At the time of Grandpa’s fall, when the spirit of the fifties was surging to its climax, the place was no better than a temple inhabited by thieves, each trading, each competing, each scheming for this or that gain. At the time of his fall, the place had gone mad, careening out of control and disorienting everyone in it, despite the fact that some people believed they were in charge. At the time of his fall, Grandpa was just like any other lodger, fighting for his sleeping place, antagonizing as few fellow lodgers as possible, working out shaky alliances in the hope that things would improve in the end.
At the time of the fall, Serenity had stopped eating meals there, and by so doing avoided the intrigue, the jealousies, the diaphanous festivity and the brittle joy that hung in the air like the smell of cow dung. All he was searching for at the Fiddler’s house, with its chipped plates, its mutilated mugs, its naked children, was freedom of spirit. At the Fiddler’s, surrounded by runny-nosed and runny-assed children, he felt at ease, accepted, not looked at as if he had stolen or was about to steal something.
In the beginning, Serenity had missed his mother terribly, believing that she was about to return. After the blessing from that mysterious woman, after that push into serene hemispheres, he stopped thinking about her, and filled the gap with indifference and dreams of education and music. At the onset of adolescence, he had waited for somebody to say something about his mother, or things a mother said to a son at that juncture. When no one said a thing, not even his aunts, who were the traditional sex educators, he put the ghost to rest. He luxuriated in detachment. His parents became mere shadows, ghosts, and he felt them floating away to the dark confines of a sealed abyss. At that time a close friend lost both parents in a spectacular bus accident which left all on board dead or injured, except for the driver, who escaped without a scratch. At that time he felt that his parents had done him a favor by saving him such pain. He was like that driver, surrounded by wreckage and carnage, but unscathed; surrounded by screams and lamentation, yet unaffected.
He stood looking at the orange tree, lean, gray-green, its thin branches loaded with blighted leaves, short thorns and small green balls. It was said to be his late mother’s favorite tree. How little it evoked in him! It left him emotionally untouched, like a desecrated temple or a looted grotto. He had swept its leaves, together with the leaves of the acacia, the jackfruit and the mango trees, thousands of times without feeling anything special.
A storm was blowing in the thick forest of coffee trees around the house. He saw them being uprooted, overturned, broken like straw, swept over the village and ultimately dumped in the papyrus swamp at the foot of Mpande Hill. How many sacks of coffee had he picked in his life? How many wasps had bitten him in the process? How many liters of tears and sweat had seeped into the soil of this coffee shamba? Uncountable. Money from coffee sales had seen him through school up to Teacher Training College, but it had also seen useless people, like his father’s women, through many superfluous storms. Many had come, many had gorged and all had moved on to worship at trees sturdier than his father’s. Many had come under the clan’s umbrella to partake of the proceeds from clan land, and had stayed till his father lost power. Serenity now wanted the storm to rake up all clan land, grind it up and sweep the dust in one mighty, furious river of erosion into the swamps. He wanted the storm to leave behind mean, uninhabitable craters and hostile, snarling gorges into which men would fall and break their necks. He wanted the remains to be so barren that no one would have anything to do with the place. He wanted another family to take over all clan land and all clan land troubles.
Religion? It seemed like poetic justice that his father had lost his power because of a religion he never practiced. At the same time he would not mind if the storm stretched its cadaverous hand to Ndere Hill and flattened the mighty church of his youth, sprinkling the bits in the surrounding forest. The aluminum church tower reminded him of all the fruitless Sunday masses, all the squandered prayers for the return of his mother and all the energy expended on church affairs. It also brought to mind the Virgin Mary: he had begged her to visit him, to turn into his mother. She refused. She would not wipe his tears, the few bitter ones he had ever shed. Now he wanted the tower and the church razed.
In the new life he dreamed of, there was no place for the county chief’s daughter flaunting her laudable background, her looks or her suitabilities. This person, whom he had never met and would not care to meet, however qualified she might be, did not figure in his dream. There was already somebody waiting. She was the new star, the new wine, the new Virgin, his ticket to freedom, success and happiness. With her at his side, he would be free of obligation to his father and to his other relatives. She would be the buffer against all the things he hated on his side of the family.
“Sir,” he stammered, “I already have somebody.”
“Do I know this person?” Grandpa, staggered, hoped it was not a village wench, the type he had spent his life dreading as a potential daughter-in-law. Had Serenity failed to get his priorities right? He closed his eyes for a moment.
“No, sir. She is new. She lives in another county.”
“Have you already proposed to her?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“I don’t like the sound of this, son. How can you build a house on sand? Do you know this person well? Her family background? Her education? Her temperament? How do you know if she is not epileptic or possessed by evil spirits?”
In Serenity’s ideal world people never promised things; they just did them. He could not bear to be promised anything. He distrusted all promises and the people who made them. The hunch on his Virgin was good. He was confident that there was nothing to worry about. If she had promised to marry him, he would not have trusted her.
“Do not worry about that, sir.”
Grandpa gave vent to his anger. “What sort of seed are you bringing into the family, son?”
Serenity knew what Grandpa meant. He wanted his women tall and elegant, wasp-waisted but firm-butted, and without the kind of boobs “which fell in the food while it was being served.” Without buckteeth, too. All Grandpa’s women looked alike. He admired consistency of choice — it demonstrated character. He believed that a man fell in love with one woman who appeared in different guises.
Serenity felt uneasy. His Virgin, his new star, was built differently: she was petite, the kind of woman who dried up with age instead of bulging all over and widening like a door. In a way she looked like Grandma, his aunt, though a touch more intense, more ambitious, more hard-willed, more self-contained.
“Some things one leaves to chance or to God,” Serenity said, instead of simply asking his father to trust him.
“I am trying to be understanding, son, but all these gray areas and don’t-knows do not sound convincing to my experienced ears. I would strongly urge you to consider my proposal. I will arrange for you to meet the girl; maybe that will help to make you realize what I am talking about.”
“That won’t be necessary, sir.”