Moses Isegawa - Snakepit

“What have dad and ma said about this?” he said to break the train of thoughts.

“They are overjoyed. Father can’t wait to hold his first grandchild.”

“I am happy for you,” Bat said, trying to put on a cheerful face.

“I am happy to hear it. When your turn comes, I will be happy for you,” Sister said, beaming, joy suffusing her face.

You should be so lucky, he thought. After making my money I will just get the hell out of this country.

They talked about family, their young brother Tayari, the wedding plans, and finally Bat offered to take her out to eat. He drove her round in his XJ10 looking for a decent restaurant. His gloom lifted, and he realized that he could not control his sister’s life, that he had never intended to. His affection for her slowly returned and he wished her well.

SISTER’S HOPE THAT the two most important men in her life would get on well, and produce a close-knit unit, did not materialize. The meeting between Bat and Mafuta Mingi was an uphill battle. At the end of the day, Bat failed to hide his feelings about his future in-law. He was a big overweight man with a paunch. In one so young, the paunch seemed to indicate a sedentary indolent life of overindulgence. Mafuta Mingi arrived dressed in a bad suit and was obviously uncomfortable with himself. Bat’s villa, the staff, the sumptuous surroundings and especially the lake view reminded him of his first wife. He had a knack for getting women from well-to-do families. He always seemed to overreach himself, with the result that he had never been fully accepted by his in-laws.

He found Bat distant, almost cold, with the demeanour of somebody who is being cheated out of something very valuable. This was not at all the kind of reception he had envisioned, considering his father-in-law’s demonstrated enthusiasm and his future wife’s warm personality. Why was this man so unreachable? Mafuta now preferred the other in-law, the mad pyrotechnician. His impression was that the fellow had a death wish or some other difficult relationship with life. Tayari hardly bothered with words, but he had offered to make a fireworks display for the wedding. Mafuta would have preferred to ignore Bat, but given his position in the family, it seemed impossible.

Sweating under his armpits, Mafuta started going on about his work, how he had manoeuvred his way into town planning. He talked about the bureaucratic maze in the planning department, which had turned into a cesspool now that no more towns were planned and everything seemed out of control. He talked about how plans kept getting lost, how the Health Inspector offered dispensations against the advice of planning experts, how applications kept going round and round till officials got their bribes. Bat eyed him keenly, as if gauging whether he was sane enough to be entrusted with his sister’s life and welfare, and when the monologue ended, he made no comment. Mafuta was a brave man; he swallowed his discomfort and talked about wedding plans. Sister watched the two men and felt hurt, and powerless to change the situation.

At the end of the visit Bat offered to drive the guests to town. Mafuta was determined not to hate him and decided to accept him as he was, although he knew they would never be friends. In a way, he admired Bat’s sense of independence. It made him want to fight back, and the best way was to enter the business world and crank up a few deals quickly. After all, this was the get-rich-quick era. Winners in this new rags-to-riches world passed them on the way, cruising in their Boomerangs and Euphorias, flying Avenger helicopters. It struck Mafuta that he was Bat’s age. He did not want to lag behind. His in-law’s success reflected badly on him, as if he had wasted his life, as if he had no imagination. He really wanted to be part of the action.

Mafuta was suddenly afraid of a repeat failure. He had begun his forays into the marriage business by bagging a princess, a woman faintly related to the kings of Buganda. The princess had been bred with the view that everyone had to worship her as a matter of course. At first, Mafuta had found it romantic to indulge his wife. He brought her breakfast in bed; he made sure that everything was ready for her when she woke up. He found it manly to put up with her raspy tongue, and swallow chidings about his being a commoner, unfit to marry a princess. He liked to hear his wife bemoan her fall from grace, the collapse of royalty. He liked to hear stories about life at the minor court where she grew up. The king used to visit thrice a year and stay for a month. The attention would shift to him; the place would crawl with chiefs, nobles, soldiers, musicians, eunuchs, peasants. Every courtier would bask in reflected glory and forget the feuds and the schemes till the king left.

Mafuta felt proud to have a piece of the royal family under his roof. He eagerly sank into debt in order to maintain the lifestyle the princess wanted. He sold his share of his father’s land, against everybody’s advice. He enjoyed the drama, the status. He liked the fact that she always spoke in plural—“Mafuta bring us our handkerchief,” “Mafuta, we have a headache”—because he felt included in each and every sentence she uttered. He seemed to hire new cooks and housegirls every week, because she kept firing them as soon as they arrived. Nobody was good enough, clean enough, efficient enough.

It amused him that the princess was so rude because hubris ran in the royal family. Up until the turn of the century, the king used to own everything in his kingdom. If you so much as looked at him aslant, your eyes could get pulled out right there by the bodyguards. At His Majesty’s whim, your limbs could get hacked off. Big chief or commoner could be stripped to the last penny. Princes could also get away with just about everything, except planning coups or trying to rape the royal harem. The exploits of princesses were no less colourful, albeit less well documented. Over the years, the powers of the royals had been neutralized by the British, local politics and the army, but in the eyes of stalwart monarchists, the royals could still do no wrong. Mafuta saw himself as an extension of this incredible group of loyalists for the king.

It had only occurred to him much later that one never went to bed with history or the royal family, but with an individual, and this individual’s very healthy sex drive had to be serviced dutifully. Sex, like food, was not asked for but demanded, and princesses never got ridden or fucked; they fucked and rode the shit out of you. Mafuta lay on his fat back every night and was ridden like a donkey to kingdom come, whether Her Highness was bleeding or not. Half-hearted erections would never do. The royal orifice entertained only sufficiently stiff dicks. He resorted to taking aphrodisiacs, very bitter stuff extracted from the bark of certain trees. He was gripped by performance angst and often lost healthy erections. He would lie there and wonder when he would stop being an extension of the peasantry and become a man. The constant rape of the self in service of aristocracy began to take its toll. The relationship seemed to have been going on for so long that he knew he would miss his princess if it ended.

Then one day he met Sister at a bus stop. She had two large cardboard boxes full of supplies she was taking to the village. She looked like somebody not used to the city and in need of help. He asked her the time, where she was going, the school she attended, why she had chosen nursing. When the bus came, he lifted her boxes and in the process popped two shirt buttons. He pointed at his hairy belly, drummed on it and they both laughed. She felt at ease with him and liked his deep voice, his sense of humour, his friendliness. They agreed to keep in touch. She provided him with something to do at work. Instead of planning gargantuan fantasy towns powered by solar energy, he wrote her letters professing undying love. He talked about his marriage, the mistakes he had made in life, his willingness to change and spend the rest of his life with her, the mountains they could move together. They started meeting regularly, going to films, dances and the Botanical Gardens. The proof that Mafuta had fallen in love was that he shamelessly told her everything the princess made him do. It poured out of him as never before, and he gobbled her sympathy avidly. Where other men would have lied to look good and tough, he just gushed like an overfull bladder. Everything — including the soiled sanitary napkins she left all over the place. He mimicked her, “Royal blood, commoner. Preserve it for posterity, Mafuta.” They would both collapse with laughter. Sister hoped that he would remain this open, this predictable, after marriage, and she felt proud that she had supplanted a princess.