The Book of Secrets (35 page)

During the latter part of my nine-month stay, I had a brief affair, the chemistry of which I attribute to loneliness on my part and socialist patronage on hers. This utilitarian liaison ended upon my departure — with the passionless comfort it provided, how many desolately lonely nights had I avoided? Without it, I might have tried to seek out Rita.

Before I left, I met the dean who had read the recommendation Gregory had written for me and had admitted me to the program. During our friendly final chat he let drop a remark which was truly unsettling, which quite astounded me; how little we know those around us, how much less we knew then. He informed me that Gregory was a poet, reasonably well known in literary circles.

I left for Dar with some relief — for a place where I had no direct family yet so much else I called it home now.

I had returned to a country on the brink of independence, one that was preparing to transmute. The date had been set for December that year, six months away, and the laid-back Dar I had known was bubbling with excitement. There was hope in the air, and a cheery confidence, symbolized in the promise of a torch of freedom to be mounted on the summit of Kilimanjaro for all to see, across the continent and beyond. If in later years bush-shirted demagogues waylaid those dreams with arid ideologies, and torpid bureaucrats drained our energies, at least we were spared the butchers.… But I am losing perspective.

They were exciting times, when I arrived back, and soon even I found myself sporting the bright collarless celebratory khanga shirt, which inspired Gregory to remark, “Have you become a man of the people now, Pius?”

Saturday was a half day at school, and on Sunday mornings the male expatriate teachers gathered in a driveway of the teachers’ quarters for a shave from the barbers. Our barbers were a genial pair, father and son. It was a considerable coup for them to have a
dozen prestigious customers in one place at the same time, submitting to their razors. We would be sitting ready for them in a straight line in the gravelled driveway when they arrived on their bicycles. We waited as one by one our turns came, making jokes, bickering and quarrelling about various academic topics, but converging always on the current rumour about the impending changes in the country.

We were intensely aware of our essential homelessness. Our world was diminishing with the Empire. We were all travellers who had on an impulse taken off, for all kinds of personal reasons, yes, but surely also to pursue a career we had all chosen — to teach. And we were all proud of our best efforts. We were now aware that we would have to choose: to return home … but what was home now? to take on a new nationality … but what did that mean? to move on to the vestiges of the Empire, to the last colonies and dominions, or perhaps to retreat to where it all began, London. I of course had chosen to throw in my lot with the new nation; being a solitary man without close attachments has been a help in living up to this resolve. But for the others, even after they had opted to stay, the question always remained to plague them — to stay or to go, and where to go?

The barbers would wipe their razors and then cycle away, leaving us in the sun, smooth-faced, uncomfortable, and exposed. And we would sit a few more minutes with our questions and anxieties before one last comment met a long, pregnant silence, and the first person got up to go.

After the Barbers’ Club, as these shaving sessions came to be called, Gregory and I would go off for lunch, usually to Cosy Café or Hindu Lodge, and then repair to his flat on Seaview, where we would rest on lounge chairs, finishing off his single malt, dozing to the sounds of waves breaking on the shore and the
BBC
African Service testing English comprehension or telling a story. I would leave towards six.

There was between the two of us — Gregory and me — the
friendship of two men thrown together by fate who were reasonably tolerant … and, if I may flatter myself, who saw the humanness in each other. There were worlds yet that embarrassed us, histories that irked, that we would rather not discuss. In other surroundings, situations, we might not have spent the time together. When I had returned from London, I brought for him an envelope from his friend the dean. It contained, with a letter, a fairly long clipping; a review of his work, I believe. We were at the Cosy Café when I handed it to him. The look on his face when he opened it is something I’ll never forget: at once sheepish, guilty, remorseful, crushingly sad; it takes slow motion in retrospect to tell the components apart. If he had had it in him he would have wept with frustration. The afternoon was humid, his pudgy red face streaming with sweat. Clearly, his art was a source of considerable pain. If I may venture further, it is to say this: the pain was that of the exile, not for the loss of home but for the loss of his inspiration. I did not quiz him about his poetry, and he was grateful, doubly so when I did not let anyone in on his secret. I must say that now I find myself surprised at my lack of curiosity about his poetry; I suppose I had presumed, with him, that it was of another world.

Soon after that incident at the Cosy, he came into the staff room one day and asked for a favour.

“I say, Fernandes — would you mind awfully if you took my tutorial tonight?”

“Where — I’m hardly prepared —
Julius Caesar
, is it?”

“Yes. Don’t worry — they’ll ask questions. Say anything — they’ll learn something from it.”

And so I began sharing with him those tutorials, which had been his privilege for many years, a mark of recognition by students and parents of his expertise in English literature. One of the places Gregory held his sessions was at the building across from Pipa’s Amin Mansion. One Sunday, following a Saturday session, he brought a piece of disquieting news to the Barbers’ Club,
which was unusually silent and brooding because those of us there had already heard. There had been a death at the shopkeeper Pipa’s home.

The tragedy is simple enough to describe: once more Pipa was cheated, robbed at the peak of promise and happiness. But I must give the man his due, tell his story. Pipa was thrown to his lowest point; he would never rise again.

Two years before, an educated black man — a teacher, in fact, because that’s how people in the street greeted him — had come to the store with two companions, and had stood outside on the main street, facing Pipa, who was perched on his high seat. The teacher seemed cheerful enough, and knew the shopkeeper — but that was no surprise, few in the city didn’t know Pipa.

“Pipa, let’s have a cigarette!”

“Have you come to buy or to demand? Which ones do you want?”

“Sportsman. I’ve come to beg.”

“Beggars come on Fridays. And they don’t get more than a heller — except the big-headed one.”

The beggar with the swollen head had a perpetual grin on his face; you avoided him in the street, and in the stores you gave him something large — a ten-cent copper — that would send him off so you didn’t have to look at him. Children fled upon his arrival.

The teacher laughed. “Don’t you know, I, too, have a big head!”

“Go away if you don’t have money.”

“Tell him, Mwalimu,” one of the companions grumbled.

The teacher laughed: “It’s his right. You know, Pipa, come independence and we’ll send you back where you came from.”

“I come from Moshi. My mother and father — I don’t know where from. Many places perhaps. Where will you send me? Tell me so I can prepare. And you will give this store to someone who
will give free cigarettes to lazy teachers — and perhaps God will supply your country with free presents.”

Pipa was spluttering, red with indignation. A servant brought cold water.

“Ah, Pipa — I was only joking. You have put me to shame. Forgive me.” The politeness was not politic, feigned, but customary, a gracious acceptance of defeat in argument.

“Bwana Pipa — you we won’t send away, but the British government we will.”

“I’ll believe you when I see them go. You think if you tell them Go … eti, they’ll pack their bags and leave?” He started coughing.

“Well then, to send them off is going to be hard work. To travel, to talk to people, to print announcements, to buy loudspeakers, Land Rovers!”

“So you’ve come to beg for money.”

“Eh-e!”

The old man, who was not yet very old, the fat shopkeeper in his singlet, slipped a hand into the cashbox. He fumbled. Without looking to see, he brought out a note; without looking at what it was, he handed it to the teacher. It was a hundred shillings — and Pipa added as a bonus two Sportsman cigarettes. Onlookers gasped.

The teacher was moved, but as was his way — which he perfected in later years as father of the country — he hid behind his friendly laugh. “You see, Pipa, we cannot fail!” He walked away, followed by a crowd of admirers. He would yet draw them out in the thousands. They would sing for him and march across the country for him; young and old, men and women, educated and illiterate.

As independence approached, on Kichwele Street, on the pavement outside Pipa’s shop, banners appeared in the green and
black colours of the new nation. Broad multicoloured canopies were put up in the middle of the street at regular intervals, bringing a toy-town look to the busy down-to-earth drabness of the thoroughfare. One day a Land Rover arrived on the side street, parking quite close to the store, almost under the tarpaulin sunshade. A man got out and walked into the shop. He handed Pipa an envelope, saying, “Open it,” and Pipa, bewildered, tore it open. There was a white card inside, but he couldn’t read it, of course. The man explained: With the compliments of the teacher — our leader — you can come and see the independence celebrations, bid farewell to the mzungu. At the National Stadium, the man said — among thousands — but with a special invitation and seat. Bring your family — how many do you have, twenty, thirty?

I’ll believe they are going when I see them going, he had said to the teacher. Now he was invited to see them go.

He went with Remti and Amin in the Ford Taunus stationwagon to see the event, along with two of his older daughters and their husbands and children. There was an air of festive expectation in the stadium, in the glow of a multitude of lights, everyone there waiting patiently and cheerfully for the hour of uhuru — freedom — to arrive. The family was given privileged seats on a side stand. Bands played and marched on the field not far from them, and from time to time they saw a dignitary arrive on the
VIP
stand. Finally, at midnight, a hush spread through the stadium. For some reason, all eyes converged on the Union Jack, calmly flying on the flagpole in front of them. The red-white-and-blue flag they’d known all their lives. Pipa had seen it first in Kikono outside the
ADC
’s office. Suddenly, the lights went out in the stadium. When they came on again there was a tumultuous uproar, wave upon wave of ecstatic cheering that came from all around them. The old flag was gone, a new one was in its place. The Queen’s husband, splendid in black ceremonials, made a farewell speech. The
teacher — Mwalimu — was on his feet now, making promises to the people and the world. Then fireworks, and the sky lit up.

It was while returning home from the celebration, having turned into Kichwele, now Uhuru Street, that the incident occurred which began the tragedy. It was two o’clock in the morning, the children were awake and cranky. One of the grandchildren hit Amin on the back of the head, and Pipa turned and shouted, “Not on the head! Never on the head.” Hitting on the head was dangerous, it could bring on a spirit, cause madness. After this, it seemed, Amin often complained of headaches.

Doctors were no help. Over the next few months the family tried several of them, beginning with the old Dr. Panwalker and ending with the expensive modern Dr. Singh. Between them they prescribed cod-liver oil, laxatives, vitamins of all sorts; they checked the boy’s eyesight and gave him glasses; they blamed the sun and the heat and everything else, and only stopped short of blaming his parents for having him so late. Herbal, ayurvedic medicines were bought; an old woman began visiting the home to draw away the headaches with special prayers. Nothing seemed to help.

And then suddenly one day Pipa knew: It was
she
, who else? She had given the boy to him, she was worrying him now. In the last ten years, with the departure of Ali, she had receded from his life until she disappeared altogether, and he thought she had found rest at last. Now here she was again. He dreamt of her, once, lying dead as she had lain many years ago, as he had seen her in his dreams many times before. He started to bring food, furniture to the mosque. What more did she want? She had taken away one son, given him this one — couldn’t she see him happy?

And then Amin’s fevers started, and would not go away. The doctors came, prescribed malaria medicine, but to no avail. The fevers, which came intermittently, persisted.

Meanwhile Pipa prayed to her. I know you can do it, he is in
your spell. He was certain of it when he dreamed that she was sitting, holding a boy in her lap. After a while, she said, “Take him —” The boy turned his head: it was Amin. “Go on,” she said.

Pipa woke up in horror.

The next day the boy died. It was Saturday night, nine o’clock, and Gregory was climbing the dark flight of stairs to take a session in a second-floor flat across the street from Pipa’s home, a boy leading the way with a candle. Gregory said he heard a scream, piercing through walls, through hearts.

Ali came back to Dar for the funeral. It was a citywide affair, as such events always were, and Gregory and I attended. A child of the community, of the school, had died. Viongozi Street was blocked off with cars, mostly belonging to teachers. People stood outside — the flat being too small — around the beige-and-green funeral van, open at the back, awaiting its passenger. And then it came, the little coffin bobbing on shoulders to the wail of the kalima — “There is none but Him” — and the sobs, of men, boys, in kanzus, coats, cloth caps. The coffin was pushed into the back of the van, then Ali in astrakhan got in behind with the others and began reciting the kalima. And I remember this, too: Gregory, wearing a suit, wiping sweat from his face, also mouthing the kalima along with the others.