Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

A little distance from the trees and the overgrown path was a dead man in a black shirt and blue trousers, lying on his face, arms outstretched as if he were crawling toward the trees.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” Cane announced.

Where were the notorious flies? Why wasn’t I afraid? Island, on the other hand, wet his pants and quaked badly.

Farther on was the body of a woman on her back, her right arm across her face as if shielding her eyes from the sun. Was she sleeping? Where were the signs of death or deathly struggle?

“Who killed them?” I asked.

“Maybe our little friend here did,” Cane said, pointing to Island.

“N-no, not me.”

“Who, then?” Cane asked. “Me?”

My guess was that after the biology teacher had sent him out, he had roamed around and found the corpses and thought of shaking us up.

He glared at me and moved near the woman. He lifted her skirt with his foot. “You want to see her …?” He turned to Island and forced him to say the word. It seemed as if the effort would kill him. Cane grabbed the back of Island’s head and pushed him down. A yellow stream, like liquid gold, poured into the grass.

“Coward,” he said, releasing him. “These people are dead, yet you are afraid of them. Why, eh? If you weren’t my good friends, I would have made you undress them. It is time for class, boys,” he concluded, turning serious.

Had he answered my question? Of course he hadn’t. I always preferred people who spoke in plain language, but this was tantamount to speaking in tongues, and this time, like many times before, I was lost. I didn’t even know why he had shown us the bodies. I could only imagine that he was showing off how fearless he was. Was he expecting me to tackle my adversaries in the same way? Was that it?

Lusanani gobbled my virginity within the walls of the derelict house where we had made our bobbin transaction. We explored our eager bodies and squeezed whatever delight we could out of them. I was finally clearing the last hurdle to adulthood. In the process, I was touched by twinges of regret: I should have asked her earlier, I kept thinking. In an attempt to make up for lost time, I tried to enjoy as much of her as I could.

I was back in my favorite tree, suffused with the smell of ripe jackfruit, salivary glands oozing, a rush of impending gratification bearing down on me. She sighed like ten bushes in a storm, and I tried to discover all the moaning voices of birthing village women, and the terrible voice of the birthing woman at the taxi park, in her vociferations. My biggest success that evening was the freedom to explore and occupy her mystery swampy terrains for as long as I wanted. I smeared myself with her fluids and arrived home smelling like an overripe jackfruit. It was late. Padlock was in a state. She asked where I had been. At the well, I replied, my eyes twinkling impishly with the pride of sexual discovery. I expected her to comment on my new perfume, but she ignored it. I was proud that I had lost my virginity and made it known. Now she would cancel her seminary plans, for I was no longer fit for celibate priesthood. I almost laughed in her face.

I relished the new sense of danger, and I walked about with a swollen chest. I was no longer afraid of Hajj Gimbi, because what he could do, I could do too. Now I wanted Padlock to nab us, but would Lusanani agree? That would mean putting her marriage on the line, although I doubted whether the danger was that great. She was the youngest wife, with the power of desirability on her side. I knew she could get away with a lot.

Lusanani refused to cooperate the first time I suggested the plan. She favored the idea of writing me a love letter. Cane had warned me never to use one trick twice. Above all, I wanted an immediate reaction. We patched up our differences, though, and I returned home smelling to high heaven. Padlock ranted and raved but failed to address the issue at hand. I felt I was in control.

On the scheduled day, I bathed all the shitters except one. Night fell rapidly. I ordered the unwashed shitter to remain in the bathroom. I went to the edge of the courtyard. Lusanani took her time, but finally showed up. When most people had entered their houses, we crept to the front of the pagoda, the steps pouring in front of us, the city winking in the distance. I had my back in the direction Padlock was going to come from. We pretended to be having sex. Hajj was away for a few days. Serenity was at the gas station. Everything was on schedule. We talked about our former schools. I dreamed about the university and a law degree.

“You will have forgotten me by then,” she whispered.

“Never,” I said sincerely. “I promise.”

We were standing in a corridor between two pagodas. Suddenly she said, “Allah akbar!” The tip of a stick had struck her on the head. Padlock flung herself on me in order to reach her, but Lusanani fled. Padlock concentrated on me. She was holding a thick stick and was hitting me on the shoulder, on the back and on the legs. I could only defend my head. I did not want her to take out my eye. My arms soon became paralyzed by the heavy blows. I tried to gore her in the stomach, but she hit me with the stick on the back of the head. She won the day.

My left hand remained numb for a week. I was scared that it might wither. I prayed to all the gods that it wouldn’t, because I did not want to resort to violent retribution. As luck would have it, feeling trickled back after ten days. Within a fortnight it could lift again.

My stint with the despots had begun with blood — Grandma’s — and had almost ended in blood — mine. Serenity stopped Padlock from pursuing the Lusanani side of the business. I told him that it was all my fault. I also told him why I had done it. By now he was more or less sure that I was responsible for the Miss Singer letter and the bobbin mystery. He and Padlock wanted me out of their house. Serenity proposed sending me to Kasawo’s, but Padlock refused. The seminary was only forty days away. I was finally sent to Aunt Lwandeka’s. I was relieved.

The conflicts had worn me out. I felt brittle and cracked like an old boot. There was no time to waste. The seminary was a detour I wanted to pass through quickly in order to get back on my lawyerly track. Although my stint at home couldn’t precisely be called an explosion, it had given me an inkling of what Grandpa meant by the expression that the modern state was a powder keg which would go off in a series of explosions. My secret wish was to have nothing to do with any of those conflagrations.

THE HYDRA at the heart of the autocracy commonly known as the seminary system bore three venom-laden heads: brainwashing, schizophrenia and good old-fashioned dictatorship. This Infernal Trinity of venoms worked jointly; the erosion of old, unacceptable ideas and the infusion of new, approved ones were meant to lead to the gradual breakdown of the relationship between thoughts, feelings and actions, which would result in a malleable subject ready for use by and for the clerics in charge of the system.

In theory, seminarians were orphans, lowly bastards plucked from the dirty, sinful world and shepherded into purity by clerical fathers whom, God willing, they could one day join in holy priesthood. Therefore a seminarian’s mandate was to please, obey and be docile and trustworthy. A seminarian had to surrender his personality and sexuality and become a voluntary eunuch. He had to dedicate himself fully to his calling, and in return he would be entrusted with the treasures of the kingdom come ordination day. A seminarian was the closest thing to the ancient apprentice temple whore: he entrusted himself and his rights to Mother Church, who was free to do whatever she wanted with him, including dismissing him summarily. If he persevered and cleared all the hurdles put in his way, he got his reward: one hundred percent compensation for everything he gave up on earth, and one hundred percent reward in the life to come.