It was love at first sight between him and Marshal Amin. A month before, Dr. Ali had read omens from the livers of ten white bulls and promised the Marshal a saviour from abroad. The moment the delegation arrived, Marshal Amin knew that Dr. Ali had been right as usual. It turned out to be a meeting of kindred spirits. Marshal Amin needed support as his friends became fewer and his paranoia swelled to the size of a cathedral. Robert Ashes got the Anti-Smuggling Unit draft because of his knowledge of boats, and he advised the Marshal to build a navy. They discussed weapons, whisky, music. In due time he honed the Marshal’s paranoia and told him which general to demote, or send abroad as ambassador or place at the head of a phantom coup plot. He married a black woman and settled.
VICTORIA WAITED TWO MONTHS before breaking the news: the miracle had happened; she was pregnant. They were at the lake walking side by side on a Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining brightly, and apart from the noise of the birds in the trees the place was quiet. She held Bat’s hand, turned her head to look him in the eye and broke the news. He looked like somebody woken from a dream-laden sleep, the eyes slightly unfocused, the mouth a bit ajar, the brow creased pensively. His face wore a puzzled look, then relaxed into a neutral expression, neither happy nor sad, as if saying, What do you expect me to say?
“Pregnant.” The word seemed to stay in the air for a long time.
“Yes, I am two months pregnant,”she said cautiously, valiantly trying to dam her ecstasy.
“Why did you wait this long to tell me?”
“I wanted to make sure.”
“What do you want to do with it?”
“To keep it, of course.”
“Abort.” His voice seemed to come from afar, slightly tremulous, as if calling back his university days, when he had given such an order and it had been obeyed. His heart was pumping hard and he felt slightly out of breath.
“I want to keep the child.” Victoria’s voice was high, plaintive, her face troubled.
“The situation is too hot. People are getting killed every day. Can you guarantee the safety of the child?”
“You talk like a mathematician. There are no guarantees in life.”
“I want to limit the risks. I don’t want to be at the office and at the same time wondering if my child is safe.”
“I want to have the baby.”
“It would be best for you to return to your home. I will give you financial support.” Bat’s heart was beating even harder; not only was he facing rebellion from the person closest to him; he did not know what would come of all this.
“I want to stay with you. I have no family,” Victoria said, infusing her voice with genuine desperation.
“You have friends. You can always hire help.”
“It is not the same thing. I want to be with you, cook for you.”
“I already have a cook. All I need is space to concentrate on my work. If you insist on staying, well, it is a big house. You will get bored to death. If you decide to leave, inform me.”
It was not terribly romantic, but she wanted a foot in the door. Some dreams needed a little pushing along the way. “It is fine with me. I want to stay and share God’s blessing with you.”
A WEEK LATER Bat received news that the Professor’s brother had been found dead near his home. He drove to the Professor’s home located on one side of Makerere University Hill. The journey brought back memories, his university days, the post-independence political situation, especially the bombardment of the king’s palace in 1966 by Colonel Amin on the orders of President Obote. It was the longest and most frightful gun battle he had ever heard. At one time he thought the whole city had been bombed to the ground.
He parked outside the Professor’s house, took a long breath and got out of the car. His friend came out to meet him, his teary eyes red. As he hugged him, he felt the Professor’s arms shaking. They sat down on the veranda and looked into the distance.
“If things continue this way, I will seriously consider emigrating. What sort of country is this where people get killed for no reason? State Research Bureau boys found him walking home, accused him of supporting dissidents, took his money and watch, and when he resisted, they killed him. In broad daylight!” the Professor said, hardly able to contain his rage.
Bat found it hard to mount a response. “I am sorry about this. I wish there was something I could do. I would really not blame you if you decided to go abroad. The country has become a snakepit. It is a shame we have not yet found a way to get rid of the vipers.”
“I have lost the most precious thing: pleasure in work,” the Professor lamented, shaking his head vigorously, like a drenched zebra. “I often think that many of my students are members of the Bureau, ready to twist my words and get me killed.”
“Maybe you should leave the country,” Bat suggested again, wondering how his friend would fare abroad. Settling in, getting a job, balancing a new identity with the old one.
“I have thought about lecturing in Kenya or Zambia. I have colleagues there. If it hadn’t been for you and the Kalandas, I would have left already. But somehow I don’t want to go. I keep thinking it will get better.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t help you make up your mind,” Bat admitted, “but whatever decision you take, I will be behind you.”
“I will think about it after the funeral.”
Bat took the afternoon off to attend the funeral. He perused the day’s newspaper in the car. It read like Amin’s diary. The day before, Amin had met the new Libyan ambassador, visited a hospital, distributed sweets to limbless children and also made a speech at a graduation parade for police cadets. The rest of the paper was full of advertisements by astrologers promising miracle cures for anything from poverty to psychosis to psoriasis. The advertisements were never edited, resulting in the most deplorable spelling mistakes he had ever seen: “pavaty” for “poverty,” “cyclesis” for “psychosis,” “sorryasis” for “psoriasis” and the like. It was so bad he started chuckling. He threw the paper in the back of the car and hoped the cook would use it to light the Primus stove or to wipe his ass. He remembered the Learjet at the airport and wondered who Dr. Ali really was. He had attended many government functions, but he had never met the man. As he got onto Jinja Road, it struck him that Dr. Ali was a very clever man; he was milking the regime without showing his face, the kind of man who could walk down the street unrecognized. One thousand dollars per consultation was not bad. No wonder his followers called him God. It occurred to Bat that if there was anybody who could kill Amin and rid the country of the scourge, it was this mysterious man.
At the entrance to the Mabira Forest, chills went down Bat’s spine. The density of it, the height of the trees, the possibilities for robbery and carjacking. Rumours had it that soldiers dumped bodies somewhere in its depths. He put his foot on the gas, adrenaline pumping. Many kilometres later, the sky cleared and he gave a sigh of relief.
The deceased had been a builder, and his house was a stout red-roofed brick structure. The place was crawling with mourners dressed in every colour under the sun. Burials always put Bat on edge. Caught between the corpse and the raw grief of the bereaved, some of whom seemed out of their minds, he felt redundant, an intruder. Words of consolation felt so weightless, so hackneyed. Each time, one was confronted with the fact that people never got used to violent death: it still shocked, the lamentations pierced with genuine sorrow. His feelings were now complicated by the fact that he was expecting a child. It made the insinuation of death in his life more poignant. Before, it had been him against the world; death on the job had seemed heroic, even glorious. But now he felt responsible for the baby; he had to protect it, provide for it. It was the impossibility of protecting anybody with any degree of certainty these days that bothered him most.