanda.”

  “It is not what it used to be.”

  “Says every gangster,” Bat laughed. “It might not be a bad idea to clean out your bank and take us all on a holiday.”

  “You don’t want us to end up like the Bossmans, do you? Your liberator killed them for liberating him of millions of dollars. Everybody in town knows it. I think the Bossmans stretched the concept of greed just a little bit too far,” Kalanda said.

  “Is that huge white man dead? Man, did he have a huge voice,” Bat cried, remembering the many times the late Big Bossman came to the ministry to complain about power failure at his premises. “Man, could he bitch! It is hard to believe that his fellow Englishman took care of him and walked away scot-free.”

  “Oh, yes, he did. Ten million dollars is a lot of money,” Kalanda said, shaking his head in wonder. “The surprising thing is that Ashes is still Amin’s favourite. I wonder what he told his boss.”

  “You have to be terribly stupid to steal from a man like Ashes. Ten million!” the Professor whistled.

  “But he was stealing from a thief, a killer,” Mrs. Kalanda insisted.

  “All the same, all the same,” the Professor said, thinking what a man of modest tastes could do with so much money.

  “Anyway, for cleaning out our bank you need a bunch of false passports and two T3000 tanks,” Kalanda advised.

  “I would drive the tanks myself,” the Professor said, making driving motions with his hands.

  “The children, boys, the children,” Mrs. Kalanda interjected.

  “What is this with the children all the time? Every time we open our mouths to talk, out come the children,” Kalanda shouted, exhibiting the aggression that came when he got really drunk.

  “Bat, you should have cleaned out that mother-shagging ministry,” the Professor said almost dreamily.

  “His head would be hanging on a spear in his boss’ office,” Kalanda said. Bat laughed.

  “Did they can you for nothing?”

  “They did not like my haircut,” Bat replied evasively. “But I can’t complain. I have met people. Including the killer of the Megaphone, as we called the Big Bossman at the office.”

  “Did he like your haircut?” Coming from Mrs. Kalanda, it sounded very funny.

  “He didn’t say and neither did I care. He is a man of few words.”

  “Maybe he had a toothache or indigestion,” Kalanda volunteered.

  “Any news from your former boss?” the Professor asked.

  “Not that I know of. Whether that is due to toothache or indigestion, I can’t say.”

  “Plans, any plans?” Mrs. Kalanda asked, trying to rejoin the conversation.

  “A man has just escaped the claws of death and you are asking him what he wants to do? Would you know what you wanted to do if you were in his shoes?” her husband asked rather angrily.

  “Yes, I would. I wouldn’t want to go back, for sure. Let them not patronize you,” she said, laying a hand on Bat’s knee.

  “We went to Mabira looking for you,” the Professor announced solemnly.

  “Christ! It must be unspeakable,” Bat cut in, wondering whether they needed to know all the details. Was it really necessary?

  “There are no words for it,” the Professor said, shaking his head. “Just the thought that your friend could be there!”

  “With a stiff dick,” said Bat, laughing to forestall the Professor’s maudlin outpourings, which alcohol always brought on. He was in his forties, but he already had grey hair. At such times he looked like a sad old man. He kept relighting his pipe, tamping, puffing. Bat knew that soon the Professor would be talking about his sickly wife, going back to the days when she was healthy, full of life. It was not the kind of story he wanted to hear now.

  “Do you know the number of times we have all passed by the Parliament these last months? And the bastard was there watching us!” Mrs. Kalanda finally said.

  “That sounds better. Bastard sounds perfect coming from your lips. I can see him in there,” her husband said drunkenly.

  “Welcome to Uganda. I will drink to Mrs. Kalanda’s first bastard this evening,” Bat said excitedly.

  “You are all making a meal of it as if I have never used these words before,” Mrs. Kalanda said defensively.

  “Not often enough, dear wife. You should swear and curse a little bit more. There is so much to swear at in this country,” Kalanda said, slapping her thigh.

  The group kept vigil till late into the night. They ate and drank and rejoiced, and by the time they decided to go to bed, it was too late for the Professor to leave. His house was half a kilometre away, but he couldn’t risk getting attacked by drunken soldiers. He and Bat shared a guest bedroom.

  “It is a bloody shame I can’t give you my wife to warm your bed for the night,” Kalanda said as he left the room with his wife.

  “Don’t mind him,” she cooed coyly, licking her bee-stung lips. “He has had too much to drink. Haven’t we all?”

  The Professor was a big snorer and filled the room with his half-choked piggy grunts. Bat was tormented by insomnia triggered by unfamiliar comfort and thoughts about how Babit was doing. He felt bad because there had been no chance of contacting her since she was not at home. He hoped she still loved him and had not suffered too much; her family too. He hoped she had managed to get some money. The comforting thought was that he was back, eager to undo much of the suffering and to pay for whatever debts she might have run up. His stomach’s protestations against drastic diet changes resulted in a bout of diarrhoea, which kept him on his feet for part of the night. He would rise in the darkness, seek out his sandals with his f
eet, and make his way to the door. The Professor slept soundly through it all, sounding like a small herd of overfed pigs.

  This was Bat’s second time to sleep in this room. The first time had been soon after his return from Britain. It felt strange, for now there was nothing to show that he had been here before.

  DURING HIS FIRST WEEKS of freedom, he was gripped by undue fear of soldiers. It came in flashes: the roar of a speeding Stinger, a snatch of hammering boots or harsh, chilling voices. The sight of these creatures, with green and brown combat fatigues spotted like leopard skins, made his stomach clutch or his heart race for a while. He would feel fear rising from deep within him like bile, and he would make an effort to hold himself together. It was as if he missed the old order, where this fear had been a staple part of the day. Now it was as if they were stalking him. The fact that he still had the house at Entebbe and that his salary kept coming added to the confusion. The fear of eviction had been at the back of his mind for some time. Visions of Babit being flung from the house had tortured him. He knew that many generals would kill for a house with so much history, but the fact that they did not make a move made the picture unclear. A systematic, logical man, he expected his enemies to be methodical too.

  As the car approached the house, he started to panic. How was the staff going to react? He had always kept them at a distance, and now he felt uneasy about having to deal with them. He was sure that Babit was not at home, and he planned to send her a messenger later in the day. He spent an anxious moment in the parked car, taking in the trees, the yard, the lake, the house. Where was everybody? Everything seemed frozen. It looked like a house where somebody had died weeks ago. He felt awkward in Kalanda’s clothes. A refugee unsure of the reception awaiting him.

  As he plucked up the courage to get out of the car, the front door flew open. Babit appeared, an anxious frown on her face. She had returned the previous evening, in between flights from Victoria’s threats, disconnected the phone and gone to sleep. She stood on top of the steps waiting to see who had come to visit. She had lost weight and looked drawn. It was a positive sign: she had been waiting. He wanted to prolong the moment and see what would happen. She could not see clearly inside the car and the waiting made her nervous. She opened her mouth to ask who was in the car.