Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

By the time Agatha arrived, a gigantic swan edging uphill in the dusk, a white bolt of light in a gloomy evening sky, she was already community property, dripping with the saliva of communal speculation. A glossy twelve-footer, she sat on her dolly, awash with fluorescent light, and glowed like a new alabaster Virgin. As cameras flashed in the dusk, Lageau stood in front of her, fascinated, like an inventor awed by his invention. He beamed and glowed, as if to say priesthood was the best profession on earth, as if every ordained priest got a twelve-footer at one point in his career. He had waited for Agatha for a long time, and now that she was here, he felt a boyish impatience to try her out.

Weeks of expectation followed. Everyone was watching. An African priest famous for his sycophantism drove Agatha to the lake with his car, affixed the engine and waited for Lageau to arrive.

Sometimes Lageau took a boy or two along to help with the boat. Dressed in white gym shorts, white canvas shoes and a white T-shirt, Lageau resembled a debonair tennis player. He began fishing with rods, then turned to nets. He first caught tilapia fish, then he started netting thirty- to seventy-kilo Nile perch monsters. The fathers’ fridge and deep freezer filled to the brim, but rotten beans continued to be part of our daily diet, except once a month, when we got Nile perch.

I thought about attacking Lageau head-on to ask why he was not giving us more fish, but I held back. I wanted somebody else to make the move. I didn’t want to appear to be too food-minded. I did not have long to wait.

We started experiencing frequent power failures. At first we thought it was a national or regional problem, and that it was the Energy Board’s fault, but it soon became apparent that the seminary was suffering many more power failures than other local users. Lageau became extremely angry, because on top of being forced to use lanterns, he had to spend time tracing the source of the problem.

At first the saboteur just pulled out wires or fuses. Fr. Lageau fitted them back easily, a curse or two on his lips. Then the saboteur decided to raise the stakes. He ripped parts out of the system and drove Lageau almost crazy with frustration. We would have a situation where the fathers’ block was in total darkness while ours enjoyed sparkling fluorescent light. A week after that was rectified, the whole school would be plunged into darkness. Fr. Lageau then built boxes over all the transformers and kept the keys in his office. He told us that he had defeated the bastard this time. The bastard must have been listening and was not pleased. He waited a week or so and struck again. These power failures affected our night study, but the advantage was that we slept longer. In that sense, few seminarians ever got angry with this enigmatic character, and any anger toward him disappeared in the blaze of the deep-freezer dramas that followed. After every successful attack, the bursar would order the freezers to be emptied, and we would feast on the fish. The saboteur would wait for the freezers to fill up again, and then he would rip a part out of the electrical system and the bursar would be forced to give us the fish. In the meantime, all efforts were directed at catching this fellow, but in vain. I was intrigued by him. I wanted to know who he was: he thought so much like me. Serenity would have liked him too, for he seemed to spring out of the pages of a good novel.

The fourth, fifth and sixth times the power supply was sabotaged, we spent a total of twenty days without power. The rector addressed us on each occasion and warned the saboteur to stop his subversive activities. It was interesting that he made no threats of divine vengeance or anything like that. He must have known that this fellow was impervious to all matters divine. I waited for the rector to call me to his office and try to ask me if I knew who the saboteur was, but he did not.

After the sixth campaign, things changed a little: we now got fish thrice a month. The attacks stopped.

My indifference to the Agatha drama did not last long. One morning, Fr. Lageau woke up to find a two-inch scratch on Agatha’s second rib. Since she had not been to the lake for the past three days, there was only one revolting conclusion to be drawn. A tomato-red Lageau, Elvis hair standing on end, concluded that Agatha had been assaulted, her pride chipped, her inviolability compromised. Who in this godforsaken place had dared to lay his hand on her? Who had marked her? After all she had done for these wretched boys and their wretched priests! Which senseless clod had done this? What was he trying to achieve or prove? It did not, could not, occur to Lageau that it might have been a mistake, an accident. After what the power saboteur had put him through, Lageau believed that accidents never occurred in this place. Everything was planned, and where Agatha was concerned, Lageau was not ready to hold back. He had had enough. At the back of his mind was also the idea that beautiful boats, like beautiful women, never got accidentally hurt. They were purposely assaulted. His car, his flowers, his person, had never been vandalized. Why did it have to be sacred Agatha? Who did not know that Agatha happened to be the name of his mother, his first girlfriend and his ideal woman? Who did not know that Agatha brought out all the protective instincts in him?

Like many powerful people who operated inside their own bubble of inviolability, Lageau was terribly hurt and offended. Excruciating pain seared him, making him afraid that he was going to have an improbable heart attack. He felt the approaching pounding devastation of a migraine, his mother’s staple affliction. He lived in perpetual fear of inheriting it. Too angry to give word to his emotions, he rushed to his room and locked himself in. He took a shot of whiskey. It burned with a familiar relief-laden fire, quickly cooled by dejection. God, he thought, it was not his week to say mass for the boys! He dressed quickly and hurried to the sacristy.

A golden hue suffused the interior of the chapel. Boys were mumbling prayers prior to the Angelus and the mass. The golden hue might have been a crimson bolt of fire. Fire was the only thing on Lageau’s mind when he asked the rector to let him say mass that morning.

“It is my week,” the pilgrim protested weakly.

“But I have a special message for the boys.”

“Can’t it wait till after mass? Couldn’t you address them in the refectory?”

“No, you have to understand the special circumstances.”

“Spiritual?” the rector asked, wondering whether the bursar had seen an apparition or had a road-to-Damascus experience. He looked so red!

The rector capitulated despite Lageau’s refusal to say whether the special message was spiritual or otherwise. How Lageau’s ears glowed! the rector thought.

Two minutes into the holy mass, the rector understood why Lageau had been in such earnest. The bursar launched his attack: “Animals!” All the priests and boys eyed him curiously. What a strange intro! We were not the natural audience for animal-rights speeches: we beat our cows or let our herd boys beat them when they strayed; we whacked pigs on the head with pestles or cut their throats to prepare them for the pan; we persecuted squirrels for eating our groundnuts; we murdered rats with poison and traps; we kept dogs and their fleas outside the house; we had a love-hate relationship with monkeys, and if they eluded death for raiding shambas, it was thanks to their sensibilities. Animals were animals here. So what the fuck was Lageau talking about? After acquiring the boat and murdering fish, was he now turning champion of animal rights?

“Monkeys, black monkeys. Monkeys with no regard for aesthetics or property. How could anyone desecrate Agatha? What had she done to them? Why would anyone cut her rib? You know why? Because they are monkeys. During this mass, join me to pray for these monkeys to gain a modicum of respect for other people’s property.”