In his present state of mind he could not concentrate on anything. He asked for a leave and devised ways of dodging his guests. He hid at the Professor’s a few times. He spent nights at the Kalandas’ and in the few still-functioning hotels. He spent long periods talking with his sister. They had become closer than ever now. She listened to his words, his silences, his mumblings. He listened to her stories, her indirect words of advice. They talked about the coming trial, the lawyers, the prospects. She cooked his favourite food, and they ate it with some degree of enjoyment. She devised a system whereby she spent a week per month with him. But he grew tired of waiting for her arrival and he acknowledged his growing dependence on her — a dependence that seemed to be eroding her relationship with her possessive husband. Although he still did not like Mafuta, he knew that he had no right to deprive him of his family life. He put a stop to his sister’s visits.
One day he received a letter of condolence from Damon, which was also an invitation to go to London. They could go out and tour the country, revisit the past or do something new. He remembered the nights at the Grand Empire, the posh nights, his proposal to Babit. There was something very appealing and something very repellent about it at the same time. He wanted to retrace his time there with Babit, but he realized that nostalgia would be the death of him. A mourner who returned to the sites of happier times was either reconciled or devastated. He knew that London without Babit was no longer his London and would crush him just like it had done others before him. He decided to go to America for a month.
BAT’S FIRST STOP was an expensive hotel in New York. He liked the seclusion, the anonymity, and the newness of it all. He liked the aggressive thrust of the buildings, the dire extremity of a crowded skyline. He liked the freedom he had from the encumbrances of familiarity, for here he was a speck in this city of millions, a mote flying in the wind. In the bosom of the great city, he sipped his whisky, praying for peace of mind. He settled down and turned on the television, seeking refuge in the deluge of images and sounds.
It was not long before he met Marshal Amin, who had made a grand entrance into Hollywood, and into the world of comic strips. During his stint in Tinseltown the Marshal had made two hit movies, now available on cable, both portraying his mentor, Il Duce Benito Mussolini. The bulk, the shaven head, the jutting jaw, the heavy make-up, the fact that a black giant was portraying a white runt, made for wonderful comedy. Of course, Amin had had to lose weight, shaving off much of the bulky stomach in high-tech gyms and by inserting laxative pills in his rectum. To hide the scandalous height difference, he was filmed from the waist up. In the first epic, The Rise of Il Duce: Il Duce’s Triumph, he dealt with the problems young Mussolini experienced on the way up. The pains of growing up on the fringes, his height, his criminality, the rigours of army life, the unfulfilled dreams, the sexual frustrations, the boiling urge to shine, then the coup and the string of victories in Bulgaria, Greece, Abyssinia, and the emergence of Italy as a major power. In the second hit, Il Duce’s Blues, Amin dealt with his mentor’s turbulent career as empire-builder and chronicled the way Europe and America conspired to bring his reign to an end. He showed his mentor’s bravery at the front, the fighting methods he initiated but which were credited to Englishmen or Americans, his selfless tours of military hospitals comforting the wounded soldiers with his golden tenor saxophone and the artificial limbs he distributed, his unrecognized efforts to dethrone Hitler, his bitterness at not being universally recognized as a genius statesman. Then there was the demonization by the press, the wives who kept committing suicide, the failure of Fascism to become a household name like Nazism or Stalinism, and his heroic end. The two films had made Amin’s name and were already classics, towering achievements for somebody who did not make his acting debut till he was thirty-nine. As a result, he had become Africa’s first truly famous film star.
Bat also discovered that here Amin had tried his luck as a sex therapist and small-time political spin doctor, with little success. Too many competitors. He had sent President Nixon advice to gag, lock up, or torture the criminals involved in the Watergate adventure. If they still wanted to fawn for the cameras, he advised gangland executions of culprits and their entire families. The financial invoice he sent Nixon was never honoured. Nixon had other plans, and when he fell, Amin sent him a telegram congratulating him upon his impeachment and the golfing time at his disposal. He offered his services to President Ford, warning him to take a much harder line and avoid the pitfalls of his predecessor.
Bat took to television channel-hopping. He concentrated on sports. He watched American football, boxing and wrestling. He would lie there and watch the scrimmaging, the touchdowns, the charges. He took a liking to the West Coast Destroyers, the Buffalo Blasters and the Dallas Tornadoes. There was a wealth of information about both the teams and the players. It amazed him how many small details the media knew about the players. They knew how many bones somebody had snapped in his career, the bruises suffered, the pounds he bench-pressed daily, his daily calorie intake, the names of his pets, his hobbies, what he did ten Christmases ago. . He would sit there and play with the data, multiplying it, dividing it, setting up bets as to who would win. . As long as he kept himself busy, and drugged himself with enough whisky, the Babit trinity left him alone. But when he woke up late in the night, his mind would begin to wander. He would get nasty flashbacks, something that had not occurred in Uganda. He would lie in bed shivering, trying to fix his mind on something else. He rarely succeeded. He would wake up, switch on the television, drink some tea and wait for the day to break or sleep to return.
During the day he would venture out and visit a few famous places. It was soothing to walk through the parks on sunny afternoons, feeling the tender grass under his feet. At one end of the Village, away from the restaurants and residential areas, he discovered a place where extreme spectacles were staged. As a former sportsman, feats of strength, competition, expenditure of energy, turned him on. He kept wondering what some of these guys would be doing if they had been born in Uganda, and what he would be doing if he had been born here. He watched men with ten-foot boa constrictors and one-ton anacondas feeding live alligators to their pets, which had names like Sweetie or Popsy. He saw a man balancing a car on his head. There was a young man juggling three raging chain-saws, and, hard by, rodeo stars were riding snappy two-ton bulls, tasting ten euphoria-laden seconds before the fall. There was always something spectacular to see, to take his mind off his situation, to tire him out so that by the time he returned to his hotel he could sleep for a few hours before the Babit trinity arrived.
After a week his urge to do something dangerous mounted to insupportable levels. On television he saw advertisements of street racing in Chicago. His love for speed kicked in like a fever. He flew to Chicago to participate in the races. He watched the plane rising, the Atlantic Ocean swelling, New York City shrinking and receding, and he felt relieved. He hoped that the nightmares would leave him alone and stay buried in the canyons below him. He thought about his brother, and he hoped he would renounce the violence before his luck ran out. He thought about the Professor and how he would have loved to be here, with the mighty city below him, headed for another one, well away from his students and the tedium of teaching. He made a mental note to give him a two-week holiday in America on his birthday.