When we went back to the group, he said, “All your mothers get fucked every night, except when they are bleeding. Your fathers pour their … in your mothers’ …” He made us fill in the missing words. Somebody wanted to know how fathers poured their … in our mothers’ … Somebody suggested that they used spoons or funnels. Cane almost slapped him; he couldn’t believe that we were so ignorant.
Cane was not afraid of teachers, and he took special pleasure in teasing female teachers who acted tough with pupils. In fact, that was how he got the name Cane, because he used to tell them, “Cane me, bitch.” The first woman to fall for it caned him till she started sweating and wet patches appeared in her armpits and between her breasts. She finally gave up. Cane liked lying on the floor for the strokes, and when he got up, he usually had a big erection. He would stand there with arms akimbo, his penis pushing against his fly like a big impatient rat. Female teachers soon learned their lesson. Nowadays, they referred him to the headmaster or to their male colleagues.
I met Cane on the way to school and introduced my problem. He patted me on the back and said it was nothing. In class he tore a precious page out of a porno magazine on which a golden-haired, blue-eyed girl was sitting on a chair, legs apart. He tore a blank page from an exercise book, folded it in two and sketched the head of the biology teacher, accentuating her hairdo, her nose and her lips. He pasted the sketch over the head of the girl. He glued the picture onto the blackboard.
The teacher found the class rumbling with juicy murmurs, which died down as soon as she appeared. She entered the room, put her bag on her chair, surveyed the blackboard and got a massive attack of nerves. “Wh-wh-who?”
“I did,” Cane said from the back, double-bass booming.
“Why?”
“Isn’t it funny, mistress?”
“Remove this dirt from my blackboard, and get out of my class. Stay out for the rest of the month.”
“I prefer to be caned, mistress,” Cane said very calmly.
We almost burst out laughing; our hero was going to show her a full-blooded erection, our erection, our riposte. Oh, the gutsy sensation of it!
“I said get out.”
“Please, mistress, cane me, cane me, please.”
“Out, out, out!” she screamed.
“Cane me, cane me, bitch.”
We roared, striking our desks with excitement. Tears flowed from the corners of our eyes. Cane was our avenger. How we loved the humiliation of this big-breasted bully! Normally, she didn’t hesitate to use the cane and to make you fetch ten buckets of water and pour it in the grass in front of the classroom, but Cane was untouchable.
In his own good time, Cane sauntered to the front, looked the teacher over, collected his picture and left. The dramatic effect of it! However, misgiving was ticking in my breast: Was this what I was supposed to do with Padlock? Cane was swarmed at lunchtime, but he ignored his admirers. He beckoned me and my Treasure Island friend, whom everyone called Island, to follow him. As the school compound quivered with noise and color and the sun hovered above us all like a ball of fire and brimstone, we cut across the football field. Two terraces lower was “the ring,” the sand patch where long-jumpers practiced and our fighters grappled in no-holds-barred confrontations. We were swallowed by the cassava trees and elephant grass. Whipped by the dry wind, the bushes crackled and rustled, their sharp blades tickling, cutting and licking our bare limbs. In the valley, giant trees in eternal competition with school buildings shot more than twenty meters into the air, their canopies reminiscent of the papyrus reeds in the swamps of Mpande Hill.
A little distance from the trees and the overgrown path was a dead man in a black shirt and blue trousers, lying on his face, arms outstretched as if he were crawling toward the trees.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” Cane announced.
Where were the notorious flies? Why wasn’t I afraid? Island, on the other hand, wet his pants and quaked badly.
Farther on was the body of a woman on her back, her right arm across her face as if shielding her eyes from the sun. Was she sleeping? Where were the signs of death or deathly struggle?
“Who killed them?” I asked.
“Maybe our little friend here did,” Cane said, pointing to Island.
“N-no, not me.”
“Who, then?” Cane asked. “Me?”
My guess was that after the biology teacher had sent him out, he had roamed around and found the corpses and thought of shaking us up.
He glared at me and moved near the woman. He lifted her skirt with his foot. “You want to see her …?” He turned to Island and forced him to say the word. It seemed as if the effort would kill him. Cane grabbed the back of Island’s head and pushed him down. A yellow stream, like liquid gold, poured into the grass.
“Coward,” he said, releasing him. “These people are dead, yet you are afraid of them. Why, eh? If you weren’t my good friends, I would have made you undress them. It is time for class, boys,” he concluded, turning serious.
Had he answered my question? Of course he hadn’t. I always preferred people who spoke in plain language, but this was tantamount to speaking in tongues, and this time, like many times before, I was lost. I didn’t even know why he had shown us the bodies. I could only imagine that he was showing off how fearless he was. Was he expecting me to tackle my adversaries in the same way? Was that it?
Lusanani gobbled my virginity within the walls of the derelict house where we had made our bobbin transaction. We explored our eager bodies and squeezed whatever delight we could out of them. I was finally clearing the last hurdle to adulthood. In the process, I was touched by twinges of regret: I should have asked her earlier, I kept thinking. In an attempt to make up for lost time, I tried to enjoy as much of her as I could.
I was back in my favorite tree, suffused with the smell of ripe jackfruit, salivary glands oozing, a rush of impending gratification bearing down on me. She sighed like ten bushes in a storm, and I tried to discover all the moaning voices of birthing village women, and the terrible voice of the birthing woman at the taxi park, in her vociferations. My biggest success that evening was the freedom to explore and occupy her mystery swampy terrains for as long as I wanted. I smeared myself with her fluids and arrived home smelling like an overripe jackfruit. It was late. Padlock was in a state. She asked where I had been. At the well, I replied, my eyes twinkling impishly with the pride of sexual discovery. I expected her to comment on my new perfume, but she ignored it. I was proud that I had lost my virginity and made it known. Now she would cancel her seminary plans, for I was no longer fit for celibate priesthood. I almost laughed in her face.
I relished the new sense of danger, and I walked about with a swollen chest. I was no longer afraid of Hajj Gimbi, because what he could do, I could do too. Now I wanted Padlock to nab us, but would Lusanani agree? That would mean putting her marriage on the line, although I doubted whether the danger was that great. She was the youngest wife, with the power of desirability on her side. I knew she could get away with a lot.
Lusanani refused to cooperate the first time I suggested the plan. She favored the idea of writing me a love letter. Cane had warned me never to use one trick twice. Above all, I wanted an immediate reaction. We patched up our differences, though, and I returned home smelling to high heaven. Padlock ranted and raved but failed to address the issue at hand. I felt I was in control.
On the scheduled day, I bathed all the shitters except one. Night fell rapidly. I ordered the unwashed shitter to remain in the bathroom. I went to the edge of the courtyard. Lusanani took her time, but finally showed up. When most people had entered their houses, we crept to the front of the pagoda, the steps pouring in front of us, the city winking in the distance. I had my back in the direction Padlock was going to come from. We pretended to be having sex. Hajj was away for a few days. Serenity was at the gas station. Everything was on schedule. We talked about our former schools. I dreamed about the university and a law degree.