Please Do Not Disturb Page 7

  I noticed one of the priest’s ears was odd; he had no right ear, no flesh around it, no lobe, just a hole. Seeing I’d noticed, he explained in his funny singing voice, ‘It looks odd but still works fine. My full ear hears everything in this world but this special ear, it hears all the lies and fallacies. So here’s the deal, my sons. I’ll take you on, educate and introduce you to the one true God, but only if you promise that’s the last time you lie to me. Understand?’ I felt Tafumo’s head nod against my shoulder, before I collapsed.

  The first thing Father Lane did was rechristen us. Tafumo became Philip, a name he dropped when he left the missionary. I became Josef, the secret disciple. I wonder if Father Lane knew how accurate his name for me was. Was it so clear, even then, that Tafumo shone with a light of leadership while I was marked with the zeal of a disciple? Father Lane taught us everything. Prepared us for life. Though he could never entirely rub out our boyhood traditions, he added to them, teaching us what he called the True Trinity: God, the Father; the wise son, Shakespeare; and the Holy Genius, Einstein.

  God, literature and science, he told us, were all the tools a man needed to see and fix the world. Father Lane taught us God’s laws – Do not kill. Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself – lessons so childishly simple I foolishly outgrew them. But the main lesson he imparted was a story old as man, of good and evil, devil and God. He taught us that we – Tafumo and I, and all Bwalo people – were the victims of evil. And that his own people, his white brothers and sisters, were the perpetrators of that evil. Father Lane showed us the devil: and the devil was him. It was the warped irony of the empire that their own missionaries taught us that what they were doing to us was wrong, unchristian, unforgivable. Tafumo and I took different paths of the Trinity – I took to Shakespeare; he to Einstein – but we both spoke from a young age of freeing Bwalo. From dust, Father Lane created two great idealists and Tafumo and I left that school filled with the word of God and a desire to change our world. It’s taken me becoming an old man to realise just how much Father Lane taught me. And how completely I’ve failed to live up to his lessons.

  After missionary school, I did an English degree at Bwalo University, where I stayed on to become a lecturer. Tafumo’s insatiable intelligence took him further; he won a Commonwealth scholarship to the University of London to train as a doctor. The day Tafumo left for London, we drank together. Using my old name, only done on the rarest of occasions, he said, ‘Sefu. No one knows us here in the city, us country boys from far away. You must keep our secret. When I’m away you’ll tell me when the time’s ripe to return. Great changes are sweeping Africa and you and I will bring freedom to Bwalo.’ The idealistic words of a young man? Maybe, but so far everything he’d told me had come true. So I clinked my glass with his, and said, ‘Yes, brother.’

  Bwalo was a late bloomer, the last nation to break free, well into the eighties. In their last years, the British clung on with the desperate grip of a master who knew his power was coming to an end. By the time I’d become a junior lecturer, we were ghosts of our own nation. We couldn’t vote. Only whites could shop in supermarkets. We had to buy goods through a letterbox. No Natives No Dogs! We sat at the back of buses even when no white sat up front. We weren’t allowed to own more than a measly strip of land. We were a people primed for revolution and it was then that Tafumo told me to start a party and I formed uMunthu with my academic contemporaries Levi, Essop, Patrick and Boma. The name uMunthu was Essop’s idea. It meant: I am because we are. I am human because of others. Vague enough not to raise suspicion with the authorities, it was an inspired choice.

  Tafumo told me to form, but not lead, uMunthu. Said I was more effective moving people from below. So Levi, the dean of the university, became uMunthu’s secretary. Like all of us, Levi was an academic, not a politician or a man of the world. He was a man of theory who knew we needed a powerful figurehead to overthrow the British. So slowly, gently, I convinced these men that Tafumo was the man for the job. Being a tiny nation, we were not rich in options; not many Bwalo men had made their mark on the world in the way Tafumo had. Tafumo had done much of the hard work; already a famous orator on the international stage, adding his voice to the rallying cry of Kaunda, Banda and the independence movement. He’d become rich and powerful, a doctor treating white people no less, with his own London practice. He’d written anti-federation manifestos, travelling the world demanding Bwalo independence. This Chewa son was the perfect candidate, I told them. It wasn’t hard to persuade them and once uMunthu agreed Levi called and invited Tafumo to lead us.

  Days later Tafumo called me. We’d not seen each other since the sixties and our twenty years of correspondence had been by letter only. He sounded strange, posh, with barely an echo of his warm African vowels, as he said, ‘Well done, Sefu. Everything is ready. We’ll rise up together, we shall free our people. I’m returning to set all of Bwalo on fire.’

  Before Tafumo’s return, we promoted him as our great hope, printing a manifesto detailing how Tafumo and uMunthu would break the colonial monopoly on land and end the suppression of our language. We entitled the pamphlet: Kwacha. Meaning dawn, the word had grown beyond its roots to signify the movement, a new birth, freedom. The word acquired such power it became illegal. Our nervous masters beating and imprisoning us just for saying it. Days before his return, Tafumo told me to organise a protest. Forever the invisible hand conducting us.

  On a drowsy afternoon, hundreds of us led by Levi marched to Colonial House. It was a peaceful protest and we were turning to leave when I heard the dull thump and mean hiss of tear-gas canisters. The students were brave, chanting kwacha as they marched towards armed police. Three men, students whom I taught, were shot dead that day. Tafumo told me to hold a joint funeral. This time thousands came and as the bodies were lowered we sang the word kwacha, our voices rising with the dust. But before the ceremony ended, the police arrived and beat us. They beat our people at a funeral for three innocent men. It sparked chaos and indignation. Essop and I were badly beaten. We preached peaceful resistance but that night, as Hope dressed my wounds, my Christian heart was tested. I wanted to kill every white man I saw. And I knew my feelings resounded in the hearts of every Bwalo man. It was time for Tafumo’s return.

  But beyond the photograph of him on the pamphlet, few knew who Tafumo was. He’d been away for twenty years and when he returned, even I barely recognised him. Tafumo was transformed. He wore a suit, an odd hat called a Homburg; even his tongue had forgotten its Chichewa, hence the need to hire Essop as translator. Tafumo had travelled so far to the other side he could no longer see where he began.

  So when he emerged from the plane looking like an English doctor, we were shocked. Was this our saviour? The vast crowd, spreading out towards the horizon, clapped but it was far from hysterical. Even Hope said to me, ‘Is that him?’

  He squinted as he descended. Then, stepping on to the tarmac, he got on his knees and kissed the earth causing the crowd to scream and sing. He remained prostrate, a servant come to assist his many masters, and we roared until he walked to the podium, where his foreign accent shocked us back into a silence that held us in its spell.

  ‘Bwalo, tonight you go to bed prisoners. And your jail is your own country.’

  We shouted, an ambiguous sound, as if turning against him.

  Then he yelled, ‘But tomorrow – tomorrow! – you will wake up – yes! – you will wake up – yes! – and you will be free!’ and we cried, ‘Free!’ and he screamed, ‘Free!’

  The ring of police, their dogs on taut leashes, tightened around us. Deliberately, Tafumo pointed to each of the policemen, one by one, turning in a slow circle, and each time he pointed we sang, ‘Free!’ There was a slight echo as Essop translated Tafumo’s words into Chichewa but the crowd sang back in English, the oppressor’s tongue.

  Tafumo stared at one of the police officers, didn’t take his eyes off him, as he leaned into the microphone and said three names, the names of
the dead students, ‘William Kilembe, Chimango Waya, Alfred Sibale.’

  Before he had even spoken the third name, the crowd was already screaming, a confused, angry noise. Police tightened their circle, the crowd pushed back, skirmishes broke out, but before violence erupted, Tafumo held his fist to the sky and we fell silent.

  Slowly, raising a finger to denote each demand, his fist flowered as he declared, ‘My food! My tongue! My soul!’ Provoking a deafening howl that forced the police back.

  Then Tafumo whispered something. At first so quiet few could hear. Gradually he increased his volume and Essop didn’t need to translate. For Tafumo spoke just one word, our word – the one they stole from us – louder and louder from deep within him, rising up his throat, until his face was tilted so the sun shone against his screaming lips delivering the word over and over: ‘Kwa-cha! Kwa-cha! Kwa-cha!’

  And we echoed his chant, so that long after he’d stepped off the podium into the crowd, the word pulsed through the air as we reached to touch him, grab him, to lay pelts over his shoulders, so that by the time he emerged from within us, his suit was hidden below layers of animal skins and he was African again. He was us. And when I turned to kiss her, Hope was crying uncontrollably.

  He stepped off the plane a man but left the airport a god. In the car park we met. He pushed through the people and greeted me politely, as one might address a stranger. Hope shook his hand but before we could say anything more, Tafumo was spun away. So careful and cold was his handshake that I wondered if I’d changed as much as he had, if he’d forgotten it was me, not heard my name as I shouted it over the noise of the crowd. But before stepping into the car, he turned, staring down the tunnel of people between us, and he didn’t nod and he didn’t smile, but he was telling me he knew it was me and that everything was about to change for ever.

  It was then that I grabbed Hope, got down on one knee, she cried and nodded, and the people around us cheered. We kissed and though I couldn’t tell Hope why, as we walked home handin-hand, I knew our life was going to be good. It was in the afterglow of that time that I believed what I did I did for the cause, for freedom, kwacha.

  Tafumo rewarded my silence and loyalty. And I’ll admit it was fun. For a village boy to walk in expensive shoes down the marble corridor of his friend’s palace. My secret friend. In the early days Tafumo and I played formal if we were in company but as soon as everyone left, we relaxed and backstabbed the ministers. The time between those informal moments soon stretched. But Tafumo wasn’t always sanctimonious. Back then his charm was so potent that when he was happy all around him were happy, his mood so expansive it flooded the nation. He loved to start silly rumours. He once told the British High Commissioner that he had kissed the Queen on the lips. The Commissioner spared no time in spreading the story. Days later a spy relayed the rumour which – filtered through black and white tongues – returned with embroidery: not only had Tafumo stolen a kiss, but the Queen now sent him a rose on the same day each year. Tafumo loved this.

  All was not perfect, of course. Cracks in uMunthu were already starting to show. I wasn’t yet a minister; Tafumo had told me that I was better placed at ground level, where people would still talk to me openly and tell the truth. So I was at none of the cabinet meetings with Levi and Tafumo. I’d only heard through Essop of Tafumo’s quiet rage when pushed by Levi to agree to democratic elections. Everything I say is law, everything. I assumed Tafumo was merely disagreeing on the timing, rather than the principle.

  So I thought little of it when I went early to pick up Hope from the palace one day and had my regular meeting with Tafumo, where I told him that the rumours around the university were that Levi was furious about being scolded in the meeting. That he was threatening to form a new political party to contest Tafumo, to force his hand, to bring about democratic elections. Tafumo’s reaction was mild. He just laughed and said, ‘Levi is a clever man but his skin is thin. Josef, you’re a good man, thank you, old friend. And do not fret, good things are coming your way.’ Then I told Tafumo of my wedding to Hope and I asked if he would attend. He smiled that vast charming smile of his. ‘For you, Sefu, of course, it would be an honour.’

  Our wedding day was bright with joy until Hope pulled me aside and said, ‘Where’s Levi?’ I made a phone call but Levi didn’t answer. It was his brother. And when I joked, ‘Moses, we’re waiting for your brother to come and eat, the dinner is being eaten by Boma, there’ll be nothing left,’ there was a long silence, until Moses finally replied, ‘Levi is gone, Josef. Something has happened.’

  I went straight to Tafumo. I didn’t care that he was drunk and holding a captive audience of admirers. We walked through the house, smiling at guests, Tafumo nodding at the women who tried to stop him as he passed. Tafumo and I sat in the back of his Rolls-Royce and I said, ‘What’s happened?’ Tafumo looked forward, let out a tired sigh, and said, ‘I sent one of my men, Jeko, to talk to Levi, calm him down, tell him not to fight me politically, assure him I was as open to democracy as he was but not yet and . . .’

  When he stopped talking I wasn’t sure if Tafumo would explain anything more. He eventually finished his sentence, but he did so without saying the actual words, ‘Levi fought back, things got out of control.’

  That was the first time I’d heard Jeko’s name. Tafumo didn’t speak for a while, he read me well, he didn’t fill the silence with explanation or justification. He was smarter than that: he let me do that. Then he turned, looked hard into my eyes, and said, ‘Sefu, it’s sad, I didn’t want it to happen. You must know that?’

  I nodded before I really considered the question fully. I looked at Tafumo closely, as if seeing him properly for the first time. I wondered if this could really be the same boy who I’d once carried on my back through the bush. He seemed so alien in his fine suit, sitting in his immaculate car. And I realised that Tafumo had become that man; that man who all those years ago had driven to our village wearing a suit, impressing us all with his car radio. That one image had stayed with Tafumo. He had held on to it, imagining it for so long that it had come to life. There sat a man who had literally carved himself from nothing, from an image, from the air itself. And I wondered just how much a man would do to keep that image alive.

  ‘Everything I do, I do for the nation,’ Tafumo explained. ‘We’ve come a long way and we’ve longer to go. But it’s time to grow up, Sefu, life isn’t so clear as we thought. Now you must take the next step, take Levi’s position as dean of the university and lead the next generation. Democracy will come, uMunthu lives on, but it will take time and care.’

  This was Tafumo’s power. It mattered not if he was sitting on a tree stump in our village, telling me we would run away to be educated, or if he sat, as he did that day, cocooned in the soft leather of his Rolls-Royce; he somehow made me feel like I was king. And I fell under his spell: Tafumo the witch doctor, who didn’t use roots and blood to mix his magic but potions of people’s hopes, ambitions and dreams.

  How many times have I thought of that moment? Have I remembered the day that I saw the world as it really was? I wish in some way Tafumo had been more of a monster. More of an Amin, a Mugabe. If he’d slaughtered thousands, kept the severed heads of enemies in his fridge, amputated the hands of children, sliced the tongues of dissenters, then – I tell myself – then, I would never have stayed. I’d never have stood and watched. But Tafumo was a subtle devil. His was a quiet terror that lived under the unspoiled surface. He worked with a doctor’s methodical touch, bit by bit, pang’onopang’ono, so I and others could convince ourselves that each new violent act was unavoidable, inevitable.

  That’s what I’ve been telling myself for years. A man can justify anything. Sitting in that car, I reassured myself that I didn’t kill Levi. I was merely a messenger. I told myself everything I did was a necessary evil. Now I know that’s just the devil’s excuse. With the country still fresh with freedom, I told myself I was fighting for principles greater than one man, greater than fr
iendship. I was fighting for the cause, for kwacha, for uMunthu. The remainder of the wedding was an uneasy blur, smiling at everyone, working my way through as best I could. And long after Tafumo and most of the guests were gone, I sat on the khondi with the original uMunthu and, looking at my friends, I knew that this night was the last night of our innocence; nothing was ever to be the same.

  The others were conscious of Levi’s absence. Boma joked about the fact Levi was sulking about his cabinet quarrels with Tafumo. Essop was worried; either he had heard something or, like Hope, he was simply close enough a friend to know something wasn’t right with me. Weeks later, the newspaper would finally announce that Levi had died in a car accident. The funeral was family-only and we didn’t attend.

  But that night, before they all knew what had happened, our world was still intact. I remember that Boma was joking with Hope that witch doctors were preparing a curse for Tafumo. ‘Better keep your eyes open, Hope,’ he warned. ‘Make sure there are no chicken bones or snakeheads under his bed.’ Joining in on the joke, Essop said, ‘Collect every strand of hair, each nail clipping. That’s what the mutimen use. Did you know Shaka Zulu even had a man walk near him so when he spat he would spit on the man’s back, rubbing it into the man’s skin so no mutimen could steal it.’ We all laughed loudly, all of us too sophisticated, too educated, to believe in such hokum any more.

  And when Patrick had finally staggered home and Boma was splayed out snoring on the sofa, Essop walked me down to the garden and asked, ‘Where’s Levi?’ When I didn’t reply, Essop knew. He understood. I could see. In the way he reacted, in the way sorrow filled his eyes. Forever Tafumo’s messenger, I heard myself parroting his words, ‘Listen to me. This is not easy, a terrible thing. But it is time we grew up, Essop. Life isn’t so clear as we thought. This is the way it has to be until we change things for the better.’ Essop looked at me like a child, desperate for assurance that the world was not what it had just become. I gently placed my hand on his back, as Essop fought his tears.