Dizzy Worms

by Michael Holman

  It was Mildred’s turn to interrupt.

  “The best way of knowing a man,” she said, “is to know what he dreams.”

  “Dreams?” said Charity, slightly shocked. “Dreams are private business and best kept private.”

  Mildred persisted. “There are dreams and dreams,” she said. “Some dreams might be private, but other dreams need to be shared. Why not ask Results Mudenge? He is very good at the dream business.”

  Charity was about to dismiss the suggestion but paused. Mildred was a wise woman, albeit with conservative views. As far as she was concerned all men were driven by base needs, interested only in steamies, the inevitable outcome of hanky hanky. Even Mr Kigali himself had succumbed to the primeval forces of nature and asserted his marital rights, and they’d been blessed with seven children.

  Mildred’s view was straightforward: Charity and Furniver should together seek the inspiration and comfort of the Church of the Blessed Lamb.

  “Dreams,” said Charity thoughtfully. “Dreams. You have made a good suggestion. I will seek the help of Mr Mudenge.”

  26

  The door of the car that had drawn up outside the chapel shut with a deep “thunk”. The irreverent, the agnostics and the atheists in the congregation opened their eyes to catch sight of whomever it was that had arrived late.

  There were two clues.

  The sound of the “thunk”, solid, comfortable, satisfied, was usually made by the door of a substantial car. No one was in any doubt that the visitor was a VIP, for only VIPs were allowed to park in the space that was so close to the church, a space demarcated by a sign saying No Parking, and another hand-lettered, which urged citizens to Keep Kuwisha Clean – Place Your Litter in the Bin.

  Below, in slightly bigger letters, a second line declared: Another private sector sponsored by the Impala Club of Kuwisha.

  Since there was no bin in sight, conscientious citizens tossed their rubbish onto a pile at the foot of the notice. Others ignored the request altogether.

  A second “thunk” gave a further clue to the occupant. The first time the noise was heard it was surely the chauffeur, who must have got out to open a passenger door.

  Then there was the sound of gravel under a car tyre, as a heavy vehicle manoeuvred its way to the exit, moving without interruption. Those in the congregation blessed with sharp ears could hear the clang as the single bar gate, operated by the policeman on duty, dropped back in position.

  By now most of the assembly had abandoned their prayers and were looking in anticipation at a side door used by such eminent local Christians, including the occasional Cabinet minister, who every Sunday ostentatiously paid their respects to Our Lord.

  At any moment the side door to the cathedral would open, and the VIP would make his way to the front row pew.

  The bishop of Central Kuwisha glanced at his watch. The minute of silent prayer could be extended, providing time enough for the late arrival to get to his seat.

  The watcher would have seen a small, frail figure enter on the arm of his companion. Leaning heavily on his ivory-handled walking stick, he adjusted the red rose in his lapel. He paused, letting his eyes, protected by sunglasses, adjust to the darker interior of the church.

  The distance from the door to the front bench was no more than ten paces, each of which seemed to be a mile for the old man.

  There was an audible intake of breath from the congregation as he stumbled, recovered and tottered towards the vacant seat on the front row, marked “Reserved”. The old man wiped his brow with a red silk pocket handkerchief which matched the rose in his lapel, carefully refolded it, and put it back in the breast pocket of his pin-stripe suit.

  The Life President Dr Josiah Nduka, Ngwazi Who Mounts All the Hens, founder of the nation and its leader since independence, had arrived.

  “Let us pray for the soul of the dear departed . . .”

  The bishop of Central Kuwisha, Alphonse Chitende, hands folded in prayer, stood in his purple vestments alongside the plain wooden coffin. At its foot lay a simple arrangement of freesias; at the head was the big Braun radio.

  The radio’s silver-coloured frame gleamed in the shadow of the curtain that concealed the entrance to the furnace. Boniface Rugiru had been up half the night, polishing, polishing, polishing, in loving memory of the deceased. A bulb lit up the yellow, green and red glass panel which gave the location of scores of stations, names that evoked the history of the empires that once ran Africa.

  Although it was 50 years since he first set eyes on the great beast of a radio, Rugiru could still recite, in order of their appearance on the panel, the names of these exotic locations, learnt at the age of 14 when he began work as one of several “small boys” employed at the Thumaiga Club. Unaware that he was producing a litany of colonial dominance, ignorant of any political significance, he had turned the names into a song, which he sang as he dusted and swept the Club quarters of the member to whom the magnificent machine belonged.

  He had sung that same song the night before the service, sometimes as a mournful dirge, then changing the beat so it became a defiant chant which halted the tears that had started to roll down his cheeks.

  Jo’burg, Cape Town and Salisbur-eee.

  The world is watched by the BBC

  Pretoria, Bulawayo, Nairob-eee,

  Wherever in Africa you may be

  Bloemfontein, Gwelo even Umtali,

  You cannot keep a secret from BBC . . .

  It seemed only yesterday that he had been a Thumaiga Club toto, prancing around the radio, flicking his yellow duster at imaginary enemies. Sometimes the boy bent low, and then exploded into a frenzy of dusting, sometimes he stood still while the yellow cloth seemed to take on a life of its own as it flew over the surfaces, turning into gold ingots the brass catches on the windows that overlooked the flower beds, patches of colour in the green grass.

  One day, he had been interrupted by the Club’s shoe boy, an ambitious youth who made no secret of his ambition to become the deputy linen manager by his mid-twenties.

  “I see you, Rugiru, dancing the tune of the mzungu and singing in their praise.”

  Boniface had defended his position, getting a bloody nose for his trouble, but eventually forcing the boy to sing the song, standing with bowed head in front of the all-powerful radio.

  It was not long after this that he had discovered the radio manual.

  The right-hand drawer of the desk in the room was usually locked. This day, however, the key had been left in the lock. Rugiru looked through the window, across the flower beds to the gravel car park and checked that the member’s old Mercedes had not returned. Then he did what any 14-year-old would have done. He opened the drawer.

  Most of the papers were bills, along with a couple of letters, and a manila envelope. Inside the envelope he found the photograph that had shocked, thrilled and amazed Rugiru in equal measure. He looked at it long and hard, then put it back in the drawer. It was not his business. Settler society would neither understand nor forgive the intimacy that it conveyed. But the instruction manual for the radio that topped the pile was another matter.

  He had checked again that the car was not in its usual spot and settled down to study the document that would initiate a novice into the mysteries of the machine.

  “To operate the instrument”, the instructions began, “slide down the on-off switch to the ‘on’ position. Turn the rotary knob marked ‘volume’ clockwise to increase the ‘volume of reproduction’.”

  He had read on, entranced.

  “Instrument,” he murmured. This was no common or garden radio. It was an instrument, which dominated the room, sitting solidly atop a bookcase, like a castle on a headland. Although it was called portable, powered by no fewer than six large batteries, it was the size of a small suitcase.

  This was no mere radio. It carried the voice of the world, the BBC, which boomed in from London. It was indeed an instrument, a veritable musical instrument, like an old violin, that
had to be coaxed to life with the aid of fine tuning and adjustment of the aerial.

  Enthralled, the young Rugiru read on: “The instrument is equipped with a telescopic dipole for the FM band, a telescopic antenna for SW bands, and a ferrite antenna for LW, MW and SW 8 bands.”

  On some days he would come into the room to find the Braun had been moved from its usual place on top of the bookcase, where it stood as a defiant rampart against ignorance; instead it was on the bedside table, a reliable companion during the lonely hours of insomnia.

  Decades later, in the era of computers and internet, mobile phones and radios that could fit in the palm of a hand, the appeal of the old instrument was as powerful as ever, evoking the past, and redolent of a conservative authority that had long passed.

  In short, to call the majestic Braun a “radio” was like calling a Rolls Royce a car.

  The congregation had stopped coughing and sneezing, scratching and fiddling, and in response to the bishop’s call, bowed its collective head. In the minute of silence that followed, they no doubt contemplated the vicissitudes of life, its unpredictable or transient nature, relieved only by their certainty that the arms of our Lord would embrace them at the end of their earthly toil.

  At a signal from the bishop, Boniface pressed a switch on the panel, and the throaty chant of a guerrilla song rang out, filling the chapel with memories of Kuwisha’s fight for independence.

  “Odd choice, the last thing that I would have expected,” Furniver thought to himself.

  Rugiru lifted his eyes to the ceiling, and held back a cheer. The system really worked! He limited himself to another grunt of satisfaction, which prompted a further look of concern from Charity.

  How he wished that the radio had been left to him, a gift that he would have treasured for the rest of his days. The thought of it being consumed by the flames along with his friend caused anguish in his heart. This time Rugiru was unable to hold back a sob of distress.

  “Poor Rugiru,” Charity Mupanga said anxiously. “Poor Rugiru.”

  “Poor Rugiru,” echoed Results Mudenge, who was sitting next to Philimon Ogata.

  Only six months ago Ogata had buried his wife; his racking cough suggested that he had not long to go himself, but he turned a deaf ear to appeals that he stop smoking.

  Mercy Mupanga, who ran Kireba’s only medical clinic, was next to her cousin, Charity Mupanga, alongside Edward Furniver, who had squeezed into his only suit, as befitted the manager of Kireba’s Co-operative Savings Bank.

  On the same row, sitting ramrod straight, was Didymus Kigali, a senior elder of the Church of the Blessed Lamb, a distinguished figure in his suit, handed down to him many years ago by a former employer, and ironed that morning by Mildred.

  Neither showed their advancing years.

  “Not a bad turnout,” murmured Furniver.

  “Shush,” admonished Charity, and gave his hand a squeeze.

  Furniver shifted his haunches, made numb by the austere wooden bench. How on earth did Mr Kigali manage to remain so still?

  Not a seat to spare. Not a bad turnout at all, even after taking into account that two rows were occupied by slack-eyed street children, their number swollen by the promise of free dough balls, as requested in the last will and testament of the deceased.

  A few benches in front of Furniver the street urchins scratched their scrawny flanks, picked their noses and explored their nostrils with probing index fingers. Every now and then they searched their curls – many of which had an orange tinge, a sure sign of malnutrition – giving little grunts of satisfaction when they trapped head lice. After crushing the creatures between nails of forefinger and thumb with an audible click, their fingers moved on to explore different locations around their skinny frames, from armpits to toenails, and on to more intimate crevices.

  The Mboya Boys, who had to be dissuaded from bringing their football team banner, had gone to great lengths to dress for the event. Most of them wore all the clothes they possessed, partly because they could afford no more than a single outfit, and partly because if they had an extra shirt or pair of trousers, they lacked a safe place in which they could store them.

  All the while they watched the proceedings, like drunks checking their change, with bemused and befuddled concentration, pupils dilated and eyes red-rimmed. Every now and then the boys took deep sniffs from the tubes of glue that hung round their necks, and licked their lips in anticipation of the dough balls that had been promised them.

  Far too much time, however, had been spent trying to persuade them to leave their glue bottles at the door, and not enough time ensuring that they were upwind of the congregation. Instead they had been seated downwind, at the main entrance, where the breeze carried the powerful odour of tyre smoke and stale perspiration under the nostrils of the dozen or so members of the diplomatic corps in attendance.

  One boy in the group seemed marginally more alert than the rest. Rutere’s heavy-lidded stare fixed on a guest several rows in front of him. The lad was dressed in an Arsenal shirt which, judging by the way it clung to his bony chest, suggested it was damp, and had been washed that very morning; the shirt was several sizes too big for him, falling almost to his knees and all but concealing a pair of shorts.

  “Rutere,” hissed a fellow street boy, “where is Ntoto?”

  Rutere thought about boxing the boy’s ears for asking such a cheeky question, but decided against it.

  “Coming later.”

  Rutere looked around, mentally marking the route to the nearest exit and congratulating himself for selecting the seat at the end of the row nearest the entrance to the chapel.

  His finger traced the rim of his nostril as he looked with fear and loathing at the back of Mayor Guchu’s head, propelling dark thoughts in the man’s direction. One of Guchu’s bodyguards turned and spotted Rutere, and glared at the boy, mouthing the words:

  “Mupanga’s rats!”

  Furniver followed the direction of Rutere’s stare.

  “Who invited that awful bugger?” he asked Charity. “Fact is,” he said, “Guchu is a grade A shit. Whether he is Nduka’s bagman, I don’t know. But the finances of the City Council are a disgrace, and Guchu has been milking the books for ages.”

  Charity chipped in: “Poor secretaries. All who work in Guchu’s office leave because they are with child, and Guchu is their father.”

  “So who invited him?” Furniver asked again.

  “He just came,” said Charity. “One does not get an invitation to a funeral. Perhaps he came with the president?”

  “Whatever,” said Furniver. “He’s a very nasty piece of work.”

  All the while Rutere’s finger was furiously working its way round his nostril.

  Furniver resumed watching him with a combination of fascination and distaste.

  “Bloody Rutere! Wish he’d stop picking his nose.”

  The Kireba Youth Choir got ready to sing, all loose wrists and extended fingers, looking more like a basketball team than semi-finalists in the All-Kuwisha interdenominational church choir competition for the second successive year.

  Their skinny frames came alive under their ill-fitting jackets and shiny polyester black trousers, and their hips began to twitch in time to the music, not so much suggesting a life of their own, but an assertion of life itself.

  The few whites in the congregation sat in uncomfortable, self-conscious silence; the rest of the assembly joined in the singing with gusto.

  Furniver gave a cough of approval. Who would have thought it? Word of his friend’s generosity in funding the township’s only clinic, as substantial as it was unexpected, had spread through Kireba like a bush fire during a drought. The people of Kireba showed their appreciation in the only way they could, murmuring as they filed past the coffin: “Hamba gahle, old man, go well.”

  The service was brought to an end with a second round of BBC time pips.

  The final Peeep! sounded, and Rugiru pressed the button on the panel that control
led the tape recorder linked to the organ speakers. The foot-stomping throb of the old guerrilla marching chant burst out, and for a few minutes the congregation was transported back to Kuwisha’s long struggle for independence from Britain – or the Breetishi, as the colonial power was commonly referred to.

  Charity smoothed her dress, collected from the dry cleaner that very morning by one of her rats, and sat up straight-backed and broad-shouldered.

  Alongside her, Furniver sat and looked around.

  “Where is Ntoto?” he asked Charity.

  “I thought he was with Rutere,” she replied.

  Next to him, Pearson, head bowed, held Lucy’s hand.

  Furniver’s attention continued to be attracted by the activities of Rutere, prompting him to turn to Pearson and exclaim: “Look! Look. Look at that little bugger. If he’s not picking his nose, I don’t know what nose-picking is! Watch his finger,” he whispered excitedly. “Just watch . . . there it goes, inside . . . Got the little blighter on toast,” he said. “You are my witness.”

  It was one thing they agreed on.

  Rutere might be clever; indeed, he was as sharp as a tack. But their analysis of the actions of his forefinger led to one conclusion. The boy was an inveterate nose-picker.

  In an elaborate mime, Pearson tried to attract the attention of Charity, who was engaged in silent prayer. His forefinger simulated Rutere’s thrust, circle and probe, thrust, circle and probe, though when it came to the circular motion that was the characteristic of the boy’s habit, his own aperture was mean and narrow by comparison to Rutere’s majestic flared orb.

  He nudged Charity, determined that she should open her eyes and see for herself what was happening, while continuing to mimic the street boy’s actions.

  Whether by accident or design, Rutere’s timing was perfect. As the bishop called for the prayers for the soul of Kuwisha’s son, Rutere’s piping voice carried clearly around the chapel.