Snakepit (18 page)

The strange thing was that in the morning nothing was heard of the shooting. Nobody talked about it. They talked about the weather, the fluctuating prices, inflation, but never about guns. It felt like a conspiracy. It was as if the shooting took place inside his head and was only heard by his drugged ears. His wife wasn't too bothered by it. It was as if she expected drunken or frustrated soldiers to behave that way. The arrival of Bat's brother did not alleviate Mafuta's tension. The young man spoke only when spoken to, preferring to maintain silence or go for long walks by himself.

Mafuta's burden lightened when he accompanied his wife to see Victoria and her child to get any information she might have. He was struck by the woman's beauty, but he felt there was something hard and dangerous about her. She expressed much grief, but there was something superficial, overdone about it. Is it simply that she has too much energy or is there something wrong with her? Mafuta asked himself as he watched her, irked by the fact that it was rich or powerful men like his in-law who played around with such women. He had expected a spurned woman to be cool, restrained, dignified in her loss. Victoria, on the other hand, looked like a house on fire, barely holding back its zeal to consume itself. Maybe the bastard has a way of bringing hardness, insanity, out of people, Mafuta thought. Victoria's child kept walking about, pulling things, going off to play, and coming back to interrupt conversation. He wondered what his child would look like.

“I have done my best,” Victoria reported, wiping tears from her eyes. “Friends in high places refused to talk.”

“What friends?” Sister asked eagerly.

“I know some people in high office, you know,” she said almost casually.

“Ministers?” Mafuta said suddenly, attempting to escape neglect.

“A minister, yes. And people who know people. They all don't know where he is.” Wiping tears clumsily, she cut a scatter-brained figure, quite different from her usual collected self.

“I have been to three different astrologers. They all say different things. I don't know what to think and what to believe.”

“Do you have enough money to live on?” Sister asked with concern.

“I have a job. I can look after myself. It is love I am without. I love him so much. I miss him,” she said tearfully.

Mafuta was not impressed. A swinger like her had to know better than to get trapped in love. He had seen many of her kind, hard-drinking, night-clubbing types Amin had put out of miniskirts and business. They were good for a night, but a nightmare to live with. Victoria's house could do with more cleaning. A peek in her inner rooms had revealed chaos: clothes all over the bed, the child's playthings all over the floor. Could the bastard have let her go because of her carelessness? Or did she make too many sexual demands? Mafuta remembered his princess, how she used to ride him, and how he had felt good about it in the beginning. Wouldn't be a bad idea if this woman had ridden the bastard like a donkey, he thought, and almost broke out laughing.

“I don't know much about this woman, but I believe she was a mistake in my brother's life,” Sister said as they drove away, Victoria waving from the courtyard.

“Why do you say that?” Mafuta said in an almost playful voice, again enjoying being in opposition.

“She calls Babit and threatens her. She openly confesses to seeing astrologers. She claims to be still deeply in love with a man who threw her out long ago.”

“Everybody is using the good offices of astrologers, but because of hypocrisy nobody owns up to it. Your family slaughtered a bull for omens to be read, didn't they? Such a beautiful woman would hate being replaced. Maybe it made her go over.”

“Somebody has to investigate her.”

“Your brother should have done that before investigating her nakedness,” Mafuta observed, hardly able to hide his glee.

“I am serious.”

“She didn't make him disappear, did she? Surely not even she could do that.”

“I am not saying that. I used to like her. But women who threaten other women are dangerous. They either believe in evil magic, or physical violence. And those tears . . .”

“Rarely do women admit defeat at the hands of rivals, except for my princess, who cleaned out my house in retaliation before going off and allowing you in. Most women would rather destroy their rivals. Gone are the days when polygamy was a respected institution and rivals had to be tolerated. Nowadays, it is every woman for herself and the Devil for them all.”

“Don't remind me of your princess.”

“Don't worry. Let us concentrate on finding your brother. He will sort out his mess afterwards.”

“Yes, you are talking sense.”

VICTORIA HAD BEEN on the trail sounding out people on Bat's disappearance, but to no avail. General Bazooka had warned everybody not to talk to the “widow,” as he called her, and at best to stop her at the gate. Thus doors kept getting slammed in her face. Former colleagues looked the other way when they saw her. She had been to the headquarters of different security agencies and received the same disheartening treatment. In her desperation she had tried the astrologers. Two omens had been bad, one good. They had robbed her of much of her hope. Her life had started to look futile. If it hadn't been for her daughter, she would have gone out of her mind.

She woke in the morning with fear in the pit of her stomach, and dressed to go to work with doubt plaguing her mind. She arrived at her office feeling nervous, as if she expected a bullet in the back, and she started sorting papers, useless files. Hers was a dead department, hollowed by the fact that rural roads had not been repaired in ages. She sat in her office waiting, she did not know for what, drinking tea, staring out the window at passersby, the trees, at nothing. Her hopes seemed to grow dimmer by the day. She was now afraid that the General would take his revenge and strike back at her. In what way? She didn't know. She kept thinking about her disappeared father and her failure to find him. She thought about her family and the fact that the General had run them off. She saw him cocking guns, asking her to shoot him. She would gladly shoot him now, for she believed that he had made Bat disappear. And robbed her of her hope. Her escape route. I have to get Bat back, she said out aloud. I have to get Bat back, I have to get Bat back, I have to . . .

Things had changed at the Bureau. It had fallen into the hands of Amin's tribesmen. She felt that if it hadn't been for General Bazooka they would have killed her. She wanted to get out. She prayed for a miracle to find Bat and take him away from that other woman. Then I will walk safely into a secure future, she thought. It was still a dream. When frustration got the better of her, she picked up the phone and called Babit. Hearing her hold her breath or begging to be left alone empowered her, made her want to smash the receiver in her face, and erase her from Bat's life. Calling her barren had at first been a slip of the tongue, but it was now a major weapon. A bazooka. She loved its soul-crushing potency. But why didn't it drive her out of the house? When she got tired of harassing her, she would leave the dead office and roam the city looking for clues, flimsy leads to turn her into Bat's saviour. A whore had been the first person to witness Jesus' resurrection. Wouldn't it be fantastic if I resurrected Bat out of the morgue?

THE SEARCH for Bat's body began at midday on a rainy day with Sister, Babit, Tayari, Mafuta, the Professor, and Mr. and Mrs. Kalanda dressed in gumboots and raincoats and looking sombre as stormy weather. Afternoons were most convenient because one was sure that all dumpers had retired for their siesta. Now and then, bodies were dumped during the day, but then by the roadside, not deep in the forest where the group was headed. The “surgeon” the group had hired lived on the blind side of Mabira Forest, where most settlements were. The taxi van which brought the group stopped three kilometres from their final destination. They walked the muddy paths deeper into the forest, the trees above wetting their heads at a monotonous tempo.

The man lived in a small settlement of iron-roofed mud houses where children were playing inside, now and then one or two of them venturing into the rain and the red mud before dashing back indoors. The women were busy making the best of the soggy, muddy situation: cooking, cleaning, making sure their children did not stay out in the rain and catch fever. The man had been doing the job for a number of years and oozed with the confidence of an expert. These were in fact the boom years. He had begun by going to strip corpses of watches, rings, necklaces, clothes, any valuables the soldiers overlooked in their haste. Business had been good then because the victims of purges were mostly well-to-do people. Nowadays the soldiers had become wiser, hungrier. There were no more pickings, but the “surgeoning” was booming because of the dramatic rise in disappearances.

He was in his thirties, in the prime of his life, dressed in gumboots, jeans and a khaki shirt. He was a very average-looking fellow who could have passed for a teacher, a carpenter, or a driver if you found him walking on the street in his Sunday best, because of the air of calm and control he had about him. He had worked in a hospital morgue but had resigned over bad pay and decided to become self-employed. Hands sheathed in surgical gloves, a cigarette smouldering in his mouth, a flashlight dangling at his hip, he led the group into the forest.

“We are the only remaining true foresters. We care more about the forest than those trained to name the trees. We know where the animals are, where the people live. The name ‘surgeon' does us an injustice,” he said at the beginning of the journey. But nobody had been in the mood to appreciate his sense of humour.

Light gradually dimmed, little insects started screeching, the forest floor felt thicker, softer, with dead leaves. The silence of the people seemed to make the ambience grimmer. When they had walked for a long time, a change in smell warned them of what lay ahead. As they drew nearer, the intensity rose, attaining a well-nigh physical pressure. The “forester” just marched on, a man in his element, a vulture surveying his domains. Suddenly, they were there. He turned around to face the group, as if asking them if they had the nerve to get down to business.

They were lying on their backs, on their sides, on their faces, some in coils like pricked millipedes. They were lying on top of each other, arms and heads over their neighbours, as if for fun or in ritual. They were lying singly, in twos, or in bigger bunches. They were dressed, naked, half-naked, sheathed only in coats of blood. There were those who seemed to have dozed off midway in prayer, rapture, boredom, disgust, dirtied as if they had failed to find the time or patience to wash. There were the faceless, the half-faced, the ones daring you to blow their cover. There were the fresh ones, with heat seeping out, and the stone-cold, with collapsed skin coats betraying bones. He guided them through them, past them, over them. With his gloved hand he pulled, exposed, unveiled, rearranged. He went on and on, a conductor musically twitching; a surgeon rubbing, probing; a history teacher selling faces, fictions. At the end of the exercise, with his bloodied glove and impassive face, he spread his hands like a priest at mass beckoning the congregation to embrace the Lord and told them that he could do no more for them. He wished them well, studying their faces, as if checking as to who had vomited most, who mourned most, who couldn't wait to get away. He brought his hands down by his sides, shrugged his shoulders like a doctor who has failed in his duties, and one by one the group turned around ready to get out of the forest and go to meet another appointment, another fisher of men.

The final search occurred on a riverbank turning to marsh. In the razor-sharp bulrushes, as if looking for floating baskets with babies, water up to their shins, they surveyed bodies surfeited with sun and cordite. Most faces were upturned in supplication, mortification, abortion. Weeds and flowers bent in the wind and touched the faces, as though to wipe snot from runny noses, or pus from sick eyes. Here and there was a trouser-ripping erection, obscenely captured in death in all its glory. Tortured by hope and despair, they retired to spend the night listening to exploding bullets and grinding out new plans, better ways to handle the present and confront the unknown.

In the morning Mafuta, Sister and Babit went to Entebbe to attack the phone in search of the elusive British politician. Sister wanted to give him the news. She dialled away, working through a cacophony of honking faulty connections, snorting disconnections, and a ringing, echoing maze of failure sounds. It was towards late evening when she got somebody on the line. Emergency. A British emergency in Uganda? She tried to explain that it was about her brother. The woman at the other end wanted to cut her off. Too many weird callers these days, some threatening violence to her boss, some saying obscene things to her or anybody else answering the phone. Sister held her ground. She insisted; she demanded; she informed. She came away with the promise that the politician would call her back. She spent a bad night loaded with doubt, hope, fear.

Much to her surprise the man did return her call, and expressed deep regret. He chatted. Bat had called him to congratulate him on becoming MP. He had sent Bat greetings on a few occasions. He promised to study the case.

THE FIRST TWO WEEKS in detention slipped by steeped in suspense, boredom, fear. His spirit felt compressed, cut off, strangled by the weight of isolation. A candle starved of oxygen slowly going out. His own company depressed him. His mind tried to roam outside, a bird without a song or a worm. He kept thinking that man was a strange animal: in a group he often sought isolation; isolated, he did his best to fit into the group. How many hours did he spend thinking about people he normally fled or whose company he found mediocre? How many hours did he spend re-creating banal conversations, images he had found boring at the time? He tried to concentrate on clinical things, reasoning his way out of the maze.