Snakepit

by Moses Isegawa

  Many people, including Babit’s parents, talked of dropping the case, if only to save Babit’s name. They could not bear to hear her called a common prostitute. Bat knew that, these being rural folks, they might forget that history was ephemeral; it erased itself as soon as it wrote itself. Opening the case under another regime would not be possible. The case would simply vanish. Files would get lost or burned. They forgot that the next regime would have bigger problems than the aborted search for justice in Babit’s name.

  Babit’s mother could hardly bear to look at Victoria. The fact that the same woman, a commoner passing herself off as royalty, had killed her first child made her physically sick, and many times she refused to go to court. She would stay home or come with the family and stay somewhere in town and wait for the reports at the end of the day.

  GENERAL BAZOOKA SAVOURED the drama. He saw himself as an artist at work and he loved every minute of it. He would sit with his cronies on the veranda of his orgy mansion, drink and laugh and argue about the merits and demerits of certain episodes. He planned twists and turns, and the impunity of it served to take his mind off the pressures of work and the misery of having a wife hovering between life and death, her skin as brittle as a dry leaf. He still visited her, disregarding non-visiting hours if necessary, pushing doctors and nurses around, posting guards in awkward places. His chief advisor had urged him to vary his visiting hours for fear of attack by dissidents dressed as doctors, nurses or cleaners.

  There had been plans to fly his wife to Libya, to the same hospital where the former Vice President stayed in his wheelchair, but they were still on hold, for she did not want to leave her children behind. When he proposed sending the children along with her, she said that she would think about it. He remembered the way she struggled with each word, releasing it like a gummy drop of sap seeping from a wounded tree trunk. He could imagine the effort giving him an answer cost her. The doctors said that it was a good sign that she had begun to talk, albeit slowly, but he could not recognize her voice; it sounded like sandpaper on rough wood. Nowadays, whenever he brought up the subject, she would ask him to tell her a story, or to talk about the good old days, or to describe the weather outside the window. He had sensed that she was afraid to leave the country, afraid that she might get neglected, left on her own in a strange land. In his heart of hearts he knew that she wanted to die on the soil she had walked all her life. The idea of her death got to him. It trickled into the things he did. It insinuated itself in the way he behaved in cabinet meetings, the impatience he showed at traffic lights and roundabouts. It drove him into creating more spectacles.

  He became obsessed with eternal life and Judgement Day. He noticed the abundance of marabou storks in the city. They seemed to be watching, waiting, stalking. It was as if they were waiting for his wife’s carcass, and the flesh on his bones. There were several garbage dumps in the city where they congregated in the hundreds, in all sizes, the biggest large as a goat, the smallest not bigger than a rabbit. They looked like mourners frozen in their grief, or rather like very hungry people caught in the game of waiting for the next morsel. They infuriated him when they hovered above the city, coasting on thermal columns thrusting from the ground, almost without moving their wings at all, as though everything beneath them was theirs, ready for the taking. Every week he directed his chauffeur to take him to a different dump. He would take out his automatic rifle and fire, blowing off bills, ripping gizzards, crowning the garbage heaps with twisted carcasses of bleeding storks. Alerted by the shooting, the military police arrived on several occasions.

  “Twisted,” they said, going away. “Doesn’t he have better things to do? A ministry to run?”

  He would go away thinking that he had done something, but the next time the birds seemed to have multiplied by ten, as though out in numbers to mock their tormentor. He would feel his skin creeping with terror. At such moments he would remember his wife’s question: “Are the bombers still busy at work?” Busy at work, as though delivering groceries? The power of that innuendo, that indirect criticism of his and his government’s inability to take care of the problem, said without the least malice or animosity, could not be erased with the blood of a million storks, and would depress him.

  THE TRIAL TRUNDLED ON to an uncertain end. The nearer the end drew, the more outrageously Victoria was instructed to behave. Nowadays she came to court escorted by ten Bureau agents dressed as court pages and behaving as such. On the penultimate day she came dressed like a Catholic nun, with a big glittering rosary dangling from her neck. A group of staunch Catholics took offence. They were dismissed because court rules were, everybody was allowed to dress any way they wanted, as long as it was not in miniskirts. Victoria’s habit had fallen way below the knees and thus within the stipulation of the law. Outside court, one hundred indifferent people who had been collected off the streets, put on a lorry and dumped there, were chanting her innocence. They urged the judge to dismiss the case and stop wasting the taxpayers’ money.

  ON JUDGEMENT DAY Bat woke up very early. He had slept very badly and the previous night’s whisky had left him with a big headache. He took a shower and prepared to pick up the day’s gauntlet. He had moved to the city, and now lived in a quiet suburb in another government villa. As he sat on the bed fully dressed, it struck him that he was alone, unfussed over, unwatched, and that it was going to be a terrible day. It felt almost as terrible as the day of the funeral. He could hear his sister moving about in another room. His nephew emerged first, wearing a blue cotton suit with red shoes. His sister followed and, seeing that he was not in the mood to talk, busied herself with other things. He went into the garage and sat in the car waiting for the Kalandas and the Professor. He had the urge to drive away and leave everything behind, and return a day or two later to hear what had transpired. His friends arrived ten long minutes later. They exchanged greetings and in two cars they drove to court. The morning mist did not lift the mood either. Bat kept turning on the wipers, then off, then on, then off again. His sister watched him from the corner of her eye, wordlessly. They found Babit’s family already at the court-house.

  Victoria came dressed as a princess with ten pages in tow. She looked sombre though and did not leer at those she was meant to torment. The proceedings were long-winded, as though the judge had finally decided to assert his authority. Dressed in his black robes and the ridiculous curly white wig, he looked like a kettle with a white tea-cosy. The evidence, everybody heard, was circumstantial, and thus not enough to convict. Victoria walked free. The killers were slapped on the wrist. Victoria and her team jubilated. The pages lifted her in the air, and she waved her way out of court. Bat wanted to lunge at her, too angry for words, but Kalanda restrained him. Outside, the princess talked to journalists from the government paper.

  “Justice has been done. Long live law and order and the spirit of reconciliation it fosters. Long live the government of Marshal Amin,” she said, beaming.

  Tearful faces raised curses at her. Angry fists were directed at her. The strange thing about losing, even if it was in such a farcical case as this, was that everyone looked embarrassed, as though it was their fault, as though they had not done enough. They found it hard to look each other in the eye. There were words of consolation, which did little to soothe the burning sense of outrage surging in their breasts. Bat’s father-in-law advised him not to take the failure personally, and to avoid being destroyed by the poison of bitterness. They all parted silently, as if to contest the defeat at some later date.

  BAT BURIED HIMSELF in work. The loss of the case seemed to mark the end of an episode, and now he wanted to look ahead. He wished to see his brother, and hear his voice, and know how he was surviving, but he kept out of his way. It was a week after the verdict that he sent a one-word message: “Bastards.” It had made him laugh; yes, bastards indeed. By now he knew that his brother would not attempt to kill Victoria. It pleased him that he had obeyed him. Maybe he was not beyond salvation, and there
were some lights of reason still burning in his head. He still wanted him to yoke his bombing activities to a political agenda, but he knew that the boy was a guerrilla, who fought his own wars, his own way. Now and then, a car bomb went off somewhere. It amazed him how Tayari had eluded his pursuers. How many cars had he blown up by now? How many army shops? That he knew this person, and had known him all his life, also amazed him.

  Bat was aware that Victoria could have betrayed him and his entire family to General Bazooka because of Tayari’s activities. She wasn’t crazy, after all. If she was, then it was selective madness. Demented love, more like it. Obsession. Destroying lives. He didn’t want to see her again. And if it meant not seeing his daughter, so be it.

  VICTORIA’S FIFTEEN MINUTES of fame ended as dramatically as they had begun. As soon as the trial ended, General Bazooka asked her to make her own security arrangements. Many Bureau agents were angry with her for misusing and tarnishing the Bureau’s name in a bid to clear herself of murder. Others hated her because the General had made them worship her and wear ridiculous costumes, beads and cowrie shells. Those who had carried her in and out of court were furious because they had been made to participate in a farce instead of going out to look for the bombers, who were still putting many of their colleagues in hospital or out of business. What did General Bazooka and his slut think? That they were slaves or shit-eating morons? Others were annoyed by the flagrant nepotism and favouritism practised by the big shots, and the great leeway the generals enjoyed. Southern agents, stool pigeons in offices, hospitals, schools, who had joined out of fear or for personal security, cursed her for spitting on royalty and for stirring local resentment. They dreaded the possible rise of monarchist terrorists who might kill them and their families in the name of the king. They were aware that many monarchists were ready to die and kill for the restoration of the kingdoms. Afraid of what might happen to them after the fall of Amin, some of them thought of capturing Victoria and handing her over to the monarchists as a sacrifice to them.

  Victoria realized that if she showed her face in Bureau circles she would most certainly be killed. She knew that without the General’s protection, Tayari or some other assassin might come after her with impunity. Very early in the morning she sneaked out of the barracks with the sleeping child on her back and got on the bus to the west. She avoided the towns where she had stayed with the General in the days when he was still fighting armed robbers in the South-western Region. She followed her nose, cocksure that she would know when she had reached a safe town. The more she pushed west, the bigger the hills became, till they metamorphosed into mountain ranges, with one higher than the other, caught in the blue skies and the hovering mist and cloud, flaunting hanging valleys blessed with rivers. She was now in the region of the earth’s tectonic plates. She could see the snow-capped Rwenzori lost in the clouds. To the north and south were a chain of breathtaking crater lakes. Nearby was a hot spring, and valleys carpeted with tea plantations. At around that time she seemed to cease to exist and she found herself observing herself from outside, just like in the period before Babit’s head was cut off. Sunshine broke over the Rwenzori, sending columnar legs through cloud and mist. It hit her in the face as the bus turned. She felt a very excruciating pain. Her eyes seemed to explode and her hands flew to her face. She squeezed her eyes, not daring to open them, for fear of finding herself blind. Many kilometres on, in the town of Fort Portal, the pain slowly disappeared and she opened her eyes, trembling with relief. Here in the west, away from the city, with roads leading to Zaïre, to Rwanda, to Tanzania, anything was possible.

  THE RIVALRY BETWEEN General Bazooka and Colonel Ashes raged on, fiercer than ever. Both men escaped death-traps on a number of occasions. General Bazooka believed that Ashes was the man behind the plots against him, although now and then he considered the possibility that some coup-plotting generals might be taking advantage of the confusion to get rid of him. Ashes, in his case, concentrated more on beefing up his security than on finding out who wanted him dead. The departure of Dr. Ali had only strengthened his position as Amin’s top confidant, and that made many soldiers eager to cut his heart out. As far as he was concerned, there was only one person he had to keep happy: Marshal Amin. By the look of things, the Marshal needed him more than ever. He was lonely, stranded on the razor teeth of his crumbling power and massive paranoia. He was afraid of assassins, capture by the CIA, subsequent torture and incarceration. The fate of fellow dictators gave him sleepless nights. He remembered too well what had happened to Emperor Haile Selassie, who was locked up in a dank cell and starved to death. He had seen what had happened to Emperor Bokassa in exile in France. Heckled by the French press, false accusations of torture and murder thrown at him every single day. Water and electricity cut every other day. Dead pigs dropped in his yard every three days. Pictures of dead black babies mailed every four days. Refusal by Air France to transport him. Boycotted by all whores, black, white, latino.

  “What did the poor runt do to deserve such disgrace? Has the world lost all sense of humour?” Amin would ask Ashes over a glass of whisky. “All the bastard ever wanted to be was Emperor Napoleon, and he was. Portraying him very well, including riding a white horse for his coronation. Now the French are rejecting him, saying that they can’t recognize him despite the make-up!” Amin would burst into laughter and Ashes would follow suit.

  “These are terrible times, Marshal. African leaders are being victimized for the sins of European leaders. Very soon people will be blaming you for Il Duce’s mistakes.”

  Amin loved that one and he doubled over with laughter. He took a large swig of whisky and took another line of coke. “Well said, friend. It was the reason why I bought that princedom in Saudi Arabia. We Muslims tend to look after our own. The Saudis will take care of me for life.”

  “It is one of the best dreams you’ve ever had, Marshal.”

  “I am sure that some swine-eaters would gladly see me treated like Bokassa, pissed on copiously, for exploiting Il Duce to become world-famous, but they will never get hold of me.”

  “Not in a million years, Marshal.”

  “Friend, have you made any plans? Do you intend to hide behind the Queen’s skirts or would you rather use Thatcher’s bloomers as a cowl?”

  They doubled over with laughter, but before Ashes could answer, the phone rang. Emergency. The dissidents had crossed the border into Uganda. With Dr. Ali’s words of warning buzzing in his ears, Amin left to go and address the nation.

  NOT LONG AFTER, an assassination attempt was made on the Marshal. He was cornered on the way to the State House. Bombs leapt and exploded in all directions. Rocket-propelled grenades hit the presidential Boomerangs and Stingers one after the other. The Eunuchs were mowed down as they valiantly fought back. In the confusion, Amin crawled away, and nobody saw him go. A bullet grazed his back, parried by his bulletproof vest. He made his way to the nearest compound and the petrified family gave him the phone. He called Ashes, who came for him in his helicopter. They spent six days together on the island.

  The nation held its breath in suspense. Some said that he had been mortally wounded and was dying, and that the army was busy choosing a successor. Some said a helicopter had picked him up one hour after the attempt and flown him to Libya for operations to remove bullets in his arms and legs. Some said that he had fallen into the hands of dissidents and was being interrogated, spitting teeth and secrets. The sceptics simply kept quiet and waited.

  In the meantime, the Marshal was enjoying himself, fishing, swimming in the dazzling waters of the lake, trekking deep into the island to look for parrots. He got the idea to catch a thousand parrots, train them to sing the national anthem, and make them the main attraction at the coming January 21 celebrations marking eight years in power.

  “Isn’t it a little bit too late, Marshal?”

  “It is never too late, friend. We can send a battalion to comb all these islands and come up with as many birds as possible. The rest
we can buy on the international market.”

  “At the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

  “Uganda is a rich country. If we can buy the most advanced Russian battle tanks, how about birds with curved beaks?”

  Amin scrapped the plan a few days later, saying that the birds were too noisy and produced toxic shit. He went boating with Ashes, travelling hundreds of kilometres in speedboats with a helicopter combing the water and the air for enemies. Somewhere in the islands they came upon a fisherman struggling to save a friend who was caught up in the nets of a capsized boat. Amin dashed out of his boat, cut the man free, helped him right the boat, and gave the men money to buy new nets.

  “A civilian saved my life a few days ago. I have saved yours to thank God. In fact, I saw you in a dream; it is the reason why I was here in time. Come and visit me at the State House when you are over the shock.”

  The men were too overcome to say anything.

  “You risked your life, Marshal, for some useless fishermen. What if they were dissidents?”

  “So much the better. It would show them that I am fearless. And if anybody shoots at me, the bullet just bounces back and kills him.”

  Ashes enjoyed playing host; big occasions suited him well. He did everything with such dedication as to suggest that he would always follow Amin wherever he went. He was the only person on the island, apart from his guest, who was not on edge. He organized wrestling and boxing and eating competitions, military exercises, Amin’s morning drills and afternoon strolls. The days drifted slowly, filled with relaxation and the faint suggestion that they might be the last days before everything changed. It looked like a farewell party, the last event before an institution was closed and the buildings razed. Ashes screened Amin’s favourite movies and video recordings. They watched I Love Lucy, joking about how much Lucy in the days when she was a stripper and aspirant actress reminded them of Margaret Thatcher. They watched romantic comedies and war films. They watched Amin’s two blockbusters: his portrayals of Il Duce. They recited Il Duce’s leitmotif: Better One Day as an Elephant Than One Hundred as a Pig. On Amin’s tongue, the Italian words sounded like something very delicious.