Snakepit (34 page)

It crossed his mind that they had all been killed. Fifty heads on a heap. And it was his fault. This civilian consideration shocked him. He had lived above the law for so long, out of bounds of civilian strictures, that it amazed him to look at himself and judge his actions according to the same. Could I have been betrayed to this extent? To the core of my identity? So fast? In less than ten days? he wondered aloud. The pain in his four-toed foot increased. The fact that he had honoured the wager, severed his toe, now struck him as a harbinger of a fall he should have foreseen. Normally, he would have laughed at the other general and compensated him with money or a cow or a car, but not gone to the extent of desecrating his body. Where had the man thrown his toe? He had taken it away in a polythene bag.

As he staggered from the empty house, he felt the final pangs of rejection: These hills, valleys, rivers, these people, had all rejected him, and pushed him back to where his ancestors had come from. He was already erased from memory. A new conqueror would soon be here, his minions cleaning and scrubbing, and filling the houses with household goods. His princedom had already gone, the bottom eaten out during the last ten days. Now he feared for his mother's business and for her life. In her house another sackful of dollars had been buried. It was his only salvation now. Without it he would be back to zero. The only reminder of his past success would be the ever-faithful Oris Autocrat on his wrist.

As he left the hill and the city, it struck him that there were eight, nine, ten children of his somewhere in these hills. Children with southern blood in them, children he had at one time craved but had ignored when they came. His legacy to the south, belonging nowhere and everywhere. He had met some of them, given them names, and coins to buy things. Others he had denied with impunity. What could peasants do to a prince? Before leaving the city for good, he found himself driving to two addresses where two of his children lived. He wanted to take these two, and their mothers, just in case. He did not want to leave empty-handed. He might learn to love them just to keep going. He might turn them into soldiers to empty their wrath on these hills at some later date. He needed them; they were his, after all.

At the first address, a house near the road, the place was deserted. Doors and windows had been knocked out, everything emptied. He felt himself grow faint. At the second address, he was informed by the landlord that the woman had left three weeks ago with her child. She had fled to a village about two hundred kilometres away. He suddenly felt very old and very weary. Pictures of men about to meet their death came to him: he remembered those who could hardly walk, dragging frail bodies which seemed to weigh a ton. He recognized the feeling; he could hardly move. Without looking the landlord in the eye, he trudged back to his Boomerang and asked his bodyguard to drive away. As he left, he felt that the south had repossessed everything it had ever given him.

In Jinja the face of destruction met him at his mother's home. The house had been reduced to rubble by fire. He made his way to the basement, his heart racing. The false floor had been lifted away. The money gone. In its place were piles of relatively fresh shit. He vomited. The Eunuchs. Major Ozi. He went to the barracks to ask where his family was. He asked a trusted officer, a tribesman; he said that he did not know. He went to the headquarters of the Eunuchs. In the compound were about two hundred men armed to the teeth, the majority wearing hundreds of bullets on chains. They stopped him at the gate. He was out of bounds. No information. No sign of Major Ozi. He tried to get in touch with the Marshal on the hotline. The line was dead. He knew that the Marshal was somewhere in this town, having fled the city a few days before. He felt his stomach sinking to his knees. He had grown up in this area, but there was no longer any place for him here.

He hit the road to the north; he missed his Avenger, whose whereabouts he did not know. This would have been the time to fly and make up for lost time. He pushed to Soroti, Lira, Gulu, Arua, hundreds of kilometres of devilish distress. Major disaster awaited him. His family was not there; neither were his fifty friends. It occurred to him that his wife and children had long been dead. The friends too. He got on the move. He spent the nights in the wild with three of his men, lying under the stars, winds sweeping over him. He could hear his wife's voice labouring through her damaged throat, asking him to . . . Reptile's revenge, he said to himself. Ashes, that vile reptile; only Ashes could plan something this diabolical. Reptile . . . He was always grateful for the break of day. It meant movement, the endless search for the ghosts of his family. Maybe they had lost their way and were wandering towards him on foot, emaciated, desperate. His right leg swelled from the pressure of activity and lack of proper medical attention. Tetanus bit into the wound; the rot started spreading upwards. When he heard the verdict, he did not wait. He put the barrel of a shotgun in his mouth and the explosion tore off the back of his head. Ashes, that reptile . . .

BAT LISTENED TO THE GUNS, the small ones answering the big ones. They seemed to expel soldiers and hangers-on by hydraulic action. There was wild shooting and looting as fleeing soldiers looked for money, civilian clothes, food, and medicines to sustain them on the long way north. Unlucky civilians were shot in revenge, frustration, desperation. He stayed inside his house, barricaded behind the steel gate. He made calls to his friends, and they called him to make sure that he was all right. There was a crescendo in the shooting and then the noise gradually died down.

The vacuum of power lasted a whole week. A new regime announced itself. There was relief, expectation, celebration. His brother paid him a visit one morning. He came with his two surviving friends. To thank him. He was very happy to see his brother, although he wondered how their relationship would be from now on. His sister also came. With a child, born during the last weeks of fighting. He got a phone call a few days later. He was offered his old job back by the new regime of former exiles. He knew some of them. He had been to university with a number of them. Professors, doctors, lawyers in army fatigues. He did not tell them that he knew how to fire guns. He accepted the offer. He was ready to relaunch his life.

He got into his car and surveyed the city, glad to see the high blue sky above on this clear windy day, and the people going about their business, picking up the pieces. A veritable sense of victory overcame him and he banged the wheel a few times. The Marshal, General Bazooka, the Zanzibari astrologers, had gone. The Libyans and Saudis had departed months before, their unfinished projects left gawking. He enjoyed watching massive statues of Amin being unceremoniously pulled down with ropes tied to lorries, and hacked to pieces. He drove to Kasubi. He had to see General Bazooka's house and make sure that he was gone. There were people walking about in the debris, commenting on the shit-smeared walls, cursing and laughing. He seemed to be the lone victor left after a vicious fight. He got back into his car and coasted down the hill, headed for his office opposite the Parliament Building.

During the last few weeks he had been plagued by dreams. The Babit trinity had appeared a few times. He had also had recurrent visits from Mrs. Kalanda.

Moses Isegawa

Snakepit

Moses Isegawa was born in Uganda and worked as a history teacher before leaving for the Netherlands in 1990. He is the author of
Abyssinian Chronicles
. He lives in Amsterdam.

INTERNATIONAL

ALSO BY MOSES ISEGAWA

Abyssinian Chronicles

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, APRIL 2005

Copyright
©
2004 by Moses Isegawa

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

 

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Isegawa, Moses, [date]
 [Slangenkuil. English]
Snakepit / Moses Isegawa.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Uganda—Fiction. I. Title.
PT5881.I9.S24S5213 2004
2003060479

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