by Dilman Dila
“I don’t want you to hate me,” she said.
He did not reply. He thought about the love they had just made. For a moment he feared she merely wanted another baby. But while they made the last two children, she had merely lain stiff on the bed, her thoughts on the Emperor’s vision, as he pounded away. This morning had been different. She had resurrected something that he had imagined was long dead and buried.
“When you didn’t come home last night,” she continued, “I wanted to call the abasura. I knew you were hiding from me. But I knew if I did I would lose you forever. I came back after midnight and found you asleep. I saw the book in your hand. I remembered what we had before. The happiness.”
He wiped off the tears that rolled down her cheeks and slipped onto the wooden floor.
“Please forgive me,” she said. “I want to heal what I destroyed.”
He thought it was all a dream. He did not want it to end. He kissed her, and again they made love. They lay shuddering in each other’s arms for the next hour, not saying anything.
“I have a surprise for you,” he finally broke the silence.
He showed her the video print of the island. He painted a picture of a little hut, of her swimming in the stream, he fishing on a canoe. Their children were all grown up. Soon, they would start homes of their own. Then, he and Akello could migrate to the little island, where they could live in relative isolation, far away from the madness of the Emperor.
“Will you live there with me?” he said.
“I’ll do anything for you,” she said.
He did not tell her about the fugitive. Instead, he waited until the afternoon, when he was sure twenty four hours had passed, enough time for the mzungu to reach Europe, before he reported the loss of his bruka. They scanned the air, but found no trace of it. Three days later the police had not found the aircraft. Then he knew that the fugitive had made it safely. If they had found her, they would have arrested him for aiding her escape.
He thanked God for hearing his prayers, and he thanked the fugitive for coming into his life. In a strange way, she had helped to heal his marriage, helped to make his wife realize where true happiness lay.
The Yellow People
The storm fell from a blue sky. It started as a playful drizzle, with the sun still shinning, and then daylight went out and bucketfuls of water slammed against the glass doors of the supermarket, imprisoning Tom Dunningan and several other people in the shop. The shop, originally intended for a small retail business, had only two aisles. The shelves were so crammed that some goods had to be placed on the floor. The Indian owner, Kapoor, sat behind the counter beside the door, frequently scanning the security mirrors in the ceiling. His assistant, a woman in her twenties, sat on a stool at the extreme end of the room. The five shoppers were crowded near the door, clutching plastic bags, waiting for the rain to stop. Dunningan was deep inside the supermarket though he too had finished shopping. He stared at an old man with no thumbs. He had always believed he was fearless, since he was the grim reaper’s helper, but the sight of this old man had unnerved him. His face had wrinkled such that he looked eighty, rather than fifty. His beard, which he usually kept neatly trimmed, looked like wet feathers. After a decade living in Uganda, he had acquired a deep tan, but the moment he noticed that this old man had no thumbs, his skin had turned white as if smeared with flour. His knees trembled. Dizziness made him sway. He leaned against a shelf for support.
“Give him a seat,” Kapoor said to the assistant. He had to shout to be heard above the roar of the rain.
Dunningan forced a smile in thanks. He was used to such privileges. As a white man living in a small African town, he got a lot of attention. He liked to think it was because he started the school for poor children, and not because of his skin color.
Without a word, the assistant offered him her stool. He collapsed onto it and closed his eyes. Maybe it is just a bad dream, he thought. Maybe I’m just imagining that it is the same old man, and that he has no thumbs.
“Are you fine?”
He opened his eyes. Kapoor now stood beside him. Unlike most Indians he had met in the country, Kapoor spoke fluent English without an accent. Dunningan held his breath to calm his heart. He forced a smile at Kapoor, but it ended up a grimace.
“I could give you a bed in the back room to rest,” Kapoor said.
“I’m okay,” Dunningan said. His lips quivered. His voice crackled like dry twigs.
“You don’t look okay,” Kapoor said. “What’s the matter?”
Dunningan’s eyes automatically returned to the old man, who clutched a shopping bag full of insecticide tins. The man had attained a darker hue, as though he had smeared himself with charcoal dust. He wore an outlandish bright yellow costume made from fine silk. It looked like long sleeved coveralls which fit so tightly that Dunningan could see every curve on the scrawny body. His shoes looked like yellow stockings with wooden soles. He starkly contrasted with the ordinary looking jeans, t-shirts, kitenges, coats and ties the other people wore. He had no hair. His head shone in the fluorescent lights. The last time Dunningan had seen him, two months ago, he had been entombed in the backyard crypt. What then was he doing among the living in a supermarket?
“Do you see him?” Dunningan whispered.
Kapoor dropped, putting his ears closer to Dunningan’s mouth. “What?”
“Him.” Dunningan’s voice was hoarse and weak. “That yellow man.”
“Him? He is a very weird fellow,” the Indian said, and Dunningan’s bones melted into a cold liquid. The old man was not a ghost. “I first saw him two weeks ago,” Kapoor added.
“Two weeks?” Dunningan said. The pallor of his face deepened. When he had visited the tomb three days before, to put in a new corpse, nothing seemed amiss.
“Tom,” Kapoor said. “You need to see a doctor.”
“I’m fine,” Dunningan snapped. “Just tell me about him.”
“You are sick,” Kapoor said. “Come, let’s go get you a warm bed.”
Dunningan felt cold fingers on his shoulder. He jumped, slapping them away. And then he saw it was only Kapoor. He smiled to hide his shame.
“I’m sorry,” Dunningan said. “I’m a little – Look, I’ll go to the clinic the moment it stops raining, but I need to know about that man.”
“Why?” Dunningan could not answer. He could not tell the Indian about the tomb in his backyard. “Do you know him?” Kapoor added.
Dunningan made it a point not to know the identity of his victims, but he could not forget their faces. He, especially, could not forget that of this old man, the third elderly person he had killed in his career. The first two had been his parents.
“Yes,” Dunningan finally said, finding a plausible answer. “He wants a place for his child at the school. I’m still reviewing his application. I wonder if I should accept it. Tell me what you know about him. I think he is rich yet the scholarships are only for poor children.”
“Well,” Kapoor said. “I don’t know much about him really. He often comes with a woman who wears the same clothes and also doesn’t have thumbs. I think they are twins. They don’t look alike, but they have exactly the same voice.”
A wave of dizziness nearly threw Dunningan off the seat. There were two escapees from the crypt in his backyard, two of the three hundred and seventy people he had killed and entombed. He bit his lip to stifle the shock.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“She didn’t come today,” Kapoor said. “Tom, you need to lie down. Come, let me give you a bed.”
He again touched Dunningan’s shoulder, but Dunningan shoved him off.
“What do they buy?” Dunningan said.
“Insecticide. Tom – ”
“Insecticide?”
“Yeah,” Kapoor said. “It’s very strange. They always buy a dozen tins each time, and they come twice a week. What do they need all that for? When I asked, they said the doctor sends them for it.”
“Docto
r?”
“I don’t understand either, but it’s good business for me. I don’t ask questions.”
Outside, the rain relented to a harsh drizzle. The tree in front of the shop groaned in the fury of the shrill wind. The shoppers still could not leave the supermarket.
“Well,” Kapoor said, after a silence had cropped up between them. “You go straight to the clinic after the rain, okay?”
“Okay.”
Dunningan closed his eyes again, and tried to think about the school, hoping it would distract him from the old man. There had to be a rational explanation, he thought. Maybe he had put these two in the crypt when they were still alive. But where did they get that costume? Who was this doctor? Why did he send them for a lot of insecticide?
#
The moment the rain stopped, the old man and the other shoppers dashed out. Dunningan ran after him. The street was littered with debris from the storm. Leaves, broken branches, upturned trash cans. Water filled the potholes. Children raced paper boats in the gutters. Clouds hung low above the old buildings, sweeping fast over the rust colored roofs. The old man had a brisk gait. His footsteps seemed to echo all over the town as he splashed across the pavement. Dunningan overtook him and stood in front of him, forcing him to stop.
“I greet you,” Dunningan said in Adhola. When he had just come to Tororo town, he took trouble to learn the language of the locals. He became fluent within three months.
The old man’s eyes were white, like a baby’s, the pupils a deep black. They did not reflect light, they were just two black and white balls in his face. He had a scar on his neck, barely visible under the collar. Dunningan had made it as he throttled him to death.
“Hell-o. To. You. Too,” the old man said. He did not stutter, but he put long pauses between the syllables. His voice was hollow, as though he were speaking from inside a pipe. As he spoke, the wrinkles on his face moved as though worms were crawling under his skin.
“So we meet again,” Dunningan said.
The old man shook his head. “So – rry,” he said, smiling. “I. Lost. Mem – mo – ry.”
Dunningan did not realise he was holding his breath until that moment. His chest relaxed. He felt something wash through his veins and he knew it was relief. At least this man had not come back from the dead with vengeance.
“So you don’t remember me?” he said.
The old man shook his head again
“What happened to your voice? You spoke properly the last time we talked.”
“I. Don’t. Know,” the old man said.
“What do you do with the insecticide?”
“Doc – tor.”
“Who is this doctor?”
“I. Don’t. Know.”
“What does he use the insecticide for?”
“I. Don’t. Know.”
A bodaboda came riding down the street. The old man walked closer to the road and raised his arm to stop the bicycle taxi.
“Let me give you a lift,” Dunningan said.
If he knew where the old man went, he might unravel the mystery. He had to know why this man had returned to the world of the living. He did not expect the old man to agree, but the old man gave him a shy smile and, without waiting for another word, walked to his car. There were three vehicles in the street, but the old man picked out the right car without being told.
How did he know my car? Dunningan wondered.
When he had picked up the old man, late one night in Naluwerere slum, he had been driving a Mark II that he had rented from Kampala city, and he had applied special effects make-up to look African. He had killed the old man in the backseat of that Mark II. There was no reason why this man should know that this Land Cruiser was his, yet he did. Had Dunningan made a mistake somewhere?
Had the old man really lost his memory?
The old man climbed into the passenger seat, placed his shopping bag on his lap, and again gave Dunningan a smile. This time, his lips parted and Dunningan realized he had no front teeth. He hesitated to enter the car. Something deadly was afoot, something that resurrected corpses and dressed them up in costumes of fine silk. Whatever it was, he had to face it sooner or later. He jumped behind the wheel.
“Where do I take you?” he said, as he fired up the engine.
The old man did not reply at once. A smile wavered on his face as he watched the wipers cleaning the windscreen.
“Headmaster!” Kapoor’s assistant ran out of the supermarket waving a shopping bag. “You forgot your things.”
“Many thanks,” Dunningan said. He rolled down a window and she put the bag on the back seat. After she had gone, Dunningan turned back to the zombie. “Where do we go?”
The old man directed him to the foot of a little mountain, a green volcanic plug that towered above the sleepy town, giving it a postcard facade. The residents called it ‘the rock’. They drove by a golf course, and then off the road into a small, overgrown path, which eventually petered out. They abandoned the car and wadded through thick undergrowth. The trees grew thicker and taller as they went higher up the rock, until they were in a jungle. Monkeys watched them. Insects pecked at Dunningan. He could hear the roar of heavy trucks on the highway.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked.
“Home,” the old man said.
“You need a lot of Doom to kill mosquitoes here.”
“We. Don’t. Use. It. For. Mos – quit – O.”
Halfway up the mountain, the old man stopped beside a huge boulder. It had a hole near the base. The old man pushed his hand into the hole, pulled something, and part of the stone’s surface moved to reveal the mouth of a tunnel. Yellow light spilled out of the hole. He went down on his knees and crawled in. Dunningan hesitated, took a deep breath, and then followed.
The tunnel led to a cave that looked like a honeycomb. Here, the yellow light looked like smoke. It came from egg-like objects on the floor, which was covered with a silky rug. A sweet perfume made Dunningan dizzy. The old man vanished into one of the cells. Dunningan touched the wall. It was spongy, and warm. It stained his finger with a yellowish, gooey substance. A woman crept out of another cell. She too wore a yellow outfit and she had no thumbs. He had kidnapped her in Kigali, a day’s drive away. He had entombed her four weeks before he throttled the old man.
“I know you too,” he said, in French.
“I don’t know that language,” the woman said, in Adhola. Her voice was exactly like that of the old man, as though it were the same person speaking through different mouths. She, however, was more fluent in her speech.
“You spoke French,” Dunningan said.
The woman gave him a smile, and shook her head. “I only know Adhola.”
“Where do you come from?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I found you in Kigali.”
“Really?” Her smile vanished. “Where is that?”
“It was your home,” he said.
“No,” she said. “My home is here.” Then, after a moment’s consideration, she added, “Maybe you are right. I lost my memory. I’ll ask the doctor.”
“Is he in?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
“He comes at midnight.”
Four more people crept out of the cells. They all had no thumbs. They all wore silky yellow clothing and shoes with wooden soles. They all used to be the lifeless residents of his charnel house. It only took him a moment to place each face - where he had picked each up, how he had killed them. Yet here they were, in this surreal cave, smiling at him, their teeth gleaming in the yellow light.
He quickly searched through the cells. They were bare. He did not even see the shopping bags of insecticide. He examined the walls for hollow spots where they might hide things, but did not find any. It was not a very big cave. It had a diameter of about sixty feet. The roof, he now noticed, was swathe in what looked like yellow cobwebs. No spiders were visible.
He went back to the first
cell. The thumbless people were all smiling at him. He touched the woman’s hand, and felt for her pulse. Nothing. Without asking, he took a knife out of his pocket and slashed off her left pinky finger. She did not cry out in pain. She did not bleed. She only smiled at him. The finger twitched in his palm, like a maggot. He dropped it.
She held up her hand, to show him another pinky finger growing to replace the one he had cut off. Then, she picked the finger from the floor and put it in his coat pocket.
“Keep it,” she whispered into his ears. “The doctor will come to you this night. He’ll answer your questions. Please, go now.”
She shoved him toward the exit.
#
Dunningan thought work might distract him from what had to be a bad dream. He went to the school. It was five o’clock. Teachers milled about preparing to go home. Students retreated to the dormitories having survived another day of classes. When he got into his office, the shock set in.
He tried to light a cigarette. He could not hold the lighter and did not notice that he had the wrong end of the cigarette in his mouth. He did not realize he was crying until a tear drop fell on the cigarette. He had last cried when he was twelve, the night he had killed his parents. They had refused to buy him an Iron Man toy. He used a fireman’s axe, which his father had bought from WalMart earlier in the day. He waited until supper time. He pulled the axe from under the dining table and split his father’s skull open. His mother had fainted. He hacked off her head in three blows. Then, to convince the police of his innocence, he had hacked at his own leg, breaking bones, to make it look like an intruder had done the killing.
Now, he dried his eyes. Unable to contain the emotions running riot in his chest, he ran out of the office. He jumped into his car, fired up the engine, reversed and crashed into the administration building. Teachers ran out of the staff room, and stared. He ignored them. He drove to the gate. The Land Cruiser wobbled like a drunk zigzagging home. He swerved off the road and rammed into a tree. Cursing, he got out, kicked the truck, and walked home.
He lived alone in a mansion behind the school, five miles away from town, from the yellow cave that zombies called home. He had lived alone since he turned twenty, after killing his foster father, a distant uncle who refused to give him a loan to start an online dating site insisting he goes to college. This time, Dunningan had made him drunk, and then staged a suicide.
