Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

One afternoon, as I was brushing the infernal carpet, I reached under the green sofa and what did I discover? A neat bundle of five half-dry guava switches, carefully cut on both ends! Woe to the thief! Woe to the craggy landscape of Padlock’s mind! Woe to any defaulter who would fall on the jagged edges of its crags! How lucky I was to be the real thief! Such predictable plans of vengeance no longer impressed me.

It was evident that this time round there would be no waiting for night to fall; the deed would be done early in the morning, after Serenity had left for work. The thief would be asked to remain behind and skip school. The door would be locked, the key pocketed. Then woe to the thief who would see, if he still had eyes to see at all, switches rising and falling with diabolical fury and orgasmic insistence. I smiled cheekily, patted the bundle like I would a good faithful dog, and continued with my sanitary duties. My only worry was that a frustrated Padlock would use any excuse, say, bad school performance, to cane some defenseless shitter. Was this bundle an indicator of Padlock’s predictability, parental incorrigibility or despotic fallibility? Or all three?

Padlock started reading from the Old Testament every evening after night prayers. She started by beseeching God to reveal the thief. When He refused, she beseeched Him to use His tremendous power, the type that had delivered Israel from Egypt, to bring back the bobbin. I noticed that, under the narcotic influence of her faith, she started looking in the most curious places every morning, afternoon and night, as though through her earnestness the Almighty would be moved to let the bobbin drop from above like steel manna and cure her hunger for miracles.

As the searches intensified, they mesmerized me with the power of their blind insistence. At one point I almost panicked. Had she dreamed, like my Biblical heroes, and received the rough bearings or coordinates of the spot where the bobbin was buried? I recalled the blind faith some women had invested in my mascotry not so long ago, and how some were rewarded with sons. What if Padlock’s faith was going to achieve its reward?

I started having odd nightmares with Padlock bearing down on me, the bobbin in one hand, a hammer in the other.

Padlock stepped up her campaign of terror by reading frightening passages from the Old Testament and praying for maladies like leprosy to afflict the thief. I had already seen what leprosy had done to Fingers; I remembered the stumps and the scars. What if Fingers’ sugarcanes had secreted bacteria in my body and all Padlock’s prayers and curses had to do was activate them?

Padlock hammered us with Exodus 32, emphasizing the sinfulness of the Israelites in making the Golden Calf. She lingered on the three thousand people who died that day as God assuaged His anger, and on the disease among the survivors which God meted out for good measure.

As I was getting used to the barrage, she whacked me with Joshua 7, which was about Achan’s greed. She made her point very clear by reading verses 19 to 26 very slowly: “My son, tell me the truth here before the Lord, the God of Israel, and confess. Tell me what you have done. Don’t try to hide it from me.” Achan replied, “I have sinned against the Lord … You will find the cloak, two kilos of silver and a bar of gold buried in my tent.” Maybe I should confess, a voice said to me, but then what happened to poor Achan? He was seized and taken to Trouble Valley, together with his sons and daughters, his sheep, cattle, donkeys and tent, as well as the stolen objects. There he and his family were stoned to death and all his property was burned! Then the Lord was no longer furious! In local terms, it would take all the skin from somebody’s back, legs, buttocks and arms, and five broken guava switches, to douse the blazing torch of Padlock’s anger. I wasn’t that stupid. If anything, by reading such horrible texts, Padlock was just shooting herself in the foot. General Idi Amin never said anything about martyrdom. He only preached self-preservation. I would never let him down again by allowing this woman to beat me for nothing or for anything I could get away with. This was obviously a mind game, and I was cleverer than she.

Serenity was also playing a mind game. When his wife bombarded the family with terrifying images of the plague, his own plague of secret love dug deeper into him. When Padlock introduced Achan and his greed, Serenity became Achan, eyed the treasures God had ordered to be wasted and, failing to resist his urges, took some for himself. Serenity relished stories of personal struggle, because they spoke directly to him and highlighted his difficult situation. When he went over to visit Nakibuka, they discussed the Biblical passages, laughed deep into the night and used the images of terror as launchpads for serious lovemaking. Sinning had never been so sweet, nor had it ever triggered such satisfaction. Serenity let himself go, unleashing deep-throated groans which seemed to come from the bottom of his spine. Bred to fear, overestimate and suspect power and authority, he felt free from the shackles of his upbringing and the gaping lacunas of his adolescence. This woman did not need him, did not rely on him, did not pressure him for anything: she wanted only what he could give. And the less she asked, the more feverish his will to give became.

Padlock was not wholly dim: she realized that even the most terrible brutalities pale with overexposure. She abruptly abandoned the horror epics and dived into the slimy waters of the psalmist. She dredged up lines which portrayed her as the good, suffering believer. Her hope was that subtlety, self-pity and a dose of good old-fashioned sentimentality would succeed where bone-crunching violence had failed. Pandering to the myth that the sight of a powerful despot on her knees was enough to unhinge hearts and move mountains, she dipped into the schmaltzy psalms, a tender girlish mask on her nunly face.

The pathetic crassness of it almost made me laugh. After ruthless bombardment, now the slimy kisses! All to extract a suicidal confession which would be rewarded with ruthless punishment. The schizophrenic seed at the heart of her logic made me quite sick with disgust and made me wish I had stolen ten bobbins.

Save me, O God / I am weak and poor / Hurry to my aid / My God rescue me from wicked men / From the power of cruel and evil men / I have trusted in you since I was young / I have relied on you all my life / My life has been an example to many / My enemies want to kill me / They talk and plot against me / May those who try to kill me be defeated and confused / May those who are happy because of my troubles be disgraced / I am terrified and gripped by fear / I wish I had wings like a dove and could fly away / I see violence and riots in the city / Filling it with crime and trouble / Protect me, O God / Punish all my enemies / You know how troubled I am / You have kept a record of my tears / Help, help, help, O God!

The manipulative cow!

In order to remind the thief that her sickening pleas for God’s help had not changed her attitude toward the crime, Padlock introduced the notorious crime-solver St. Jude Thaddeus, detective, protector and rescuer of desperadoes. This man was reputed to put both dead and living sleuths to bitter shame. Among devout Catholics, he was fondly called an “automatic rifle.” All you needed was faith and a novena, and the magician would patch up rotten marriages, find dead bodies floating in rivers, make paupers rich, cure frigidity, impotence, gonorrhea and syphilis, and give desperately barren women those dreamed-of wrinkly little monkeys and greased piglets.