The seminary stood on top of a hill, arranged around the chapel, accessible from all sides. It was easy to move from Sing-Sing, at the extreme end of the compound, to the chapel because of the protection accorded by the trees and a pine-tree fence for most of the way. I found Dorobo behind the chapel, crammed into a nook, roaring in his illegal sleep. My destination was to the left of the chapel, ten meters away. It was a long, slant-roofed building used partly to store tools and partly as a garage for the fathers’ cars.
I crossed the gravel-strewn stretch to the tool area and opened the side door with a key used by the student in charge. I found myself inside the long, cold building with heaps of scythes, hoes, pangas, rakes, defunct lawnmowers and chain saws reeking of dust, oil and neglect. I picked up a blunt panga and weighed it in my hand, remembering the maniac who had threatened to decapitate Grandma. I set it down again, careful not to let other implements slide and make noise. I proceeded to the connecting door.
The hinges squeaked, making me afraid that Dorobo might hear me. I got inside the garage, and was confronted with the smell of cars: a tangy combination of oil, steel and rubber trapped in a confined space. There was Mindi’s blue Peugeot, Kaanders’ white Volkswagen, the rector’s beige Renault and an old grayish car left behind by a priest friend of the rector’s. In the far corner was a huge, full-bellied motorcycle on its flipper-like kickstand, seemingly leaning against the wall, a pool of oil under it.
It took me a few minutes of sweaty-palmed poking and fumbling to get into Fr. Mindi’s car. I imagined Aunt Tiida, dressed to kill, watching Dr. Ssali trying to get into their Peugeot and fussing with camouflaged pleasure as their neighbors looked on from behind parted curtains.
The stench of tobacco, however, brought me back to my senses. I was inside the car of a chain-smoker. I thought of pouring salt in Fr. Mindi’s engine and wrecking it for good, but that seemed uncalled for. I was not here on a rampage, but a courtesy call. I was principally here to send a modest message to the big man, something a touch above the average seminarian’s idle fantasy revenge. I had eaten a few pawpaws, bought from a truant, and combined with our weevilled beans, the stench they gave my excrement was overpowering. I held my nose as I opened the plastic bag. I had delved into Uncle Kawayida’s archives and pulled out a football hooligan’s weapon: shit. I used a trowel to smear the seats, the roof, the floor, the steering wheel, the gear shift, the dashboard and all the carpets. I locked the stench inside the car and worked on the door handles. I left the offensive plastic bag on the bonnet.
By now the whole garage was alive with stink-hammers. I hurried out of the contaminated air, closed the connecting door as carefully as possible and tiptoed around the heaps of scythes, pangas, hoes.… I was aware of the precariousness of my position: somebody could smell me from a mile off. I made my way to the bathrooms, cleaning myself along the way with odoriferous pine needles plucked from the fence.
I had visualized a more sophisticated aftermath to my painting job. The staff members were typically very equivocal about the attack. “Somebody vandalized Fr. Mindi’s car.” “Somebody did terrible damage to a certain staff member’s property.” “Somebody acted very disrespectfully and uncharitably toward our bursar,” they said. The details finally leaked out via the boys who were made to clean up the mess. Fr. Mindi had found them talking during silence time and had charged them with the horrible task of scrubbing, washing, wiping and drying his desecrated status symbol.
Finally, Fr. Mindi told us officially. He dressed his anger in curse-laden threats, ultimately announcing that if the culprit did not give himself up within three days, something was going to happen to him. I was in familiar territory, hardly able to believe how similar dictatorial thought patterns were. This man with an ego as large as a cirrhotic liver expected the culprit to crumble under its holy smells. If this was what that Urban University conservatism had come to, then I didn’t envy him all the lasagna he had eaten in Italy. His experience with truants should have warned him that not all miscreants were in awe of his university curses covered in Bolognese sauce.
Fr. Mindi paid us a second visit, this time at the refectory. “What sort of a seminarian can do such a thing? What did he come here for? Does he want to become a priest? How did he enter the system? It is in your interests to denounce this character. I am sure he said something to somebody, criminals often do. Please, let me know. If this sort of behavior is left unpunished, we are all in big danger. This is the kind of person to set the whole place on fire.” I wasn’t turned on; neither were the majority of the boys, who felt that Mindi deserved every dose of pain he got.
The rector, as somber as a judge with piles, asked us after a day to surrender the culprit. Like Mindi, he believed that somebody had heard something or seen something or smelled something. He hinted that somebody might have a grudge against the bursar, but that the manner in which he had expressed himself was beastly and unworthy of somebody destined for the altar. He laid on the syrup: “Come and talk to us if you have a problem. We are here for you. Without you we would not be here. This is a family, and if one family member hurts, the whole family suffers. Remember, one rotten orange can corrupt the whole basket. If you know anything, tell your spiritual director, or slip a piece of paper under my door. Don’t let anyone see you. I assure you: nobody will be penalized for giving us the necessary information. And if anyone threatens you, trying to keep your mouth shut, come directly to me and he will be dealt with.” I had heard all this in my former life. It left me cold.
Four days after the attack, amidst a cloud of speculation, Fr. Mindi announced, rather triumphantly, that he had caught the culprits. The staff was divided. Mindi wanted three bully boys expelled with immediate effect. Others wanted the boys punished but given a chance to continue with their education. The skeptics questioned the manner of the discovery, because they found it too plausible: somebody commits a crime, names are anonymously given on a piece of paper and heads roll.
Lwendo and his classmates were in an uproar. They went around saying that a Bushman was responsible for betraying the trio to the staff. There were threats against the Bushman and vows to squeeze them till they squealed, but when one of the trio was expelled and the other two were suspended for a fortnight, the furor died down.
So much for justice. I never succeeded in finding out who the smart Bushman was who had punished the bullies by saddling them with responsibility for the crime. I didn’t mind either. My neighbor in the dorm said that I often laughed in my sleep.
Books took over. It was bound to happen anyway. Life was too regimented and too boring. Sports were dull, picking up their only blast of annual excitement during inter-house competitions. The dominance of church activities and liturgy was generally asphyxiating. As others caved in to total submission or to sporadic fits of bravado, I turned to books. I was intrigued by the secret universe under the dust-laden covers and thrilled by the endless morsels one could extract from the most unlikely volumes. Between some very dull covers were the most spectacular wars, adventures, murders, love affairs and characters, whole terrae incognitae to explore.