Abyssinian Chronicles (6 page)

The glitter of the cars seemed to heighten the tension and the intensity of locust nibbles in Serenity’s thorax. After all, he was the one about to be weighed, decanted, measured, tested, approved of or rejected.

At Virgin’s parental home the atmosphere was formal, reflected in the white tunics and different kinds of jackets the men wore, and in the wraparound, ankle-length, short-sleeved
busutis
the women donned. The hosts stood in the red-earth courtyard like polished crockery on a polished tray. The weedless coffee shamba in the background looked like a worn decor for an old oft-rehearsed play. The apparent richness of the visitors’ attire and the shine of their cars conspired to give Virgin’s parental house a woebegone look, the walls looking a century old and the iron roof, red with rust, a century and a half older.

The guests were ensconced in sofas covered with white tablecloths to hide their diversity of make and ownership and present a uniform image. The women sat down on exquisite mats made in all colors of the rainbow, which, combined with the soft browns, soft greens, and soft reds of the women’s busutis, challenged the solemnity of the occasion. Extra cheer was lent by a necklace here, a bunch of bangles there, pearls here, a fake gold watch there.

The strain of their life and their beliefs was deeply etched on Virgin’s parents’ faces in stark configurations, some of which called to mind tribal scars common in the north of the country. The father was small but strong, a frank expression the main asset of his face. The mother was tall and thin, exhibiting great fortitude and perseverence. If they had on broken-heeled shoes, it did not show, and even if they did, the significance would have paled in the light of the black-framed portraits of the pink-faced, haloed Holy Family. The child Jesus had an expression too serious for his age, and the Virgin Mary had soft features encased in thick-petticoated garments. St. Joseph, exhibiting the silent anguish of an aged cuckold too timid to confront his much younger wife with the severity and implications of her crimes, was standing behind his wife and child in his eternal red anarchist’s tunic. Any lingering frivolity would have been canceled out by the portrait of Jesus on the cross, all thorns, all wounds, all blood, occupying a prominent position facing the door.

On this occasion, Serenity was not expected to say much, and in fact he hardly said a word, because he had a speaker to plead his case in the court of Virgin’s family and friends. While his speaker went about his job, Serenity was being examined by the members of Virgin’s family, very carefully but tactfully. Meanwhile, he could look anywhere
he wanted, except up at the roof, which revealed coin-sized portions of sky in places—this because a well-bred person never embarrassed others. For much of the time he kept his eyes on the food and drinks, which he consumed or pretended to consume. He could cough or clear his throat, but not so noisily as to attract undue attention. He could not clean his nails, or attack his teeth with his fingernails, even if a piece of meat as large as a pinkie got lodged between his front teeth. In such a case, he could excuse himself, stand up, hold the hem of his tunic and go outside. To pick his nose, he had to do the same. To fart, belch, scratch his armpit or his groin, he had to follow the same procedure. He could not ogle the womenfolk. He could not address them directly. He could not contradict or correct his in-laws, on fact or error. In general, he had to portray a lamb on the way to the slaughterhouse or at least a wolf in a lamb’s skin.

As he went through the motions, he became sure of a few things: (a) he was unimpressed, thus unintimidated, by his brothers-in-law; (b) Virgin’s sisters and relatives in general would be treated as they treated him; (c) one of Virgin’s paternal aunts, if his memory or the introduction was right, was gorgeous. She and he were probably of the same age. She had not looked down or looked away when the power of his gaze made her aware of his eye. She was a bit oval in the face, a contrast to the round faces of the family, and her big clear eyes, her high forehead and her not so severely restrained, hot-comb-straightened hair gave her an outstanding look. Her long, subtly grooved neck reminded him of his sister Tiida. There was an extremely vague resemblance to Virgin, maybe in the set of the mouth, or in the mouth-nose combination, he could not say. Her smile, which he had seen twice, on both occasions directed toward another family member, burst with the flash of a splitting coconut, the white, smiling teeth seeming to flow and brighten the dark brown facial features. To heighten the tension, and to make sure he had been noticed, he ignored her for some time, looking elsewhere, concentrating on the drinks, and then broke the spell by looking her way over his glass. He caught her eye once again. The third time he tried he found her place empty. She never showed up again until the moment of his departure.

Virgin had appeared only once, to welcome and greet the guests. He imagined her standing in the garden or among the coffee trees, dealing with whatever she was feeling. She had not crumbled or
cracked under the pressure. For that you could trust the Catholics: they knew how to instill character, and how to hone it like a knife on an age-old whetstone.

It took Serenity a whole week to deal with the refraction of reality occasioned by so much sudden attention. By the time the second visit beckoned, he was relaxed enough to welcome it. Now he felt like a well-to-do teacher addressing a crowd of well-behaved but needy pupils. The nibbling teeth of gastric and thoracic locusts that had terrorized him on the previous occasion were gone. Women were cheap here in the central region, in contrast to the cattle-rearing peoples in the west and the north, where bride-price could rise up to one hundred head of cattle. Here people asked for calabashes of beer, bolts of cloth, tins of paraffin, ceremonial chickens, a lump sum of money and a few other minor things. Bridegrooms often felt compelled to outdo themselves in dazzling displays of generosity. The overriding feeling Serenity had on this bride-price setting and paying day was that these people could use a bit of financial help, if their beliefs allowed it, and the safest way to secure it would be by asking an exorbitant bride-price.

This time around, he and his father were in for a pleasant surprise: these people had no intention of exacting self-enrichment in exchange for their daughter. They asked for very little. It seemed so embarrassingly cheap that when the groom’s team withdrew to confer, the two glittering cars swollen in front of them like bizarre money chests, they had no option but to put on a garish display of generosity.

Grandpa wanted to donate a cow and a calf. Serenity, however, wanted something more visibly urgent: a new roof. It was bound to last longer anyway, impervious as it was to
nagana
and other cattle-killing diseases. There was disagreement between father and son. To help break the deadlock, Mbale, Virgin’s eldest brother and officiating brother-in-law, was summoned. A firsthand torture victim of roof-leakings and of the recurrent youthful nightmare that they would wake up one night trapped in a roofless house, Mbale sided with Serenity. He was then charged with the task of whispering the gift in the family’s ear. Virgin’s parents were opposed to this overt desecration of the temple of matrimonial holiness—their daughter was not a cow to be sold for the glorification of Mammon—but the rest of the family moved in
with full force. Who among them had not dreaded family visits in the rainy season? Who among them had not thought of helping the family out by roofing the house forcibly if necessary? This was the occasion to do it. Afterward, when the wedding was over, it would be too late.

The majority won, and the gift was accepted. The interesting part was watching Mbale and a few other men, who knew a lot about roofs and the price of iron sheets, capped and uncapped nails, beams, labor and the like, calculating how much money was needed to complete the job as quickly as possible. Virgin’s parents, dismayed at having failed to kick the traders out of the temple, could not bear the lugubrious look of the crucified Jesus and left the house. They went for a long, somber walk, bemoaning the shameful hijacking of holy matrimony by Mammon.

Serenity loved the histrionics. For the first time in living memory he did not begrudge the shopkeepers their earnings. He could already see the new iron sheets glittering in the sun. There was another fine twist to it all: the spirit of the corrugated-iron church tower he had wanted to destroy had invaded this house, and was about to shatter or dent this family’s very Catholic sensibilities. Here, it would not be a tower, but it would have as much power. Mammon’s profanity was going to shine. Strangers in sweaty overalls were going to invade this place, tear down the dilapidated roof and spray the air with rust, broken nails and rotten beams. Buried in the rubble would be the Virgin Mary, with her dead alabaster smell and promises. Up would go the new roof, proclaiming the rise of the new Virgin and her new wine. Up would go the new roof and the thrust of his new life, power and the glitter of his new dream. The heap of banknotes, a mini-tower in itself, made him feel happy. He was not like those grooms who promised heaven and earth before the wedding, and afterward failed to fulfill those promises, bloated with tactical amnesia. Everything was going to be on time: he was a doer, not a promiser.

Virgin watched the roofers, heard their oblique comments and resented them for sprinkling rust in the butter oil her aunt was rubbing into her skin to super-condition it for the wedding. Local butter oil redolent with a faint milk smell was used because it worked better than industrial products. It made the skin browner, clearer and tighter on the bones. Virgin, like most peasant girls not raised around cows and
fresh milk, found the scent disturbing, almost nauseating. The fear of carrying a milk smell in her bridal garments and into her marital bed bothered her. One had to make a perfect first impression. One did not want a niggling imperfection wedging itself into the scheme of more important things. She was gripped by the fear that the baths, some herbal, would not defeat the smell.

Although she felt like exploding in kaleidoscopic displays of violent anxiety, she kept her temper under wraps. She wanted to maintain control of what was going on around her. But how could she manage to achieve that amidst all the hammering, the shouting and the leering of the roofers? How could she remain the center of attention when so many relatives, friends, villagers and strangers were milling about, calling, screaming, barking orders, contesting superior knowledge of decorum, custom, tradition, religion and nonsense? All the villagers who owed her parents a favor and those who didn’t were there, lending a hand, necessary or superfluous, adding to the madness. Most annoying of all, religion had been chucked to the sidelines. Nobody said morning or evening prayers anymore. People all around her were indulging their lusts without a care in the world. Her parents had given up trying to make them say grace before meals. Local beer was flowing down cheerful throats all day. In short: The Devil was winning when this should have been God’s biggest hour. And there she was, unable to do anything about it.

Amidst this physical and mental turmoil, the bride turned her mind to her father-in-law, and she experienced something akin to hot flashes. She did not like the man at all. All the vibes from that direction were wrong. Their two personalities were antagonistic, and yet she was destined to spend a number of years as his neighbor. How was she going to do that? She also worried about Serenity’s aunt. She did not like her either. Who could like a woman suffering from amenorrhea? It was whispered that she had menstruated only thrice in her whole life. Such people were often witches, people to be feared. Their tongues were often potent beyond measure, making things happen even if they did not mean them to. On top of it, the woman had had that buffalo dream. What was she supposed to make of it? How could she make something of anything when she was not in control, when the whole world seemed to be milling around on top of her head?

She could have called off the wedding, but who had ever heard of
a peasant girl calling off a wedding? After all this? Who would listen to her? Which fancy reasons would she give? A bride’s sensitivities and anxieties? She knew nothing would wash with this crowd of lively souls. And she did not want to call the wedding off, even if she could. It was her show, her day in the sun. All the impotence and hostility she felt against Serenity, against herself, the roofers, Mbale, Sr. John Chrysostom (her erstwhile Mother Superior), and against the world, was a way of coming to terms with her new position in life, her new powers, her new expectations, her new dreams.

Serenity was in seventh heaven; Virgin’s family were quivering with the thunder of his power. His success felt even sweeter when put into proper perspective. As a typical go-between man, always relying on others to transmit his messages and negotiate on his behalf in matters of the heart, he had suffered terrible anxiety, a condition exacerbated by the second go-between’s long absences and mysterious silences. Had she betrayed him and chickened out? That was how people generally let one know that there was no hope. Such people assumed that it saved your feelings and your dignity a few ugly dents. Serenity always preferred to have the bad news up front: it hurt intensely at first, but the pain disappeared gradually into the mists of fate or in the vapors of another chance arising. Serenity was not the conquering type; unlike his father, he found the fear of rejection too real. He preferred the mediation of others and the time it gave him to digest and weigh all possible outcomes. He thought of himself as a crocodile, ever conserving his energy by waiting and letting the prey come to him. That anesthetized him against the guilt some conquerors felt when terminating relationships. He always felt that the prey had seen it coming. Virgin had delivered herself to him, and the intensity of the fire she had ignited in him, coupled with the psychological lift he had given her, should have canceled out any hesitation whatsoever. So why was she torturing him?

As the nights sat on him and the pressure and the pain permeated every fiber in his body, Serenity went over the course of his preliminary dealings with Virgin. He had surely not forced himself on her. The attraction had been mutual. In addition, he had shown her great respect. He had not blown his trumpet, or said anything to inflate his ego. If anything, he had given her the impression that her opinion was
all that mattered. Why, then, was there this horrible news blackout? The weakness of the go-between system was that it left many questions unanswered for too long. How long was he supposed to wait? The days had now gone into high double digits. Anger and frustration had corroded his patience, his understanding, his hope. When the pain became too harsh, he contemplated dropping her. He could do it because he was a man aware of defeat in life; the feeling would not be new. He could call off the go-between, swear never to see Virgin again and crawl back into his father’s arms. He gave it three more days and nights. However, just as if Virgin had been spying on him, seeing into his mind and gauging his limit, he got a message from her two days later.