Abyssinian Chronicles (54 page)

The quarter-kilometer walk up the hill had left Kasawo sweating. The wet-look grease in her hair was trickling down her head, and she
kept wiping it off her neck with a large handkerchief. She kept looking at the many well-dressed women, who far outnumbered the men. It struck her once again that if women abandoned the business, witch doctors would run out of work.

She was annoyed that there were so many people ahead of her. She was irritated by the bawling children and by the arrogant airs pulled by some of the visiting women. She could tell the die-hards from the beginners by their indifference. The first-timers looked around nervously to make sure that nobody they knew could see them from the road. The discomfort they felt about being here also came out in the way they shifted uneasily, coughed or blinked as though their bodies were in open rebellion.

Quite a few of these people were supposed to be in a hospital, but they were awaiting clearance from the Vicar General of the Devil’s Diocese. Western medicine had been around for more than a hundred years, but many people trusted their witch doctors more than they did medical doctors. Kasawo could understand their reaction. There were many greedy medical doctors who milked people’s money without telling them the truth. It was a question of trust. In her case, though, she knew exactly when to consult medical doctors. A little education is not too bad, after all, she thought sourly.

From her experience, Kasawo knew that half the people here had not come to be relieved of physical ailments; they were here in pursuit of luck, success, revenge, love, power, favor and divination. There were housewives who wanted love potions to make their husbands love them more than other women; and some in search of evil magic to cause car accidents, illness or other disasters to their competition. There were barren women desperately searching for babies after combing every church and hospital for help, and fecund women who wanted more children in order to ensure their position in the home. There were mad men and women tormented by “voices” which told them to walk naked, to attack people, to sit in fire, to climb roofs or to talk to themselves; and men and women who wanted to drive somebody they hated mad. There were people with psychosomatic and psychological ailments, and others with migraines, cancers, swollen legs and broken limbs. There were people in search of themselves who needed the big man’s magic touch to peel away layers of self-delusion, self-pity and old pain before moving on to a better life. Last but not
least were those who had lost loved ones in the recent past to deep forests, swollen rivers, dank dungeons and mass graves. They wanted to locate the remains, lay wandering spirits to rest with a proper funeral and, where possible, make the killers pay.

Kasawo sympathized with this group, because all the killers had fled or were in hiding, and no one had been brought to justice.

As Kasawo sat, patiently watching all these people, she wondered whether this was not a nation of gullible moaners and corrupt mythmakers. The Vicar of the Devil was certainly a mythmaker, an enigma, but Kasawo did not agree with her sister that this was a nation of moaners. The pain was real. It was just a nation in search of proper leadership. She too needed guidance from time to time. She wondered whether her belief in enigmatic characters was not a nostalgic search for another man, a resurrection of the Pangaman of her pre-elopement days, the Pangaman who took charge of every aspect of her life. The nation, she felt, was in need not of repentance but of proper stocktaking and action. She personally fantasized about a good man to grow old with, somebody to take care of her. She could not help thinking that after the purification rites it would be that much easier to find him.

Kasawo waited for half a day. By the time her turn came and she passed through the polished wooden door of the consultation room, to be immersed in the crisp redness of the new bark cloths covering the roof, the walls and the floor, she was trembling with nervous irritation. Her center had been hollowed by fatigue. The dry woody smell coming off the bark cloth made her feel drowsy. The man in front of her looked bigger and more imperious. His huge eyes, guarded by hard-bristled caterpillar eyebrows, made her more restless. The wide round nostrils made her believe she was looking down a double-barrelled abyss. The woody smell made her fear that she was being chloroformed. This man was a new force, a juggernaut that fed on dirty old witch doctors and would not stop before engulfing all their customers. This man with his enormous wealth and imposing personality inspired instant faith. Kasawo felt like an old disciple.

“Give me all the details.” The words dropped from his despotic lips like heavy gongs whose reverberations were accentuated by the red darkness they were uttered in. Kasawo was grateful for the darkness: it made her feel less self-conscious. Unlike the time she went to see her parish priest, for the Vicar she did not reduce the number of her
attackers by four. Kasawo told the man everything she remembered and even felt like adding elements from her imagination. At first it felt strange to hear herself in the darkness; then she got used to it. By the time she came to the end, words were flowing of their own accord. Her anxiety doubled during the subsequent silence. Her heart raced madly as she waited in the darkness for the big man’s verdict. He grunted and snorted and finally said that everything would be all right. The relief she felt was phenomenal.

Kasawo was sent to the dormitories, which turned out to be long buildings with either single or double rooms. There was a small shop selling soap, razor blades, bandages, cigarettes, salt, maize flour, tea leaves and other items necessary during a stay. Behind the kiosk, one could get cooked food, tea and porridge. The thought of porridge made Kasawo’s stomach turn. She hurried to her room.

There was a spring bed, a cupboard, a basin and a cement floor to rest her feet on as she contemplated the cost of all this. The Vicar was one of the few modern witch doctors who gave credit, because clients could not contemplate cheating them. Kasawo felt that the man deserved every cent he got: she had been here for only half a day, but she was already feeling better. As she lay on the bed waiting for night to fall, she wondered whether this was not a mental asylum where patients checked in whenever the burdens of the past and the present became too much to bear. She sat up in one fluid movement: the thought that her rape could be the figment of a diseased mind horrified her. No, no, no. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, she said out loud. She lay back slowly, happy that she was not mad. She thought about a boy she had seen that day. He had been brought in fastened with ropes. His father said he was possessed by spirits. She remembered the boy’s blank eyes, so fathomless yet so shallow, and the way he fought when they untied him. It took three men to hold him before the Vicar came. She remembered the Vicar’s taking him by the hand and saying a few words to him. She remembered how he stroked the sick boy and led him inside. The power, the tenderness, the confidence, the many sides of the Vicar kept Kasawo thinking for a long time.

Dressed in black, a dry leopard tail in his hand, the man entered Kasawo’s room. He ordered her to undress, wrap a black sheet around her and follow him. It was past midnight. The compound was quite dark except for lights here and there in the sleeping rooms. They entered
a banana grove and ended up behind a massive tree that loomed like a diabolical tower of terror. There was a cave under the tree, inside which were three basins full of cold water. Incantations poured into the air as water from the three basins dripped down Kasawo’s shivering body. Bits of herb stuck in her hair and on her body.

Back in her room, the man motioned her to spread a mat which was leaning against the wall on the floor and lie on it. In twenty years Kasawo had not lain down for punishment. It felt strange. Seven strokes of a dry bamboo cane found their mark. Confused, and in strange pain, she was led back to the cave. She bathed again. The water felt very cold, and she could not stop the tears which came with the quivers. The black clothes gave the man the arcane dimensions of a ghoul and made her feel both afraid and reassured. A man born to wield power. A man born to exorcise demons and conquer women.

On their way back, Kasawo became more convinced that God and the Devil were two sides of the same coin. They even used the same methodology in combatting opposition. So many years ago, when she had just met Pangaman, her mother had taken her to the parish priest under the pretext that they were going to buy rosaries. Kasawo was afraid of the white man. She became more afraid when her mother reported to him that she was fornicating with a man, drinking alcohol and treating her father with insolence. Her mother asked the priest to exorcise the demons tormenting her. The priest stood up and said very many Latin words. The expression on his face was deathly. He did not seem to see her or her mother. He finally reached for a cane and beat her. But not even he could beat Pangaman out of her.

The second time round, her mother took her to the mother superior of the parish convent. The nun listened in dead silence, a very sad and terrifying expression on her stern face. She looked at Kasawo for a long time, at the end of which she asked both mother and daughter to kneel. She led the rosary and the litany of the Virgin Mary. She dismissed the mother and asked Kasawo to stay behind. She locked the door and pocketed the key. She drew all the curtains and ordered her to strip. Kasawo did so woodenly. The nun asked her to lie on her back. She took a leather belt and whipped her twelve times between her legs. Kasawo cried out. She had never tasted such pain before. “Think about the nails your sins are driving into Jesus’ wounds and keep quiet,” the nun commanded. “Aren’t you ashamed of the pain your behavior is
causing Our Lord?” The nun did not ask her not to tell her mother. She knew that the girl wouldn’t. The nun administered the same treatment every day at the same time for a week. It did not work. Soon after that, Kasawo eloped with Pangaman.

Back in her room, seven hard bamboo strokes found their mark again. The man ordered her to go to bed. She was bothered by the repetitions in her life, and especially by her inability to squeeze some usable wisdom out of them. Her thoughts could not coagulate. They flapped around like frog spawn in a swamp. The ordeals and the tears, however, had a very soporific effect.

Kasawo woke up late the following afternoon. The red tiles of the Vicar’s residence peeped at her from her window with the seductiveness of a sweet fading fire. She was overwhelmed by the noise of activity in the compound, and she wondered how she had slept through it. As night dropped like a dark veil she went to the kiosk to buy some food. Moths had appeared. They circled the lamps in dizzying yellow arcs. She sat on her bed and ate. She retrieved a moth’s wing from her mouth. She spat and threw away the food.

As Kasawo waited for the man to arrive, she thought about how the therapy worked. She had told him everything about the attack and much about her life. It seemed that he had picked out salient elements and used them to make her relive her pain and move on. It hurt more than she had expected, but she felt it was all for the better. Now more than ever, she wished she were more educated and thus able to tie the different strands of her life together. She remembered confessions in the cupboard-like confessional. At the beginning, she really believed that the white priest was Jesus, and she quaked with holy terror, not daring to tell a single lie. But gradually it had struck her that if the priest was indeed Jesus of Nazareth, then he surely did not need to be told anything. She started telling him small lies and omitting little details. “Jesus” swallowed it hook, line and sinker! The terror went away, and she started smelling the man’s tobacco breath. From then on, she stopped saying prayers of contrition. The Vicar knew better. He guided his clients through the rituals. He is a Catholic, Kasawo thought; he must have fooled the priests himself. Send a thief to catch a thief, her primary school headmaster used to say.

His massive frame filled the doorway. He beckoned her to follow him to the cave, where she took the same long, cold bath. She had
never shivered so in all her life. Her teeth rattled badly as she walked back to her room for the final installment of lashes. He administered them and turned her over. The cold hand of the wind pushed inside her and shook the very marrow of her bones. She was so cold that she started feeling a dull heat building inside her. She closed her eyes and succumbed to the convoluted meanderings of her mind. She was awakened by the fire of his latex-sheathed penetration. He rubbed the stretched membrane of her rejuvenating self with the hellfire of her worst pains. He reminded her of the professional brutality of bone-setters who broke badly set bones in order to correct the mistakes. Her mind worked on and off between bitten-back screams and tears as she tried to hold on. She thought of Pangaman, of her fear, hatred and even love of him. She thought of her father, of the parish priest who had beaten her, of the nun who had whipped her, and of Amin’s soldiers, and of her violators. Her face was wet with tears. He asked her if she was crying. She felt shame over it, but she could not lie to the ultimate confessor and admitted that she was. He laughed. She felt relieved.

Back at the cave, she was ordered to fill a bucket with water. He sprinkled herbs in it and ordered her to carry it on her head. This time they headed for the road. They stopped in the junction. She eyed the three arms of the road with trepidation. She prayed that it would remain empty, desolate, dead. He ordered her to strip and bathe while saying the following words: “I leave the world’s rapes here. I leave the world’s ill luck here. I leave every evil here. Let the winds carry it all to the ends of the earth.” He stood at a distance, and she could hear him mumbling. They walked toward the compound in silence. She was glad that part was over. Her body was still burning, but she felt calm. She did not care whether another seven lashes were awaiting her. She had broken a psychological barrier. She felt invincible, fearless, ready for anything.

At the door he stood aside and let her enter. He stood in the doorway and watched her shiver, the black cloth tight on her steaming body. He seemed wreathed in priestly isolation. “It is over, girl,” he said in a thick voice. He stood there as if waiting to be thanked. She found herself on her knees, thanking him as though she weren’t going to pay him.