Kintu Read online

  “Why didn’t she bring her concern to me? Why ask you?”

  “She is frightened, Mbuga. I am the one who asked for her kindness.”

  “But the children are mine: not yours, not hers. Mine.”

  “They are, Mbuga.”

  “When my children occupied her body, it was temporary. I’ll pay for her services if that is what she wants. Tell all the other wives who might want to cordon their children off with a ‘my’ and ‘mine’ attitude that I will take them away from them.”

  “They know it, Mbuga. No one has cordoned her children off.”

  “That includes your sister. She’s not special.”

  On learning Kintu’s decision, Babirye screwed her face in tears and Nnakato cried with her. Before she left, Babirye whispered to Nnakato savagely, “Those children belong to Kintu because I said they do; if I change my mind they would not be his, would they?”

  Nnakato held her mouth in shock. Babirye returned home enraged by the emptiness of her maternal embrace. Nnakato’s guilt was exacerbated by the lethargy of her womb. After a while, she found a happy compromise and went to Kintu. “I’ve been thinking, Mbuga,” she started. “Now that we’re getting old, couldn’t Babirye move in with us? She’s given us the ultimate gift: why not share the rest with her? She will be mother to the children, Mayirika is vast, you’re away most of the time and we’ll keep each other company.”

  “You’re asking me to marry her.”

  “You’ve already married her in every sense except in ceremony.”

  Kintu agreed to marry Babirye on condition that she kept quiet about the children. For Nnakato’s sake, he married Babirye in a big wedding. The community applauded. “It was not right abandoning Babirye like that. After all, he’s only a man. There’s enough of him to go round. Whoever thought of separating twins in the first place?”

  Kintu wanted to house Babirye away from his main home like the rest of his wives, but Nnakato insisted on sharing Mayirika with her.

  There had been peace for a long while until recently. This time, Babirye accused Kintu of planning to make Baale next in line in spite of his older children. On this charge, Kintu was in a dilemma. All his sets of twin sons were identical. To make one twin governor was to ask for trouble: What would he do with the other? The Ganda never made identical twins heirs to an office; one could not be sure who was who exactly. Besides, with Babirye’s disposition, who knows what she would do to Nnakato if he died and one of her sons became governor? Yet, there was no question of making another woman’s child heir to the chieftaincy. That left him with one option: Baale.

  Babirye had another complaint. Apparently, when her turn came to cook for Kintu, when he spent a week in her quarters, Kintu only came at night. He barely managed to stick a finger in her cooking, lick it and fall asleep. Babirye suspected that Kintu only visited her when Nnakato pushed him.

  To Kintu, this complaint was immaterial. He never chose which wife to lie with and he did not visit his other wives more often than he visited Babirye. To him, while Nnakato continually worried about Babirye’s welfare and begged him to spend more time with her even during Nnakato’s own turn, Babirye complained incessantly.

  Kintu made up his mind: One, he was going to build a house for Babirye away from Mayirika and move her. Two, Baale was his heir. It was time to start molding him. First, he would apprentice him and present him as his next in line to whoever would be kabaka. And when the time was right, he would get Baale married. Now Kintu adjusted the knot on his barkcloth decisively. The relief he felt was similar to that time when, after the long period of mourning his father as custom demanded, his hair had grown thick on his head. On the morning of his father’s last funeral rites, his aunt shaved his head and Kintu had felt such relief.

  Looking over the horizon, Kintu was grateful for the distance and space the journey had put between him and his home. Because of the recent royal turmoil, he had not traveled beyond his province for a long time. Such proximity to domestic politics clouded his judgement, he thought. Now that he had stepped away, everything stood in crisp clarity.

  4.

  The party was a week into the journey and their pace had slowed down considerably. In the absence of overhead vegetation or hills, they were exposed to the sun and to the heat. Although Kintu talked to his men, commenting on the weather and on the landscape, he kept counsel with his mind.

  Now the men’s laughter forced itself upon him. They no longer talked to those immediately around them as before, but as a group. It was a strategy to disregard the sun, to numb the ache in their heels and to maintain cheer. Kintu never took part in the morale-sustaining banter, partly because the men only ever discussed women and partly to maintain his distance.

  Kintu turned his mind to the men’s conversation. Gitta was the unfortunate subject. He had recently given Kiyirika Village the kind of gossip that sustained strenuous work because it did not die easily.

  “At Gitta’s age, a bride like Zaya would only hasten him to his grave,” a voice said.

  “But how was he to know that Zaya was a toddler? She was his height and had breasts on the wedding day.”

  “How was he to know? One, when he found out that his bride preferred children’s company; two, when she continued to grow. Zaya’s now head and shoulders above him.”

  “Zaya’s not a child. She’s one of those women who can’t bear the touch of a man.”

  “In that case, Gitta is stuck with a man.”

  “What do you mean ‘stuck with a man’? A woman’s a woman.”

  “He should have made her pregnant first thing.”

  “How could he? The girl’s a wrestler.”

  “Her family was negligent. Zaya wasn’t sufficiently prepared for marriage.”

  The men threw opinions over Kintu’s head like a bunch of women in a peeling barn. Kintu would have rather redirected the conversation but it had reinvigorated the pace. Gitta was a prominent elder. However, a very public error had felled him.

  “I blame Gitta’s eldest wife. When I bring home a girl like Zaya, I expect my eldest wife to take her on, groom her and let me know when she’s ready,” Nnondo the headman said.

  “Depends on the first wife you married.”

  “Do you know what Zaya told my daughter?”

  “What?”

  “That Gitta is rotten, that she keeps a knife under her bed in case he gets rotten with her.”

  “I still can’t make it out though. How did Gitta get his head stuck like that?”

  “Apparently,” a narrator started with relish, “this particular night, Gitta was to get his dowry’s worth. When he got to her quarters, Zaya started her childish games of: Leave me alone, I don’t want. Gitta gave her a few whacks to let her know that he was serious. Zaya stopped fighting. He made his move but Zaya went wild. She grabbed him—you know how huge she is now—swung him like a fibre doll and ran. Gitta, thinking he was still the bull he once was, gave chase. Zaya ran into the shrubbery behind her quarters, Gitta in pursuit. In the darkness, he ran into an acacia shrub. Somehow, the stems locked around his neck. When he pulled his head out, the stems tightened. Gitta panicked and roared.”

  “That wail, man. As if something was devouring him!”

  “If you got to the scene after Gitta was dislodged, count yourself lucky. But there I was with a man old enough to be my father, his neck trapped between stems like a sheep because he was chasing young sex. I put laughter on hold and got working. But it was not easy. The women kept asking: Why he was chasing her at this time of the night? All Gitta said was, Hurry, help me. I looked long at Gitta, gray all over but still craving young cunt. I thought, surely there must be a point at which a man can say enough is enough and hang up his manly eggs?”

  “My wife woke me up and said: Your friend nearly died. Which friend? I asked. The aged bull that grazes among calves, she said and I shut her up.”

  “What happens to Zaya now?”

  An awkward silence hovered.
r />   Zaya was now part of Kintu’s household, but the facts were not clear. Unfortunately, the men could not speculate in his presence. The prolonged silence and the absence of Kintu’s bland smile alerted the men that they had gone too far. The conversation died.

  Actually, when Nnakato learned that Zaya was fugitive in her garden, she had invited her into the home and asked Kintu to let her stay while her marriage was sorted out. Kintu dissuaded Gitta from returning Zaya to her parents, reasoning that she might be a slow developer needing the firm but gentle handling of a mother. On her part, Zaya swore to kill herself if she was returned to Gitta. Kintu left Zaya with Nnakato and Babirye to groom and asked Gitta to give her time. Then he told his teenage sons to treat Zaya as a sister, but with the respect for a married woman. His sons had laughed. Who wanted Gitta’s pugilistic bride, one who took strides like a hunter, whose feet grasped the earth like a man’s, whose voice, when she spoke, carried the whole house on top of her head and who, as if her mother never breastfed her properly, said that she had dreamed of becoming a warrior?

  As soon as she was let loose in Kintu’s household, Zaya forgot that she was married and a woman. She joined Kintu’s sons in laying traps to catch animals and shooting birds out of trees. Boys kept reminding her that she was female and should not climb trees.

  Kintu felt for Gitta. He knew the snare of being a man. Society heaped such expectations on manhood that in a bid to live up to them some men snapped.

  5.

  Just as the sun moved into the center of the sky to inflict its worst, o Lwera, a region of barren land came into view. For Kintu, o Lwera marked the beginning of uncertainty. The men greeted the sight of o Lwera with both excitement and dread. It was only the seventh day but they had covered a ten days’ journey and could now rest for the night. However, o Lwera was o Lwera. Even at this distance, a dirge, the hum of its heat, was audible. Waves of radiation danced in the air warning: You traverse these grounds at your own peril.

  Rather than stopping at this point for the night, Kintu decided that the party take on o Lwera for a short spell to give the men, especially those trekking for the first time, a sense of the moorland. There was a cave, not far away from where they were, where his father’s entourage used to camp. They would spend the night there. Kintu feared that spending the night outside o Lwera’s borders would enhance the men’s apprehension. Still, the pace fell as each man battled with private doubts about traveling through o Lwera.

  Kintu was a boy the first time he spent a night in o Lwera. He had traveled with his father. His father’s head-wife’s tyranny had led to the formation of cliques among the children in order to protect themselves. Kintu, an only child whose mother had died, had neither clique nor mother to protect him. Though his father later brought two other wives to the home to curb the woman’s tyranny, Kintu never fit in. This led to a close bond between him and his father. That night, as everyone slept, Kintu had slipped off his sleeping skin and sat at the mouth of the cave. In his young mind, o Lwera was the son who, because of an intrinsic evil, isolated himself from his siblings and severed all intercourse with the family. Even at night, o Lwera seemed to turn its back to the moon and stars. It stood sullen, spying, and scheming. The following day, when he asked how o Lwera came to be, his father had explained, “O Lwera was the shallows of Lake Nnalubaale. But one day the sun, the lusty fool, attempted to kiss the lake and it shrank. o Lwera was formed.”

  Now, Kintu looked into its expanse and sterility stared back. The few scraggy shrubs scattering the landscape were nettled. Small parched weeds crawled the ground laying nasty thorns. o Lwera was level, its soil gray, thin, and loose as if a fire had caused the desolation. The ground burst intermittently into tiny gray bump-like anthills. Even the cool breeze from the Nnalubaale that soothed Buganda avoided o Lwera.

  O Lwera played mind games. Its weapon was illusion. Distant objects seemed so tantalizingly close that gullible travelers set themselves impossible goals, often missing the right places to rest. Rookie travelers swore that when they lifted their feet o Lwera moved the ground so that they stepped back where they were before, that the sensation of walking but not advancing was frightening.

  Kintu looked at his son. Kalema had kept to himself since Baale returned home.

  “How are the feet, Kalema?”

  “Still good, Father.”

  “Do you think you can wrestle o Lwera?”

  “I am not frightened.”

  “Don’t push yourself. If you’re tired, we can take a rest.”

  “I am fine, Father.”

  Typical, Kintu thought. Kalema was at the threshold of manhood where the words ‘I am not sure’ did not exist. Shy hairs peered above his upper lip. His voice had dropped and his legs and arms had lost their childish flab. He was almost as tall as Kintu yet Ntwire, his biological father, was stocky. Kalema was born Kalemanzira but family tongues had reduced his name to the familiar and royal name of Kalema. At home, he was Kintu’s son but older residents knew that Kalema was the only child of Ntwire.

  One day, Ntwire had arrived in Kiyirika Village, distraught. In his arms was a shivering newborn, still covered in birth-blood. Between demonstrations and gestures, it became clear that Ntwire was a munnarwanda on his way to settle in the capital but his wife had died in childbirth. The residents took Ntwire to the governor. Nnakato, who had just given birth to Baale, offered to put Kalema on her breast. When Kalema grabbed it as if it were his own, Nnakato sat back in satisfaction: Baale had a twin. As a rule, a child in Kintu’s house was a child of the house. Talk of different ancestry was taboo because it led to self-consciousness and isolation. In a house where all Nnakato’s other children were twins, Kalema being Baale’s twin never raised interest.

  In appreciation, Ntwire pledged to lay down his life for Kintu. He would do any work for him. Ntwire took a piece of land that Kintu gave him, abandoned plans to carry on to the capital and started herding Kintu’s cattle. However, while Kalema blended into Kintu’s vast household, Ntwire hovered on the peripheries of the community. Unlike the Tutsis who found their way to the capital and who assumed Ganda names on arrival and married Ganda spouses, Ntwire stood aloof. Inside, he was torn between his needs as a lonely outsider who craved his son’s love on the one hand and, on the other, he wanted to let the world take his son where happiness was. Otherwise, Ntwire was content to note that in spite of Ganda food, language and mannerisms, Kalema had taken after his mother: tall, regal, and with the most comely face that a womb ever sculpted.

  When Ntwire found out that the governor was traveling to the capital again, he came to talk. He had decided that Kalema should find a job in the courts of the kabaka. Kintu was surprised that after all these years Ntwire still thought that working in the palace was a good opportunity. It was true that settlers from other tribes found jobs and sometimes favor in palaces. To some ba kabaka, surrounding themselves with people from different cultures was equivalent to traveling to these places. Mawanda used settlers as escorts to his envoys. Namugala employed them as spies. However, Kintu was uneasy. He knew the reality of the palaces, especially at such a time when a neophyte kabaka was still grappling for the security of his reign. In any case, there were many Tutsis in Kyadondo Province already. Despite this, Kintu understood Ntwire’s dilemma. While Kalema the child had enjoyed the life of a governor’s son, as a man, once Kintu’s protective hand lifted, he would plummet to reality. Ntwire’s refusal to take on a Ganda name and behave Ganda would always make Kalema a foreigner. Had Ntwire been a woman, mother and child would have been absorbed into the tribe as soon as a man made her his woman. Kalema would marry a Ganda girl: Kintu would give the children not only names, but his clan. However, Ntwire, the real father, was defiantly Tutsi and as long as he was alive, Kalema would be Tutsi in spite of his marriage and in spite of his name. Now Ntwire had chosen to send his son away. Kalema was on his way to the palace.

  Kintu decided that if Kyabaggu did not need Kalema, he would put him in cha
rge of the family estate on Lubaga Hill and let him carve out a future. Who knows? Kalema could become his eyes and ears in the palace. It would work out even better when Baale became governor. The two brothers would make a great team.

  When Kintu told Baale about Kalema’s departure, the boy was broken. Kalema seemed confused but he was a quiet lad who always did as he was told. Nnakato and Kintu had decided not to tell him the truth of his birth. If Ntwire wanted his son to know he would tell Kalema himself. But as far as they were concerned he was their son. All Kintu told Kalema was that he needed him to stay in Kyadondo to learn the ways of the ba kabaka court and that it would be useful to Kintu.

  Baale and Kalema’s parting was silent. Kintu had told Baale to return home several times. Each time, Baale had asked to go “just a little further.” Finally, Kintu raised his voice and ordered him back. Everyone else stopped. Baale stared at the sky. Kalema looked down, drawing lines on the ground with his big toe. The pain on both their faces was heartbreaking but Kintu held his stern look. Baale turned abruptly—without a word to Kalema or to his father, without waiting for his escort—and ran toward home. Kalema too started to walk without looking back. He did not talk to anyone for a long time.

  O Lwera’s heat hummed. Kintu removed the leopard skin and passed it to the men carrying his clothing. Kalema walked in front of him carrying Kintu’s drinking gourds. They were tied on a string, which Kalema had draped on his right shoulder. As he walked, they knocked each other noisily but he did not seem to be bothered.

  “Snails are licking my heels. Pacesetters stretch your strides!” Nnondo called from the back. Kintu took the string of calabashes off Kalema’s shoulders and carried it himself.

  “There, you’ll walk faster.”

  6.

  The party finally arrived at the chosen campsite. At its threshold, o Lwera offered a few oases. Luckily, this one was close to a cave. The men rested their loads on the ground. Those carrying jugs took them down to the spring where water flowed, while others searched the cave for snake eggs or animal cubs. Kalema put down the gourds and stretched.