Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

When one uprooted a milk tooth, after many threats and gruff shakings by Padlock’s rough fingers, one deposited the bloodied thing behind the cupboard for the “rat” to find and replace with hard cash. It was that money that the thief started targeting. Padlock was especially annoyed because she had, on two occasions, used silk thread and yanked teeth with such force that the bleeding was so heavy, everyone feared she had cut into the gum. With blood guilt on her mind, she went berserk when she discovered that the rat money had been stolen. In respect for tradition, she had to replace the stolen money on both occasions. In addition to that, she observed that both “robberies” were committed while I was away. So somebody had surely been insulting her intelligence! Ergo, the property of the shitters got raided.

On the day of judgment, night prayers were said as usual and the roof was stained by Padlock’s last-hymn tremolos. Supper was just minutes away. This time, though, two shitters were not served groundnut soup, which was appetizingly thick with dry fish. The aroma filled the house and tickled our sharp appetites. A schooled sadist, Padlock had taken care to buy quality fish and quality groundnuts and had prepared the food in a quality banana-leaf-thatched pot to heighten the flavor. We ate our food inches away from the condemned shitters, their foreheads gleaming with beads of guilty sweat, their eyes red with fear. We washed our dirty fingers with water poured and trapped by the two criminals in small bidet-like plastic basins such as I would, years later, find in a foreign brothel, and which I would always associate with smut, soap, fish smells and poisoned meals. Serenity, high in his chair like Pontius Pilate, washed his fingers absentmindedly, looking neither at the block of blue soap proffered nor at the trembling shitter making the offering. Godot, encased in red, tired-looking hard covers, was the only being on his mind. And, oh, the ever so sunny aunty of the woman herding his brood.

Determined to register my protest, and to sabotage Padlock’s sense and system of justice, I was the first to rise. An undercurrent of disgust coursed through me, making me resent the calculated sadism of official justice. Maybe I empathized too much with the subversive element. The truth remained that I had played a part in the drama which had culminated in this, and I had enjoyed the exploits of the duo. I was troubled by the jangling question of whether I was responsible for their defense. Padlock called me back.

She reached under the green sofa and removed three finger-thick guava switches and declared, rather pompously, that she had caught the thieves who had been terrorizing the household. The duo was ordered to lie down a foot from each other. Serenity, who had so far said nothing, and in the spirit of despotic harmony was not supposed to say anything, disappeared behind the red shroud of Godot. Padlock was all over the shitters like a hungry eagle terrorizing a brood of hens. In a wan attempt to resurrect Big Brother’s machismo, which had saved them on the two earlier occasions, the duo turned their glazed eyes to their hero; but my act was too surreal to replicate, and at their age their hero too would have failed to call forth any macho wonders. The orgy of howling, drooling, prancing dogs cracked the confines of nocturnal mating scenery and invaded the house. The resultant mayhem of canine vociferation was punctuated by pleas for clemency, promises never to sin again and prayers seeking deliverance from the notorious St. Jude Thaddeus, savior of desperate cases. One of the shitters even went so far as to call upon the mighty Serenity, probably in the name of Godot, to intervene; but he only got cut more viciously as Padlock made it clear that despotic or non-despotic intervention was out of the question.

General Idi Amin had told us to fight hard and come back each time we fell. And his rise to power had proved that the majority of people needed a savior, somebody to save them from themselves and their fears before they could get in shape to fight. There had to be giants, heroes, like me to save the helpless. It struck me how easy it was to sit back, watch and put your hands hopelessly in the air. Everybody had put theirs in the air the day Serenity hammered me, maybe because they never listened to the general as I did. Maybe it was because they had never drunk from the well of heroism and self-sacrifice Grandpa had shown me. Maybe it was because they had never woken up at midnight to go with Grandma and deliver a baby five kilometers away. I wanted to rise above them and take the blows. I asked myself what General Amin would have done in this situation. He would have intervened to save the shitters, or at least distracted Padlock to give the victims a breather.

Moreover, General Amin was fond of sending messages and warnings to his enemies. He warned imperialists, colonialists, racists and Zionists that their time was over. It was high time somebody sent a message to Padlock that overkill was not the baptismal name of corporal punishment. Above all, for the first time since my arrival in the city, it struck me that I was as much a parent to the shitters as the original providers of sperm and eggs. I, in fact, knew more about these children than the despots. In cleaning them, washing them, helping them with homework, bribing and blackmailing them, I had got close to them. I had grown fond of them.

Anyway, wasn’t it known that I was a co-parent? Wasn’t it known that I was the third force in this dictatorship? Wasn’t it known that I regarded Serenity as my elder brother, and Padlock as his mean-hearted wife who had to be harassed, corrected and damned if she was too crooked to change?

“I am the one who gave them the money,” I suddenly said.

“What?” Serenity prodded, gasped.

“I gave them the money.”

“They confessed to the crime,” Padlock said coldly after giving the duo a few more hard strokes.

I was caught off guard. I hadn’t thought of every despot’s stock-in-trade: confessions.

“Do you mean to say that you stole the money and gave it to them?” Padlock asked with great fury.

Heroism had tripped itself on its coattails. “No.”

Now the more squeamish of the duo looked alarmed. Padlock smelled sabotage and wanted to demonstrate that heroism was synonymous with scars and a bruised ego. She cut me across the back, and an innocent shitter got knocked down as Padlock turned, clumsily, like a buffalo speared through the ass.

I jumped and sat down again. I got four more cuts. It hurt, but I couldn’t cry out: I had my image to uphold. Another four switches came my way, this time on the legs. I bit back canine howls, thinking about the shitters. I momentarily feared I had wet my pants, but it was not so. I smiled. Once again I had denied her victory. Infuriated by the unsatisfactory sighs of whacked air, Padlock stretched her hand to deliver solid fire to my back, but something popped and glass poured down. She had struck the electric bulb and its shade. Serenity was infuriated: he hated all interruption of his reading.

“Enough of this,” he barked without looking up. “Nakibuka, enough.”

“Who?” Padlock turned to Serenity with the stick still held high in the air.

“What?” Serenity mumbled. He had given himself away. I had heard him; so had his wife.

The stick fell from Padlock’s hand. The shitters could claim it was a miracle performed by St. Jude Thaddeus. A cloud of silence had descended on the house. Padlock sent everyone to bed, and miracle of miracles, she did not even ask the shitters to thank her for disciplining them.

I slept like a log that night. I had acquired two loyal followers.

I missed Uncle Kawayida very much. He never visited us anymore. Sometimes he met Serenity at his office and returned home without coming over. He had bought himself a pickup van in the heat of the Indian exodus and was raising turkeys. I knew that only a Muhammad Ali fight could lure him to our home, but Ali had not fought anybody worthwhile for some time, and he was yet to appear on the stinking Toshiba. I did not like Ali, because he was more arrogant than I ever wanted to be and he openly boasted about his victories. I preferred that others sing my praises. However, I would have forgiven him everything if any of his fights occasioned a visit from Uncle Kawayida. The fact that my uncle stayed away was ample proof that the rivalry between his wife and Padlock was still strong. I was worried about him and his family. His town lay along the route to where anti-Amin guerrillas, under the leadership of the former dictator Obote, were operating along the Uganda-Tanzania border. Amin had successfully repelled one guerrilla incursion, inflicting heavy losses on the attackers, but one never knew what would happen next. What if the guerrillas crossed the border and took over Uncle’s area?