“I have done my best,” Victoria reported, wiping tears from her eyes. “Friends in high places refused to talk.”
“What friends?” Sister asked eagerly.
“I know some people in high office, you know,” she said almost casually.
“Ministers?” Mafuta said suddenly, attempting to escape neglect.
“A minister, yes. And people who know people. They all don’t know where he is.” Wiping tears clumsily, she cut a scatter-brained figure, quite different from her usual collected self.
“I have been to three different astrologers. They all say different things. I don’t know what to think and what to believe.”
“Do you have enough money to live on?” Sister asked with concern.
“I have a job. I can look after myself. It is love I am without. I love him so much. I miss him,” she said tearfully.
Mafuta was not impressed. A swinger like her had to know better than to get trapped in love. He had seen many of her kind, hard-drinking, night-clubbing types Amin had put out of miniskirts and business. They were good for a night, but a nightmare to live with. Victoria’s house could do with more cleaning. A peek in her inner rooms had revealed chaos: clothes all over the bed, the child’s playthings all over the floor. Could the bastard have let her go because of her carelessness? Or did she make too many sexual demands? Mafuta remembered his princess, how she used to ride him, and how he had felt good about it in the beginning. Wouldn’t be a bad idea if this woman had ridden the bastard like a donkey, he thought, and almost broke out laughing.
“I don’t know much about this woman, but I believe she was a mistake in my brother’s life,” Sister said as they drove away, Victoria waving from the courtyard.
“Why do you say that?” Mafuta said in an almost playful voice, again enjoying being in opposition.
“She calls Babit and threatens her. She openly confesses to seeing astrologers. She claims to be still deeply in love with a man who threw her out long ago.”
“Everybody is using the good offices of astrologers, but because of hypocrisy nobody owns up to it. Your family slaughtered a bull for omens to be read, didn’t they? Such a beautiful woman would hate being replaced. Maybe it made her go over.”
“Somebody has to investigate her.”
“Your brother should have done that before investigating her nakedness,” Mafuta observed, hardly able to hide his glee.
“I am serious.”
“She didn’t make him disappear, did she? Surely not even she could do that.”
“I am not saying that. I used to like her. But women who threaten other women are dangerous. They either believe in evil magic, or physical violence. And those tears. .”
“Rarely do women admit defeat at the hands of rivals, except for my princess, who cleaned out my house in retaliation before going off and allowing you in. Most women would rather destroy their rivals. Gone are the days when polygamy was a respected institution and rivals had to be tolerated. Nowadays, it is every woman for herself and the Devil for them all.”
“Don’t remind me of your princess.”
“Don’t worry. Let us concentrate on finding your brother. He will sort out his mess afterwards.”
“Yes, you are talking sense.”
VICTORIA HAD BEEN on the trail sounding out people on Bat’s disappearance, but to no avail. General Bazooka had warned everybody not to talk to the “widow,” as he called her, and at best to stop her at the gate. Thus doors kept getting slammed in her face. Former colleagues looked the other way when they saw her. She had been to the headquarters of different security agencies and received the same disheartening treatment. In her desperation she had tried the astrologers. Two omens had been bad, one good. They had robbed her of much of her hope. Her life had started to look futile. If it hadn’t been for her daughter, she would have gone out of her mind.
She woke in the morning with fear in the pit of her stomach, and dressed to go to work with doubt plaguing her mind. She arrived at her office feeling nervous, as if she expected a bullet in the back, and she started sorting papers, useless files. Hers was a dead department, hollowed by the fact that rural roads had not been repaired in ages. She sat in her office waiting, she did not know for what, drinking tea, staring out the window at passersby, the trees, at nothing. Her hopes seemed to grow dimmer by the day. She was now afraid that the General would take his revenge and strike back at her. In what way? She didn’t know. She kept thinking about her disappeared father and her failure to find him. She thought about her family and the fact that the General had run them off. She saw him cocking guns, asking her to shoot him. She would gladly shoot him now, for she believed that he had made Bat disappear. And robbed her of her hope. Her escape route. I have to get Bat back, she said out aloud. I have to get Bat back, I have to get Bat back, I have to. .
Things had changed at the Bureau. It had fallen into the hands of Amin’s tribesmen. She felt that if it hadn’t been for General Bazooka they would have killed her. She wanted to get out. She prayed for a miracle to find Bat and take him away from that other woman. Then I will walk safely into a secure future, she thought. It was still a dream. When frustration got the better of her, she picked up the phone and called Babit. Hearing her hold her breath or begging to be left alone empowered her, made her want to smash the receiver in her face, and erase her from Bat’s life. Calling her barren had at first been a slip of the tongue, but it was now a major weapon. A bazooka. She loved its soul-crushing potency. But why didn’t it drive her out of the house? When she got tired of harassing her, she would leave the dead office and roam the city looking for clues, flimsy leads to turn her into Bat’s saviour. A whore had been the first person to witness Jesus’ resurrection. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if I resurrected Bat out of the morgue?
THE SEARCH for Bat’s body began at midday on a rainy day with Sister, Babit, Tayari, Mafuta, the Professor, and Mr. and Mrs. Kalanda dressed in gumboots and raincoats and looking sombre as stormy weather. Afternoons were most convenient because one was sure that all dumpers had retired for their siesta. Now and then, bodies were dumped during the day, but then by the roadside, not deep in the forest where the group was headed. The “surgeon” the group had hired lived on the blind side of Mabira Forest, where most settlements were. The taxi van which brought the group stopped three kilometres from their final destination. They walked the muddy paths deeper into the forest, the trees above wetting their heads at a monotonous tempo.
The man lived in a small settlement of iron-roofed mud houses where children were playing inside, now and then one or two of them venturing into the rain and the red mud before dashing back indoors. The women were busy making the best of the soggy, muddy situation: cooking, cleaning, making sure their children did not stay out in the rain and catch fever. The man had been doing the job for a number of years and oozed with the confidence of an expert. These were in fact the boom years. He had begun by going to strip corpses of watches, rings, necklaces, clothes, any valuables the soldiers overlooked in their haste. Business had been good then because the victims of purges were mostly well-to-do people. Nowadays the soldiers had become wiser, hungrier. There were no more pickings, but the “surgeoning” was booming because of the dramatic rise in disappearances.
He was in his thirties, in the prime of his life, dressed in gumboots, jeans and a khaki shirt. He was a very average-looking fellow who could have passed for a teacher, a carpenter, or a driver if you found him walking on the street in his Sunday best, because of the air of calm and control he had about him. He had worked in a hospital morgue but had resigned over bad pay and decided to become self-employed. Hands sheathed in surgical gloves, a cigarette smouldering in his mouth, a flashlight dangling at his hip, he led the group into the forest.