During my confinement, I considered returning to the village and helping Grandpa as he wrestled with age and hernia, but I knew that he would disapprove and send me back. Had I learned nothing from his tribulations and lectures? Had he been beaten and immersed in a cattle dip and shot for nothing? All Grandpa wanted was a lawyer, and since Serenity had disappointed him, the responsibility was fully mine. Had I not learned that there was no giving up and that one had to lick one’s wounds and then come back in style? I was ashamed of myself. I also realized that there was no longer any village to return to. I carried the village with me, and it would remain so for the rest of my life, although the years with Grandma could never be relived.
With the beating still fresh in their minds, the shitters obeyed orders with the precision and dispatch of survivors who knew too well what could befall them. They weren’t about to tempt fate or to stir the wrath of sleeping gods. On a few occasions I caught them talking about me, but I ignored them. They were wary of me, as if I had contracted leprosy, most probably the leprosy of guilt by association. I could not blame them for finding it hard to proceed on the treacherous mudflats of despotic unpredictability.
For her part, Padlock acted as if nothing had happened. In her mind, the score had been settled. I had once condemned her to death, and she, in turn, had made me peep into the hungry lacunas where death putatively resided. Her only interest was in finding out whether my fall from grace had led to a total change of heart. When I attempted to stir her guilt by pretending to be too sick to do my shit duties, she said, “Cut out your little games, boy. Remember this: this is not your grandmother’s house.” From then on I executed my duties with the cold efficiency of a soldier on guard.
I avoided Lusanani like the plague. The note she thrust in my pocket on the way to the borehole was dripping with sympathy, the very thing I could do without. It irritated me as much as the sight of her nipples protruding from her wet blouse. It should have been a message of congratulation, for had I not passed the test, survived the ordeal?
I raided Serenity’s library of fantasies and lingered about, wondering whether to make off with Beckett. I finally decided to take Treasure Island, the most popular book in the house. I hid it for days, hoping it would be forgotten. I was planning to give it to a girl I was beginning to take an interest in. She was younger than I, in a lower class, and I did not even know whether she cared much for pirates, ships or adventure. Serenity ignored the disappearance of the book, but Padlock pursued the matter hotly. She slowed down only when she realized that no chest-beating, confessing fool was going to pop out of the woodwork and own up to the “robbery.” She took to saying, “I know who the thief is. God will shame him one of these days. Whatever one does in the deepest darkness will be proclaimed from housetops.”
Personal experience told me that whenever Padlock had recourse to Divine Intervention and Holy Scripture, it was not out of piety but out of a sense of looming defeat. I sat comfortably on the book, waiting for a chance to donate it. In the meantime, a friend of mine took an interest in it. It was an ill-fated move to lend it out. An aspirant girlfriend of his who was trying to assert her rights took it, and my friend, who had all along been looking for a chance to lay her, did not ask her to return it.
At school I got myself pocket money by writing love letters for large boys to their prospective sweethearts. It was my favorite hobby, for it accorded me the chance to see how burdensome hormones worked, and to what lengths boys went to appease them. This was also my foray into the arts of blackmail, deceit and corruption, which culminated in my most daring move: writing a love letter to Padlock.
The usual procedure was that a large boy would approach me, mostly at the recommendation of a third party. He would introduce the subject, often beating about the bush, especially if he was intimidated by my academic credentials. I would listen, and he would ask if I knew the girl in question. We would follow the girl. He would sing her praises, even if she deserved none, and I would memorize what he liked about her. Back at my desk, I would write a letter emphasizing the girl’s strong points. If she possessed no visible beauty, I would improvise, assigning her qualities which would make her mind spin, but careful not to exaggerate too much. It often worked. If a girl was very clever, I would raid Serenity’s poetry books, extract a few catchy lines and stroke her heart with the words of a dead poet. The most accessible source of inspiration, however, was the Old Testament, which most pupils never read, making my quotations all the more impressive.
Seeing how frantic some boys became, buying patterned handkerchiefs, underwear, petticoats, powder, perfume and sweets for girls who did not love them, and sometimes did not disguise their disdain but could not resist the lure of free gifts, one could not help concluding that love was a disease which one chose to ignore and endure, or cure by doing all manner of foolish things.
If we dispatched a letter and a girl took her time reacting to it, the boy would ask me why it took so long, as if I knew and I was just refusing to cooperate.
“Go and talk to her, beg her if that is what she wants. Tell her that I can’t sleep, and I can’t do anything without thinking about her. Tell her that I will give her anything she wants …”
At that point, I would doctor the pleas and the answers, because I wanted to keep my clients happy. If the girl said that the boy had bad breath or stank or that he should drown himself to save womankind from the scourge of his existence, I would say that her parents had threatened to beat her if she ever started dating in school and had put spies on her to make sure that she kept away from boys. My other favorite line was that the girl’s parents had vowed to make her drink azure blue to induce abortion if she ever became pregnant, and that afterward they would come for the boy with pangas. I would end by saying that the girl was in love but saw no way out of the situation, at least for the moment. Most clients bought the lie, at least for some time.
If two boys competed over the same girl, I would pocket their money and choose whom to favor. If I didn’t like the girl, I would campaign for one boy, get him a date and then tell the other about the rendezvous.
For bullies I had my punishment: I would take the money or the gifts meant for their girls and give them to Lusanani, and then lie that the girl was not yet convinced, or that the reply would be coming soon. If the bully threatened to take action, I would ask Lusanani to write a letter insulting the fellow, asking him to leave her alone.
All this experience in wheeling and dealing proved beneficial later, when I entered the world of business. For the moment it made school the most interesting place on earth for me, apart from the taxi park bowl. Adding to the excitement, on top of the love letters, the deceit, the promises, the successes and the blackmail, there was sports. When the football season began, betting started, and fights broke out as losers who failed to pay up were hounded by angry winners. Large boys were often asked to intervene and frighten the losers into paying. When the hostilities reached insupportable levels, the score could be settled by a fistfight or a wrestling match at the sand patch, where long-jumpers made their sinuous springs. A date would be decided, and after school eager spectators and ready combatants would slip behind the buildings and enjoy the match.
One day, as I was wrestling with a letter to a trainee teacher on behalf of one of our hormonally unstable boys, it struck me that it would be a fine idea to tackle the despots by writing Padlock a love letter made to look as if it were from Loverboy. It was such a daring idea that for days I was restless. I woke up at night to listen through the connecting door and hear whether they were still feuding over him. I didn’t want to catch myself in the snares of my own lies. I wanted to strike at the right moment, hoping that the marital harmony of the despots would get a good jolt. I didn’t find out anything about the state of despotic feuding: it was as if they anticipated me and fought earlier or much later. The only constant factor in the drama was that Loverboy continued visiting, albeit less frequently than before. My guess was that Padlock had told him to slow down a bit and give Serenity a false sense of security before picking up the old routine. The situation was ideal for me. Serenity was probably not too happy with his wife’s intransigence, but because she had done something about the boy, he must have eased the pressure and ignored Loverboy’s irregular visits, waiting for the right occasion to put his foot down again.