The headmaster, an evasive elephant seal of a man, spent most of his time on the slide rule, figuring out theoretical mathematical problems. He had little to do, because his deputy literally ran the school. On many days, he did not put in an appearance at all, preferring to attend meetings and see to his business interests in the city. His trick was to assure the reverend that he was not a threat to him, while he did his own thing. The headmaster, like the Invisible Man, acted and moved incognito. Sometimes he entered his office and no one knew that he was even there.
This cavalier spirit extended to school accounts. They were a mess or a maze to the average eye. It was as if a mathematician were creating work for himself to fill his lonely hours, or a crook were disguising his hand. To begin with, most teachers had financial problems. They would go to the headmaster and explain their positions, and according to the need, he would decide how much to give them as a supplement to, or an advance on, their salaries. He would dole out the money and write the amount on a piece of paper. In the meantime, the deputy was writing his own pieces of paper, which ended up on the headmaster’s desk. There was such a big heap of famous pieces of paper that many got lost or confused. The only conclusion one could draw was that the headmaster was exploiting the system for his own good; otherwise there was nothing to stop him from acquiring an accountant or a better system. Consequently, clever teachers always had a problem—with the children, the wife, their health, anything—and drew whatever money they could. Sometimes the deputy referred these cases to the headmaster, who, being a nice man, could not find ways of denying them and ended up giving them money and writing on pieces of paper.
The headmaster liked me, because I never asked for money. My guess was that he was writing somewhere that he had given me so much and pocketing it. Whenever I went to his office, it was to ask for permission to go home, ostensibly to the clinic or hospital for my headaches, which later became migraines. This headmaster did not mind a sickly teacher as long as he did not ask for financial assistance. So whenever I had business to settle in town, I would ask for permission to leave. And I would get it. This of course meant that students were suffering, but ours was not a student-oriented school, at least not in the academic sense. There was no use pretending. Most teachers taught in other schools to supplement their deficient pay, and others had jobs in town. As long as one came and taught, one was not obliged to stay on campus. Sometimes teachers came, went to the staff room, had tea, conversed and left, as though their lessons were over. It was a free-for-all, with many students also dodging and staying home to fetch and sell water or do other things to earn money to support themselves and pay school fees.
The old system of sending school inspectors to keep an eye on teachers had died an excruciating natural death in the seventies, and the new government was too busy fighting guerrillas to bother about such banal things as school inspections. Teachers got paid three months late, and in order to appear to be fair, the government did not put them under pressure.
The best thing I could have done for our boys and girls would have been to teach them sex education—we were, after all, keeping them there to grow up before going out to become parents—but that was taboo. Our biggest problem was not alcohol or drugs, but unwanted pregnancies. Strangely enough, many parents believed that sex education would only exacerbate the problem. Most parents did not want their daughters swallowing pills or interfering with the procreative process in any way, and they resented anybody who divulged such information to their little ones. The good reverend, supported by the conservative element among the parents, resisted the introduction of “godless information” into his school with all his might. That just about sealed it.
Under the circumstances, the school could only expel pregnant girls. The culture of shame and secrecy had a lot to do with it all. Most parents never talked about sex to their children—good Christians left such matters to sort themselves out. In the past, paternal aunts used to take their nephews and nieces aside and tell them everything, but with the breakup of extended-family structures, the gap had been left yawning. For the majority of youths, peers were the educators. I now and then intercepted chits and cuttings from pornographic magazines and love letters as they changed hands. They reminded me of Cane lecturing us, and making us complete sentences with words like “penis” or “vagina.” I was not such a hypocrite as to feign anger or shock. I often made one student read a chit aloud. Then I would ask if there was anybody with questions on the subject of sex, pregnancy, contraception or abortion. Suddenly everyone would become alert. Once, the deputy took me aside and requested that I not corrupt young minds. I bowed my head, but did the same thing when I intercepted the next chit.
A few hundred meters from SIMC was a small primary school, kickstarted for the sons and daughters of the area who could not afford better Muslim schools. Behind the compound was a small, dilapidated mosque, where the faithful held prayers on Friday. The imam, who taught Koran education at the school, lived nearby and ran both places. Looking at the rough mud walls and the leprous roofing set in a bare, pebbly compound chipped out of solid rock, one would think that nothing good could creep out of this wretched environment. Compared with dear old SIMC, and the Catholic school and church not so far away on the same ridge, the place looked dismal and oozed decay. It seemed like a sandy island awaiting the storm that would blow it to oblivion. At break time, however, the joyous screeches of the children filled the air, and their pink uniforms fluttered in the wind like so many large flags. They played and sang almost as hard as the imam drove them to memorize the Koran and the Arabic texts he wrote on the chipped blackboard.
On school days, he would strut from class to class, stick in hand, a frown on his face, and woe to anyone found messing around. The secular teachers who found themselves at the place often gave him a wide berth, not because he would beat them too, but because he believed in respect and discipline more than the teachers did, and he was not into theoretical discussions. “I am a man of action,” he always said. If pupils did something wrong, they got punished on the spot. They could plead, and maybe even get a reduced sentence, but the punishment came all the same. “Action, character, responsibility, is all I teach,” he always said before and after dishing out punishment.
A friend who taught at this dusty place to supplement his SIMC salary asked me to accompany him to the school. It was among the prancing, rope-skipping, screeching multitude that I first saw Jo Nakabiri. I stared. Her dark face was gleaming in the sun, as though she had used too much facial cream that morning. I looked at her limbs and frame, and I found myself wondering if she was Lusanani’s sister or cousin. Her wasp waist and solid bum had me bursting with excitement. Sweat broke out in my armpits. I was intrigued by the uncanny feeling that I knew this person, had at least seen her somewhere before. But where?
We found her shouting at a group of little girls, and when she saw us, her voice dropped, as though we had caught her saying obscene words. It was then that I saw her eyes: large orbs full of bottomless joys and sorrows and mysteries I suddenly felt eager to explore. She extracted herself from the group with the stiff grace of one being watched, then came and greeted my friend and me, in that order. They ignored me for some time as they recited the litany of inadequate salaries, unfulfilled plans, impending holidays, local weddings and the like. She seemed uneasy, as though talking about school affairs, the imam and the pupils in the presence of a stranger were a breach of trust or a form of betrayal. I kept looking at her and at my friend, camouflaging my desire to look only at her. I was already thinking that I had enough money to take this girl away from this place and maintain her in relative comfort.
My impression was that she was working here for respectability, and probably because it was her profession. If so, who was paying her bills? Ten government dollars, which came after three months, was hardly enough for a tenth of monthly expenses. It was likely that she had a man or was living with her parents. If she was a refugee, there was a big possibi
lity that Husband had joined the guerrillas and was somewhere in the Triangle facing the elements, the Katyushas, the helicopters and the army. The idea shook me up a bit. Some of those guys returned with bloodlust in the head and the maddening suspicion that their wives had been screwing all over the place, and they would not think twice before putting a bullet between another man’s eyes. In a few of those cases, the woman never divulged that she had a husband; you only saw the fellow standing in the doorway furious as hell and lethal, like a wounded buffalo. Maybe her man had died in action and she was a young widow. There were many juicy widows walking around these days, some from the Triangle, and since they wore no distinctive dress, few people got to know who they really were. I would not mind dating a young widow, or a woman whose husband was fighting in the bush, as long as she told me the whole truth from the beginning.
I decided to ask my friend. Friends helped each other out in this way, even if it was their sister in question. He knew something about her; they lived in the same area. He owed me for bailing him out of endless financial problems.
He told me the little he knew. Yes, she had come from the Triangle two years back and now lived with her grandmother. She had been married once, but no one knew the whereabouts of Husband or whether there had been any children. I would have preferred to hear that the man had died, since now I did not know whether he was alive and still interested in her. That type was quite dangerous: they first mistreated the woman, and when she left them, they realized what they were missing and tried to get her back. When, in many cases, the wives refused to go back, the men grew bitter. Some turned to sending emissaries or to witchcraft, some to stalking or writing threatening letters. What about the other possibility? Maybe this girl was ill-mannered, loose and mean-tempered, and her man had got tired of her bad ways and moved on. Maybe she was the one trying to go back to her old life. In which case the man was waiting and making her stew a little bit longer in the juices of her iniquity.
The campaign to win Jo took many weeks. She rejected all my friend’s efforts, saying that she was through with men. I did not believe her. If it had been true, she would have been in a convent flagellating herself and removing devil hair with her bare fingers like the Padlock of old. I wrote her letters, but she returned them unread. Taking into account the ease with which Triangle girls surrendered themselves, her behavior was annoying. I asked my friend to give up the assignment, but he was determined to see it through. He finally succeeded, after I had given up hope. He got her to invite me to the end-of-term concert given by the children of her school.
I sat on a bench behind her and watched her as she watched her pupils’ performances. I kept thinking about how my friend had pleaded with her, saying that I was a decent person and that she was making a big mistake by treating me like dirt. She had countered with her suspicion that I had many girlfriends, but my friend had denied it vehemently because he did not know of my Triangle girls. He kept saying that I had just broken up with a bad-mannered girlfriend and that Jo was making my suffering worse by rejecting my sincere courtship. Jo said that she had no intention of being used as a stepping-stone to another relationship. To which my friend swore that my intentions were honorable.
At the end of the concert, she had to talk to some parents who were inquiring about their children. I waited. As the sun was going down she finished, and we walked down the road to SIMC. We sat on the veranda of the two-story building, with the school compound stretched out in evening silence, and talked. She told me that her father had died when she was young, and that her mother had brought her up. At seventeen, she had got pregnant with a daughter, whose whereabouts she refused to divulge. At nineteen, she had gone to the teacher training college to become a primary school teacher. Then the troubles in the Triangle began. Her school closed down and was later occupied by the army. When the guerrillas attacked, she, together with most people in the area, fled. She explained that, earlier on, she had not been playing hard to get, but that she wanted to date only serious people.
I told her a little about myself, and about Aunt Lwandeka, the seminary, the university, SIMC and Boom-boom Brewery. The evening quickly turned into night. We walked down to the main road, and she saw me off. From then on, we started meeting regularly. I got rid of the other Triangle girls, even though I continued to financially help out one or two of them.
On chosen Sundays, we would go to the Catholic cathedral and hear mass. Neither of us was that devout, but sometimes one got information about what was going on in the country, especially what the papers missed or just hinted at. The Catholic Church was still playing chief political critic of both the government and the guerrillas. We would have lunch at a decent restaurant and then go to an alfresco bar and sit and watch the people and the soldiers. She liked beer. By the fifth bottle, she would start singing nursery rhymes and some of the songs her pupils sang in the end-of-term concerts. I enjoyed the show and the childhood it invoked. It seemed we were both looking for an anchor to steady us in these turbulent times.
At such moments, the war faded to the oblivion of the Triangle and its phantoms, suffering and wantonness. We were in our own small world, locked behind steel gates, allowing in those we wanted to see, barring the undesirables. Soaked in beer, we would tell stories that evaporated with the stupor and remained on the sheets where we made love. Lovemaking itself was an act of war, an expression of the tension ripping the country apart. By trying to create something new and beautiful, we were firing our weapons, opposing forces of evil and destruction, throwing a lifeline to something on the other side that had to be redeemed. By driving ourselves to the limit, we were steeling ourselves for battle, for all those confrontations ahead of us, and making sure that we would have the capacity to survive the most painful ordeals. We were both orphans, people from whom something dear had been robbed. The common bond drove us further into the search for fulfillment.
As I thrust deeper into the marshes of love and the triangle of life, I kept wondering where her child had passed through, because this was one super-tight woman, the tightest I was ever to encounter. Had she lied about the child and the marriage? Was she just another mythmaker and I her gullible victim? I knew almost immediately that even as I was savoring the splendors of my paradise, I was also witnessing the beginnings of my doom. This was one experience that would not be duplicated, one act that would be almost impossible to follow. My joy was bruised with sorrow, my happiness touched by fear. I had hit the sexual jackpot: if I lost this, I would only have memories to ruminate on. I savored the sweet torture of her excruciating contractions with unease. I felt that loss was inevitable. I could feel her slip away. Such marvellous things never lasted. If they did, they enslaved their owners and turned them into drooling fools. I had either to enslave her or to pass her on. One side of me wanted to chain her, to tie her on a leash, to saddle her with bells that would betray her every movement. One side wanted to set her free to go out into the world and inflame and torture and madden others with the bruising grip of her hidden treasures. I could see old men drooling and getting heart attacks on top of her. I could see young men driven insane by her flame, getting rid of their wives and girlfriends and ending up bankrupt and alone. I could see men walking round and round, asking themselves where it had gone wrong, how and why they could not stop this pearl from diving back into the depths whence she had come. I loved it.
It would have been easy to ask Jo to move in with me, but I was into the torture games of letting her go and welcoming her back, watching her vanishing backside and embracing her when she returned. I was steeling myself for the loss, preparing the trap for other men to fall into. When she left, I kept thinking that she would never return. When she returned, with the smell of the school on her hair and the heat of passion in her veins, I kept wondering whether she would ever leave. I kept wondering how Husband was taking his loss of this woman or girl or phantom or whatever she was. In the midnight hour, when the bed or the trench or the ambush turned into a torture r
ack of lust, he must have pined for her. His lust for her must have turned into lust for blood. He must have embraced her in his dreams, but on waking up cold and alone, his head must have spun. I hoped we would never meet.
My time with Jo helped me gain insight into the ways other people conducted their love affairs. Had Grandpa not lived with Uncle Kawayida’s mother’s buckteeth? Had he not known that Serenity’s mother had fallen for another man? Had Serenity not accommodated his wife’s ways? Had Padlock not accommodated the fact that her husband was in love with her aunt? Was Aunt Lwandeka not in love with the mysterious brigadier, keeping his picture in her Good News Bible under the mattress? Didn’t they maintain trust in each other despite the distance and not hearing from each other for months? Wasn’t Uncle Kawayida in love with three sisters? Affairs of the heart had never been perfect; imperfection was part and parcel of the package. I was prepared for the worst. In the war to find and free myself, Jo was one big skirmish, not the final battle.
Midway into the decade, it was clear that there was a stalemate in the fighting. We would see army trucks, as indifferent as sealed coffins, carry their stiff, blank-eyed cargo into the Triangle. We would see dishevelled soldiers returning from their nightmare campaigns with the look of death in their eyes. We would see intelligence officers, walkie-talkies sticking out, eyes red with fear, legs stiff with uncertainty, moving up and down our little town in a frenzied daze. There were rumors, corroborated by Aunt, that the guerrillas were about to start an urban campaign, focussing on the city. After many weeks, they attacked a big army barracks near the two cathedrals. They caused considerable damage, as the army, despite all outward show of vigilance, was caught unawares. In retaliation, the army picked up people from around the city and detained them and interrogated them and tortured them. The dragnet netted few, if any, real guerrillas.
Abyssinian Chronicles Page 44
