One Man Dancing

by Patricia Keeney

  Charles pictures her, arms swaying over her head, dancing towards Samuel, gathering him in. And singing. As she would for him. Then they would hold and hug and laugh and cry together. And she would never stop singing salvation. Kekinoni knows God. Sees Him in her children. Her reason for living and her special route to heaven.

  “We spoke of my life in Kenya. And I have a good life there. I asked her why Debra was still not married. She told me that Debra has never been comfortable with men since…”

  Charles nods.

  “Mostly, she wanted me to bring her back photos of you. She spoke of you a lot. She can barely walk now. She needs a good wheelchair.”

  “You must buy her one.”

  “I would but the ones made at home are junk. And a new one from abroad, well, the problem is getting it to her. It would be stolen and sold before she ever saw it.”

  Samuel continues. “She asked when I had last seen you. I told her it had been a very long time, that I had only received some newspaper clippings you sent me about the tours and that Beth had sent about the tornado.

  Charles saddens visibly. “I sent Mother several letters with clippings and photos, Samuel. When I called, I could only get through to the village shop. They told me that they hadn’t seen any post from me. Who knows what happened.”

  “She still wants a grandson from you, Charles. She always expected you to return in triumph one day. She wanted you to marry at home, give her lots of grandchildren. She never stopped believing in you. Even now.

  “I took her to the health centre for a kind of massage,” continues Samuel. “She’s got pain everywhere. Her whole body is separating, each part going a different way.”

  “You have pictures of her?” asks Charles.

  Samuel hands him some photographs. Charles studies them intently travelling back with each one.

  A grey-haired Kekinoni looks directly out at him. This once stately woman, now so small. Seated on a covered divan, wearing a long green checked cotton dress. Coolly and sedately she stares, speaking to him forcefully with her whole demeanour, focused on him. She smiles bravely through her toothless mouth because she knows her son will soon see.

  “Be strong,” she tells him in pictures. “Be my strong son.”

  “Her eyes are troubled,” he says softly. “She is holding back so much.”

  He flips through the other pictures quickly and returns once more to the first.

  He studies it again, noticing how tightly the dark headband wraps a few stray wisps of hair. Then his eyes fall on her hands, cupped carefully around a polished milk bowl. An offering to him. Of love. Of continuity.

  “I have kept my bowl too,” he tells her.

  “What kind of life does Debra have now?”

  “She has been so damaged, Charles. She stays with a cousin and comes to help Mother as she can. She wants so much to see you. She hopes you will come home one day. When I left, I felt as if I was abandoning her.”

  “I abandoned her,” says Charles. “I abandoned all of them. But one day I will go back. I will set it all straight again.” His voice is suddenly urgent, cutting through the calm and tears like a sword.

  “It is impossible Charles. Even I can just barely survive in Uganda. You are on crutches. You wouldn’t make it through the airport terminal. I saw them insist that someone with a broken leg prove he wasn’t smuggling things inside his cast.”

  “They made him take it off?”

  “Finally they settled for a bribe.”

  “I can get money, Samuel. I have been saving a little bit each month from what the welfare gives me.”

  “Forget Uganda, my brother. It is like a graveyard. I drove through so many villages we used to know. Remember all those lively places, people coming to greet us? Now there is no one. Just a scrawny cow or two wandering among dilapidated huts.”

  “How is he, Samuel?” The unspoken name suddenly spoken. “How is Father? It is so many years now that he stopped living with Mother. Is he okay?”

  “I took the taxi to his village too. It is not so far from hers. When he left, he gave up his government job. Everyone in the village gathered around the taxi. Cars do not come there so often. I had sent a telephone message but I could not be sure he got it. I told him I would arrive in the afternoon.

  “It was seven in the evening when I found his small house. He was already asleep.”

  “Already asleep,” repeats Charles mechanically. A sort of rehearsal for death, a little sleep easing into a bigger one.

  “He woke up when I came in. He was surprised. He had not received my message. I was shocked at how thin he was. I could feel his bones.”

  Charles recalled the weight of Kanyunya’s authority, his years of ceremonial feasting. “He is very frail now. When I knelt before him, he could not bend to help me up.”

  “And how is he in his mind?”

  “He is depressed. His income is low. He has nothing to do. He is not important anymore.”

  Then Samuel adds with difficulty, “Everything he owned disappeared. His land is long gone. All the politicians are corrupt. Not like your father was.”

  Charles feels his guts wrench. “I should be there. I should help him.”

  “It is not your fault, Charles. And it would be very difficult for you to go back. When I left, the whole village came and said goodbye. They all send you good wishes.”

  “They remember me?”

  “Of course. You are a celebrity.” Samuel pauses on a thought. “But for each person who asked, for each person I met, there was another who had died. Or who did not remember anything. There is so much death.”

  “And the new government?”

  “The new government cannot change the past. Cannot disguise the body count. Yes, there has been some improvement since Amin left and they have given a bit of power back to the business people. But it will take a very long time to repair the destruction.”

  Images of friends scuttle past on the same dusty track of his familial guilt. “Once Father distributed land to the people so grandly. He could give a mountain. He could give anything.”

  “It is sad. Your father is dreaming of death.”

  Charles sees his old home in some of Samuel’s other photos. The land, brown and dry. Buildings ramshackle, outhouses thrown together and balanced precariously, just sticks in the wind. He can hear the trees cracking in the arid air, their stripped bark flapping, yellow and useless.

  “How long did you stay?”

  “Just overnight. I had to get back to Kampala. I had some business meetings. Then I had to catch the plane.”

  “Does everyone still dream of living in Kampala?”

  “Not as many. A great number of our old friends returned to their home villages when the country fell apart. They had to flee. But now they’re stuck in those places. They wake up in the morning, watch their livestock graze. All their hopes of living and working in the big city are dead. They’re back where they began as children and now they can’t get out. Their only choice is to join the army and wait.

  “The clever ones, though, survive on black market business in Kampala. Money-changing. Exporting sculptures, masks. Small stuff. Just enough to get by. I deal with one or two middlemen there still.”

  “They have no future, do they?”

  “A future?” Samuel sighs sadly. “When I left the village, everyone came out expecting me to give them something. I had a bottle of gin that I was going to leave for your father but he didn’t want it. So I handed it to a man by the car and told him to share it with the others.”

  He pauses, looking at Charles with hooded eyes. “I felt such shame.”

  The next day, Samuel broaches yet another difficult subject.

  “I was in Stockholm about a year ago Charles. I was there for a gathering of import-export people. I took advantage of it to contact your w
ife.”

  “You saw Christina? You saw the baby?” Charles almost leaps up out of his chair.

  “I spoke to her on the phone.”

  “Tell me Samuel. Tell me.”

  “She’s remarried. She has other children now.”

  Wonder comes in waves. And doubt. Had they really loved one another? Could it have worked?

  “And your son is no baby. He is six now. I spoke with him on the phone.”

  “You actually talked to him?” Charles is crying silent tears, his body gushing through his eyes. Samuel waits.

  “I asked for his mother. He said she was out, but I could call back tomorrow. He sounded so confident, my brother. A child with the world before him. Not tainted by all our bloody history.”

  “Did you call back?”

  “Yes, the next day.

  “Charles who?” she asked rather rudely when I told her I was a friend.

  “She must not have remembered.”

  “But she let me continue. Asked if we had met in Rome. Where I was living. It was like being interrogated by a lawyer. She had me on the stand, a witness for the prosecution.”

  “Then what?” asks Charles. “Then what?”

  Samuel moves him closer and closer to it. “Then her voice changed, Charles. It softened. She said, ‘Tell him I wanted him to find us. Tell him that, Samuel.’”

  “I deserted them too.”

  “She forgives you Charles. She wishes you well.”

  “Christina,” he whispers, as though in prayer. “My Lady of Mercy.”

  “She left a photo of your son at my hotel the next day.” He hands it to Charles who is mesmerized at the round brown face of a little boy. Black eyes lit like candles. Black curls forming an opaque crown. Smiling fondly at him.

  “She calls him Kiti, Charles. Just as your father used to call you.”

  “He has her look,” whispers Charles. “Full of hope and trust.” He stops as though searching.

  “And need,” he says eventually, turning to Samuel, as though understanding at last. “She believed nobody could ever hurt her.” Charles cries yet again under his own revelation. “But I did. I did.”

  “They are safe now, Charles. I’m telling you they are safe and well. Do not stress yourself any further over them.”

  Charles agonizes. As the son, he was supposed to be caring for Father, and for Mother, in their age and difficulty. As a husband, he was supposed to be responsible for his wife and child. He abandoned them all.

  Charles already hears in his mind the voices of everyone who knew him.

  “Where is the son who should fix this?”

  They will, of course all blame him for leaving, will say he destroyed his family.

  Charles knows he is no a prodigal son. He is no son at all.

  After their time of difficult revelations, the two friends hug urgently, knotting themselves together so they will never come undone, as if letting go meant losing everything all over again.

  Samuel leaves for the airport and the long trip back to Kenya.

  Charles continues his slow circular spin. A torn solitary leaf swirling in autumn winds. A random flake of snow. Almost invisible against the sky. A man dancing. Without music.

  A month later, his doctor recommends reconstructive surgery. It can only be done in Toronto, followed by extended physiotherapy. Beth urges him to go. There is nothing holding him in Edmonton any longer. Or anywhere.

  Toronto appals him. Cautiously he ventures out with a walking stick and is lost. In alien territory. Buildings squeeze his head tight. The sun bores a hole through his skull and pours in fire. The edges of leaves scissor his brain.

  In his tiny downtown apartment on rainy days, he lies staring out the window and listens to bullets drop, waiting for the roof to crash in. Watching the wind’s giant hand swoop down and scoop him away, spinning the world again into cloud.

  There are iron bars on his windows and delinquents have destroyed much of the lobby.

  In a coffee shop, a woman moves menacingly toward him. She is nearly naked and whips her icy hair back and forth across his startled face before she is taken away.

  “Your mind is retreating,” say doctors in the hospital where he has checked himself in after many sleepless nights. “Your red cell count is low. Your immune system is not coping.”

  He sings himself to sleep. “Lullaby and goodnight. May the angels caress you.”

  The angels. How he longs for them. To dance with them. To dance with the ancestors. He is almost there.

  What stops him is a play.

  Although he cannot see it, he recognizes part of his story. Drifting back to him on rumour and speculation. Toronto audiences and theatre critics have raved over the play, Come Good Rain. They respond eagerly, compassionately to George Seremba’s story of survival in Amin’s Uganda.

  A story owned by so many. Seldom told. Perhaps now for the first time.

  “You can believe me. I stayed still as a stone, Charles. It was my only chance.”

  Charles knows Seremba. Has invited the actor to his tiny basement apartment. Downtown commotion swirls around them. Oblivious to all externals — yellow leaves flapping against the window’s high hooded eye, slithering off — the two sit, glued thickly together by George’s relentless recollections.

  Charles is once more excited by possibility.

  “I think of the things that Abafumi might have done with it, what my Makonde group did with some of the same material. Namanve. You said you were ‘sinking’ in the forest. That is absolutely the right image.”

  “I was being slowly swallowed by marsh mud. All but my head.”

  George stands, then begins physically, to drop down as though pulled into the ground. It is unbearable. Charles feels the panic. Cannot breathe.

  “They must have lost sight of me and decided not to waste another bullet. After that, such agony. The ground wanted to suck me into its grave. So many souls already there. Then the rain.”

  “I can’t imagine how I survived. Charles, really I can’t. Or how you survived the tornado. And Amin.”

  A long pause.

  “We both remain guilty of survival,” says Charles.

  “I suppose we were somehow meant to be here,” Seremba responds. “Perhaps to bear witness. We were meant to tell others what we lived through. Maybe the talent God gave us is for that purpose alone. Maybe … but I’m no longer certain of anything.

  “When I realized what you were doing with Makonde at the Fringe in Edmonton, Charles, I knew I had to tell my story too. You inspired me. Perhaps one day we can start a company together here. Reach other Africans. Others who care.”

  “My body is broken, George. I cannot work with people the way I used to. I can’t even keep my concentration for very long.”

  “But you can coach younger artists — actors, musicians and dancers. You would be wonderful.”

  Charles wants to believe him.

  But his reality is different now.

  At his lowest moment, he meets God. Or rather, he meets David. David has read of the tornado disaster. An anniversary story about it appeared in a Toronto paper. Charles’ name is mentioned. The Miracle Man again, living in Toronto. But did they have to reveal he was alone?

  David has sought him out, inviting him to the non-denominational Brethren Church where Charles agrees to join the congregation and pray. Suddenly feels pure.

  David and his wife spend hours discussing the Old and New Testament with Charles.

  The Brethren’s New Year’s service lasts twelve hours. Charles is again loved and fed. In this Theatre of God, the congregation reads the Bible together, repeating the ten commandments over and over. He repents years’ worth of sin, stands and renounces evil. And is forgiven. Publicly. Once more, born again.

  Is it possible?

 
“No, not Robert Seremba,” Charles corrects politely, “Robert Serumaga.”

  A Toronto theatre professor has phoned Charles. He is in need of material on theatre in Uganda and has found Charles’ name. He has never heard of Serumaga, dead now for more than ten years. They arrange to meet a few streets from Charles’ apartment. Charles brings his scrapbooks and limps slowly towards this academic who is curious about his old theatre life.

  The professor had called George Seremba earlier (by now Mr. Uganda in Toronto) but Seremba was about to go on tour and suggested he speak to Charles.

  So Charles and Prof. Don talk, the latter learning in detail of Abafumi and Robert Serumaga. He asks Charles about pictures for inclusion in his epic theatre encyclopedia, wants to bring Abafumi’s reputation back to light, wants Charles to be his source. Prof. Don seems willing to learn. And genuinely interested.

  The two spend many hours hunched like conspirators together in a tiny Lebanese café. The owner, a welcoming all-mother named Josie, reigns over the small kitchen and several plastic tables like royalty, hands on hips, black hair cascading, suggesting secret items from the menu along with yoga tips for physical and mental improvement.

  She is fascinated to overhear their conversation. She regards her establishment as a refuge for intellectuals and artists and she is always pleased when she believes creativity is being nourished with her baklava and Turkish coffees. She is impressed when the professor, seeing her interest in their conversation, tells her that Charles is a major African theatre artist and shows her a photo.

  “Is that a picture of you?” she asks Charles, marvelling at the face from Renga Moi slanted dramatically between crossed swords.

  “It’s who I was,” he says slowly.

  After three meetings with Prof. Don over the next month to discuss Ugandan theatre, Charles is asked, carefully and courteously, why he limps and what brought him to Toronto. An innocent query, without pressure or accusation.

  “How long do you have to listen?” laughs Charles.

  Prof. Don hears the outlines of Charles’ story. Wants to hear more.

  But Charles is now thinking theatre again, wondering if he could teach a class for the Professor’s students. The Professor agrees to have Charles speak to one of his classes. A visit is set for the following week.