Moses Isegawa: Snakepit

Inside the endless Mabira Forest the speedometer shot madly forward. Everything seemed to darken, as if sealed in a green cloth thick as canvas. The Professor prayed that no suicidal cow cross the road, and no mad soldiers place impromptu roadblocks on the tarmac.

“I shouldn’t have let you drive! Jesus,” he moaned. “Do you want to kill us?”

It was the way the car entered the compound that told people that something had gone terribly wrong. And when the duo emerged looking like they had been exhumed from a landslide, the parents knew that the claws of grief had gripped the family. Bat broke the news slowly, steadily, each word having the effect of cutting, scalding. They all watched him, and for a delayed moment it was as though he were speaking about a disaster averted at the last moment by the intervention of a miracle. But the claws gripped tighter and people’s faces crumbled, their lips disfigured with the heaviness of their sorrow. Bat would have paid any amount of money to be elsewhere, even in prison. He asked them for their forgiveness for “killing your daughter who was so dear to me.” His father-in-law patted him on the back, as if to say everyone would apportion the blame according to their judgement.

“It is those soldiers; that curse walking this land like an eternal plague. As soon as they attacked the palace and forced the king into exile, I knew that this country would never have peace again,” his mother-in-law declared.

“What should the son of man do about those animals?” somebody said, intoning a general sense of helplessness.

“They are not animals as we know them. They are beasts, demented creatures,” another elaborated.

It was generally assumed that the State Research Bureau or the Public Safety Unit or the Eunuchs or thugs from the armed forces were responsible. Criticism was not often aimed directly at the Marshal’s doorstep, for obvious reasons, but now people talked freely. Grief had given them recklessness.

The cautious ones ended the tirade by asking when the body could be collected for burial. The Professor talked about the post-mortem, the ongoing investigations, the delays that might crop up. Somebody asked if the head would be sewn on the trunk again and received only dirty looks. Another wanted to know whether the freezers in the morgue worked, for, the last they wanted was to bury Babit with flies in her wake. Bat looked on with bowed head, waiting for the tempest to pass.

The police investigations were fast and furious, chiefly because the wife of an important man was on the slab, and partly because of the curious fact that none of the house staff had been around at the time of the murder. The policeman had reported sick, and had been sick for the past few days. Due to a shortage of staff his replacement had arrived after the murder. The detectives concentrated on the gardener and the cook. The former could not be quickly located, but the latter was at home. As soon as she saw the police cars, she knew that there was big trouble or tragedy in the air. The nasty stares from the detectives chilled her. Police brutality was common. The caning of prisoners or of children delivered by despairing parents into police hands was standard procedure. A policeman was like a lion; he was a friend only when sated or out of the way. The woman babbled in fear.

“The gardener told me that we had been given a day off. I did not ask him why. He had to know because he talked a lot with the late Mrs. Katanga. . I don’t know anybody who might have wanted to kill her. She had no enemies. The only person who did not like her was Victoria, the woman with whom Mr. Katanga has a child. She used to threaten her on the phone. . Apart from her I know nobody who might have liked to harm her. .”

THE GARDENER WAS FOUND late that evening. “Somebody with a State Research Bureau identity card told me to inform the cook to stay away, because he said that there were investigations scheduled for the day, regarding Mr. Katanga’s work, and they wanted nobody around. .”

The remaining question was: where was this Victoria?

TAYARI APPEARED THAT NIGHT. He sent an emissary, who asked Bat to go to the lake and wait for him. As Bat walked through the trees to the lake, he felt the urge to escape the place. It seemed to ring with Babit’s death, like a cave that multiplied the sound, bouncing it against its walls. The lake stretched out in front of him. He looked at its dark-grey skin caught in the moonless night and felt disgusted by its indifference, its perpetuity. It was as if Babit had never visited it, loved it. Nothing seemed to matter to it. He stood in one spot, shivering, wishing to go somewhere very far away, a place Babit had never been. Maybe to the islands to catch parrots and fish. He hated the house with its history of British governors, its pomp, its indifference to time. The last governor had abandoned it and built a bigger house, the current State House. Maybe the others before him had also suffered disasters in its walls, uncharted miseries written in their tombs. He wanted to leave this town and forget it all. He wanted it encircled by water and swallowed whole, with its airport, and the roads Babit had walked. He wanted it reduced to a memory, a flicker in somebody’s mind.

“Brother,” a voice said to him, “I am extremely sorry about what happened. Maybe if I had taken more care of you, this would not have occurred.”

“I doubt that even you could have changed things,” Bat replied hoarsely.

“I happen to know where Victoria is.”

“You do?” The words seemed to echo endlessly.

“She is in Bombo. Do you have a message for her?”

“I want her to stay out of my life forever.”

“I can plant a device in her house — of course, when the girl is out.”

“We don’t know whether she is the one responsible.”

“It is crystal-clear. There is nobody else who hated Babit that much. The work was too clinical to have been unplanned. She is responsible. I bet my arm she is guilty.”

“I don’t want anything to do with bombs,” Bat said, feeling extremely weary.

“Do you want her dead in another fashion? Just give me the word.”

“I don’t want to kill her.”

“You don’t! Do you want that creature to remain eating and breathing after what it did to your wife?”

“I don’t want anybody’s death on my conscience.”

“The responsibility would be mine, big brother. I would do it as a favour, a show of gratitude. You have helped my group and the country so much.”

“I can’t kill my daughter’s mother.”

“But she has killed all the children Babit would have produced. Aren’t you mad about that?”

“Yes, I am. But killing is not my line of business.”

“Give me her legs. I will put her in a wheelchair for you.”

“Listen to yourself, brother. You talk like those men you are fighting.”

“I can’t allow injustice to go unpunished. It is the very reason why this country is still dominated by soldiers. Everybody is afraid to do a thing against them. I have done something, and I am sure that it has helped.”

“I never gave you money to make bombs,” Bat mumbled weakly.

“The radio could not work. Those thugs have no respect for words. They respect dynamite. And fire. They are looking for me, but before they get me, I will put many in hospital.”

“Where does all this violence come from?”

“I decided to offer myself to the nation. To die for the cause. It is a vocation, like priesthood. You are lucky that I am here itching to avenge my sister-in-law’s death.”

“Don’t touch even a hair on Victoria’s head. The law will deal with her.”

“Do you believe that? Do you really believe that, big brother? Is that Cambridge University talking or utter resignation?”