Snakepit (28 page)

Mrs. Kalanda remembered seeing him standing in the doorway, drenched in sweat, on the edge of despair, with the look of madness and grief in his eyes. The stoic bureaucrat had died, leaving behind a strange incarnation. He released a number of mangled sounds which spelled out a tragedy, of what calibre and sort, she could not tell. He waded through her questions, went to the cupboard and put a bottle of Scotch to his mouth. She had to fight him physically to retrieve the remaining quarter. There is no dignified way to grieve, she thought. Grief makes us totter between childishness and beastliness. The saving grace of wisdom and strength comes later when the poison is drained. He lay on the sofa and groaned, a heart-rending spectacle. He was saying at intervals, “I killed her, I killed her.”

“Why?” she said trying to hold him. “I don't understand.”

She went to the phone and called her husband and the Professor. They arrived to find Bat sitting on the sofa. He was somewhat calmer and he told them what had happened, what he had seen.

“Head on the bathroom floor!” everyone exclaimed at once. Even in a country tormented by lunatics, even to a group that had trekked to the forest to search for him among the dead, this was gut-wrenching. It was personal in every way. They huddled together, grieving, and tried to make plans. There were people to inform, people who would be hurt by the news. Bat took on the biggest burden: he decided to be the one to inform Babit's family. Mrs. Kalanda wanted to do it, but he refused.

“It is my responsibility.”

He went with the Professor because he came from the same area as Babit. Also because Bat needed company in case something went wrong on the road. The journey was uneventful. The two men looked grimly in front of them. The Professor had lost a brother. He thought he had a good idea about what his friend was going through. Tired of supporting his sickly wife and getting little in the way of pleasure out of her, he had wished death on her on a number of occasions, but now he believed he had never meant it. The idea of finding her with her head chopped off made him shiver.

Inside the endless Mabira Forest the speedometer shot madly forward. Everything seemed to darken, as if sealed in a green cloth thick as canvas. The Professor prayed that no suicidal cow cross the road, and no mad soldiers place impromptu roadblocks on the tarmac.

“I shouldn't have let you drive! Jesus,” he moaned. “Do you want to kill us?”

It was the way the car entered the compound that told people that something had gone terribly wrong. And when the duo emerged looking like they had been exhumed from a landslide, the parents knew that the claws of grief had gripped the family. Bat broke the news slowly, steadily, each word having the effect of cutting, scalding. They all watched him, and for a delayed moment it was as though he were speaking about a disaster averted at the last moment by the intervention of a miracle. But the claws gripped tighter and people's faces crumbled, their lips disfigured with the heaviness of their sorrow. Bat would have paid any amount of money to be elsewhere, even in prison. He asked them for their forgiveness for “killing your daughter who was so dear to me.” His father-in-law patted him on the back, as if to say everyone would apportion the blame according to their judgement.

“It is those soldiers; that curse walking this land like an eternal plague. As soon as they attacked the palace and forced the king into exile, I knew that this country would never have peace again,” his mother-in-law declared.

“What should the son of man do about those animals?” somebody said, intoning a general sense of helplessness.

“They are not animals as we know them. They are beasts, demented creatures,” another elaborated.

It was generally assumed that the State Research Bureau or the Public Safety Unit or the Eunuchs or thugs from the armed forces were responsible. Criticism was not often aimed directly at the Marshal's doorstep, for obvious reasons, but now people talked freely. Grief had given them recklessness.

The cautious ones ended the tirade by asking when the body could be collected for burial. The Professor talked about the post-mortem, the ongoing investigations, the delays that might crop up. Somebody asked if the head would be sewn on the trunk again and received only dirty looks. Another wanted to know whether the freezers in the morgue worked, for, the last they wanted was to bury Babit with flies in her wake. Bat looked on with bowed head, waiting for the tempest to pass.

The police investigations were fast and furious, chiefly because the wife of an important man was on the slab, and partly because of the curious fact that none of the house staff had been around at the time of the murder. The policeman had reported sick, and had been sick for the past few days. Due to a shortage of staff his replacement had arrived after the murder. The detectives concentrated on the gardener and the cook. The former could not be quickly located, but the latter was at home. As soon as she saw the police cars, she knew that there was big trouble or tragedy in the air. The nasty stares from the detectives chilled her. Police brutality was common. The caning of prisoners or of children delivered by despairing parents into police hands was standard procedure. A policeman was like a lion; he was a friend only when sated or out of the way. The woman babbled in fear.

“The gardener told me that we had been given a day off. I did not ask him why. He had to know because he talked a lot with the late Mrs. Katanga . . . I don't know anybody who might have wanted to kill her. She had no enemies. The only person who did not like her was Victoria, the woman with whom Mr. Katanga has a child. She used to threaten her on the phone . . . Apart from her I know nobody who might have liked to harm her . . .”

THE GARDENER WAS FOUND late that evening. “Somebody with a State Research Bureau identity card told me to inform the cook to stay away, because he said that there were investigations scheduled for the day, regarding Mr. Katanga's work, and they wanted nobody around . . .”

The remaining question was: where was this Victoria?

TAYARI APPEARED THAT NIGHT. He sent an emissary, who asked Bat to go to the lake and wait for him. As Bat walked through the trees to the lake, he felt the urge to escape the place. It seemed to ring with Babit's death, like a cave that multiplied the sound, bouncing it against its walls. The lake stretched out in front of him. He looked at its dark-grey skin caught in the moonless night and felt disgusted by its indifference, its perpetuity. It was as if Babit had never visited it, loved it. Nothing seemed to matter to it. He stood in one spot, shivering, wishing to go somewhere very far away, a place Babit had never been. Maybe to the islands to catch parrots and fish. He hated the house with its history of British governors, its pomp, its indifference to time. The last governor had abandoned it and built a bigger house, the current State House. Maybe the others before him had also suffered disasters in its walls, uncharted miseries written in their tombs. He wanted to leave this town and forget it all. He wanted it encircled by water and swallowed whole, with its airport, and the roads Babit had walked. He wanted it reduced to a memory, a flicker in somebody's mind.

“Brother,” a voice said to him, “I am extremely sorry about what happened. Maybe if I had taken more care of you, this would not have occurred.”

“I doubt that even you could have changed things,” Bat replied hoarsely.

“I happen to know where Victoria is.”

“You do?” The words seemed to echo endlessly.

“She is in Bombo. Do you have a message for her?”

“I want her to stay out of my life forever.”

“I can plant a device in her house—of course, when the girl is out.”

“We don't know whether she is the one responsible.”

“It is crystal-clear. There is nobody else who hated Babit that much. The work was too clinical to have been unplanned. She is responsible. I bet my arm she is guilty.”

“I don't want anything to do with bombs,” Bat said, feeling extremely weary.

“Do you want her dead in another fashion? Just give me the word.”

“I don't want to kill her.”

“You don't! Do you want that creature to remain eating and breathing after what it did to your wife?”

“I don't want anybody's death on my conscience.”

“The responsibility would be mine, big brother. I would do it as a favour, a show of gratitude. You have helped my group and the country so much.”

“I can't kill my daughter's mother.”

“But she has killed all the children Babit would have produced. Aren't you mad about that?”

“Yes, I am. But killing is not my line of business.”

“Give me her legs. I will put her in a wheelchair for you.”

“Listen to yourself, brother. You talk like those men you are fighting.”

“I can't allow injustice to go unpunished. It is the very reason why this country is still dominated by soldiers. Everybody is afraid to do a thing against them. I have done something, and I am sure that it has helped.”

“I never gave you money to make bombs,” Bat mumbled weakly.

“The radio could not work. Those thugs have no respect for words. They respect dynamite. And fire. They are looking for me, but before they get me, I will put many in hospital.”

“Where does all this violence come from?”

“I decided to offer myself to the nation. To die for the cause. It is a vocation, like priesthood. You are lucky that I am here itching to avenge my sister-in-law's death.”

“Don't touch even a hair on Victoria's head. The law will deal with her.”

“Do you believe that? Do you really believe that, big brother? Is that Cambridge University talking or utter resignation?”

“The law will take care of her. That is how we do it. Babit was not a violent person. Nobody is going to die in her name.”

Tayari threw his hands in the air with frustration. If he could, he would have thrown his brother on the ground and punched his face or made him eat wet sand. “The law! There is no law in this country, except the gun. The bigger the better. Soldiers have the licence to kill. I take that licence in my hands and I want to use it.”

“You don't mean it.”

“After letting you down, I want to do you right and let you know beforehand. It is the reason why I did not attack her secretly.”

“Look here, brother. I want you to find the killers and put them in the hands of the police. They will lead the investigators to her, and the law will take its course.”

“I don't understand you, big brother. Maybe I never have. But I respect you. You are educated, but you have balls. Coming back after Cambridge made me respect you. Coming back after detention made me fear you. Any other person would have stayed in London and fucked Uganda. It is the only reason why I am going to do as you say.”

“I trust that you will keep your word. Take care.”

“You too. Oh, by the way, were you not happy when you heard that my piece had taken care of the General's wife?”

“It doesn't help me now, does it? Babit is gone. Go and find her killers.”

“I won't let you down.”

With that he slipped away in the darkness. Bat did not even hear his footfalls. It was as if he had flown away. Should I have sanctioned Victoria's death? Wouldn't some of Babit's people have been happy to get the news of her killer's demise? I don't expect Tayari to understand my position. For him justice excuses everything, the way Victoria believes that love excuses everything. They are both on the run. One hunting the other, the other hunted by the security forces, Bat thought. That two women's lives had been destroyed because of him saddened him, the kind of sadness his brother could not understand because in his world there were no half-measures. Victoria, the love extremist, had now discovered that too much love killed, that it was a drug that needed dilution if the user was not to be killed by the poison of its concentration.

He looked at the house in the distance, reduced to a bunch of lights dimly penetrating the foliage. He had no wish to go back there. He had no wish to face the people, and the weight of the memories, and the night. He had no wish to smell the cooking, hear the voices, sense their sympathies. He wanted to walk into the lake and repose in its ageless bosom. Many had found eternal rest there. The more he considered it, the more attractive the prospect became. What more do I want to achieve? I have seen it all, at least as much as I can stomach, he said to himself aloud. As the temptation mounted, crashing in his chest, swelling in his head, making his ears sing, he heard somebody calling him. It was the Professor.

“We have missed you, you bastard. Let us go home. People are waiting for you.”

THE SEARCH FOR VICTORIA was short but very dangerous. Tayari and his friends had to be very careful not to land in the hands of their enemies. Having committed the crime, Victoria had curtailed her movements. Reality had kicked in, destroying the euphoric inebriation of the deed. She had already paid the killers, butchers from a nearby town. She had got in contact with them through a friend at the Ministry of Works, for, having lost favour with the Bureau, she could not get anybody from there to do the job. The men had named their price and had promised to deliver. In style. On two separate occasions they had joked that people were animals, that when you got used to slitting the throats of cows, like they did daily, you could easily do a person. They had even asked if she wanted proof. A hand or fingers or something more intimate. The head on a plate would have served as a bonus as well as a warning; a bonus for its biblical dimension: Herod's daughter receiving the head of John the Baptist; a warning to keep her quiet if things went wrong. She had assured them that nobody could penetrate the protective wall she had around her: the might of General Bazooka. But they still felt that a warning was in order. One never knew . . .

The friend at the Ministry of Works had already told her how it happened, and how the police were hot on her heels. It was the same friend who had told the gardener to tell the cook not to turn up. He had warned her not to mention him if things ran out of hand.