“Oh, my God!” he said as the two-day-old parcel burst open in his face. A wet slapping sound suffocated the second and longer exclamation. A soggy mass covered his face, then dripped down his throat, the front of his shirt and on to his trousers. Instinctively, his hand went to his face and got messed up. He plucked pine needles and frantically rubbed his face and clothes. He ran wildly to the back of the chapel and all the way to the refectory, but the aluminum water tanks were empty. He careered downhill to the piggery and used the drinking water in the pig troughs to wash. The stench would not go away. He tried to vomit, but only strings of bile dropped from his mouth. He went up the hill again and finally sneaked into his bedroom via the back door. The stench filled the room. He sprayed himself and the room with deodorant and went about cleaning the mess properly.
Fr. Mindi wasn’t the first dictator to be blinded by his own sense of unquestionable power into making the wrong diagnosis of a critical situation. He could not break through the membrane of despotic outrage to come to the root of the problem. He believed that the attack was an act of hate, which was wrong. It was a lesson in not striking out in anger. The attack had been coldly calculated and executed, the way proper punishment should be, but swollen with his sense of power and self-righteousness, Mindi could not see that. His priestly oils kept his vision glazed and served to infuse him with paranoia. He firmly believed that a mad seminarian was out to kill him. He remembered the shock of his father’s poisoning. His body had turned soot-black in death. Fr. Mindi could now see it floating in front of his eyes, black shit oozing out of its rear. The idea came to him that death by poisoning might be a hereditary curse cast onto his family by some unknown individual. If so, he was next in line. This really shook him up. He was not ready to die so miserably. He suddenly felt very exposed, very unsafe. For the first time since his return from Rome and his ordination, he felt that he could not win. How was he supposed to fight this faceless enemy? How was he supposed to tell his fellow brothers in the priesthood what had happened to him? And what would they make of it? Were they training psychos or diocesan priests?
Fr. Mindi reported in sick for a few days, and ultimately left the campus for a week. There were rumors that he had an ulcer; later ones claimed that he had asked for a transfer. He returned to the seminary looking sick, hardly able to drum up even a brittle arrogance. He hated the boys. He hated the seminary. He hated his secret tormentor. Boys remarked that he had stopped spying and prowling. Another rumor circulated that he had purchased three huge dogs to bolster the security of the seminary. The most interesting part of all this was that nobody knew why the bursar-cum-discipline master had decided to neglect his responsibilities. The whole turnaround was so unexpected that nobody dared celebrate openly. There was a feeling that his withdrawal was a trick, a ruse to draw rule-breakers out, but why had the bursar taken to travelling so much? Why was he staying in his office most of the time when he was around? Why was he no longer attending communal mass? The boys smelled a rat.
Censorship was firmly in place. Our letters were opened and read before we received them. When we wrote letters, we put them in unsealed envelopes for the rector to read before he sealed and posted them. We were allowed to write letters only on the weekend, and it was against the rules to post them ourselves.
One evening, I got a message that the rector wanted to see me. My heart palpitated. Was the game up? Had somebody really seen me executing the second attack? For sure I did not care about the seminary, but I did not want to be dismissed mid-term. I wanted to go at the end of the year after taking the national certificate examinations. Ah, Lusanani might have written. If so, what was I going to tell the rector? What clever lie was going to save me? Trepidation took over.
“You look scared,” the rector said before I could even open my mouth. “Did you do something wrong?”
“No, Father, but …”
“But what?” He was in a talkative mood tonight despite all the paperwork strewn on his desk. There was a pile of open letters, and I wondered why this man was going through our mail. Did he really believe that it was wrong for boys of our age to communicate with girls? Did he really believe that ordained virgins made the best priests? What did those people in Rome think they were doing, giving such directives? Here was a man approaching middle age, quite a likeable fellow with a good sense of humor, reading our mail like a dirty old man in search of cheap titillation. He always told us funny little stories, and we liked him for that. Now I wondered whether he did not garner some ideas from our letters. “Have you got something on your conscience?” he asked, dramatically raising his brows.
“Don’t we all?” I bravely said. “I lied to somebody yesterday. I took a new exercise book from his desk and used it without telling him. He asked who had taken his book, and I said I did not know. I replaced the book in the evening, but I could not confess to him what I had done because of his temper.” This was pure bullshit, but plausible bullshit in our situation. This was the kind of calculated lie we told in the confessional. We usually first discussed among ourselves the kinds of sins to confess: lying, calling others names, using other people’s things without permission … Now I was looking for an opening, baiting him with my putative frankness.
“How do you like your job in the library?”
Relieved, but also aware that he was looking for an opening, I said, “I like it very much. My grades have improved greatly since taking the job.”
“Any problems?”
“Sometimes we cannot trace who steals our books.”
“Have you done your best to plug all the holes?”
“The most annoying thing is when some boys steal books borrowed by others.”
“I guess you hear a lot of things in the library.”
“Sometimes.”
“Did you hear about the terrible thing that happened to Fr. Mindi?”
“Yes, the vandalization of his car was a shame to all of us aspiring to become priests.”
“I did not mean that. I meant what happened to him recently.”
“No. Yes. I heard he has got an ulcer.”
“Didn’t you hear about the attack?”
“No, Father. What attack?”
“Haven’t you heard anybody talking about it?”
“No, everyone is talking about the ulcer and how the bursar must be working too hard.”
“I am not talking about ulcers. I am talking about a physical attack.”
“No, Father, I haven’t heard anything to that effect. Fathers are above such things.”
“In our day, lawbreakers used to brag about their exploits. That was how they got caught. Are you sure that you have heard nobody bragging about teaching Fr. Mindi a lesson? Don’t think I am not aware that some boys don’t like the bursar.”
“I have not heard anything, Father. But I am sure the culprits will get caught. Last time the net got them. This time too they will not escape.”