Lageau was down but not out. A few days later, he took a bale of secondhand clothes he had received on behalf of poor seminarians to Lwendo’s barn, doused it in paraffin and set it on fire. The flames and the thick smoke drew a crowd of boys and a few nuns who came to see what had happened. Lageau stood in front of the barn, at the spot where Lwendo stood to watch Bushmen fighting for charcoal, and watched without blinking, without saying a word. The nuns put their hands on their mouths when they saw what was burning, but said nothing. The boys stood a respectful distance away from Lageau and whispered among themselves.
That same evening he came to our refectory, and in a calm, toneless voice announced that he was going to catch the culprit even if it meant going to Mars. He said this standing two meters away from my table. Everyone knew that he had burned the clothes in revenge, and many wondered why he was still pursuing the case after releasing his anger in the bonfire. I was not the only one who had fantasies of stoning him with chunks of the loathsome posho we were about to eat.
The literature teacher, who had not attended the fateful Monkey Mass, as we called it, referred to the incident obliquely, by exclaiming “God!” at unexpected intervals in the lesson. We prodded him for comment, but he kept on saying, rather ironically, “I reserve my comments. Silence is golden, speech is silver. I would rather keep the gold.”
The seminary was awash with speculation as to who had shamed Lageau. I kept out of it. Lwendo tried to talk about it, but I showed no interest at all.
The line of investigation Lageau took scared me. He collected specimens of our handwriting and promised to feed them into a computer. I hurried to the library to find out what a computer looked like. I tried to find out how different computers worked, but I got no wiser in real terms. Kaanders noticed my sudden interest in computers and said, “Oh boy, boy, Father Lageau is going to catch that bad boy, boy.”
“It was a shame what they did to Agatha, Father.”
“Oh boy, boy.”
“I hope the culprit gets caught,” I said to test him. “It is probably the same person who steals library books.”
“Yes, yes, boy.”
I asked Kaanders how a computer could be used to catch the culprit, and he said that it would look for similarities in letter patterns. I now had to cover my tracks by sabotaging Lageau’s efforts.
Like most dictatorships, the seminary was locked in a web of rumors and mystery. Days later, Lwendo came and said that Lageau had already caught his man.
“A staff meeting took place last night. But the staff is divided about what to do with the culprit.”
“How was he found out?”
“Somebody slipped a piece of paper under Father Lageau’s door, and it might have helped the computer. The same fellow is said to have been seen entering the dormitory in a cassock some nights ago.”
I was now sure that I was not alone in my hatred for Lageau. This sounded very much like “Fisherman,” as we called the secret power saboteur. I became more and intrigued by this fellow. I suspected that he was a bit like Cane, always out to challenge authority. Had Fisherman really seen me, and was he now just enjoying the game of fooling Lageau? And if so, why was he fingering certain individuals?
“To me, it looks like only bullies get fingered,” I said, feigning indifference.
“Lageau is different from Mindi. Bullies, well, they are the ones who commit crimes, aren’t they?”
I felt I had to do something quickly. There was a chance that the boy would not be expelled. For the moment, though, I was banking on the possibility that Lageau was concentrating on a number of things and would not keep too keen an eye on Agatha.
In the morning, the boy was dismissed. He told his friends that he would be called back because he was innocent. This was unlikely; hardly any dismissals were reversed, except if one came from a very powerful family with diocesan connections, which the boy’s parents lacked. I became more determined to throw a spanner into the works.
This time I first checked on the watchman. He was asleep. I approached the hallway from the refectory side. The smell of Agatha excited me. Agatha, like a sorceress casting her stones for divination, kicked up images in my head. I could see her on the lake and hear winds moaning all around her, above the monotonous purring of her engine. The noise seemed to rise to a crescendo, fill the whole hallway and make the floor vibrate.
I sank onto one knee, ready to gore anybody sneaking up on me in the gut. I etched the words RED INDIAN under OH GOD! which was still there. Cold sweat trickled down my back and armpits. I rose suddenly, thinking that somebody had tapped me on the shoulder. False alarm.
Relieved, I walked out of the hallway, leaving the rusty nail behind. I had played the same trick twice and got away with it! This time I went via the refectory to the back of the classrooms. The neat rows of desks had something almost divine about them. They represented a little world, complete in itself, with its own rules, rewards and punishments. I could see the acacia trees in the distance. Home, I was almost home. The trees, the squeaky insect sounds, the forest in the distance, all reminded me of the village, the swamps, the hills, Ndere Primary School, the church tower, the nuns and Santo the madman.
The bathrooms were nearer now; I could see them looming like decapitated statues. They suddenly reminded me of the three gas pumps at the service station where Serenity and his cronies congregated. I negotiated the corner of the last building and almost collided with Dorobo. I thought he was smiling, because I could see a white burst in the pitch-black ball of his face. I froze.
“Gud morning, Faza,” he boomed.
“Good m-morning.” I could not remember his name. I wanted to bait him with the sound of his name and acknowledge him with the most unique feature about him, but I could remember only “Dorobo,” the name of a Kenyan tribe given to him by the boys because he was so black. How tall he looked now! He reminded me of awesome American wrestlers in cage matches. I might have been inside a steel cage, slipping and sliding on the sweat- and blood-stained canvas, trying to figure out how to escape this monster. There was not much I could do except to wait for what he had to say, and maybe beg for mercy. What would I trade in return for clemency? Dorobo then surprised me with a touch of humor: “You no sleep, Faza?”
“Ah, I–I sleep …” I was tempted to add the highly patronizing “my son” to my answer, but how dare I? He could book me for truancy, cassock-stealing, raping Agatha …
I suddenly thought of Cane and the corpses: how big Cane must have felt, standing there and showing us the corpses as though they were dolls! How powerful he must have felt while pushing Island’s head down toward the dead woman’s stomach! It occurred to me that there might have been something sexual in it for Cane. Wasn’t that why he lifted the dead woman’s skirt with his foot? I was glad I hadn’t looked. I was glad I had not seen what was underneath.
“You no sleep, Faza, eh!” the giant said and laughed.
I wanted to join in the laughter, but I did not know what exactly he had up his sleeve. “Yes, too much worry about exams.”
I was in for a bigger shock. He said, “Sank you fa Agasa job, he-he-heeee.”
“Ah …”
“Sank you fa Mindi job too, he-he-heeeee.” And he rocked with more laughter.
I was now sure that he was beating me with my old stick: blackmail. But why, if he knew all along, had he waited this long? To gather sufficient evidence and leverage? I knew it. He wanted me to forge and stamp documents for him. He probably wanted a recommendation written out on seminary stationery, stamped and signed in the rector’s name. I could do that, with some degree of difficulty, of course. My guess was that he had found a better job but did not want to alert the staff about it.