“Are you thanking me?” I said, waiting for the bombshell.
“Ya, ya, tough, eh? Faza Mindi no gud. Faza Lago no gud. You? Ha ha haaaa, tough. Otha boyz coward, but you?” He roared again and made me uncomfortable. “Faza Lago ask about boat and I say I watch fa thief not fa writer, ha haa …” The giant doubled up, clutched his thighs and roared away.
My fear now was that some troubled priest who might have heard us was about to catch me.
“Very clever of you to look out for thieves and not for writers!” I unsuccessfully tried to laugh.
“Me writer too,” he said, pointing to his huge chest with the quiver full of his odious arrows. “Me put dem pepaz wid name in Mindi and Lago orfice, he he heeeee.” He went off into one of his huge laughs. This time I joined in.
“You?”
“Ya, fa Dorobo game.”
I laughed hard this time, for now I understood. A group of boys used to tease this man by pretending that they were involved in a sentence-making game.
“I met a Dorobo warrior yesterday,” one would say.
“Did you know that Father Mindi’s mother was a Dorobo woman?” the second would ask.
“What a coincidence! The bishop’s uncle was a Dorobo warrior too!”
Those boys were the ones who took the blame for the damage done to Fr. Mindi’s car. None of them knew who had done them in. The watchman had fooled us all!! It all made sense, because both Fr. Mindi and Fr. Lageau had talked about firing him, but the rector had vetoed the decision on all occasions.
“It late now, Faza. Sleep, sleep.” He made a snoring sound and melted into the shadows. I kept thinking that he was Fisherman, the power saboteur. A real fisher of men. I hurried to the bathrooms. My teeth still clattered as I lay down in my bed.
There was confusion and incredulity when morning uncovered yet another assault on Agatha. While he condemned the action, the rector showed us the nail the attacker had left behind. Fr. Lageau had another migraine attack and ate pills and stayed in bed the whole day. There were threats from staff members loyal to him, for they were afraid that their cars and other properties might be attacked too.
Agatha was repainted, and a German-made monster of an alarm was installed on her. There were rumors that Lageau had put in an order for a ferocious police dog. As if I planned to attack Agatha again! The dog came after I had left the seminary. Years later, government soldiers sent to hound guerrillas from the forest cut its throat and barbecued it.
“Agatha’s alarm could feed you for a whole year,” Fr. Lageau was quoted as saying by his volleyball playmates. We could live with that, because there were no more expectations from him, and the hope that he might improve things had died. Boys now made jokes about Agatha and the dog.
“How is Agatha?”
“Oh, she is fine.”
“Who is Agatha?”
“A little yellow-haired Canadian whore.”
“Where did she spend the night?”
“Whoring and cheating. Her pimp cut her up in retaliation.”
“What did her boyfriend do about it?”
“He bought her a police dog.”
Almost at the same time as the events at the seminary, Padlock lost her parents to natural causes. At the moment I was facing the night watchman, a large, flamboyantly patterned puff adder was being attacked and displaced by safari ants. He moved his headquarters to a sweet potato garden and buried himself under the soil and the sparse leaves left by the hot season and the first harvests. A few hours later, the old woman woke her husband for morning prayers, the rosary and a hymn to welcome God’s new day. This was like second nature: they had been doing it for the last forty years. They loved praying to the God who had sent both their children to Rome and the Holy Land and brought them safely home. The old woman prepared tea on an open fire in the kitchen and served it quickly. She left her husband in the sitting room under the supervision of the crucified Jesus and the Holy Family, and went to the garden. It promised to be a hot day. The sky was clear, and she could see all the way to the forest. One part of the forest still bore the ravages of the recent storm. Godless people blamed Mbale for causing the storm. She found this ludicrous, pitiable too. Those people needed a foundation — God. The storm had come but had not done much damage to her house and gardens. She believed that it was not the hill that had protected them, but God. Mbale had got off badly and now had debts to pay, but it was all for the better: he would work harder and pray harder. There was nothing God could not do if asked with a sincere heart.
The old woman bent down to rake up the sparse potato leaves clinging to the thin, snaky stalks. She became aware of the sharp pain in her lower back. It had been there for years. She had dedicated it to the Virgin Mary. She stepped over potato mounds, gathered the leaves and heaped them at one end of the garden. She surveyed the naked mounds, survivors of wind, rain and the first harvests, which had been done with digging sticks. She grabbed her hoe, ready to dig up the mounds, collect the last potatoes and prepare the area for another crop. The pain shot up again. She thought about asking one of her grandchildren, probably Mbale’s, to come and live here and help her with some chores. She raised her hoe and cut deep into the mounds, spreading the soil over her feet and collecting the potatoes one by one with her fingers. Last harvests were usually mediocre, and this was no exception: the potatoes were small and stringy.
She felt a scratch on her right foot. She ignored it. It had to be one of those red safari ants she had seen near the latrine. As she dug up the mounds, she thanked God for the blessings He had poured on her family: her children bringing home the pope’s blessings and pictures in which they stood near the Holy Father was more than she could ask for. It made all the hard work of raising them rise like a cloud of incense to the portals of heaven. Her own children! Children who used to go barefoot to school, who were teased for being poor, who were taught the hard way. Her children had flown to the Holy Land! The blessings Nakkazi had brought back were a sign that God had forgiven her sisters for living in sin, for rebelling against His will, for shaming everyone by begetting children of sin and for spurning holy matrimony.
The second scratch was almost imperceptible: the pain was swamped by the thoughts swirling in her head. She was remembering Nakkazi’s wedding. She could see the whole place crawling with people: relatives, friends, strangers. She could still hear the builders hammering, taking down the old roof and putting up the new one. She could see the bride glistening in the sun, butter oil sinking deeper and deeper into her skin. She remembered feeling a bit pressured by the in-laws, and had been instrumental in turning down the transport they had offered. Then their vehicles broke down on the wedding day, and most people remained behind! She remembered feeling worried that Nakibuka would create a rift in her daughter’s marriage: the way she eyed the groom had been unhealthy. Thank God nothing had happened, and Nakkazi had been happily married for years and had never said a word against her aunt. Now one of Nakkazi’s boys was going to become a priest: what an honor! The old woman felt she had fulfilled her mission on earth.
The third scratch jolted her: it was very sharp, as if it had been made with a long thorn or a large needle. In a bid not to interrupt her thoughts, she did the natural thing; she lifted her left foot and used the heel to rub hard and kill the red ant without having to look at it. Her heel, however, landed on a thick, soft, rotten-potato-like thing. She jumped in the air and saw the viper’s tail swing like a thick, dirty rope. The arrowhead attached to her foot was magnified by fear to the size of a pumpkin. Jesus, Joseph and Mary: What was happening? She screamed and fled the garden. The snake still clung to her foot. She could feel the poison entering her bloodstream. The whole leg already felt heavy. Regaining her wits, she stopped, retraced her steps and reached for the hoe. She battered the viper and in the process almost chopped off her big toe. She could see her husband trudging toward her and the neighbors approaching. Who would look after her husband when she was gone? She had to live. The energetic neighbors got to her first. They pulled the viper off her leg, calmed her down and helped her as best they could.