Snakepit (5 page)

He found Bat distant, almost cold, with the demeanour of somebody who is being cheated out of something very valuable. This was not at all the kind of reception he had envisioned, considering his father-in-law's demonstrated enthusiasm and his future wife's warm personality. Why was this man so unreachable? Mafuta now preferred the other in-law, the mad pyrotechnician. His impression was that the fellow had a death wish or some other difficult relationship with life. Tayari hardly bothered with words, but he had offered to make a fireworks display for the wedding. Mafuta would have preferred to ignore Bat, but given his position in the family, it seemed impossible.

Sweating under his armpits, Mafuta started going on about his work, how he had manoeuvred his way into town planning. He talked about the bureaucratic maze in the planning department, which had turned into a cesspool now that no more towns were planned and everything seemed out of control. He talked about how plans kept getting lost, how the Health Inspector offered dispensations against the advice of planning experts, how applications kept going round and round till officials got their bribes. Bat eyed him keenly, as if gauging whether he was sane enough to be entrusted with his sister's life and welfare, and when the monologue ended, he made no comment. Mafuta was a brave man; he swallowed his discomfort and talked about wedding plans. Sister watched the two men and felt hurt, and powerless to change the situation.

At the end of the visit Bat offered to drive the guests to town. Mafuta was determined not to hate him and decided to accept him as he was, although he knew they would never be friends. In a way, he admired Bat's sense of independence. It made him want to fight back, and the best way was to enter the business world and crank up a few deals quickly. After all, this was the get-rich-quick era. Winners in this new rags-to-riches world passed them on the way, cruising in their Boomerangs and Euphorias, flying Avenger helicopters. It struck Mafuta that he was Bat's age. He did not want to lag behind. His in-law's success reflected badly on him, as if he had wasted his life, as if he had no imagination. He really wanted to be part of the action.

Mafuta was suddenly afraid of a repeat failure. He had begun his forays into the marriage business by bagging a princess, a woman faintly related to the kings of Buganda. The princess had been bred with the view that everyone had to worship her as a matter of course. At first, Mafuta had found it romantic to indulge his wife. He brought her breakfast in bed; he made sure that everything was ready for her when she woke up. He found it manly to put up with her raspy tongue, and swallow chidings about his being a commoner, unfit to marry a princess. He liked to hear his wife bemoan her fall from grace, the collapse of royalty. He liked to hear stories about life at the minor court where she grew up. The king used to visit thrice a year and stay for a month. The attention would shift to him; the place would crawl with chiefs, nobles, soldiers, musicians, eunuchs, peasants. Every courtier would bask in reflected glory and forget the feuds and the schemes till the king left.

Mafuta felt proud to have a piece of the royal family under his roof. He eagerly sank into debt in order to maintain the lifestyle the princess wanted. He sold his share of his father's land, against everybody's advice. He enjoyed the drama, the status. He liked the fact that she always spoke in plural—“Mafuta bring us our handkerchief,” “Mafuta, we have a headache”—because he felt included in each and every sentence she uttered. He seemed to hire new cooks and housegirls every week, because she kept firing them as soon as they arrived. Nobody was good enough, clean enough, efficient enough.

It amused him that the princess was so rude because hubris ran in the royal family. Up until the turn of the century, the king used to own everything in his kingdom. If you so much as looked at him aslant, your eyes could get pulled out right there by the bodyguards. At His Majesty's whim, your limbs could get hacked off. Big chief or commoner could be stripped to the last penny. Princes could also get away with just about everything, except planning coups or trying to rape the royal harem. The exploits of princesses were no less colourful, albeit less well documented. Over the years, the powers of the royals had been neutralized by the British, local politics and the army, but in the eyes of stalwart monarchists, the royals could still do no wrong. Mafuta saw himself as an extension of this incredible group of loyalists for the king.

It had only occurred to him much later that one never went to bed with history or the royal family, but with an individual, and this individual's very healthy sex drive had to be serviced dutifully. Sex, like food, was not asked for but demanded, and princesses never got ridden or fucked; they fucked and rode the shit out of you. Mafuta lay on his fat back every night and was ridden like a donkey to kingdom come, whether Her Highness was bleeding or not. Half-hearted erections would never do. The royal orifice entertained only sufficiently stiff dicks. He resorted to taking aphrodisiacs, very bitter stuff extracted from the bark of certain trees. He was gripped by performance angst and often lost healthy erections. He would lie there and wonder when he would stop being an extension of the peasantry and become a man. The constant rape of the self in service of aristocracy began to take its toll. The relationship seemed to have been going on for so long that he knew he would miss his princess if it ended.

Then one day he met Sister at a bus stop. She had two large cardboard boxes full of supplies she was taking to the village. She looked like somebody not used to the city and in need of help. He asked her the time, where she was going, the school she attended, why she had chosen nursing. When the bus came, he lifted her boxes and in the process popped two shirt buttons. He pointed at his hairy belly, drummed on it and they both laughed. She felt at ease with him and liked his deep voice, his sense of humour, his friendliness. They agreed to keep in touch. She provided him with something to do at work. Instead of planning gargantuan fantasy towns powered by solar energy, he wrote her letters professing undying love. He talked about his marriage, the mistakes he had made in life, his willingness to change and spend the rest of his life with her, the mountains they could move together. They started meeting regularly, going to films, dances and the Botanical Gardens. The proof that Mafuta had fallen in love was that he shamelessly told her everything the princess made him do. It poured out of him as never before, and he gobbled her sympathy avidly. Where other men would have lied to look good and tough, he just gushed like an overfull bladder. Everything—including the soiled sanitary napkins she left all over the place. He mimicked her, “Royal blood, commoner. Preserve it for posterity, Mafuta.” They would both collapse with laughter. Sister hoped that he would remain this open, this predictable, after marriage, and she felt proud that she had supplanted a princess.

Sister now reminded Mafuta of those days to cheer him up after Bat had dropped them off.

“What do I need a princess for when I have you right here?” he said proudly, patting her back.

BAT SAW VICTORIA on and off; she somehow seemed to be there when he needed her. Her relationship with the General was dead, the only bond remaining being a lukewarm threat of violence if she strayed too far, for he had verbally released her. She started spending three days a week at Entebbe, reluctantly reporting to the office. She harboured dreams of spending the rest of her life with Bat. The fact that their relationship seemed to have developed by itself, without much effort on her part, made her feel that it was preordained. After all, she hadn't written Bat any letters or sent him gifts or done any of the crazy things women do to trap men. She just appeared at the right time, and he seemed to have taken her the way one took a gift, without prying too much. She had accompanied him to a few official functions, and waited for rebukes from the General, which never came.

The meeting with the Kalandas had been less successful. They were too educated, speaking in what sounded like tongues to her. They discussed economics, high finance and banking and lost her. Mrs. Kalanda had not helped matters either. Never, for once, did she revert to women's affairs. She kept up with the men till Victoria felt disgusted, stranded. She regretted the premature end to her education. She suddenly felt afraid that Bat might drop her because of her lack of education. Midway through the meeting, she tried to cut off the field by asking Mrs. Kalanda about politics. It was a no-go area for obvious reasons; nobody crossed it with strangers. Mrs. Kalanda rudely shut her up by saying that politics was the domain of spies and did not interest her at all. Victoria felt as if her cover had been blown. She apologized and asked for a glass of water to calm her nerves.

Later that evening Mrs. Kalanda told her husband that she did not trust Victoria. She even suggested that Bat should let somebody check out her background.

“The number of women in the State Research Bureau is staggering. Housewives, teachers, nurses, bankers, you name it,” she said, shaking her head sadly.

“Are you calling her a spy?” Kalanda asked amusedly.

“She is a woman without history. She is like a butterfly; nobody knows where she came from. She appeared out of the blue at a party. What would stop her from flying away without a trace?”

“Do you mean to say that she is a gold-digger?” Kalanda said, remembering his campus days. Even then Bat knew how to choose good-looking women; Victoria was no exception. The way she rolled those big eyes!

“Maybe worse,” Mrs. Kalanda replied worriedly.

“How does one tell Bat something like that?” Kalanda mused, his mind still preoccupied with Victoria's body. He liked women with a wild streak; he had not had any in a very long time. He wished he could have one, to while away the boredom that comes with married life and guaranteed pussy. He hoped Bat was having a wonderful time.

“You have known him since God knows when. If he won't listen to you, he will listen to nobody.”

“He is not defenceless. I am sure he is minding his step.”

“You are too complacent,” Mrs. Kalanda said loudly.

“The woman is in love as far as I can see,” Kalanda remarked languidly, as if thinking back to the heady days of fresh love; “you only had to see the way she kept sneaking looks at Bat.”

“Maybe she went to acting school,” Mrs. Kalanda said, raising her voice once again.

“Take it from me, my dear. Bat is all she is thinking about.”

Kalanda never got around to asking Bat directly to check out Victoria's background; Bat knew very well the kind of people he worked and dealt with. To put his mind at ease, he asked whether Bat would tell Victoria about, say, a secret deal or fortune.

“Are you out of your mind?” Bat said, laughing. “What one hand does the other must never know.”

VICTORIA GOT VERY INVOLVED with Sister's wedding. She attended many of the endless meetings which preceded weddings. For her it was never boring; she was connecting with the living, people preoccupied with everyday things, not abductions or other grisly affairs. It helped her combat her paranoia, since these people tried to be as oblivious to government goings-on as possible. She envied them their clean record and the fact that they had no nightmares rooted in harming other people. She prayed for pregnancy, for marriage, for life. If General Bazooka is happily married, and has been for years, and most people in the Bureau have families, why aren't things working out for me? She prepared for the wedding as if she were the bride. She bought a very beautiful gown and looked more desirable than she had ever been. On the big day, the church reminded her of her childhood before the catastrophe. She could hardly take her eyes off the bride and her groom. She kept thinking, Next time I will be the centre of attention.

Months into her assigned official task, she reported to the General that she was not getting any viable information from Bat. He asked her to keep at it. She had now become used to Bat's ways. After a very long day, he did not want to talk about work. When prodded, he would ask her to talk about something else, or throw a temper tantrum, leaving her on the defensive, begging to be forgiven. His finances were another restricted area. If she wanted money, he provided it without question. She had no way of making him talk if he was not communicative. She sometimes followed him to the lake, hoping that the waves and the wind would make him open up. He would sit on a rock, feet in the water, and let the waves do the talking. She was left with two choices: either to fabricate information or to let the General fuck himself.

GENERAL BAZOOKA GRUDGINGLY ADMITTED that Bat Katanga was the best employee he had ever had. It hurt to see how excellent his future prospects were. It was hard to tell how he had cleaned up the mess in the ministry. Whenever information was required, Bat or his team had it close at hand; whenever something needed to be done, they knew who would do it best and how long it would take him. His spies at the hydro-electric dam, which supplied the whole country with electricity, told him how well things were running. Much as he appreciated this level of efficiency, he felt it reflected badly on his position as overall boss of the ministry; it made him feel vulnerable, needful of this man and his talents as never before. How he would have loved it if a tribesman, a man he could trust 100 percent, had been the agent of this change! All this hurt very much because Bat was still uninitiated and had not pledged personal allegiance to me, his boss, his minister. He always talked about serving the government or the people, as if they, the leaders, his masters, weren't people, as if Bat were an elected official, not somebody chosen by him. He was still the Cambridge graduate full of British airs, driving a British car, oozing sophistication. He had yet to inhale the stench of decay, which every true follower had to imbibe before being trusted, accepted. Apart from his academic aptitude, what had he ever done to deserve his fortune? News had already spread among ministers that he was an organizational wizard, and a few generals had talked about poaching him, moving him to their ministries for at least a year each. They even talked about tossing a coin or rolling the dice to find out who would get him first. The dice! He swore he would never allow that. He was sure some of those generals had consulted astrologers, possibly the Unholy Spirit himself, and had been promised success. But he would never let them take Bat away from him. If it came to that, they would all lose him. He knew that many generals were jealous because only recently Marshal Amin had singled out the Ministry of Power as deserving of special praise for showing improvement.