3

The silence engulfing Tajirika’s home was deeper than that in the thickest bush in the darkest night. Gaclgua and Gacirü, their young ones, were in boarding school. Domestic workers were there during the day; husband and wife were left to their own devices at night. Tajirika often did not feel like going home early after work and would stop at a bar.

One evening he felt fed up with hard liquor, which did not always numb his loneliness, and decided to go to the Mars Cafe for a cup of coffee instead.

Since beating his wife, Tajirika felt better, but whenever the images of the dancing women came to his mind and he imagined the lifestyle in which Vinjinia had indulged during his incarceration, he would still feel a sudden resurgence of anger. Ironically, this resurgence and the intense focus on Vinjinia’s misdeeds served to deflect his mind from dwelling on what had happened to him during police custody. How could he dwell on the picture of himself with a bucket of shit dangling between his legs? It was not a pretty sight, even to himself, and dwelling on Vinjinia’s dirt made him feel purer.

The only memory that gave him enormous satisfaction was that of the Wizard of the Crow in police hands, for he took it that he was now safe from the sorcerer.

Tajirika knew nothing about the latest twist in the saga of the Wizard of the Crow, and he would not have believed it anyway were he told that the wizard was now in America at the behest of the Ruler. All he cared to know was that Sikiokuu had ordered the sorcerer to remove the magic spell he had cast on Tajirika and nullify all short-and long-term side effects.

He looked forward to the Ruler’s imminent return. Sikiokuu had assured him of getting back the chairmanship of Marching to Heaven with all powers, including those that Kaniürü had taken illegally. He truly had a new friend in Sikiokuu, and whenever memories of his old friendship with Machokali forced themselves on his mind, he would dismiss them very quickly. But sometimes they would not go away and he would actually pause to reflect on the situation and ask, What shall I do when Machokali returns?

Not that this was a question that would have made him lie sleepless at night. Tajirika prided himself on being flexible in everything to ensure his own survival. He moved with the world and not against the world. His relationship to his former friend and benefactor would depend on the relative strength of Machokali and Sikiokuu in the game of power. If Machokali should prove the stronger, then Tajirika would tell him everything he knew about what Sikiokuu had been cooking in Machokali’s absence. But if Sikiokuu proved himself the stronger, then Tajirika would continue on his side and forget the past. As he now crossed the street toward the Mars Cafe, the thoughts of how he would maneuver between the two giant rivals for the power behind the throne preoccupied his mind and he forgot the prospects of another lonely night at home.

He felt people pressing against him on one side but quickly dismissed this as one of the inconveniences of walking on crowded streets. Eldares is attracting too much riffraff from the rural areas, he said to himself, slightly irritated. But when he tried to push forward and he still felt the pressure, he looked about him only to see people in head masks with two menacing slits for the eyes. Even then he did not immediately associate this with himself. He had always read and heard about victims of kupigwa ngete. Was he about to become an eyewitness to that kind of daylight robbery?

But before he could figure out what was happening, he felt rather than saw himself being lifted and pushed inside the back of a waiting van, which then took off immediately. The whole thing occurred so quickly that none of the passersby noticed the activities around the van as anything unusual. Inside the dark van, Tajirika found himself firmly held by his left and right arms and seated between two of the captors. He tried to extricate himself from their grip but he could not even move his hips, so tightly did they hold him. His first reaction was that these were thieves.

“I don’t have much money on me. Where are you taking me?” he asked, but received no response.

He thought it best to keep quiet and wait for their arrival at wherever they were taking him, and once outside the van he would try to escape. But as soon as the van stopped, his captors blindfolded him, took him into a house, and pushed him into a chair. When now they removed the cloth and Tajirika found himself surrounded by masked persons, beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. Who are you? he asked again, his voice trembling.

They removed the masks. What! Women? He was shocked, deflated, and ashamed, all at the same time. He, a man, to be kidnapped by women? Then came contempt and defiance. There was no way nine women could hold him against his will, he thought and quickly dashed toward the door. It was locked.

“Go back to the chair and wait for the ceremony,” one of the women told him, but Tajirika did not heed her.

“Open this door or I will teach you to know a man when you see one,” he told them, kicking the door with his shoes.

Tajirika did not even know who touched him first or from what direction, but the next second he found himself lying flat on the floor with three women sitting on his back; one at the neck, another at the waist, and the other one at the feet.

“What is your name?” the one on his feet asked him.

Fury blocked his throat. How could he, a man, be wrestled to the ground by a bunch of women?

“You are being asked. What is your name?” the one who sat on his neck asked.

“Tajirika,” he said, from the side of his mouth, breathing heavily under the combined weight of the three women.

“And other names?” the one in the middle asked.

“Titus.”

“Just wanted to make sure that we did not pick up the wrong man.”

“Get off my back,” he hissed. “What do you want from me? A ransom?” he said as he tried to shake them off, to no avail.

“Let’s introduce ourselves. We are not killers. We are not robbers. We want you to count all the money in your possession because we do not want to ever hear you claim that anybody here has taken even a penny from you.”

“No need for that. I have one thousand Burls, and you can have them all.”

“We don’t need your Burls,” one of the women standing told him; the others laughed.

“What, then, do you want? Surely women don’t rape men?”

“See how his mind works?” one of them said. “Rape is entering another person’s body by force. It is violence, and if that’s what you want we can certainly …”

“No, no, I mean if it is sex you want, we can make a deal. Work out a routine, a time, and the order …”

“He does fancy himself a man,” another one said. “Nine women all to himself?”

“Who are you?”

“A new order of justice created by today’s modern woman. You are now appearing before a people’s court.”

“I refuse to recognize your authority,” Tajirika replied with a little bit more defiance.

“Don’t worry yourself. By dawn you will.”

“Get off my back,” he said again, annoyed with himself for sounding as if he was pleading.

“Not so fast. We want you to feel the full force of our weight.”

“What is this all about?”

“Justice. We are hawkeyed justice. We float in the air, our ears wide open to the cries of women. Now it has come to our ears that you beat your wife night and day”

Tajirika felt himself choking with anger. How dare these hussies interfere with his business?

“Listen to me. There is no power on earth that can tell me how to run my home.”

“That might very well be so, but man, woman, and child compose a home, and if one pillar is weak, the family is weak, and if the family is weak, the nation is weak. So what happens in a home is the business of the nation and the other way around.”

“I don’t need to be lectured. My wife is not our wife; she is mine.”

“You said, ‘my wife,’ but I did not hear you say, ‘my slave. “

“Listen. Tradition is on my side; it is the man who wears the pants in the house.”

“You talk of tradition. Remember that in the past husbands who ill treated their wives faced trials before a council of women.”

“Even the Bible says that woman is man’s rib,” Tajirika said.

“Why don’t we pluck out one of his ribs so that he can show us how a rib turned out to be a woman?” another one added.

Now a big woman wielding a shiny machete emerged from another room. “Why do you let this man give you so much trouble? Let me show you how it’s done. Take his pants off. Let us cut off his penis.”

The woman looked and sounded so serious that Tajirika felt he was about to piss on himself as he let out a single involuntary groan. Suppose these women were actually crazy? Possessed of female daemons intent on destroying man? It was much safer for him to go along with their so-called court proceeding. He would keep them busy while figuring out how to escape.

“Please get off my back; let us talk. There is no court of law that decides cases solely on the basis of a plaintiff’s story, and especially one who is not even present.”

“Let’s give him a chance to defend himself.”

They allowed him to take his seat again but warned him not to show contempt, or else …

“Listen to me,” he said in a disingenuous respectful tone. “I don’t know who you are. And I don’t even know who has accused me of wife beating. Vinjinia and I are one of the happiest couples in the world. I don’t believe in domestic violence. Ours is a Christian home, and we belong to the middle class. Wife beating is for the poor pagans, you know, people without any understanding of what it means to be modern. I suspect that all this talk of my wife beating and whatnot may have come about when some neighbors saw my wife with a swollen face and a few scratches sustained when she slipped and fell on the cement floor. You are women, and you know how clumsy your kind can be sometimes. I really despise neighbors who have nothing better to do than poke their noses into other people’s affairs.”

“There are only two people who know what happened. You and your wife. You say she is clumsy and she fell on the cement floor. So we are now asking you: do you want us to summon her here?”

Tajirika was taken aback. This was the last thing he expected, the summons of his wife. But he believed that Vinjinia would never say anything untoward about their domestic affairs to perfect strangers. The Vinjinia he knew was the key to his freedom, and he was sure that she would stand by her man.

“Yes, call her,” he said with braggadocio.

“Give us directions and describe her to us,” one of the women said, to indicate that they were not in league with Vinjinia. “We know only about you.”

After an hour or so Vinjinia was in the room. The women seated her opposite her husband. One of the women chaired the council. The others were the jury. Vinjinia had covered her head with a shawl. Her eyes showed fear, and she did not look at her husband directly. Tajirika gave her a stern look, which he tried to hide with a false smile.

“Tell them the truth that I did not touch you,” Tajirika hastened to say before the chairperson could utter a word. “Is it not a fact that your swollen face resulted from your falling on the cement floor?”

The judge told her to speak her truth as she knew it. The silence in the room was riveting. Vinjinia glanced at Tajirika, at the women, and then looked away.

“I fell on the cement floor,” she said, in a barely audible voice.

The women looked stunned. Tajirika made no attempt to hide his triumph.

“You have heard for yourselves,” he crowed, openly arrogant.

“There is nothing more to say about this sad affair,” the judge said.

Tajirika wished he had the means to wreak instant vengeance on these women. At the door he put his arms around his wife and whispered: “You did well. Anything else and the last beating would have paled in comparison with the one I would have given you tonight.”

Vinjinia trembled. He simply had gone too far. If he could threaten her just outside the hearing of these women, what was he not capable of at home? If she was going to die, at least let there be witnesses. She quickly disengaged herself from him and turned around.

“I am sorry” she said, directing her remarks to the judge. “I have lied to you, and lied to myself while lying for my husband. This man rains fists on me whenever it suits his temper. If he has a disagreement with others in his workplace or in a bar, he takes it out on me. The heart of my husband is as hard as a concrete floor.”

Tajirika lost it before the woman who had just betrayed his manhood. He jumped on her and was going to beat her yet again, but the women were too quick for him. They restrained him before he landed a blow. But even as they dragged him away from his wife, Tajirika continued wagging his finger at her.

“You wait till I get you home! Just you wait!” he shouted at her, throwing caution to the wind.

“But who told you that you are going home?” the machete-wielding woman said as she rushed toward him, waving the machete in the air menacingly. Tajirika jumped back a step, convinced that these women were prepared to kill him if he gave them the slightest cause.

The judge told them to sit down, which they all did, including Tajirika, who was inwardly grateful to the judge for keeping the machete woman at bay.

“You,” the judge said, pointing at Tajirika. Your own actions before our very eyes confirm what we’ve heard. But this court will not condemn you without giving you a chance to defend yourself. Why did you beat your wife?”

“Don’t call her my wife,” Tajirika said, panting with frustration at his inability to teach his wife a lesson. “This woman is a hypocrite. When the police detained me recently, she seized the opportunity to hire dancing prostitutes and gangsters to entertain her.”

Vinjinia, who had not the slightest clue what Tajirika was talking about, shook her head in disbelief. But the mention of dancing women made her recall the women who had forced the government to admit that it was holding Tajirika.

“Who lied to you that I did nothing about your arrest? That I was partying with women dancers? Some people are truly incapable of gratitude. When the police arrested me a while ago, this man did nothing. I even came across a press statement in which he was going to denounce me. But when he was arrested and held in secrecy, there was no police precinct, hospital, or newspaper office I did not set foot in to find out what his so-called friends had done to him. But when he came out of his tomb, instead of asking me how it was at home when he was away, he went about sniffing for gossip, and whatever his drunken friends told him he took as the gospel truth and sound basis for killing blows.”

“The woman has asked you a question,” the judge said, turning to Tajirika. Who made allegations against her? Tell us so that we may fetch him and bring him here to testify.”

Tajirika remembered that Sikiokuu had forbidden him to talk about the photographs or the dancing women because of ongoing security investigations. He did not respond.

“Do you have anything else that you want to tell this council?” the judge asked Vinjinia.

“I just want to say before you all that I will not accept blows on my body anymore.”

“Stop lying, woman. I have never touched you with these hands the way a real man should,” Tajirika shouted, standing up and clenching his fists.

The women pushed him back to his seat.

“Your actions before our very eyes testify against you,” the judge told Tajirika. “We have enough evidence for the jury to issue a just verdict. Vinjinia will be taken back to her place,” the judge said with a tone of finality.

As he saw Vinjinia being escorted out of the room, Tajirika felt like crying out to Vinjinia: Please don’t leave me here with these crazy women! But he did not. How could he, a man, call on his wife, a woman, to save him from other women?

The judge fixed her eyes on Tajirika.

“You are sentenced to receive as many blows as you rained on your wife.”

“But if you ever appear before us again, you will not leave here with your penis dangling between your legs,” said the woman with the machete as she did a little war jig while brandishing her weapon. Even as the women pummeled him, his eyes were focused on the machete. His pain was dull; his stare was blank.