“We have missed you, you bastard. Let us go home. People are waiting for you.”
THE SEARCH FOR VICTORIA was short but very dangerous. Tayari and his friends had to be very careful not to land in the hands of their enemies. Having committed the crime, Victoria had curtailed her movements. Reality had kicked in, destroying the euphoric inebriation of the deed. She had already paid the killers, butchers from a nearby town. She had got in contact with them through a friend at the Ministry of Works, for, having lost favour with the Bureau, she could not get anybody from there to do the job. The men had named their price and had promised to deliver. In style. On two separate occasions they had joked that people were animals, that when you got used to slitting the throats of cows, like they did daily, you could easily do a person. They had even asked if she wanted proof. A hand or fingers or something more intimate. The head on a plate would have served as a bonus as well as a warning; a bonus for its biblical dimension: Herod’s daughter receiving the head of John the Baptist; a warning to keep her quiet if things went wrong. She had assured them that nobody could penetrate the protective wall she had around her: the might of General Bazooka. But they still felt that a warning was in order. One never knew. .
The friend at the Ministry of Works had already told her how it happened, and how the police were hot on her heels. It was the same friend who had told the gardener to tell the cook not to turn up. He had warned her not to mention him if things ran out of hand.
Alone, Victoria felt the world contracting. Luckily for her, the butchers did not know where she lived. It slowly sank in that it would take a miracle for Bat to take her back. She still loved him deeply and wanted to be with him, but the way was now blocked by Babit’s death. For the first time since the murder she thought of her daughter: what would become of her? In her terror she tried to reach for the only rock of certainty in her life: General Bazooka. She tried to call, but the phone was engaged. She wanted to go to his house and report the deed and ask for advice, but she was afraid of landing in police hands. She knew what the General would tell her: he would congratulate her and advise her to savour the moment, but she wanted to hear it all the same. It struck her again that if she failed to locate him, or if he turned her away, she was all by herself.
Two days later somebody knocked on her door at eight in the morning. Her heart leapt with fear. He knocked again, loudly, like the knocking of soldiers. “Fungua mlango,” he barked in gruff Swahili. She threw the door open and saw a man standing in her doorway. He was dressed in the gear of a Safari Rally driver, with advertising stickers on his clothes. When she recognized him, her fears grew. Behind him was a rally car festooned with dark windows and big advertising stickers. It looked like there were people inside. Perhaps it was Bat with military policemen or guys from the Public Safety Unit. The thought of falling into their hands chilled her. They would take the chance to vent their hatred of the Bureau on her. Not too long ago there had been a gun battle between the two groups.
“We are going for a ride,” Tayari said in a stern voice.
“I can’t leave my child here by herself,” she replied in a shaky voice.
“Do you want to bring her along? The clock is ticking. I hope you won’t reach for a gun or do anything stupid.”
“I don’t have a gun.”
“Every Bureau member is entitled to a pistol, but can always get an AK-57 rifle.”
“I don’t have one.”
“You obviously prefer knives. My first love is dynamite. It is cleaner and more dramatic,” he said, smiling maliciously.
“You can’t kill me. I am the mother of Bat’s daughter.”
“Just hurry up, will you?”
They left the child with a neighbour. Victoria sat in front with him. He was a little surprised by her lack of resistance: she could have shouted and alerted neighbours, and maybe somebody would have called soldiers from the barracks. The car roared and then sped away. They were headed for the north. His plan was to follow the main road to Kakooge, Katuugo and, if necessary, continue to Nakasongola. If by then she had not told him the truth, then he would resort to other means. He would have preferred to use weathered back roads to bruise their backsides in the potholes, but the possibility of hitting livestock, cyclists or schoolchildren kept him away.
She sat in the car, beautiful, gloomy, her breasts heavy on her chest. He felt a small pang of regret. This might be her last journey, their last meeting. Personally, he did not care; he would do anything to get his brother out of his current state of grief. He remembered the first time he saw her. He felt outdone by his brother, who seemed to have it alclass="underline" the education, the power job, the beautiful woman. But a lot had happened since. His stint as a spy had blunted his fantasies.
What mattered now was getting the truth. He would try to respect his brother’s decision. Intellectualism bred guilt which bred gutlessness much of the time. He agreed that there were things he did not understand, intricate designs and logic his head could not bore through. Those were the things which held his brother in check. Less education made his own position easier to defend: he either did something or he didn’t. When he decided to do something, he did not regret it. His father had more or less the same attitude.
Over the years, he had met many women like Victoria: women wanting to break out and doing it wrong. To rebel against their parents they married soldiers. To appear tough they hung out with Bureau men. To feel safe they joined the Bureau. They often ended up in the clutches of evil men who were infected with violence. They had children with these men, making the bonds of their oppression even tighter. They got blackmailed into staying or complying because they feared for their children. Sometimes they complied and the children got hurt all the same. He had helped a few to get out, but some had been so bruised that even when outside they felt unsafe, wanting to go back to what they knew. A few years ago he might have let Victoria off lightly, reasoning that the dead couldn’t be brought back whatever one did. Now he was a different man, maturer, tougher.
The first fifteen kilometres were done in a matter of minutes. They overtook everything on the road. He played games with the Boomerang of an army officer. He would slow down, let it overtake him and get away, and then he would put his foot down, put on the spotlights, catch up with the bigger car and overtake it in one breath. He did that twice. The second time the soldier stuck out a hand and waved an automatic pistol at him. He was gone by then. The soldiers at the roadblock admired the car.
“When did you win the Safari Rally?” one asked, almost drooling.
“At the beginning of the year,” Tayari lied, adjusting the visor on the helmet, feeling grateful to the friend who had organized the borrowing of the car and the gear.
“It was my dream, still is,” the man said and waved him on.
The sun had come up but was kept out by the smoked windows. During the next twenty minutes, with top speeds of two hundred and above, Victoria’s bowels gave way. Tayari was awakened from his trance by the stench. They were now in the endless grasslands of Katuugo. The giant grass, almost two metres high, formed thick walls on both sides of the road. When the wind blew, it felt as if the grass walls would collapse and drown the road and the car. He opened the side window, ground through the gears and stopped. He held his breath for some twenty seconds, savouring the deliciousness of adrenaline, the banging heart, the shaking knees, the tingling in his back. He got out and stood beside the car, breathing in fresh air.
“I want to know where the killers are,” he said, leaning in.
“Let me first wash up, please.”