Prologue

There is no dawn in Dacca House.

The new day arrives abruptly, unheralded, with a violence like that of a
small earthquake, a sudden explosion that lasts all day.
The tenants are all inveterate early risers. Most of them rise, almost before
they have slept, in a vain attempt to beat the rush for the one cold shower in the
block. A good number wake up to finish trivial do-it-yourself projects
repairing broken doors and furniture, mending holed pots and pans or cleaning
their rooms and their clothes. The others, the numerous faceless ones, turn their
radios on full blast and go resolutely back to sleep until the queue outside the
shower room has dwindled sufficiently to allow for a quick shower.
Thus long before the rest of Grogan Road starts stirring from sleep, Dacca
House is fully engaged in the helpless process of existing frying pans locked
horns with the perpetual odour issuing with an almost audible hiss from the
overflowing garbage cans and the toilet out in the yard.
It was Magendo Ka

One
The Bathroom Mans child was wailing his lungs sick when Dusman
Gonzaga woke up.
In a malicious conspiracy with the world, the gods had burdened the
impoverished mechanic with a mentally-handicapped offspring. The child could
not talk, walk or play, and, even though the eyes were always open and moving
in an apparent determined attempt to understand, it was doubtful if anything
ever registered in its soft brain. Apart from swallowing and voiding, the only
other bodily function it was capable was crying. And when the Bathroom Mans
freak exercised his lungs, everything stopped to listen. It was a sound from out
of this earth, a dusty, strangled screech from Hades. Whether the child screamed
from hunger, a malignant illness or just a painful stirring in his dead brains in an
effort to communicate, only the despairing mother could tell. But, like her
husband, she was shy and withdrawn and did not talk to the neighbours any
more.
Dusman Gonzaga suspected the Bathroom Mans child howled to keep up
with the tradition of Dacca House by raising hell like everybody else.
Toto whistled into the room from the cold shower outside and slammed the
door shut. No matter how late he slept, Gonzagas roommate woke up with a
charged, ready-to-go attitude that infuriated him. He was medium tall, a lean
and energetic young man. He got up singing and shadow-boxing every morning
and kept it up until he remembered that he hated his job. Then he dressed
quickly and rushed to go to work. He now sang a familiar but meaningless,
tuneless song as he dressed.
If you must sing so early in the morning, Dusman Gonzaga complained
every morning , why dont you sing something meaningful?
Like? Toto would ask cheerfully.
Like a hymn.
Dont know any.
Try a national anthem.
Dont know any.
Then shut up so I can think.
What do you want to think so early in the morning?
What the hell am I doing in a dump like this?
You are living, man. Living in it.

On normal days the conversation would end there. But this, as Dusman
Gonzaga was to find out a little later, was not a normal day.
I am famished, Toto told him. Slowly starving to death.
I am dead, Dusman Gonzaga mourned, turning over in his bed. Starved
to an early grave. Jesus my head.
His head covered, he listened to Toto walk around the room, singing the
aggravating, incoherent song.
What is for breakfast? he asked.
No paraffin today, Toto said.
I thought so, he said and rising on one elbow, he peeped through the rents
in the curtain into the yard outside.
It was a bright and sunny August morning. No good excuse for him to miss
work this Saturday, but, sometime during the night he had made up his mind to
do so. He was sick and tired of reading parking meters. They would have to put
him back to his water meters. It was getting so he could no longer stand the
sight of a parking meter. They haunted his every dream. He dreamt about them,
against them, and their numbers. Hundreds of thousands of numbers. He had the
craziest dreams. Cockroaches danced and pranced I the dark empty holes in his
mind, danced and laughed at him. Then, in front of his unbelieving eyes, they
mated with horny fireflies and giant wasps with long burning spears sticking out
of their anuses.
Dusman Gonzaga had dreamed some fantastic dreams the night before.
Apart from dancing with all the women in Dacca House, including the wife of
the Bathroom Man, he had become a parking meter magnate. He had installed
miniature meters on the dirty kitchen table for the roaches that came in hordes
to forage for crumbs. He had invented special ones with split-second electronic
timing devices for the mice and rats out by the garbage cans. They too had to
pay parking fees to grab a piece of ugali and run. The inventions had made
Dusman a rich and famous man. In a stroke of inspired genius he had fashioned
light-weight portable parking meters for the restless souls who daily hung
around outside the music stores on Hasrat Road. All the City Council had to do
was carry the devices around and install them in front of the loitering party. If
the vagrant paid up, he could loiter for a time: otherwise scram.
You are not working today? Toto asked, busy dressing.
Dusman shook his head. He was going to try again to get an audience with
the Meters Superintendent. They had to give him the transfer before he went out
of his mind.
Got some money? he asked.
3

Toto nodded.
Like to lend me a pound?
Not particularly.
Make it two.
You owe me five, Dusman, Toto said. Take two from that and give me
my change.
Toto switched on the radio. It was permanently tuned to the Breakfast
Club so that all he had to do in the morning was to flick a tiny switch to receive
an instant breakfast of cereal commercials. Now the radio drowned most of the
noise from outside and added an unpleasant little growl of its own.
so whats happening? Dusman said. You used to get broke like everyone
else.
Are you jealous or complaining?
I dont know anymore, he said. I am going nuts.
Toto peeked at his image in a jagged piece of broken mirror. His lean
youthful features disguised his thirty years of age so effectively that most casual
acquaintances were left with the impression of an athletic teenager. On this
Saturday morning, he did not feel too well, on account of a hard Friday nights
drinking, but in the broken mirror he looked perfect. He brushed his hair from
the lapel of his sports coat.
Got a date with an angel, he sang, slapping two pounds on the table for
Dusman. When do you plan to start repaying me?
Soon. Got a cigarette?
Toto tossed him one on the bed. Dusman caught it in his hand but it slipped
through his fingers and fell on the dusty floor. He had a much bigger frame than
Toto, sparingly packed with flesh so that it gave him the appearance of a slowwitted and clumsy oaf. He did not feel good and he looked worse. He had sacks
full of exhaustion under his eyelids and the corners of his full-lipped mouth
were deeply lined with fatigue.
Give us some fire, he said.
Do you ever have anything? asked his roommate, tossing him a long and
slim silver-plated gas lighter.
He examined it carefully, turning the lighter over and over in his huge
palms, before lighting the cigarette. No, he thought, I never seem to have
anything.
Where did you steal this one?
I thought you were paid peanuts like the rest of us, he said, giving it back.
4

Coconuts maybe, Toto told him. I paid nothing for this one. I got it from
a friend.
Dusman stretched and yawned hungrily. No more drinking on an empty
stomach. Never again.
Before you go, he said. How about a couple more cigarettes to help me
make through the morning?
Toto threw him the whole packet.
Whatever you do, remember to buy some paraffin, he said.
The he went out and banged the door shut. Their life together was lived
with the ease and informality of a mens barracks. Each lived his own life and
apart from the occasional beer together, the only obligation they had to one
another was the rent they jointly owed Tumbo Kubwa.
Dusman lay back and watched a roach make a record cross-ceiling dash
into a crack on the opposite grey wall. The room was dustier and stuffier than
ever. The disc jockey on Breakfast Club tortured his hopeless voice in a vain
attempt to impersonate some obscure black American brother.
The door burs open, startling Dusman as Toto staggered in breathless.
The car, he gasped.
What car? Dusman sat bolt upright.
Your car, Toto said, painting. It is come and see.
Gonzaga jumped into his trousers, snatched a shirt and charged after Toto,
but when he stepped on the cold cement floor of the yard, he rushed back for a
pair of slippers. Then he followed down the stairs, buttoning up his trousers and
shirt. They arrived on the Grogan Road together. The car was still there.
Standing side by side in the dusty battery smell of the garages, trying to get used
to the suns glare, Dusman could see nothing wrong with his old car, except that
it sat a little too low on the ground for this time of the morning. He turned to his
roommate for an explanation.
Some bastards took the wheels, Toto said quietly in his high-pitched
voice.
Dusman had to look again to believe it. All the wheels had been taken and
the car was propped up on four stone blocks. He leaned on the car and banged
his fist on the roof in anger. The helplessness of the situation choked him with
despair so that he could not talk. Toto looked from him to the car and shrugged.
You dont suppose they took anything else doyou? he asked.
The thieving Gorogan Road sons of monkeys had got him at last. He could
feel it through his bones. His car was never going anywhere again, ever. For the
5

past six months she had lain there in the street, hanging uncertainly between the
road and the junk yard, as he toiled reading millions of odious meters and
saving for her. Now it was all over, her glorious days forever gone. There was
no conceivable way he could gather together enough money to buy her a whole
set of wheels.
Dusman Gonzaga had bought the old Triumph Herald from the same white
man who had fired him from Sunshine Hotel. For only four thousand shillings,
she was a bargain in spite of having rotten suspension and worn out seats which
had cost him another two thousand shillings to put right. She had run cheaply
and trouble-free for two years, until he was dismissed from the hotel
employment. Then, in protest, almost, the car had gone into an unreasonable
sulk, become suddenly temperamental and unreliable. She broke down after
every hundred metres and lost strange pieces of her vital mechanics, small bits
that cost so much Dusman just could not afford to replace them.
In his staunch determination to keep her on the road, he had devotedly
taken the car to the open-air garage on the Grogan Road and had had the
Bathroom Man patch her up the best he could with wires and spare strings.
Though retiring and demure in Dacca House, the Bathroom Man was a wizard
with broken-hearted motor vehicles. While Dusman stood by, to make sure he
did not steal some parts from the car, the mechanic hammered bent rods back
into shape and replaced missing bolts with rusty steel nails. The car coughed
painfully and rattled along for a few more weeks while Dusman tried
desperately to unload her on a workmate at his new place of work in City Hall.
But in her resolve to frustrate him, the car had broken both the king pin and the
carburettor just after the deal had been clinched and a day set for the test drive.
For six months she had lain outside Dacca House, accumulating dust and
trash around her while the red enamel paint peeled off through the mercilessly
hot and dry months. There were no second hand parts for Triumph Heralds
anywhere. At the open-air garages, where stolen parts changed cars for a song,
the mechanics could not remember when they had last worked on any Herald
but Dusmans. They had all been carted away to be converted into braziers,
drums, and water basins. There are no parts for such old junk, they told him.
Give us an order for a Peugeot or Mercedes and you got a deal, mister. If they
did not have the parts already hidden in the bush by the river behind, they would
borrow them from another customers car.
Dusman had clung stubbornly to his car. He believed in her. She was his
whole past, the only past he remembered without regret. She reflected the
respectable side of his lifes achievements. What Dacca House took out of his
personality, the car gave back. Even as she lay immobile on the street below, she
gave him pride as the only member of Dacca House who owned a car. But most
of all she was his ticket out of Dacca House. As long as she was there he knew
6

he would one day leave. He had come to Dacca House in the old Triumph, and
that was the way he would leave. To give her up would be like selling not only
his past, but the promise of a better future as well.
All these things Dusman remembered as he watched, speechless, the car
that had been so unfairly mutilated during the past night.
Around them Grogan Road lived on. Throngs of people bustled by on their
endless missions; parked cars collected hard course dust and leaked oil, petrol
and water. Stale, greasy dust stirred up by passing trucks cascaded into red
sleepy eyes. A wheelless car was nothing new on Grogan Road.
Toto finished his inspection tour. Everything else on the car seemed in
order. The doors had not been forced and the windows were intact.
You are a lucky man, he said finally. They could have taken the
windscreens, the seats, the battery. Hell, they didnt even steal the headlights.
You should thank your stars.
Dusman Gonzaga could not see anything lucky about having had only
some of his property stolen. He rubbed his tired eyes. Scratched his hair and
said nothing.
They probably realised they could not pawn the rest of the scrap, Toto
went on. Then after a while he asked, Arent you going to say anything?
Like what?
Like, he waved toward the car. Damn it, say anything, curse, swear, cry
out loud. She is you bloody car, isnt she? And they have just stolen the
goddamned wheels. Havent they? Man, you have no car any more, dont you
understand? No car.
The conspiracy is complete, Dusman thought. The same persons
bewitching him with disappearing parking meters were resorting to more
tyrannical methods in their continuing efforts to drive him insane. They would
probably return the wheels the following morning and push him over the wall
completely.
Ask me, Toto told him, ask me if I know anyone who would like to buy
wheelless old jalopy.
Do you? he asked.
No, said Toto with his voice full of venom. Dusman shrugged, his wide
and vacant eyes flitting up and down the street. No need to be so harsh, he
thought. He just could not seem to think fast enough this morning. N o good
drinking on an empty stomach.
I wanted to get it through your thick skull, Dusman, Toto told him
fiercely. She is finished. You should have sold when I suggested. You are
7

completely ruined now, she will never move again. She has still got a burst king
pin and carburettor and isnt even good enough for a junkyard. All you own now
is a wheelless old hunk of metal. He shifted his legs, his voice falling back to
normal. You are a blockhead, Dusman!
Dont fret, Dusman said, forcing a smile. I wont ask for help.
Good, Toto said. And dont let anyone know this is your scrap either.
They will fine you for littering the street and charge you for its disposal.
Dusman looked about him, the smile still clinging to his red, hangover
eyes. He would never drink on an empty stomach again.
That delivery truck has been there for years, he pointed out to Toto. And
the two cars behind it. Never seen anyone bitching over their having been
dumped here permanently.
That is only because they cant find the Indians who owned them, Toto
said. And the City Council does not do anything for nothing.
They wont find me either, Dusman told him.
Where do you think you will run to?
Back to bed.
Well, arent you even going to the Police?
What for?
To report the theft?
What for? How could they ever find two pairs of old wheels on Grogan
Road.
You are crazy, was all Toto could think to say next.
There followed a quiet, hopeless lull, while Dusman wracked his brains for
something witty or funny to say to cover up his apathy.
You are late for work, he said finally.
Damn it, Toto cried, looking at his watch.
He darted up the street , dodging with impressive expertise through the
gangs of mechanics and spanner boys waiting for the garages to open.
Dusmans catatonic gaze wandered from the receding man back to the car.
He just did not know what to think except that, as his roommate had tried to tell
him, he was finished. There was no other way of putting it.
A mechanic in oily dark blue overalls leaned on closed garage doors
nearby and watched Dusman indifferently, while his head churned with a
turbulent hangover. His body craved a cigarette to sooth his raw nerves but his
pockets were empty.
8

Dusman noticed him firs. He sidled casually over, trying to look natural
and relaxed. They watched each other apprehensively for a few seconds. The
mechanic spoke first.
You got your shirt inside out, he said in a slow, tired baritone that said he
knew it was none of his business, and spat into the dust.
Dusman peeled off his shirt and reversed it.
I dressed in a hurry, he explained. How much would you sell the red car
for?
Got a fag on you? the mechanic asked.
Dusman shook his head and repeated the question.
What car? the big mechanic said, looking through the Triumph.
The red one.
The junk without wheels?
Yes.
Its not mine. My head is murdering me. You sure you havent got a
smoke?
Absolutely. Supposing she were yours?
Who?
The car.
What the red one?
Yes.
The man glanced from his strange interrogator to the crippled car and back.
He shrugged, rubbed his thick oily hands together and spat again. Hangovers
made him want to spit all the time. When he shook his head, it rattled like an oil
can full of gravel and broken glass.
Goddamned my head, he moaned, slamming one hammer fist into the
palm of his other hand.
you will recover, Dusman said sympathetically. I got one too.
You do? He sounded almost thankful for meeting another fellow sufferer.
Dusman nodded.
Good, the mechanic said. You know how I feel. Why did they invent
hangover! Hell, I hate to get under a car with a hangover.
Do you think you could make that one move? Dusman asked him.

I can make any car in this city move, he said. In all my life I have never
gone under a car that afterwards refused to go. Yes, I can make that rattlebag
move, but first it has to have wheels, see?
Dusman nodded. Whichever way he looked at it, the whole story started
and ended with the wheels. Wheels, wheels, wheels.
I see, he said. Supposing you were selling her, how much would you
ask?
For that load of scrap, the man looked up at the car. Why should anyone
in his right mind want to buy such a misery?
That is what I thought, Dusman said bitterly.
Unless maybe for spares, the big mechanic said quietly. But that
perishing machine is at least how old would you say? Thirty years? With
anything that old you never can tell. Could be just a hollow shell, you know.
Dusman nodded absently. Toto had been right all along. He should have
sold years ago. Come to think, it had not grown to be such a good bargain after
all.
You want to first make sure all the parts you want are there, the mechanic
rumbled on. King pins, carburettor a whole lot of stuff. But if you are
seriously considering buying the scrap, he shrugged, I could maybe arrange a
deal for you with the owner. He is a friend of mine.
I dont want to buy, Dusman said. I am trying to sell.
You? a strange somewhat benign smile broke out on the big face. You
mean
I wish I could deny it. Yes, it is mine.
I am sorry.
It is all right.
I am sorry, you know what I mean?
Dusman nodded quietly. It was only natural for a Grogan Road mechanic
to want to sell something that didnt belong to him.
The man scratched his tough greasy hair. His eyes wandered aimlessly to
Dusmans feet.
You got your slippers on the wrong feet too, he said, sitting down on the
steps outside the closed door.
Dusman was wearing one of Totos blue slippers and one of his red ones
on the wrong feet. He changed them around.
You sure havent got ten cents for a fag? the mechanic asked.
10

Absolutely certain. Now about the car

Such things are almost impossible to flog, the man interrupted. But for a
small commission, maybe I can find you a buyer. She would have to move,
though. No one in his right mind buys a stationary car.
Dusman nodded consent.
They got to see her in motion, the mechanic went on. A car is like a
woman, you know. You cant tell what stuff she is made of until you take her a
couple of laps round the block. She could be bitchy as hell and look like an
angel. You never can tell by just looking at her. What did you do with the
wheels?
I forgot to lock them up in the boot, Dusman answered.
I have known a guy do the same sort of thing before, the man continued.
He had to raise some cash in a jiffy but rather than part with the whole car he
pawned the tyres. When he recovered he bought another set of second hand
tyres. Rather smart, dont you think?
Thats quite clever, Dusman agreed.
Some people have all the akili, the other added.
But it makes it harder trading the damned car after you pawn the rollers
first.
He dropped his big round head into his meaty hands and cursed beer.
I did not sell the wheels, Dusman told him quietly.
What happened?
You stole them.
The mechanic stumbled on his thoughts and looked up, the hurt in his head
radiating out of his bloodshot eyes.
I dont mean you, Dusman corrected instantly. I mean all of I mean
one of you.
Still that was not good enough for the mechanic, whose eyes now oozed
pure murder. He shot to his gigantic feet, his neck muscles dancing nervously,
the bulging arms swinging like a gorillas while his mouth emitted a growl like
a mad dogs.
Dusman did not try to explain any further but instead beat it fast up the
trash-strewn stairs. Thats me, he thought as he panted out on the yard. Make
friends by the dozen and lose them by the score. All he had to do was open his
mouth and they were gone. He had been outrageously unfair to the mechanic
with a hangover. Grogan Road mechanics are allergic to any word that implies
the taking of other peoples things, because that is what they do all day long.
11

Someone somewhere in Grogan Road knew exactly who had his wheels and
what price they marked on them.
He flopped onto the bed and closed his eyes. The tin-smith inside his skull
was back at work. The garage below opened up, the noise quickly accelerating
to a reverberating peak as the mechanics also set to work.
The unmade bed was uncomfortable to Dusmans back. He got up to make
it and flushed a couple of mating roaches from under the pillow. Dacca House
cockroaches did everything except get out and go away for good. They ate raw
food, drank three days old milk, slept in his reeking shoes and now this tailwaggling dance in his bed. He would not be surprised at all if he found them
smoking his cigarettes.
Dusman Gonzaga lit one for himself.
Outside the hot and stuffy room, clothes danced on the squeaking
washline, flies buzzed freely in and out of the window and the lavatory stank.
He was now convinced he would never get used to it. When he first moved into
Dacca House he thought just a week or two and it will get better. Instead it
had got worse as the tenants continued to eat and defecate. The bowl was piled
high with dung that wouldnt move on and make room for more, while the
residents continued to churn out manure like a fertilizer factory. The smell that
invaded the rooms could kill any malnourished human being. The Bathroom
Man had disconnected the old and rusty cistern to avoid neighbours unwittingly
flushing the toilet and flooding the floor with the broth which would inevitably
overflow and form a pool at his doorstep.
Before going up to City Hall to tackle the Meters Superintendent about the
long overdue transfer, Dusman had an important letter to write to the Sunshine
Hotel Limited to remind them they still owed him his court awards for wrongful
and unlawful dismissal. They had fired him from his post of room attendant
after he was charged with locking a cleaning woman in a closet, during working
hours. She had actually led him into it, but when she yodelled and attracted the
audience, she became too terrified of the white manager to speak the truth and
had ended up implying he had forced her. The manager, Mr Whitehead, became
abusive and Dusman lost his temper. He socked the manager, lost his job and
landed himself in a police cell.
However, when the woman learned later in court that Dusman faced
imprisonment and strokes of the cane if convicted of indecent assault, she
changed her evidence and got him off. He stayed fired though, because the
management would not accept him back, especially since the manager himself
had his eye on that particular woman. He was not at all mournful at the loss of
the job. He had just about had his fill of the crooked hotel industry. They would
not listen to the workers complaints which Dusman, as the spokesman, handed
12

to them every week, and for which they had single-mindedly denied him the
post of supervisor which had been vacant for a long time.
The Sunshine Hotels letter took most of the morning to compose. He tried
desperately to be firm and polite but he detested them too much to keep the
venom out of his tone. All the time, Sukuma Wikis children chattered away
outside as they searched for rats in the trash cans. They were growing to be
quite devoted rat-killers.
Dusman dressed quickly and tidied up. He fished out the two pounds from
the debris on the table and stuffed them into his pocket. Down the stairs once
more he stopped to gaze at his crippled car thoughtfully. Like Toto had said, he
was finished. He should have sold it when Toto had advised him to. Somehow
he had failed to realize the inevitable disaster that threatened any vehicle that
hung around Grogan Road a second longer than necessary. The road was
cluttered with machines that had met the same disgraceful end. They had been
stripped of their lamps, doors and seats, wing mirrors, wheels and anything
easily detachable. Later models had lost their engines and gear boxes as well. A
whole range of charcoal braziers in use all over the city had been carved out of
Grogan Road material. All along the greasy, dusty road the numerous spare
stores were doing a brisk business and not even half of them sold honestly
acquired parts. Dusmans tyres were at that precise minute going at throwaway
prices together with a lot of other stolen parts.
He kicked an empty oil can under a stationary pick-up van, startling the
mechanic who hated crawling under cars with a killing hangover. He stuck his
head out from under the sick car, saw who it was and asked him to go rumba
with his grandmother. Dusman ignored him completely and walked on. He was
winded by the time he climbed into River Road. There were people everywhere,
people he had met on the same street before, doing the same thing. They never
shopped, just passed the day going up and down the opposite sides of the street.
With no work to go to, and no home to sleep late in, their lives were lived
relentlessly pacing the endless River Road and clustering outside record shops
to listen to the ear-bursting music played to attract customers.
A line of pathetic, perplexed patrons waited outside Dr Patel K. Patels flu
surgery. If he would do away with his old-fashioned interviews and simply
shoot the men full of dope, the good old doctor would probably process his
patients much faster. But he still asked what the trouble was, even though only
one detestable complication brought the men repentantly to his doorsteps. But
unlike most of his colleagues in the medical profession, he did things by the
book. He was still the best, the most popular medicine man in town. No one
ever ran away from him, once they had met him. Dusman remembered clearly
the pockmarked grey-haired head, the calloused cold hands and the two months
he had spent so doped he did not know whether to live or die.
13

The beggar was there in the usual corner. The way the body was mangled it
was difficult to tell its sex. It sat at the corner where Raeta Road poured its load
of human filth into River Road, always there from sunrise to sunset, body
crouched against the wall of the building, legs drawn up to avoid getting
trampled by busy hurrying feed, and the eyes set blindly on the crowded street.
Every not and then the head moved slightly, first up, then down the street, and,
unimpressed, settled back on the drawn knees to stare once more unseeingly
across the intersection. Always there, bundled under the ragged blanket, as still
as the black burnt-out stump of a felled log. There every day from dawn to dusk,
one crushed hand thrusting out a rusty tobacco tin in which lay two equally
rusty coins. The hand was flung inflexibly and stubbornly out at the indifferent
world, like a vain black scarecrow whom the crows had long got used to and
ceased to take heed of, but the world milled by, too bewildered by the
mechanics of mere existence to notice the broken body that once brushed
shoulders with them in the common rat-race.
Dusman occasionally dropped coins into the beaten-up tobacco tin, but
there were never more than two coins when he came back by. His balance
shifting money disappeared, leaving the same two embarrassingly rusty coins.
He dashed across Moi Avenue, narrowly missing getting caught under the
wheels of a monstrous delivery truck. The driver called him a madman with a
death wish. Dusman advised him to go get a parking meter and abuse himself
with it. Passersby spat in disgust. He hoped they enjoyed meeting upright,
stinking vermin.
Outside Prakash House, a khaki-clad old guard paraded a brand new
helmet and club the size of an axe handle. There are scores like him all over
town and they are worse than their bosses. No one can possibly get past them
unless they have an executive bearing, arrive in a large car or are expensively
dressed. The sleepy-eyed guards have a sharp sixth sense that is strictly tuned to
job seekers. They can smell them a street away and they despise them.
Dusman stopped to buy cigarettes at the tiny sweets-stall on the corner.
The hungry-eyed beggar must have seen him get the change. He related to
Dusman how he had not eaten for days, and how great misfortune had
inexplicably swooped on his household. Dusman was about to give him a
shilling but then thought better of it. He had worked it out mathematically. If
everyone in the city gave the same beggar a shilling each week, the man would
be a millionaire in a month; and that was bad for the economy. It would
encourage idlers and vagrants. Everyone would flock to the streets to make their
fortunes and the honest beggars, like all honest businessman, would soon be out
of business. There was nothing the matter with the beggar who now confronted
Dusman. He had simply grown old, lazy and self-disrespecting. He looked
14

depressed than before, and stated quite frankly that the money was not enough
for tea.
How much is a cup of tea? Dusman asked him
Some places its one shilling, he said. Others it is fifty cents.
I cant afford fifty cents, Dusman told him.
There is some for twenty cents too, the old geezer said and hobbled
closer.
The man was a thoroughgoing pest. He was every inch a human virus.
Dusman handed him another ten cents and tried to take off.
What about the bread? the man wailed.
What bread?
To go with the tea you just bought me.
I am not your father.
I know but
Get someone else to pay for it, he told the beggar seriously, shaking him
off. Who the hell do you think I am? A walking charity house?
Once you soften, beggars cling to you like death. If you stop to listen to
what calamities they have been exposed to they become more than ever
determined to rip you off. Dusman never seemed to learn. A shoeshine boy
glared at him with eyes burning with contempt. By giving in to beggars, he was
tilting the financial platform unfavourably. He was making beggars wealthier
than shoeshine boys who do an honest days work cleaning dirt off other
peoples shoes.
There are honestly needy beggars, and there are money makers. Sometimes
it is impossible to tell a genuinely crippled and helpless beggar from the
professional with one closed eye and an expertly twisted limb. The
professionals are to be found in bars along River Road after work. They drink
late into the night like everyone else, and, after being ejected at closing time,
vanish into the dark back alleys to reappear on duty in the main streets in the
morning.
During one of his fantastic trips, Dusman had dreamed up parking meters
for beggars too. They were the same design as the ones he had invented for
cockroaches and vagrants but cheaper. Anyone who could not afford to pay to
exhibit his misery in the busy streets would have to stay at home. This would
drastically reduce the numbers of creepers and crawlers who roamed the streets
in packs like marauding hyenas. They crawled under Dusmans skin, making
him want to scratch violently.
15

The City Hall elevators were out of order again and he had to climb the
four floors to the Water and Sewerage Department. He had climbed those same
stairs so many times before, going up to see the same man for the same reason.
On every floor there were same familiar signs, Warning: slippery floor.
Wherever he turned, there was another warning or a commanding arrow.
Private. No entry. This way to the Accounts Office, that way to the Complaints
Department, Mens toilets, Stores, this way to hell. And on the doors of the dead
elevators was one sign that said simply Out of order. Climb!
He stopped on the third floor landing to get back his breath. At thirty-five,
he felt old and worn. An old man of thirty five, thoroughly worn, like the soles
of a man with only one pair of shoes to his name. Dusman had two pairs of
shoes to his credit but one pair lay out of order at home, with holes through
the soles. They say battered and discouraged under the bed, the usual collecting
place for dust, cockroaches and other detestable city vermin. Still unmarried at
thirty-five, and he was falling apart. The five foot eight inches frame carried as
the saying went less meat than could fill a skewing pin. The clothes which at
one time had fitted him snugly now hung loose and flabby over him like a
retired scarecrow. The blue turtle-neck shirt had lost its colour and all its
clinging elasticity so that it now hung over his body loose like a track suit. The
faded denim jeans had shrunk up to two inches above the body ankles. The
shoes still fitted though his feed had not lost much weight. The tennis shoes, a
legacy from the not-so-bad old times, stank like poison.
Swallowing big gulps of air, he took an inventory of his senses. His eyes
were in good working order in spite of a permanent creased squint he had
acquired from peering down pits at steamed-up water meters, and later the glare
reflected from sun-drenched parking meters. His hearing was in perfect order
too. So good in fact, that he clearly heard Sukuma Wiki, the vegetable seller
next door, conspiring with his amazon wife to raise vegetable prices to cope
with the rising imbalance between supply and demand. Sometimes at night,
when the Indians dogs in the next block were not raising so much hell, Dusman
heard the Bathroom Mans retarded child wheezing asthmatically from down
the yard. Some nights he heard the cockroaches plot against him. He did not
quite understand their language but he got the message loud and clear. Like
most of his neighbours, they hated him.
Next Dusman considered his smell organs. Nothing wrong there either. His
olfactory senses were in such good shape that, back home in Dacca House, he
could smell an egg frying two rooms away, above the stench from the blocked
lavatory. Only his touch senses were giving up. The feet and legs tired faster
than ever, and the long arms flopped uselessly by his sides like those of an aged
baboon. It seemed there was nothing he could do about it. He was resigned to
dying of old age by the time he was forty.
16

He was winded and footsore by the time he got to the fourth floor. There
were people moving all around him, men rushing up and down the stairs, lumpy
old ladies in green uniforms toting gigantic floor mops, washing and polishing
the slippery floor or leaning on the mops gossiping. Messengers in khaki
uniforms carried baskets of letters along the endless dank corridors, while
consumers wearing painful frowns tried desperately to find someone to
complain to.
Strangers get hopelessly lost in spite of directing arrows. The hangover
receptionist at the information desk on the ground floor directs them to go to
room number two on the fourth floor. The gruff clerk on the fourth floor shouts
at them No! The bastard you want is always in room four on the second
floor. Then after trudging back down the slippery stairs to the second floor, they
discover that their troubles are only just beginning. The man they so desperately
need to rectify the errors on their water bills has been fired, moved to an
unknown office in the mysterious building, or has simply just left for an hours
coffee break that will take him till after lunch. If one is completely new to the
system and loses ones sense of humour, then one is the only loser. It is a simple
straightforward game they play in City Hall, a game with neither rules nor
instructions.
However, Dusman knew where to find his man. The big man was at the
end of a dimly-lit corridor on the fourth floor, barricaded behind a door that said
Private. Meters Superintendent.
Behind the door was the secretarys office, and the waiting room. Her desk
was squeezed up against the far wall under a large poster that said The boss is
not always right but he is always the boss. Next to a low table crammed with
old copies of the Economic Review, were two hard-backed chairs for visitors.
Dusman loathed those two chairs so much that he rarely sat down in the waiting
room. The secretary took her usual five minutes to recognize his presence. She
was a big bosomed woman, with a permanent frown on her brow and a voice
whetted on broken bottles. As he patiently waited to be acknowledged, Dusman
wondered whether this specially cold and nasty countenance was reserved for
him alone or whether it was a part of the welcoming procedure. When she
finally looked up from the typewriter, she seemed to be talking to someone
behind Dusma.
Yes? she said and the voice grated on his raw nerves.
Can I see him today?
See who today?
The Superintendent.
What about?
17

Business.
Your name, please?
Dusman Gonzaga. I was here last week.
Did you see him?
No. You said he was busy.
She opened her diary and pored over it for a few seconds. Then she closed
it, pushed it aside and turned her cold eyes on him.
You havent got an appointment, she said.
I dont need one, Dusman told her. I work here. I am the meter reader
with problems about a transfer. Remember me?
I dont, she said flatly. You still need an appointment to see him.
Dusman tried to protest further but gave up as the woman dismissed him
and started her typing.
Can I make an appointment then?
She stopped her typing and without a word, not even to seek his approval,
she made him an appointment for the following Saturday. He left the office in
greater despair than ever, cursing the day he joined City Hall. He was slowly
beginning to believe he would never be moved from the hateful parking meters.
He would die a meter reader and when they buried him, they would plant a
parking meter on his grave for a headstone, with the inscription: Here lies the
greatest meter reader of all time.
It was lunch-time when he got back to City Hall Way. Masses of people
gushed out of their offices and battled with the beggars and the vagabonds and
shoppers for space on the choking streets. The air was not hotter and more
tense, and the crowds were hungry, rushed by time and ill-tempered.
Dusman fled out of the city centre back to the relative security and calm of
Grogan Road. He got home in time to catch a trio of slimy-looking greasyoveralled characters in the process of stealing the seats from his car. They had
forced the doors and had managed to rip out all the seats, which were now piled
on the pavement awaiting transportation. The three stood by, smoking and
waiting for the fourth partner who had gone in search for a push cart. Their
relaxed, easy manner confused even Dusman. It just was not possible, he
thought, that they were stealing his seats in the middle of a busy street in broad
daylight. It just couldnt be happening.
He leaned down and peered into the car. It had no seats. The ones on the
pavement had to be his. He looked from the car to the seats and to the three
gangsters.
18

What do you fellows think you are doing? he asked them.

The three stared blankly at him and then at one another. Dusman, his anger
rising, looked around for help. He could not handle the three crooks alone, that
much was obvious. The only person he knew on the street, the mechanic with a
killing hangover, was nowhere in sight. The pick-up van he had been working
on that morning was gone. Going for the cops was out of the question. The
nearest public telephone was in Bamboo Night Club, way up on the River Road.
The thieves would be gone with the seats by the time he came back with the
cops.
I asked you, he said to the three bad guys. What do you think you are
doing?
What does it look like we are doing? the biggest of the three asked.
You are stealing my seats, he told them.
They laughed. They just laughed.
Dusman shook his head incredulously. I dont believe it, he thought, right
in the middle of the bloody day. Then it hit him that these three were the same
people who had stolen his wheels.
You are thieves, he bellowed at them.
They looked at one another. They did not smile any more.
Thieves, he yelled hoarsely. You stole my wheels. Help! Thieves! Get
them, they are thieves.
As he shouted and danced on the spot with effort, they regained their
confidence. They could, if the need arose, easily turn the tables on him. They
were more likely to be listened to by the murderous mob than the raging maniac
in blue jeans and a flabby polo-neck shirt.
Dusman knew this even as he called for help and tried to get sympathy.
Once the mob justice machinery got going, it did not very much matter whose
blood they drew. They just loved to kill, kill, kill.
People passed, glanced at the hysterical man, listened to what he had to
say, then shook their heads and moved on. They were trained to run after and
kill a thief, not to listen to sermons. It was a conditioned reflex. Until a man ran
away, it was impossible to animate the mob.
They are thieves, Dusman told the small audience that stopped to listen to
him. I found them stealing my car seats.
What car? asked a spectator who had decided that Dusman did not look
the type of man to own a car.
The one behind you, Dusman said eagerly, glad to have some attention.
19

Which one? another asked.

The red one, Dusman answered.
The junk without the wheels?
The crowd, including the thieves , laughed.
He is crazy, one observed quietly.
Is that a car to steal from? another asked the audience.
They laughed again, making Dusman hot with humiliation and anger.
Crazy? he screamed. Crazy! Just wait here. We will see who is crazy.
Trying to steal my seats
He stormed up the stairs to his room, tore off his coat, hurled it on the bed
and searched quickly for a weapon. He snatched the kitchen knife, decided it
was too small and chose the sword-stick. By the time he got breathless back on
the street the bored crowd had dispersed. Suspecting he had gone to phone the
police the crooks had also disappeared, leaving the seats there on the pavement.
Dusman waited ten minutes for them to come back. They did not come back. He
could not put the seats back into the car. Apart from the work involved, he was
certain that since the door-locks were broken, someone else would try to take
them out. He had no choice but to haul them upstairs to his room. It took him
half an hour of sweaty hard work to realize that however he arranged them, the
seats would not fit in the room. Finally, he piled them up outside by the window
lashed together with a sisal rope to make them hard to steal. To make it doubly
difficult for any would-be thief, he rigged the seats with empty tin cans, making
it impossible to cart them away at night without waking up the neighbourhood
with the clatter of the tins.
The seats were thus rigged, like a witch doctors kit, when the Bathroom
Man came home from work. By this time of course, everyone in Dacca House
knew the red car down on the street had been grounded the night before. But,
apart from Toto, only one other person remembered to whom the car had
belonged. The Bathroom Man still remembered clearly the hot and dusty days
he had spent on his back under the Triumph, way back when Dusman could
afford to have the car serviced. The Bathroom Man had treated her with care
and tenderness as though she were his very own. He had treated the owner as a
neighbour and a friend but it had all ended up badly with Dusman refusing to
pay him the money owed and finally letting the car fall into disrepair out in the
street.
When the Bathroom Man saw those seats in the yard it was love at first
sight. He had never in all his life in Dacca House beheld anything as beautiful
as those seats in the yard. He sat for a long time on a crate outside his room,
admiring those luscious creatures and wondering. He was almost certain now
20

that Dusman would never get the Triumph moving. But he could not quite
remember how much he was owed by the owner of the lovely green leather
seats.
He knew what he must do, but he did not know how to go about it. But
whatever he had to do it had to be done tonight.
Finally, when he could delay it no longer he dragged himself off the crate
and ambled nervously to Dusmans room and rapped on the door.
Come in, the big slow voice said from within.
He pushed the door open but he did not enter. The house-owner lay barechested on a bed, reading a magazine. Dusman looked surprised at the sight of
the caller, and for a few seconds they just stared at each other.
Greetings, the Bathroom Man said, his voice hoarse with appreciation.
Like most of the neighbours, he lived in mortal fear arousing Dusmans
madness.
Greetings, Dusman responded.
The Bathroom Man hesitated. The urge to give up his mission and run
weighed heavily on him.
These are fine seats you have, he said finally.
I found some bastards trying to steal them, Dusman told him. They took
my wheels, did you know that?
I saw, he responded.
Do you think you can refix the seats for me? Dusman asked. I cant pay
you now, but I will at the end of the month. I still owe you some money, dont
i?
The Bathroom Man nodded, quietly feeling the conversation run slowly
out of his hands.
How much do I owe you? Dusman asked him.
I cant remember, he answered.
Yes, it has been a long time, Dusman went on. However, if you can fix
the locks they broke as well, I will make it worth your while.
I probably can, he said, his eyes averted. But I do not think it is a good
idea. They will come for them again. Maybe they have an order for spares.
I thought of that, Dusman agreed.
Once they set their minds to it, they never give up! the Bathroom Man
continued. They may come back for the lights, mirrors, doors, and
windscreens. Youd have to guard it day and night to keep them away.
21

I thought about that too, Dusman nodded in agreement again. Come in,
sit down.
He shook his head and leaned on the door-frame. This was the closest he
had ever come to entering any of his neighbours rooms. No one had ever been
in his room either.
I thought you might want to sell, he said hesitantly.
I will certainly sell her as soon as I fix her, Dusman told him. Are you
interested?
Not in the car, he said. The seats.
No way, Dusman said and laughed. I am selling the whole machine soon
as I fix her up.
The Bathroom Man nodded, shrugged and, hanging his head like a licked
dog, went back to his bathroom to tell his wife the bad news.
It took him three days to gather enough courage to approach Dusman
again. During that period, it rained once, changing his lust to heartbreak as he
watched he objects of his undivided desire lying abandoned in the rain and
realized that such fine specimens of good craftsmanship could not withstand
another day of damp weather without becoming completely ruined.
During the same space of time, the headlights and one window vanished
from the car. Dusman suspected the Bathroom Man but his roommate convinced
him on the contrary. If the Bathroom Man could steal, he would not be living in
a bathroom. He was honest to the point of being ridiculous. Toto in his usual
wisdom suggested Dusman sell whatever was left of his car before it
depreciated even further. It was already worth embarrassingly little.
But Dusman did not consider the Bathroom Man to be a good customer.
There was no way the man could raise the kind of money he expected for
whatever was left of the car.
For the second time the Bathroom Man went disappointed back to his wife,
his whole being enveloped in an aura of sheer defeat. His wife sat by the
charcoal brazier outside their room, peeling potatoes, for their first and only
meal of the day. Their baby sat at the mothers feet, baffled by a decapitated
plastic Chupa Na Debe had sold them for the evening meal.
What did he say? she asked in her usual subdued manner.
No, her husband said, his shoulders slouching even further in defeat.
The wife bent back to her potatoes. Like her husband, she had grown to be
a natural pessimist. No one had ever been nice to them and there was no reason
to believe they would start doing so now.
22

Dusman spied on their reaction through the torn curtain. It was something
they had talked over, he thought. Perhaps they had lost sleep over it, planning
how to approach him. He called the Bathroom Man back.
I hope you understand, he said lamely.
As before, the mechanic stood by the door, restlessly shifting weight from
one leg to the other and back. Obviously he did not understand.
It is nothing personal, Dusman told him. It has nothing at all to do with
your living in a bathroom or anything like that. It is a personal thing with me
and the car. It is just that I really intend restoring her to some respectable shape.
I have a certain attachment to that machine that neither you nor anyone else
seems to understand.
The Bathroom Man nodded but he still did not understand how anyone
could have any special affection for a car that did not move.
What would you say about me giving you a contract to repair her?
Dusman asked.
The mechanic rolled his head dejectedly first one way then the other. He
had no wish at all to make Dusman mad.
Is it a deal? Dusman asked.
She cannot be repaired, he answered at last, prepared for a quick retreat.
What do you mean she cannot be repaired? Dusman said forcefully. That
machine is as good as new. A few knocks here and there but thats all. I know a
thing or two about cars, you know.
The Bathroom Man shrugged. He was scared of arguments. He had never
won one in his life.
If you cant fix her, say so, Dusman told him. But dont try to tell me she
wont go.
He lit a cigarette. From the corner of his eye he scrutinized the mechanic.
Doubts, almost physical in their intensity, nudged him from all sides. In effect,
the Bathroom Man was saying what Toto had said and exactly what the
mechanic with a hangover had tried to tell him.
Are you sure about that? he asked, trying on an ill-fitting air of
nonchalance.
The Bathroom Man nodded and shifted his feet for the millionth time.
How come you are so sure? Dusman asked suspiciously.
Last time you brought her for service, he said. We used too many bent
nails and strings. If you havent replaced them by now he shrugged again.
23

Dusman thought about it. It was true that most of the Triumphs essentials
were held together by scavenged parts and their sheer determination to stick
together. The carburettor and the king pin were both out of normal. And now
there were the wheels, the lights and the door. It would take a good bundle of
money to put the old faithful back into one desirable piece. And that was
assuming he could get the spares for a model two decades out of its time.
But it was still Dusmans only touch with the past and his only hope for the
future. How could the Bathroom Man not understand that?
Do you smoke? Dusman asked, holding out his packet.
The other man shook his head.
They are bad for the health, Dusman told him.
Do you want the seats or the car?
I can only afford the seats.
Dusman shook his head so suddenly and vigorously that the Bathroom
Man took one step back.
You think I am some kind of a fool? he said fiercely. What will I do with
a car that has no seats and no wheels?
Sell it to the drum makers, the Bathroom Man said thoughtlessly.
Dusman jerked his head up sharply and for a few seconds glared at the
petrified man.
Two weeks ago, I would have kicked your brains out for suggesting just
that, he said. However, considering the position we are in and the sort of nasty
activities that have been going on concerning my car, I will refrain from doing
so now. He stared thoughtfully at the ceiling, smoke coiling lazily from his
cigarette.
Be realistic, Toto had said during one of their long arguments concerning
the sale of the car. That car will never move. Besides you can always buy
another one to carry you out of Grogan Road. Toto was totally wrong about one
thing, about Dusman buying another car. If this one went, and as far as Toto and
the two mechanics were concerned it had already gone, Dusman would sink
even lower in his social and financial standing. His status in Dacca House
would change from being that of a temporary resident to that of a permanent
one.
Somehow, the nasty Fate had got him into a rut again. If he did not sell
soon, the thieves of Grogan Road would steal the whole of the car. But so far
the only person with the slightest interest in the car was the Bathroom Man,
who, as far as Dusman could judge, had no money to buy it.
24

Tell you what, Dusman told him. I will make you a deal. You take the
whole car and you can have the seats.
The mechanic thought it over. The seats were the only items he could pawn
easily at a fair price, he had an order for those particular seats, there were still
some usable parts left in the rest of the machine. The engine was intact, the
windows, the parking lights and a few other odds and ends.
He nodded assent.
Good, Dusman said. Now, the money. How much money have you got?
The Bathroom Man took so long working it out it bothered Dusman.
Youve got some money, havent you?
Yes, the mechanics voice was low and faint. Dusman barely heard him.
How much have you got? he asked.
A hundred and fifty, the mechanic said fearfully.
A hundred and what? Dusmans voice rose in disbelieve.
And fifty, the mechanic answered.
Get out of my house, Dusman roared, shooting to his feet, his face alight
with anger.
The mechanic stammered something apologetically and beat a hasty retreat
back to his bathroom.
A hundred and fifty shillings, Dusman bellowed, following him out into
the yard. What am I selling you, a pair of used boots? A hundred and fifty for a
car! You think I am an imbecile? If I ever see you come crawling to my room
again, I will break your head. A hundred shillings!
Two days later, another door and the rear windscreen went missing and
Dusman found himself forced to reassess his position. There was no longer any
doubt now that the car had to go. He did not have much with which to bargain
with any possible purchaser, and each day he saw himself with less and less. So
far, the only person who had shown any interest at all was the Bathroom Man.
Dusman summoned him
The mechanic took his usual place by the door frame and braced himself
for the tempest.
I have made up my mind to sell the car to you, Dusman started. I hope
you understand my dilemma. You realise I dont want to ever be remembered as
the guy who sold a car for a hundred and fifty shillings.
The Bathroom Man nodded.
Have you still got the money? Dusman asked.
25

I have two hundred shillings now, the man answered eagerly.

Good, Dusman said. Give it to me.
The Bathroom Man stumbled expectantly out to his room and, after a short
burst of intimate exchange with his wife, came back with the money, in worn
and greasy bills of fives and tens.
Dusman counted it carefully and dropped it in his pocket. He tore a sheet
out of an old exercise book and fetched a ball-point from his jacket hanging
behind the door.
Sit down, he ordered.
The Bathroom Man sat down on the only chair in the room. Dusman sat on
the bed and placed the pen and paper on the table between them.
Good, he said again. Now I am going to make you a deal you cannot
refuse. He shook his head thoughtfully. I should hate to go down on record as
the man who sold his soul for two hundred shillings.

26

Two
The elevators were still out of order. Again he had to climb the loathsome
stairs. It seemed the whole world was out of order the blocked plumbing back
home, public telephones, people, anything Dusman Gonzaga could think of was
out of order. A long line of complainants was strung outside the complaints
department. And they would, he knew, still be there tomorrow, the day after and
the one after that. He had seen them before and he would see them again. He
had been to the City Hall so many times that it seemed as if he had been born
there. He would surely die there, climbing those crazy slippery stairs to see the
big man.
Dusman Gonzaga had been in and out of the City Hall numerous times
during his spell as a meter reader. Reading water meters had not been as easy as
the Superintendent had promised it would be. To speed him up in the
performance of his duties City Hall had provided him with a file, a ball-point
pen and a rickety old bicycle with wheels that appeared determined to go each
its own way. On this weary contraption he was expected to cover the citys
suburbs from end to end, recording every customers monthly water
consumption so that the bills department could work out of a charge.
The machine was beaten and rusty, one of the very first Indian exports to
hit the East African coast. The handlebars were askew so that he had to steer
slightly to the right to make the front wheel point straight ahead. The driving
chain was loose and he had to get off and push the bike up the slightest incline.
It had been tough job riding the bicycle.
He had tried to get the council to pay him petrol and mileage charges to
use his old car on duty. The Meters Superintendent had grinned his hideous
detached grin and sent him to talk to the accountant. The accountant, who had
no car himself, could not understand the request. A meter reader? With a car?
Being paid mileage? Where the hell did he get a car in the first place?
Dusman continued push-riding the problematic bicycle. Up sweaty
boulevards and along wooded avenues. Here in the suburbs the air was fresher,
the view quieter, and more attractive. The cedar and kaiapple fences were well
trimmed, the great lawns hedged with roses, bougainvilleas, hibiscus, morning
glory and other hybrid flower bushes he could not name. sometimes, especially
when the jacaranda and the flame trees were in full bloom and the air was full of
red, purple, green and bird-song, he had loved his job. If only he did not have to
read the damned meters! They had presented a more tricky problem than the
rusty bicycle.
In most houses, the water meters were by the trash cans behind the kitchen,
a hundred or more metres inside the awe-inspiring kaiapple fence with its
reinforcing chicken-wire. The heavy steel gates were always shut to exclude
27

unwelcome visitors, such as electricity and water meter readers, and were
patrolled by fierce guard dogs, just in case they did manage to come in. the
names on the gates were all alike in their unlikeness. It appeared that to live
here one had to have an unpronounceable name, followed by the suffix Umbwa
Kali. Such impossible names as Ics Umbwa Kali and Zygner Umbwa Kali and
Xhaser Umbwa Kali sprouted by the gates up one avenue and continued along
the turn and round the corner for as far as he could ride his bicycle. The Umbwa
Kali signs served not only to discourage job seekers but to keep out the rugged
stoop-shouldered vegetable women as well. Umbwa Kali. Beware. Sharp dog,
hot dog, fierce dog, crazy dog! Some of the mad dogs were fierce monstrous
brutes, others small pedigrees that came no higher than his calf. They had all
been trained to hate. His creaking bicycle attracted the dogs of the whole
suburban neighbourhood to their respective gates, snarling and barking and
raising hell. And Dusman had to calmly lock and park his contraption by the
roadside, calmly push the gate open and walk the hundred metres or so to the
back of the kitchens to read the water meter. Then the dogs, still raving,
escorted him back to the gate. Every few steps he had to wave his walking stick
to keep them back. Rarely was any attempt made by the owners or servants to
keep the dogs from this nerve-tearing practice.
Sometimes an especially cunning dog escorted him, keeping a safe
distance behind him, then suddenly went for his leg just as he closed the gate.
He tried hard to keep his cool, but sometimes neither his usual patience nor the
possible loss of his precarious job could keep him from retaliating by hurling
stones over the fence from the safety of the road. This desperate action only
helped to aggravate the dogs, and some never forgot. Most loathed him and
none liked him.
Dusman had never imagined a dog could harbour a grudge until he made
acquaintance with the giant Alsatian guarding the house of a Mr H.C.R. Bates
Umbwa Kali. It was a big, black-maned monster with hateful calculating eyes
and teeth like an old hyenas. The beast behaved strangely from the moment he
opened the steel gate and ventured inside. Instead of bawling and barking his
head off as expected, he raised his maned head from the carpet on the verandah
and squinted back at him through suspicious black eyes. Then he rose lazily,
shook the massive body awake, yawned and followed Dusman to the back of
the kitchen.
As he uncovered the meter and recorded the reading, Dusman watched the
brute from the corner of his eye. He did not like its quiet acceptance of him. It
sat on its haunches two metres away, its salivating red tongue hanging almost to
the ground, and studied him. Then it rose and followed him back to the gate. A
metre or so from the gate, just as he was beginning to attribute the Alsatians
docility to overfeeding, it attacked him, catching him by surprise and hurling
him through the half open gate. The beast was left with a large piece of
28

Dusmans trouser-leg in his mouth, but fortunately, mainly due to his sudden
motion forward as he fell, the large canines barely grazed his calf.
Dusman lost his cool and rained missiles at the Alsatian, who the,
unperturbed, retired back to his carpet on the shady verandah where the stones
could not reach him and lost all interest in him. He slapped a few extra litres
fine on the account of H.C.R. Bates Umbwa Kali and left. The next time he
went that way he took along his sword stick, determined to assassinate the
Bates dog, but the Alsatian no longer reposed on the cool verandah. According
to the black kitchen boy, the bwana had had to have the dog shot after it had
almost mauled an electrician to death. Dusman never left his sword behind after
hearing that piece of news.
Sometimes Dusman met with Chupa na Debe hauling his laden jute sack
through the suburban streets from one rubbish can to the next, collecting odds
and ends. Sometimes all Dusman could recognize was the over-patched pants
seat sticking out of a garbage can as the old man buried his body in the trash,
sorting through rotten food, cracked china, shattered glassware, old shoes,
empty food cans, mutilated dolls and mangled toys discarded by the wealthy but
still quite usable and in great demand on Grogan Road and the African
locations. Out there among the green lawns and tree-lined avenues, they passed
each other like complete strangers. But once they met back in Dacca House, the
old man would casually wonder whether Dusman had any empty bottles to sell,
and try to flog him useless shells of old radios and other electronic waste.
Dusman had read hundreds of thousands of water meters in those days and
escaped numerous calculated attacks by the frothing Umbwa Kalis. The very
scent of him evoked in them a deep-rooted homicidal urge. They were in no
way like the African street mongrels he knew, which, if kicked, took off, tail
between hind legs. The European breeds were bigger and meaner and came after
him with an almost human sense of vengeance. Some meters he could not get at
due to the dogs bubbling hatred at him. These he read from his bike by the
roadside. The more disagreeable the Umbwa Kali, the more the guilty Bwana
paid for his water. If a growling brute made an uncomfortable close sweep at
Dusmans lean calf, the owners meter reading went up by shillings. There was
satisfactory justice in Dusmans desperate form of revenge. This was the only
way he could hit back at the aristocrats. Of course they could all get their money
back if they took time to come to City Hall and line up outside the complaints
department every day for a week, but most of them were so stinking rich he
doubted they ever read the bills before dealing out the big notes.
When Dusman finally gave up trying to get even and put in for a transfer,
the Meters Superintendent had proved most understanding of the explanation
given. He had taken back Dusmans file and the old bike, which he had by then
grown to like, loaded him with pocketfuls of parking tickets and turned him
29

loose on the unwary motorists. It was the best thing to come Dusmans way
since the purchase of the Triumph from the Sunshine Hotels manager, the car
which had later turned out to be not such a wise investment. He did not have to
ride kilometres of hot suburb roads on a bicycle which, like him, did not wish to
cover them, and he had no mad dogs to fight away. All he had to do was walk
up and down the city centre hanging violation tickets like banners on
windscreens. There was no rush to beat time and sometimes, especially when
the sun was hot and the streets inhospitable he could slip down to Grogan Road
to catch up with some lost sleep.
It was an easy job at first. Then the parking meters also started to get him
down, the main complaint being there were too many of them on any one
assigned street. The heavy traffic and the general city rush weighed down on his
shoulders like a heavy wet blanket that had been soaked in hot water. In August
the sun bakes the city and the streets shrivel up like dried hide and crackle and
turn to dust. And the events that take place daily on these same streets leave you
with a dry acid taste in y our mouth. Real life dramas, written by an eccentric
old bastard, having no apparent beginning or end, no winners, only losers, and
choreographed by a sadistic bitch-goddess. Each passing day Dusman saw the
people re-enact the tragedy by being, and witnessed them suffer and breed to
death on the parched streets at the merciless hands of their laughing fellow
countrymen.
Parking meters were permanently impressed on his mind by the oppressive
head, burned into his brain with a hot branding iron. He dreamed about them,
for them, against them and, more recently, even saw them in the most unlikely
places. Something seriously wrong was getting worse, otherwise what would a
parking meter be doing against the wall of the blocked toilet?
The Superintendents secretary was a big broad woman with as much sense
of humour as a cockroach caught in a room full of killer gas. It took her five full
minutes to notice Dusman who stood hopping from one tired foot to the other,
waiting to be discovered. She ordered him to sit down on the chairs he loathed
and continued her typing. Obeying her command, he sat down and lit a
cigarette. He in turn completely ignored the tin can ashtray on the low table and
let the ash find its own way onto the polished floor. By the time she commanded
him to proceed into the big mans office, a full ten minutes later, the floor
around where he sat was covered in fine grey ash dust. She did not seem to
notice or care.
Dusman rose, stretched and yawned tiredly then conveyed his carcase into
the Superintendents office. The big man was busy rummaging about in drawers
and peering inside envelopes with intense purpose. Without as much as a
glance, he told his caller to sit down and continued his furtive search.
30

The Meters Superintendent was forty-five, and big and round like a giant
log hive. Though he had a smaller frame than the meter readers, he had three
times as much weight distributed haphazardly over his chin, cheeks, belly and
the enormous rear end. His greying hair had receded to the back of is pumpkin
head, leaving a glittering black bald ball as smooth as a mirror and as shiny as
an expertly blacked shoe. He as an old timer, and Dusman had long ago rejected
the idea that the big man actually ran the water and sewerage department.
Whenever one had a complaint, there was never anyone else to see but the big
man, hopeless as he was; but Dusman was convinced that somewhere in the
Superintendents uncertain background, there was an expert running the show
for him.
They had another hard chair in the big mans office, purposely provided to
discourage complainants from overstaying. Taking up his position on it,
Dusman it another cigarette and prepared himself for a long wait. The office had
a shiny, brown tiled floor just like the secretarys and Dusman proceeded to
decorate it with grey ash. A small square of dark blue carpet covered the floor
under the heavy teak desk and the big mans easy chair, but did not extend as far
as the high-backed visitors chair.
Apart from two huge Vickers steel filing cabinets crammed with volumes
of ancient records, the office was bare of furniture. Out of the fourth floor
window, the City Hall Way below looked like a crowded parade ground packed
with slow moving cars and people.
Yes? the Superintendent said finally, tossing some envelopes into a
drawer and slamming it shut.
When he looked up, his round face had a generous benign look about it and
an eagerness to be of service that Dusman knew to be extremely deceptive.
Yes, Dusman answered.
What can I do for you, perhaps? he switched on a weary but patient
smile, one second on, then off.
My name is Dusman Gonzaga, Dusman told him.
Yes?
I had an appointment to see you this morning.
An appointment, the boss repeated absently.
Now lets see. Dusman. Dusman Gonzaga. Tell me, what was about it?
You see, Ive got so much in my capable hands, things sometimes slip through.
Can you give me a clue as to what this is all about?
My job. Dusman answered simply.
31

Of course I remember now, the Superintendent said, his voice devoid of

the enthusiasm on his face. For a moment there, I thought you were another
one complaining about over-billing, and, I can assure you, those people are
nothing more than a pain in the ass. You see, recently our meter-reading brigade
has been a little over-zealous in the pursuit of their duties, as a result of which
we have been getting an endless stream of unwelcome callers. Did you see the
rabble outside the complaints office?
Dusman nodded.
Some of those thugs have been sitting in that corridor since eight. Some
people never give up. Its amazing, isnt it? You get some nuts actually
demanding to see the man in charge, which, as you very well know, is me, and it
makes my work absolute hell because there is nothing that I can do to help those
beggars that the complaints clerk cant do. Do you see what I mean? It makes
me so mad sometimes I want fire someone!
Dusman squirmed uncomfortably in his seat.
However, the boss said. That is neither here nor there. Now, I presume
you work for us. Am I right? What do you do eh
Gonzaga, Dusman said.
Yes, Gonzaga. What do you do for us?
Dusman hesitated. He was not certain what reaction to expect in view of
what he had just heard.
I am ah the meter reader, he said hopelessly.
Aha, one of my own boys, said the big man, offering a meaty, wet
handshake. I must tell you right here and now how proud I am of the job
you are doing. It fills my heart with pleasant joy when I see the complaints
office jammed with customers. It means you and I my friend, are at work,
see? And when I finally solve their problems, it is just another testimony of
my competence, and your undying devotion to duty. This is the only way
to run a public office. If everything went nice and smoothly those bastards
would never realise what a tough and important job I do. It would give my
enemies, and I assure you they are many, an excuse to brotherise or
expatriate my job, which they have been trying to do for a long time now.
Do you understand that or is it too much for you?
He paused to take a few gluttonous mouthfuls of air while Dusman
nodded slowly, his mouth hanging open in amazement.
Right, the Superintendent went on, his red hangover eyes alight with
enthusiasm. I must set the record straight right here and now. When those
visitors at the complaints office stop calling, I will personally fire the
whole lot of you. Now, how do you like that?
32

Not much, Dusman said, awed by the superintendents eloquence.

I didnt expect you to exactly jump with joy, but that should indicate
how much importance I attach to your work. However that is neither here
nor there. Now, what can I do for you, mister
Gonzaga.
Yes, Gonzaga. Where did you get a name like that? Gonzaga?
From my mother.
Isnt it funny what parents do to their children? They saddle you with
a name, it could be as ugly as hell, and they dont bother to ask whether
you like it or not.
I like Gonzaga.
Supposing you didnt? what could you possibly do about it?
Change it.
Yes, I suppose one can do that. Funny I never thought of that before.
Yes, that is a good idea. Mind you, I have nothing against them, but I think
mothers sometimes overdo it a little. What I mean is my name for
example. Kimende. Who in his right mind would burden a child with such
a name? kimende for Gods sake! Would you believe it doesnt mean
anything? I keep telling people this, but they never believe me. They make
me spell it two or three times and then they forget it almost instantly. For
all the time I have been in City Hall, the Mayor himself can never call me
by my name. he says it sounds vulgar. Kimende! She must have been
drunk when she dreamed that one up. But that is neither here nor there.
What do you want of me?
I want a transfer, Dusman said simply.
The Meters Superintendent cocked his bullet-head, and scratched the
bald patch thoughtfully. The dark red eyes squinted back at Dusman across
the voluminous desk. It was rumoured throughout the dark corridors of the
water and sewerage department that the Superintendent spent his nights at
the Hallians Night Club wenching and getting boozed up and slept in his
barren office during the day.
Now let us see, he mumbled quietly. We have discussed this before,
yes? Have we not? Now let us see. I think I remember this one. You want a
transfer to parking meters, am I right?
That was six months ago, Dusman said. I want to be transferred
back to water meters.

33

The Superintendent shook his head and rubbed his tired eyes. He took
out an official City Hall issue ball-point pen and held it poised over the
thick green blotting paper on the desk.
Now, let us see, he said and scribbled the words on the blotter.
Weve got to get this one straight. Six months ago, right?
Right, Dusman nodded.
What did I tell you at that time?
I cant remember everything you said, but I got the transfer.
You got the transfer?
I got it.
So what the hell do you want again?
I want I want to go back to the water meters.
Weve got to get this one straight, the boss said, his eyes squeezed
shut in concentration. He opened them and referred to the notes on the
blotting paper. Five months ago you wanted
Six months ago, Dusman corrected.
You said five last time, the boss protested.
I said six, Dusman said quietly. You wrote five, I saw you do it.
Why didnt you correct me, then?
I didnt think it was important.
The big face darkened, the eyes dilated in annoyance.
why, he asked, do you come crying to me if you do not think your
transfer is important?
I didnt say that, Dusman said quickly. My transfer is very
important to me. What is not important is the time factor. I mean, five or
six months. What difference does it make?
It makes a hell lot of difference to me, the Superintendent said
painfully. Nobody, you included seems to realise what my job means to
me. I am not my own boss, you know. I am a servant to the people. I have
got to account for everything I do to the Mayor and he wants facts all the
time, facts, mind you, not words. And, as I told you, I know right now he
stands poised to put his own brother or a tribesman in my seat. They are
waiting for the slightest slip I make to boot me out of this office. You
understand? That is why I have to get every single letter in its right slot,
and if every person I have to deal with kept changing his mind, it would
drive me out of my mind!
34

Dusman opened his mouth to explain but the wild look in the older
mans eyes silenced him. The big red eyes were feverishly inflamed, the
teeth bared and the nostrils flared like those of a mad horse. The
Superintendent reached into a drawer and with trembling hands extracted a
tablet, popped it into his mouth and swallowed it without water. In a few
seconds he was his normal self.
Let us get this straight for the record, he said, passing a hand over
his face. I hate losing my temper. It is bad for my head, do you
understand? Bad for my head, can you understand that?
Perfectly, Dusman nodded.
Right, the Superintendent said, once more appeased. When that
happens, I lock myself in here for weeks and refuse to see anyone, you
understand? Now, what will it be? Five months or six months?
Six months, Dusman said.
Six months, he corrected the record. As you said before, it does not
really make any difference.
That is what I thought, Dusman said.
Right. I like people who think. Now let us get this straight. Six
months ago you wanted out to parking meters, correct? Yes, good. Now,
today, this minute, you want back to water meters. Correct, yes, no?
He wrote the word now with an arrow stabbing at the word water and
crowned it with an asterisk.
Correct?
That is right, Dusman said.
Explain. He threw the pen down on the desk, reclined on the ten
thousand shilling executive chair and closed his eyes to listen. His head
was beginning to throb again from a mixture of hangover and
concentration.
Everything? Dusman asked.
The big man nodded and, his eyes still closed, massaged his temples
with his hands in an attempt to stem the pain.
Dusman started to say something, hesitated and shrugged. Where
could he start? The story of his life had no apparent end or beginning.
Whenever he reviewed his life privately, it was sometimes impossible to
believe that he had actually lived it and was currently continuing to do so.
His life was a series of catastrophes thrown haphazardly across his path by
time itself. Each time he tried to narrate the story of his life, it left his
audience with a queer expression on their faces and thereafter they made
35

an obvious effort to avoid him. How could they believe the tragedy that
was his life? And tragedy was what it was. How else could he describe a
life shared with a man who lived in a bathroom, a witchdoctor and, once,
with a cat that wouldnt eat mice and ended up committing suicide. What
could one say?
Dusman tried in as few words as possible to put his case across. He
had joined the City Council after being unfairly fired from the Sunshine
Hotel. He had accepted the meter reading appointment for two reasons.
One was that there was no other job anywhere in sight. The other, the more
positive reason, was that City Hall, recognizing his potential, had promised
to take him off the meter rounds as soon as a clerical vacancy arose in the
accounts department. That had been the mutual understanding between him
and the City Council. What they had not bothered to tell him was the
vacancy would only arise if another of their employees died, retired or was
sacked. All the possible candidates were young, healthy men who were not
likely to be leaving the citys services for any reason during Dusmans
lifetime. Meanwhile, Dusman read meters with something akin to
fanaticism, as a result of which, meters had started sprouting in the most
unlikely locations. He cited the case of the recent appearance and
subsequent disappearance of the parking meter against the blocked toilet.
Whats that? the Superintendent was suddenly wide awake studying
him suspiciously.
Early one morning a few weeks back Dusman had woken up and, as
usual, peered out of the window to see which of his neighbours was
beating up his wife so early in the morning. He had instead beheld a
parking meter leaning easily against the communal lavatory. He rubbed his
eyes and looked again. The thing was still there as natural-looking as any
on a busy city street. Convinced that he was going crazy, Dusman had
quickly pulled on his trousers and rushed outside. By the time he got out,
the instrument was nowhere to be found. There was no one out in the yard
except Sukuma Wiki, the ageing vegetable hawker from next door.
Dusman was slowly developing an antipathy for parking meters that
made it virtually impossible for him to carry out his official duties. The
more he thought about meters, the less he liked them. They were nothing
more than dumb telluric erections that, like cheap wenches, did not work
until one put money in them. They were not as respectable as the
industrious water meters that laboured diligently underground and did not
get in anyones way.
You are the best reader I have, the boss said when Dusman had
finished. Let me put it straight for the record. You are my best man.
I hate parking meters, Dusman told him matter-of-factly.
36

So do I, the Superintendent echoed. That makes two of us.

Two of what? he asked confused.
For a few seconds the Superintendent was lost in deep thought. Then
he snapped his head up, eyes alight with discovery.
I have good news for you, he said, his voice charged with new life.
I will make you the head reader.
Whats that? Dusman inquired.
A foreman, the man told him. Some sort of an inspector. You see, I
like you. You are not my tribesman but you are a good man all the same.
You work hard and you have a certain amount of drive. You see, I am a
reasonable man. I will not victimise you just because your clansmen are
trying to give my job to a white man. I told you all about it, didnt I? They
are jealous because I am popular with my subordinates and a successful
businessman. I know for certain they have paid someone to assassinate me,
but dont worry. I will not take my revenge out on you because I am a
reasonable man and a true Christian. Vengeance is mine, said the Lord.
And give to the devil his due.
Dusman shook his confused head and lit a cigarette. He had not
particular interest in the politics of the city. He had his own Dacca House
politics which no one wanted to understand.
I will talk to the Mayor about it, the Superintendent raged on. You
must be my new foreman.
What happened to the old one? he asked casually.
I will fire the bastard.
What for?
So I can give you the job. You do want the job, dont you? He is a
lazy oaf, anyway. And his people are trying to sack me. I told you that
didnt I?
Dusman hung his head hopelessly. He could not tell whether he was
being bribed to stay or being led along the meandering paths or a neurotic.
I dont want promotion, he said tiredly. I have had my fill of
parking meters. Dont you understand? I hate the bloody things!
You are the best Ive got, the big man reassured him You have
emotions about meters and therefore are capable of great feats of work. I
like people who work hard like me. I cant let you go. Never. You must
work and work again. For me. Labour is the salt of life, have you heard
that one? No? Well, anyway the others are meat-heads.
37

I am nuts too, Dusman said, clutching on the only chance for

rejection.
You are what? the Superintendent asked.
Crazy.
Are you sure?
Certain of it.
I am sorry to hear it, the superintendent said scrutinizing him warily
through hooded eyes.
Dusman squinted back at him and attempted to look innocently mad.
Are you absolutely certain? he asked again.
Dusman nodded and grinned smugly.
Does it hurt?
Dusman hesitated. How did a mad man feel inside? How did the great
endless wrangle between the demons inside him register on his body?
No, he said. I mean, yes. A little.
I am sorry, the Superintendent said again.
Nothing serious.
You will be all right.
Especially if I get the transfer.
Have you seen a doctor?
No, I tell you all I need is
You must see a doctor, the man cut in. Let us see now. Yes, Dr
Bates. Ever heard of him? No? Never mind, he is the best in town, as a
matter of fact in the whole country. He is a Cambridge man. Best
psychiatrist all round. Of course he is white, but, he is one of the better
ones. None of the self-important bullshit you get around here. Dr Bates.
He jotted down the name and address on a slip of paper and pushed it
across the desk.
Dont look so upset, he said. I assure you he is a fine man. I have
had dealings with him often.
He noticed the dismal look on Dusmans face.
Nothing serious, you understand, he added quickly. Just a little
body pain here and there. Now, you go and see this man on Standard
Street. See him today no it is almost closing time. Make it first thing
38

Monday morning. He is a very clever man, from the best medical school in
the world. Oxford, ever heard of it? No? Never mind. See him anyway.
But Dusman started to protest and the Superintendent stopped
him with a raised hand.
No charge, the boss waved him away. He is our company doctor
and will send us the bill. Your health is my greatest concern.
But I am not Dusman tried again, and again he was interrupted.
Take one weeks leave to attend to it, he was told. I will get
someone to hold for you. You must get well.
He rose to button up the enormous coat round his belly, a sign that the
interview was over. It was almost time to start his Saturday booze-up
which would go on, as rumour had it, until the early hours of Monday
morning. He firmly ushered Dusman out of the office and shut the door.
A messenger was on his knees on the floor of the reception office
shining the tiles where Dusman had dropped the cigarette ashes. The
secretary did not look up as Dusman passed by her desk. One of these fine
days she would smile when she realized how blessed she was, he thought.
Did she possibly know she had a lunatic for a boss?
As he strode along the dark and cold passages on his way out, he
pondered over the turn of events. He had started out to get a transfer and he
had ended up with seven days of leave and instructions to see a doctor he
did not need. It was not too bad a turn of events. This time he had got
something tangible and there were lots of possibilities.
*

Dusman Gonzaga stopped in the grilling midday sun, squinted first one
way up City Hall Way then the other. His head was spinning from the encounter
with his boss. They had been together for the better part of an hour, and, aside
from mutually concluding that Dusmans health was of paramount importance
to both parties concerned, they had merely talked a great deal and said nothing.
He still did not have the transfer, but one thing was clear as day. He had a
weeks freedom from work and nothing to do with the time.
The Saturday afternoon traffic was picking up its maddening holiday
mood. By one oclock it would be suicidal to try to cross any streets.
Slowly he strolled along City Hall Way, lost in deep thought. Nothing
made a good sense any more. At the end of the street he stopped. Where was he
going? Without money, he would could not get very far in any direction except
one home. He retraced his steps past the City Hall, across Moi Avenue and
39

down along the more familiar Hasrat Road. The Saturday fever catches early in
these parts. There are people everywhere one turns. Everything in sight moves.
They move in all directions and at the same time in no directions at all. Very
much like the confused roaches in Dacca House, a familiar pattern that unfolds
itself every minute of the day. The milling masses sweat sticky black pitch,
there shoes stink, and gasping for breath, they open their shirts and try to cheat
one another of the little cooling breeze that finds a way into the maze.
Up and down, up and down, all year long. Not doing anything, just being
there. They will not leave or go home before night falls. Not even, as often
happens in April, when a sudden downpour drenches the city and floods the
streets. They stay on till dark, and cluster at every possible excuse, to exchange
monosyllabic comments and marvel at life. They collect round minor car
accidents, get together at street brawls to cheer their favourite warriors, stand
solemnly together reading disaster headlines a newsstands, and sometimes too
they get involved in a running free-for-all.
In their sombre moments, they gather in larger numbers outside music
stores to listen to the latest hits. They hardly need get closer to the music as it is
always too loud. It echoes across streets and into the urine-smelling back alleys,
making the restless bums more confused. If it ever occurs to them to give the
city up and move out they never try to put their thoughts into practice. How,
Dusman wondered, would they justify the impotence of their youth to their
offspring?
Dusman battled his way through these idle throngs and headed home.
Once, in utter despair, he had written an unsigned letter to the editors of the
daily papers. It said simply give them a job, force them to work, or take them
out and let the army use them as dummies for target practice, but please for
Christs sake get the bastards off the streets. That one was never printed and he
had found himself compelled to write again to the newspapers. It was titled
Does Anybody care?: the ultimate solution to the malignant problem of habitual
vagrancy. The letter advised the powers that be to collect the whole miserable
lot, cram them into trucks and take them as far north as possible, into the remote
semi-desert, and dump them there. By the time they trekked back into the cities,
they would have decided what they wanted to do with their lives. Another offshoot of the same basic idea, the key word being self reliance, was to take the
offensive creatures into the arid north, give them each a panga, a jembe, a bag
of seeds and six months dry ration, order them to wait for the rain and ban them
from ever setting foot in the cities. That would certainly get them thinking
positively. That letter too was never printed.
Why, Dusman argued, wouldnt they do respectable, self supporting work
like everyone else? Why couldnt they peddle cabbages like Sukuma Wiki or
recycle garbage with Chupa na Debe?
40

But even as the thoughts passed through his mind, Dusman realised how
hopeless it all was. There were only so many cabbage eaters in the city. And that
anyone, even a kinless old man, should survive on peddling other peoples waste
was beyond understanding. What Chupa na Debe collected wasnt even second
or third hand, but usually beyond re-use. It was like selling someone elses
chewed up vomit to the hungry.
As he climbed the stairs to Dacca House, Dusman was certain he was
going to starve to death. He had not eaten for longer than he could remember
and there was no famine relief in sight. Not unless Toto broke his oldest habit
and came home tonight, or the Bathroom Man paid up for the seats.
Sukuma Wikis children had just massacred another giant rat on the
rubbish covered stairs, smashed it to a bloody mixture of furs and broken bones.
They had made a rule to kill one rat a day whenever they were free from
schooling, and they did not just kill them. They bashed them with stones and
sticks until there was nothing left but a bloody smear on the floor. Dusman had
once tried to warn them of the futility of their extermination campaign; told
them they would die of old age before they had rid Daccca House of its dark
furry curse if they only killed one every day. Sukuma Wikis children had just
laughed and continued their hunt.
That Saturday he found them grinding the dead rat into the cement floor
and tried to talk to them again.
Have you fellows ever stopped to think how much more fun you could
have if you included cockroaches in the wanted list? he asked them.
They laughed good naturedly and continued their work. They had already
discovered that roaches were too many, too small and did not bleed half as
much as rats.
As he watched them smear the rat into the cement floor he knew their
innocent sadism and blood lust would in time find other outlets. If those little
boys survived Dacca House and grew up to join the River Road mob justice
gangs, God help the thieves.
On a long wooden bench outside Mgangas room was a dejected group of
waiting customers. They came from all over the city to consult the witchdoctor
and ask his assistance in charting them a newer, brighter destiny.
The yard was littered with hundreds of old bottles of all sizes and colours.
Chupa na Debe was busy sorting out the weeks loot. He was a willowy old
man, at least sixty years old, with sunken cheeks, glazed dark eyes and a full
head of cotton-white hair. He had had trouble with his long legs for a long time
now, and he moved at a painfully slow pace. He was permanently stoopshouldered from lugging heavy sackfuls of bottles and scrap.
41

Chupa na Debe had explained the sorting procedure to Dusman. Bottles of

the same colour and same family were laid out in separate heaps, ready to be
bagged for the trip to the recycling plant in the Industrial Area early on Monday
morning. To most people a bottle was just a bottle, but to him each bottle had a
certain value in cents. He had every conceivable bottle in his collection: spirit
bottles, wine bottles, cooking oil bottles, fruit juice bottles, the whole lot. Apart
from his bedding and the tinsmith kit he used to mend old pots and pans with,
his room contained an incredible amount of rubbish and old bottles. From next
to his sleeping mat near the door, the bottles rose in a heap to the back of the
room.
But though they were his main source of income, old bottles were not all
that Chupa na Debe dealt in. in his usual rounds through the citys dustbins, he
collected a multitude of discarded goods. He collected scrap metal, old
newspapers which he sold to Sukuma Wiki for wrapping vegetables in, in
exchange for a meal, old shoes which he sold to the neighbours and, sometimes,
old cast-off clothes that could be patched up enough to cover a bare back.
The fact that he had neither a brazier nor cooking utensils in his house had
given rise to the rumours that he lived on food he found in the garbage cans in
the course of his duty. The rumours were, however, untrue, as was borne out by
the fact that the old man enjoyed better health than many of his neighbours.
He looked up as Dusman stepped over the heaps of bottles on his way
across the yard.
Greetings, he croaked.
Greetings, Dusman responded, trying to avoid stepping on the bottles.
Have you got anything for me?
I told you last time, Dusman said stopping to figure out where next to
step on the seemingly endless carpet of green, white, red, black and blue bottles.
We dont bring bottles home.
What about papers?
I stopped buying them when they refused to print Sukuma Wikis letters.
Old shoes?
I have told you before we are still wearing our old shoes.
I thought you might want to sell.
No , we dont.
However, there is never any harm in asking.
No, there is never.
42

Chupa na Debe stooped back to his work. Dusman found his key, unlocked
the door and went inside. The room was dark and smelt of the sleep of the night
before. He pulled the torn curtain aside and threw the window open. The room
was in a mess, the utensils unwashed, beds unmade and the floor littered with
waste paper. He took off his coat and hung it on a nail behind the door. Then he
took off his shoes and lay down on his bed to rest.
From down the yard, he heard music and feminine laughter from
Magendos room. Laugh and love all you can, Dusman thought. One of these
nights he would waylay Magendo, the gangster, out in the yard and call him to
account for the shame he had piled on the poor Bathroom Mans wife.
Through the window Dusman could see the pile of shiny clean metal
salvaged from his car by the Bathroom Man, waiting to go on sale on Grogan
Road. The car on the street was now no more than a shell. Somehow during the
past week, the mechanic had managed to mover every usable part, including the
doors and the engine, piece by piece up the stairs and up to his bathroom.
For every piece disposed of, he would keep ten per cent of the returns and
hand over the rest of the money to Dusman. That was the deal Dusman Gonzaga
had made with him, a deal he had found most sympathetic and impossible to
turn down.

43

Three
Grogan Road is also the citys pacesetter. When the dilapidated slums
along it go quietly to sleep after another hot and gruelling tussle with time, the
entire city also succumbs to the rigours of the pointless rat race.
Dacca House, usually the last to yield herself reluctantly to the perils of
the dark nights, is suddenly quiet and peaceful. From Dusmans room light
burns through the flimsy curtain and flows like a dark yellow liquid onto the
cold yard.
*

Dusman was alone in the room. He lay on his bed dressed in grey cotton
underpants and blew smoke rings at the smoke-stained ceiling above. Totos bed
across the room lay unmade and as empty as he had left it on Thursday
morning. He had not been back since. The coffee table was stacked with read
and unread books and second-hand magazines, purchased for fifty cents a piece
from street vendors on River Road, half a dozen empty cigarette packets and a
couple of overspilling ashtrays. The formica table top, wherever it was possible,
showed stains from spilled tea and grains of sugar. The glass Dusman had drunk
his afternoon tea out of sat unwashed on the table, and a baby cockroach was in
the process of drowning in the little tea left at the bottom.
It was a lonely, sleepless night. A hot August night so restless that the mice
inside the ceiling would not go to sleep. They had plotted all night and Dusman
heard them loud and clear. He had heard the neighbours snore and grunt as they
turned in their beds. He had heard babies wake up to cry and heard their
mothers turn and stick their tits into the open mouths and go back to sleep. Then
too he had listened to the slap-slap sucking sounds made by the sucking babies.
Dusman suffered a great bout of insomnia. The heat filled the room with a
heavy suffocating weight, evoking in him the mortal dread of being asphyxiated
and drowning in a lake of boiling water. He could not open the window for fear
that if he dozed off, someone would pole-fish his clothes or steal the curtains.
Tattered as they were, the curtains could fetch a price somewhere in the city.
They could be sewn into bedding or cut up to make clothes for some barefoot
children. Nothing was ever beyond salvage on Grogan Road.
He thought about the leave his boss had forced on him. The thought of all
those seven glorious days to sleep late and laze around all day did not make him
as happy as it should have done. He would never be happy. He was destined to
die a sad man.

44

He was a troubled man. He had not told his boss everything that was
bothering him. The job bothered him, yes, and the mysterious parking meter.
But then there was his life, a monster sworn to destroy him. There was Grogan
Road. There were neighbours, Sukuma Wiki, the Bathroom Man and the others,
the faceless ones. True, everyone had their own problems, but Dusman was too
close to the flame. Not only could he smell the fire, but he could actually fell the
heat of friction generated by the conflict of bodies so closely packed together.
He could feel it and it was not healthy. Not for him. His mind cried for room to
think, his heart air to breathe. But relief lay nowhere in sight. Everywhere he
turned, life was crammed with endless vistas of bleak hopelessness.
He blinked and shook his head to clear out disturbing thoughts. The
cockroaches walking on the smoke-stained ceiling above him looked an
impossible black against the cancerous grey of the mouldy ceiling. Water had
leaked through the roof, soaking the ceiling so that when it dried up the boards
were left deformed and sagging downwards in places. Above the ceiling lived
the grey mice and rats eating away at the wooden crossbars that supported the
ceiling. One day when they ate their way through all the supporting beams and
bars, the roof of Dacca House would collapse into the cells below. Sometimes at
night the mice descended into the rooms to steal dirty socks and old
underclothes with which to feed the colony above. Years of near misses had
sharpened their instincts and made them impossible to trap.
Dusman counted the cockroaches on the ceiling. There may have been just
a couple of hundred black roaches, but through his squinting eyes they formed a
blurred image of thousands of teaming black bodies. They played, and danced
about like well-fed kid goats, forming in his vision a mass of frothing, bubbling
black liquid. The happy roaches must have eaten out that night. If they had not
fed in the neighbouring rooms, then they must have gone out to the sprawling
crap restaurant outside. Feasted deliciously on the exotic African waste heaped
there by the neighbours. There was not a single morsel to be scrounged from
Dusmans room. He had not had anything to eat for the whole day himself and
his stomach bit.
The Indian dogs from over the high stone wall separating the Dacca House
block from that of the last Indians on Grogan Road barked madly. Down the
courtyard, a neighbour snored loudly. The barking dogs and the snoring man
had kept him awake way past midnight. He thought about water and parking
meters and could not decide which he hated most. He thought about Toto out
somewhere having a good time with beer and women and wished that he too
worked in a bank so that he could have money when few others had. He thought
lingeringly about the Bathroom Man and his patient wife and their retarded
child, and he was glad he was not in the footsore shoes of the Bathroom Man.

45

Then he was angry. Thinking about the Bathroom Man filled him with
despair. Suddenly he was assailed by overwhelming storms of shame, guilt and
sometimes, fright. He was embarrassed for the Bathroom Man, ashamed that
anyone should live in a dark bathroom like a slimy, black African toad.
Unreasonable as it was, he felt he had contributed to the ostracization of the
Bathroom Man. Fate had given the Bathroom Man a retarded child, but men had
done worse; they had casually and irrevocably condemned the half-wit to grow
up in an old disused bathroom. The thought of how extremely vulnerable human
life was filled him with a bitter helplessness that sometimes frightened him into
a violent, destructive rage.
Dusman, like most of his neighbours, did not make much money. But he,
unlike them, did not have a wife and children to look after. He shared the house
rent with Toto and was able to have extra for the occasional rampage on the
town, whenever he felt lifes drudgery dragging him into the pit.
He lit another cigarette. A visiting mosquito from the stinking river buzzed
him once and landed on the wall. It had to be a visiting mosquito. Local ones
did not get anywhere within arms reach with the lights still on. He turned on
the bed and slapped the insect against the wall. The stolen blood from the
mosquitos thin abdomen added to the numerous blood smears on the wall. He
had squashed hundreds of the blood thieves against the same wall.
Next door the bed creaked loudly as Sukuma Wiki turned on the rocky
contraption. Tonight he had not conspired with his wife to raise the price of
vegetables. The man coughed. There was the soft thud-thud of heavy sandaled
feet, then the bolt clicked back and the door screeched open. The doors in the
block had not been oiled since the Indians moved out, and light sleepers like
Dusman woke up many times I the night as the neighbours went out to the
toilet. Now he had heard the vegetable hawker go out and the subsequent loud
splashing into the toilet bowl. Sukuma Wiki did not flush the toilet after use. No
one did at night. The neighbours knew from practical experience, that the
ageless rusty cast-iron cistern would awaken the whole of Grogan Road if
disturbed at night. The door to Sukuma Wikis room screeched shut. The bed
creaked again. There was brief intimate murmuring followed by the now
detestable familiar regular creaking of the bed as Sukuma Wiki proved to Vuta
Wiki, his enormous wife, that he still had it in him in spite of his fifty odd years.
The rhythm slowly mounted and soon, accompanied by heavy breathing, it was
as fast as the rattle of Sukuma Wikis vegetable push-cart coming full speed
down Mkokoteni Lane. The noise rose to a crescendo. Then came one final
crash and the bed stopped rocking. Sukuma Wiki coughed once more and,
satisfied, settled down. The block breathed relief and again settled back to sleep.
The cockroaches continued their curious ceiling dance above. Be sure and
make it good tonight, bastards, Dusman transmitted to them telepathically.
46

There was a conspiracy to get rid of them and this time they would never
escape. He was going to starve them to death then gas the living hell out of
them. Better make your dancing good tonight, he said out loud. And have a
good nights sleep for the last time in this room. Again Toto had promised to
buy a large can of insecticide to spray some respect into the monstrous
cockroaches. They had grown so carefree and daring that they no longer
scampered under the beds when a Homo Sapiens walked into the room. They
needed some disciplining. Killton would do it. According to the radio
commercials, New Killton killed bugs dead.
On sleepless nights like this Dusman missed Toto. Toto was not much of a
talker, especially when he was sober, but he was good company. Dusman had
allowed him to share the dingy room on condition that whatever else he did with
his salary, he would pay his share of the three hundred-shilling rent. Whenever
the need to cook arose, they shared the expenses. Toto had turned out to be a
good roommate. He did not always pay his rent on time, but he did pay. Even
when, as sometimes it happened, he had squandered all his money in one
weekends good living and had to borrow from Dusman to pay him for the
house rent. They both understood the landlord was a sober man of God and
could never comprehend how anyone could spend all his months earnings on
bear and evil women.
Dusman extinguished the cigarette on the ashtray and got under the
blanket. He did not bolt the door, in case Toto came home tonight. Toto never
knocked. He broke in, shoving the bolt catch out of the aged frame. He had
done it so many times that Dusman had resolved to always leave the door
unbolted whenever Toto was out. When Toto had been drinking for days on end,
he lost patience with everything.
Dusman switched off the lights. He was exhausted, he was hungry too. He
had not had anything except tea for the whole day. The last meal he had taken
was the lunch, on his way back from the confrontation with his boss the day
before. The whole day Sunday he had lain on the bed, reading old magazines
purchased on the street up River Road, hoping Toto would come home with
enough money left for a meal.
The tired door screeched open and slammed shut. Light cut painfully into
his sleepy eyes. Muttering obscenities, he turned over, buried his sweaty face
into the dust-smelling pillow and went back to sleep. Then followed a few
seconds of complete silence. Dusman slowly drifted into a light sleep.
When Toto finally spoke, his voice trailed miles behind him.
Dusman, he said.

47

Dusman was instantly awake again. He did not turn though. No listening to
Toto tonight. Never again. On nights like this, the drunken monologue stretched
into the following morning.
Dusman, Toto called again.
Dusman snored lightly. Sometimes the ruse worked. Toto would talk to
himself for a few minutes then fall asleep in mid-sentence. Apart from the
snoring next door and the mice conference in the ceiling, the building was dead
silent. Dacca House was a strange animal. Apart from Toto, Dusman, and
Magendo the gangster down the yard, most of the occupants were asleep by
nine.
Dusman, Toto called again.
Go to sleep, Dusman told him suddenly, his rough voice muffled in the
sweat-stinking pillow.
But, Dusman, I want to talk.
You have my permission.
But Dusman, listen mate.
Do you have to wake me?
Theres got to be a listener.
Cant you do both?
And, plaintively, what will you do?
Sleep.
That is unfair.
Unfair? It wasnt unfair when I was lying here unable to sleep because of
hunger while you were out burning money.
I am sorry mate, but
Go to bed.
A period of complete quiet followed, a pause during which the snoring
next door and the barking dogs stopped. Dusman was drifting back into the
dream world when the absolute silence knocked him awake again. Slowly he
turned his head. Toto was leaning on the door, half asleep, head hanging loose
over his chest like the of a dead rat. A quiet snort escaped his dilated nostrils. It
was four a.m. Monday morning. It had taken Toto four days and four nights to
find his way back home. Some end-of-months it took him longer. Some months
he did not come home at all until he had drunk all his pay or got himself
battered in a bar brawl. One could tell how much fun he had had by the bruises
on his body. Today he looked as if he had been thoroughly chewed and then
spat out. His fashionable imported, black market suit and shirt were in bloody
48

tatters. His face and body were covered with superficial bruises. A cut on his
swollen lower lip oozed a thin trickle of blood which he kept licking and
dabbing at with the tail of his shredded shirt while he slept. He had had a good
time, a truly jubilant end-of-month.
What happened? Dusman asked, all sleep gone out of his head.
Toto stirred and swallowed noisily. His eyes popped open. He shifted his
sleep-clogged head and rested it on his right shoulder. With one limp hand he
dabbed at the blood on his lip and tried to say something. His breathing was
hard and slow. He sighed, waved Dusman away and closed his eyes. Though
small Toto was not as thin-looking as his roommate. His skin was lighter, there
was some Somali blood in him, and his long hair was less kinky.
You wanted to talk, Dusman told him. I am listening. What have you
been up to?
Ah, Toto waved his limp hand again.
Damn it, I am asking you what?
Now he opened his mouth and, after a few attempts, said: What do you
think?
Thugs? Dusman asked.
Toto shook his head disdainfully. Only morons and muttonheads got
themselves mugged. He had never got himself violently robbed in a lifetime of
monthly bar-crawling sprees. While left, right and centre, people were getting
robbed and even killed, Toto never had as much as a brief confrontation with
robbers. This was a miracle that recurred each end of the month. He went out,
had himself a ball and got worked over by bar crowds. He attracted violence the
same way his money drew in the whores. He would get into a bar, start minding
his own beer and soon enough someone would start feeling like bursting Totos
head. And of course Toto would encourage him to try. He had never learnt to
fight one drunk at a time. He took on the whole bar together, and once he got
into a fray, he was no quitter. However many they were, he kept slugging away
until he was knocked out cold. No matter how many times they chucked him
out into the dusty streets, he would keep staggering right back in until a police
officer grabbed him by the scruff and forced him his head into the dirt, or until a
drunk bashed his head with a bottle full of beer. Whatever happened, he
returned home through back lanes crawling with muggers and killers, and still
made it home. Occasionally he came home with a terrible cold into the bargain.
Got into a fight, he drawled in answer to Dusmans question.
looks like a war, Dusman thought but asked, with your amazon women?
He nodded.
49

Third month in a row, Dusman told him. What bugs me is if you got to
have a go at a woman, why dont you pick one your own size, or smaller? Those
bitches will kill you one of these days.
Not likely, Toto shook his head. You are scared of women, thats what.
Plain scared. He snorted a while then said, Hey, you know what, I tried to find
the spitting woman. I dont like women who spit at my friends. But I couldnt
find her so I took the next best thing.
As with his bar fights, Toto did everything in a big way. The man had style.
Most of his women friends were a head taller than his one and a half metres and
much heavier. His slight build and youthful features misled a lot of them into
thinking they could spank him. Often they realised their mistake too late to back
out. He could be very tough in a flight, especially when sorting out a scornful
female.
How big was she? Dusman wanted to know.
Toto swayed, belched and waved his hand at the room.
As large as this room, he said. Most of it was the mudguard.
Big as this room?
Toto nodded and dabbed at the dried blood on his thick lip.
And she did that to you? Dusman asked.
She didnt touch me.
No woman the size of this room could lay a finger on Toto when he had
been having a spell of the good times. He reeled too fast for anyone to land him
an effective blow.
Her boyfriends? Dusman asked.
The slut ran, Toto told him. When I warmed up, she took off, left me a
whole bar. The new joint at the corner of Hasrat Road and Moi Avenue. Went to
check it out. The den was full of braggarts and drunken bigheads. Making so
much noise over my whacking the woman. I told them to shut up and act like
like Africans. The monkeys didnt like it. I told them to go get stuffed and they
did not like that either. They didnt look like doing anything about it and I had
to do something to get them started.
So I tossed them a couple of bottles and left. Down the street I realised my
watch and wallet were missing. You know the automatic watch I got from
Magendo. My wallet had three hundred shillings in it.
You havent told me anything important yet like why you were fighting
the woman in the first place.
She called me a small man!
50

Dusman flicked a cockroach off the pillow and waited on his elbow. He
was still tired but wide awake.
When I got back, Toto tried to laugh but his swollen lip got in the way.
When I got back you know, the mother suckers were fighting like mad dogs.
I must have missed the guys I aimed the bottles at. You should have seen the
action. Like mad dogs! Bottles, chairs, glasses everything was airborne. I saw
a womans handbag knock a bastard out cold. Bang, on the face, and he went
under. After a thoughtful pause: Maybe she had a bottle hidden in it. Maybe it
was a man who wielded the bag. The man just wilted.
Dusman smiled.
I got my wallet back. Found another thug trying it for size. I never
smacked a drunk the way I did this one. Whack! He crawled under a table and
lay still. I got my watch back too.
He started searching over his roughed-up person.
Where is that son of a he reeled and came up with the watch. He put it
to his ear and gave it a shake. The little bit of the strap fell off. He listened
again.
It moves. What did I tell you. Magendo does not always sell pure junk.
Another chain and it should be as good as new you know, I couldnt leave
such a fine watch to those swine. Class one bastards. You must meet them some
time.
We will go back together to sort them out. You know the type I mean. The
worst scum that ever sat on a bar stool. The kind of imbeciles that kick you in
the head when you go down. He touched the cut on his lip, tested the teeth
behind it to make sure they were still there. And that drunk trying my wallet for
size!
Dusman turned on the bed and covered his head. It is four in the morning,
he said desperately. Go to sleep. You have had a swell time.
Toto staggered to his bed and sat on it. He was as drunk as ever. After a
moment he got up and reeled to the kitchen table. Cockroaches scrambled from
the dirty pots and pans, and took cover under the table.
I am hungry, he told them quietly.
So am I, Dusman said, still covered up. I hope you saved the rent at
least.
Rent, rent all the time, the drunken roommate slurred. Do you ever think
of anything else?
Neither does Tumbo Kubwa, Dusman said.
Forget the pig, Toto said. Where is the food?
51

What food?
Why?
Because there was no food yesterday, and the day before and before.
Why?
Dusman did not bother to answer that one. Toto wandered aimlessly round
the room, and ending up by his bed, sat on it. He took off his shoes, shrugged
off his clothes and slipped into bed. He switched off the light but after a
moment switched it back on.
Have we got any eggs left?
Its after four, Dusman reminded him.
Toto climbed out of bed and stumbled back to the kitchen table. After a
lifetime of fumbling, he managed to get the paraffin stove going. The frying pan
was a mass of grey mould under a three-day old layer of fried tomatoes.
Where is the cooking fat?
Finished, Dusman said.
How can a man eat fried eggs without cooking fat? he demanded.
He cant, Dusman told him. Its after four and tomorrow is a working
day.
But I am starving.
So I am.
I cant sleep hungry.
You should have remembered that earlier in the evening.
When Toto gave up the futile search for food and collapsed on the bed,
Dusman drifted into a troubled light sleep. He dreamed he was a fugitive with a
price on his head pursued by a posse of bounty-crazy parking meters for selling
his car for two hundred shillings.

52

Four
When Dusman Gonzaga fell asleep late at night, after a restless evening of
soul-wringing, he did so with the unshakable belief that he would wake up in
the morning to find the world gone. Where or how did not really matter. It had
existed for too long and it had to go. All he cared for was another turn, a fairer
chance to starting over again, in a different street in another city. Each night
before drifting into his nightly nightmares he bet the cockroaches they would
never see another day in their lives, nor would they ever see him again. The
world would be to hell and gone in the morning. Each night the cockroaches
listened to him numbly and the rats laughed at him from above. And sure
enough, in spite of the odds against it, Dacca House would still be there in the
morning, sitting redundantly on the same old street, in the same old city of the
same old country, and Dusman would have to get up and go out to read the
same old hateful meters.
*

Once more hell was loose on Grogan Road. All the neighbours radios,
record players, cassette players or whatever noise machines they possessed were
turned on full blast. Breakfast music wailed through Dacca House in dozens of
strange languages. The Bathroom Mans child was not howling his head off
today but Chupa Na Debe was mending a tin pot and the effect was exactly the
same.
Dacca House has a history as long as , but much more colourful that that of
any other along Grogan Road. It is older and sturdier than most. The fact that it
stands erect and tough, while many others have either already perished or are in
the process of sagging and crumbling all round, is a living testimony to the
proud craftsmanship of just one man old Kachra Samat, now retired to a
generous mansion in the cool and quiet of suburbia. Until recently Dacca House
had been the flower of his youth, the fruit of his sweat. He built Dacca House
with his own hands and named it after his home city on the River Ganges,
thousands of kilometres across the Indian Ocean.
Along with many of his compatriots, Kachra Samat first came to this
country as a coolie engaged in the building of the great colonial railway. The
country had been nothing then but a vast wilderness which the white man was
trying to organize into some form of a government. The natives, who lived in
scattered groups around this wilderness, could not be interested in helping build
a railway for the white man to colonise them better. When the fifteen hundred
kilometres of railway were completed, the thousands of Indian coolies imported
for manual labour had found themselves stranded in a strange country with
53

nothing to do. To keep them happy while he planned further adventures into the
interior of the dark, empty continent, the white man had granted the Indians
trade concessions and large plots of land on which to build their shops,
flourished and settled down on a more or less permanent basis.
That is a long time ago now, way back when the city streets were mere
mud tracks, and the river behind Grogan Road, a freshwater river with fish and
green snakes, dragonflies and nesting places for birds and wild ducks. Old
Indians can still remember fishing in what is now a moving sewer.
Like his compatriots, Kachra Samat had not built his house to let. He had
toiled over it for his family to live in, in the early days when there were no
rental houses in the city. It was a one-floor affair. The ground floor had been
many things before finally resigning itself to being a mere second-rate garage
specialising in used and stolen motor car parts. It had started as a drapery store
selling Indian textiles; then it became a bookshop, a photographic studio, a
cobblers shop, a grocery store and finally a garage. It had, however, mainly due
to its poor location, escaped the fate, worse than death, that had overtaken most
of the formerly Indian properties on River and Grogan Roads that of being
turned into bars and brothels after the Indians sold out to Africans.
This brothel-mania amazed Dusman. It was an itch of the newly affluent
Africans to turn all newly-acquired property into bars and brothels, a
phenomenon which had led one reckless foreign entrepreneur into stating that
Africans could not think beyond bars and brothels, and that, given the chance,
they would convert the whole city into one vast brothel. This misguided
statement had started a big outcry in the Parliament and cost the foreigner his
paper citizenship. But Dusman had a strong feeling that if Africans ever bought
out the Hilton Hotel, it would turn out to be the biggest brothel south of the
Sahara.
Upstairs in Dacca House were the fifteen rooms for Kachra Samats
extensive family. It was built L-shaped so that every room had a door and a
window opening into the yard. In keeping with the fashion of the age, there
were connecting doors between all the rooms, so that one could travel the whole
L on the building without stepping outside at all. This design later proved
priceless to the new landlord of Dacca House. Against the further wall of the
yard were the common floor-level toilets, a bathroom with a monstrous tub
which rested on four pig-iron lions feet, and a shower room. The kitchens had
been built nearest the rooms. The building was surrounded by a high stone wall
topped with rows of broken glass to prevent natives from clambering over to
steal. The only entrance was from Grogan Road and up the stairs through a
heavy wooden door which was locked day and night during the long occupancy
of Kachra Samat, his brothers, uncles, sisters and all their numerous offspring. It
was a big, safe place and for over thirty years it was home for the Kachra
54

family. They worked hard in the shop below, the father as a tailor, the mother as
the cashier and the young Kachras as shop attendants, and at dusk they closed
shop, went upstairs and bolted themselves in their rooms for the night. During
the night, all communication was carried on through the connecting doors. One
did not need to step outside except to go to the latrine.
As the years went by and life became progressively comfortable, more and
more compatriots came from India to settle permanently, and stone buildings
mushroomed along the river and up the valley. All one had to do was dig up a
foundation and plant a building in the rich African soil. Almost by magic, a
street took shape, one identical to many Indian streets in Dacca or New Delhi. It
was named, according to colonial tradition, after a famous British war hero.
There was no organized sewage system then and the immigrants simply
channelled their refuse down the hill and into the river. The river behind Grogan
Road became an open sewer. The fish died, the wild ducks were all poached by
marauding bands of newly-urbanised natives, and the green snakes and the
dragonflies emigrated to God-knows-where. The river stank all day and night.
Unhealthy mosquitoes buzzed all over Grogan Road. But the city went on
growing.
New streets sprang up on the hill around the all-important City Hall and
the Law Courts. These too directed their human waste down the hill. Grogan
Road stank even more. It became necessary to move some of the more classy
stores up the hill to the newly built River Road. A lot of shops on Grogan Road
were converted into motor garages. The street acquired a new character. The air
was smelly and dusty and the whole district reeked of grease and car batteries.
Old tyres turned all day long in the wild bushy area between Grogan Road and
the river behind.
A new species of human beings never before allowed in the area began to
appear on Grogan Road. Greasy open-air mechanics drifted into the district,
lugging heavy steel tool boxes, looking for work. They did not need to ask for a
garage to let. They repaired the cars where they were parked in the streets and in
the few open spaces that, for some reason or other, the Indians had neglected to
build on. Grogan Road was crowded with all sorts of strange people, and
broken-down machines. As motorised traffic increased, the dust got thicker and
rose higher. More shops escaped to the cleaner air of River Road and Victoria
Street. The shoppers followed them just as fast up the hill, and Grogan Road
slowly took on the air of ghost street, bombed-out shell of an old commercial
centre. It was left to the garages, broken-down cars and grease-smeared, black
mechanics.
Then a new plague struck.
The times were changing fast, and some of the laws enacted during the
building of the railway in order to distinguish between master and servant
55

suddenly became outmoded and, as some put it, inhuman. It was no longer
allowed to reserve more attractive residential areas for people of certain races
only. People were free to live wherever they could afford to buy property,
Whites, Indians and Africans alike. It became suddenly fashionable to live in the
formerly whites-only suburbs outside the city centre. According to the fastchanging standards of a rapidly evolving society, it was no longer considered
affluent to live anywhere within a kilometre of Grogan Road. Many of the
original creators of the now infamous street moved out to the beautiful lawns
and fresh air of the formerly exclusive suburbs. From a respectable distance
behind, the Africans started their encroachment on Grogan Road.
Now that they no longer lived or did business in the ill-fated district, most
Indians sold their properties to up-and-coming African businessmen. But
Kachra Samat, ageing fast and more sentimental than most, hung onto Dacca
House until the very last. It was his home away from home. His very heart and
spirit were buried in the buildings foundation. It was his only link with his
homeland and the past. He just could not sell.
When he moved his family to the suburbs, he let the shop on the ground
floor of Dacca House to an old friend and countryman who was not yet affluent
enough to move to the new districts. The rooms upstairs he leased to two Indian
families for eight hundred shillings a month. With the help of his sons, just
starting out in his footsteps, he continued to manage the drapery shop along
Victoria Street. As time passed and he grew older, his sons took control of the
business which was expanding fast. They had to open a branch shop on the then
new Government Road, and to be able to purchase these new premises, they
finally decided Dacca House had to go.
Now old and tired, Dacca House was sold to a shrewd African
businessman.
Tumbo Kubwa was one of the first few Africans ever to open their eyes
after the long slumber induced on the natives by colonialism. As soon as he
realised that the winds of change and fortune were blowing hard, he unfurled his
creased sails and struck out into the future of property investment. Roving on
Grogan Road, his eyes landed on Kachra Samats building. At once he saw the
potential that lay behind the humble, cracked faade of Dacca House. Buried
inside the mottled concrete walls were hundreds of thousands of easy shillings.
All he had to do was get together his resources and borrow a little from the
newly-formed, non-discriminatory credit companies.
He paid old Kachra Samat in hard cash, since, even in in those days, no
wise Indian would accept a cheque signed by an African. And as soon as the
legal transfer papers were signed, he started his mint rolling.
He gave the two Indian families a months notice to quit the tenement.
Their eight hundred shillings rent was peanuts compared to what he intended to
56

get out of the place. They pleaded with him to let them stay, but there was no
way they could pay what he wanted. The Indians moved out. That same day,
Tumbo Kubwa moved in with a gang of freelance carpenters, masons, and
plumbers picked off street corners and from low-class bars in town. He never
paid for anything he could cheat out of somebody. Before work began, he gave
his gang a pep talk out in the yard. This was designed to put them in line. He
had the ideas, the plans and the tools. All they had to bring was their labour. He
would pay them so much, not a cent more.
They set to work, repartitioning the flats. The bigger rooms were
partitioned with cardboard to make more rooms. By the time they had finished,
Kachra Samats connection doors were all nailed shut. Each room was a
complete private entity with some sort of a window and door, and worth at least
three hundred shillings a month. Electrical rewiring was done using old wiring
ripped out of other places so that even the rooms divided with cardboard had
light switches in them. Next, the conscripted work force moved out into the
yard.
The two large kitchens in the yard were stripped of their shelves and
plumbing to make cells with barely enough room for a small bed and a cooking
stove. The huge bathroom between the shower and the toilet was stripped of its
bathtub and plumbing to make another room, this one slightly smaller than the
kitchens. A single water faucet was installed outside by the wall of the shower
room for the tenants.
By the time the gang of builders had finished their rigorous job, the old
fifteen-room Dacca House had now thirty single rooms, including the two
kitchens and bathroom, one toilet, a shower room and a water faucet. Each room
was just slightly larger than a giant parking crate, completely independent of the
others, but they all shared the one toilet and one shower. Apart from these
necessary alterations, nothing else was touched. They dirty peeling paint
remained dirty and peeling, the leaking roof stayed leaking, and any windows
that had not been fortunate enough to have window panes stayed without
window panes.
Tumbo Kubwa did not need to advertise his numerous vacancies.
Prospecting tenants had already heard about this ambitious new African venture.
Even as he worked on it, tenants came to view the project, expressed their wish
to be considered for a room and gave their names with a deposit of one months
advance rent. Most of the rebuilding was accomplished with this same advance
rent. His pocket book was full with names of early applicants and how much
money they had paid.
The day after the renovations were complete, he unlocked all the rooms,
then the front door and let in the flood. As tenants scrambled for rooms, Tumbo
Kubwa smiled with satisfaction. His God had smiled on him. In his first month
57

as the landlord of Dacca House he had easily and without fuss made eight
thousand shillings, ten times the amount Kachra Samat had collected each
month. He was a very happy man. He drove back to his suburban residence
singing praise to the Almighty, a happy man.
Dusman was among the first African tenants to live in Dacca House. Toto
joined him a few months later while looking for a job in the city, an
inexperienced school leaver, armed only with his youthful eager features and a
school certificate.
*

Toto sat on his bed, smoking his breakfast as he did every morning while
trying to tune himself up for another day. Unlike Dusman he did not fret about
having to face another new day every morning. All he wished was that every
new day would delay its arrival by at least another ten hours. They came too
soon. Hardly had he closed his eyes before he had to rise and go back to work.
He sat in his underwear, bare feet hanging over blue rubber slippers. He felt his
bumpy lit with the tip of his finger, wondering whether it was bad enough for
him to get sick leave. It did not feel bad enough for his boss to allow him sick
leave. His head hurt with a hangover and now more than ever he hated his job at
the Commercial Bank. It was a rotten job through and through. He detested
passing out thousands of shillings to complete strangers every day, while his
pocket was empty. It was worse than forced labour. Forced hard labour forced
by the need for money without which his craving for booze and women would
surely send him to hell. Hard labour having to work thirty long days a month
with pleasurable play coming briefly by at the end of the month. Too much
hateful work, too little pay. The algebra was lousy, and so the equation would
never balance, ever. He knew this, and each morning as he sat smoking his
breakfast, he hung his head dejectedly and sadly, as hopeless as one going to
hell on Sukuma Wikis fruit cart, drawn by drunken donkeys.
And all the time the crazy scrambled breakfast music was persistently
trying to drive Dusman insane. He threw Toto a red-eyed bad-morning look,
covered his head and tried to go back to sleep.
No milk today, Toto told him without any of his usual exaggerated cheer.
He had taken a good hiding the night before.
So what? Dusmans voice was hard and irritated.
So theres no milk.
So what?
I am starving, Toto said quietly.
58

Last time it had been tea leaves. Always something vital was missing from
breakfast. One day it was sugar, the next coffee, the day after something else.
And when the chemicals were all there, then either the stove had no paraffin, or
there were no matches to light it. This diabolic arrangement of small
misfortunes in such a way that they made it impossible to ever have breakfast
convinced Dusman without doubt the room was bewitched. On extremely rare
occasions the appetite was missing.
Weve got to get organized, Toto said, a statement he had made on
numerous other mornings when there was no breakfast.
The smell of frying eggs from the neighbouring rooms battled violently
with the stench from the common toilet across the yard. Sunlight trickled into
the room through the rents and tears which Pussy, Totos tomcat, had made in
the calico cloth curtains only a few minutes before he left to go and get run over
by a truck on Grogan Road. Dust particles, some as large as boulders, sailed
aimlessly lost in the suns rays, searching desperately for a place to settle among
the thousands of other dust particles that covered everything. The sight of so
much dust aroused in Dusman his great fear of asphyxia. Some days there was
more dust than air in the room.
It is seven oclock, Dusman, Toto stepped on the cigarette end with his
slipper and rose to take his place in the line at the shower room. You will be
late.
Let me be, Dusman growled.
In case you didnt know, today is Monday. Weve got to go bake the daily
bread!
I am on leave, Dusman said impatiently. How many times have I got to
tell you!
Leave again! What do you want leave for?
To recuperate.
To what?
Recuperate. They think I am crazy.
Who does?
My boss.
He must be nuts too. There is nothing wrong with you. You are just plain
lazy. The clinical term for it is bone-idleness. The only known cure is hard
work.
I am trying to sleep, Dusman said impatiently.
What the hell are you going to do with another leave?
59

Sleep.
For how long? Toto asked, his voice edged with envy.
One week, Dusman uncovered his head and said emphatically. Will you
please let me sleep?
Go right ahead.
Toto grabbed his bathrobe, soap and towel and went out to join the shower
line. Dusman covered his head. After a moment he reached out to the table and
murdered the radio. He wished death on his neighbours, especially Sukuma
Wiki and his radio, and tried to sleep. Toto came back into the room and
slammed the door, waking him instantly.
Sukuma Wiki beat me to it, he said. The bastard takes hours to shower,
he switched the radio back on. They ought to move the Bathroom Man further
down the yard so he can stop cheating on us.
He lives there, Dusman said, still covered up. I hate him.
You hate everybody you dont like, Toto reminded him.
He whistled as he combed his hair and dressed to go to work. His long dry
hair had to be wetted from the water tap outside the bathroom so that the
wooden comb could penetrate deep enough to make an impression on it. He
peeped at himself in the broken mirror which, like the split wooden comb and
many other things in the room, needed replacing. It used to be a large thirty by
twenty centimetres mirror before one of Totos regular sluts smashed it against
the floor. She broke it during a misunderstanding over her overnight wages. She
wanted twenty shillings for the night of hard labour, but Toto had only three
and that was hardly enough for a beer. He reminded her they had drunk the rest
of the money together at the Moonshine Club the night before but that meant
nothing to her. She insisted on being paid twenty shillings for her nights work.
Toto demanded a refund first, on the beers, chicken and chips, and for the use of
his bed. The amazon lost her cool and violently smashed the mirror in which she
had been admiring here synthetic afro-wig. She should never have lost her
temper. This rash move shifted the balance and now she owed Toto a new
mirror. Of course she had no money and could not pay for it. Toto slugged her,
knocking her down the trash-covered stairs, minus her headdress, the synthetic
hair and one platform shoe. That convinced her he was real. She did not attempt
to climb back up the stairs that day.
It happened one bright hateful Monday morning between Totos waking up
and going to the bank. They tried to drag Dusman into the conflict as a mediator
but he had a severe hangover and could not be interested. He lay quietly back
and watched, as indifferently as he had watched their violent, beer-inspired
romance the night before, and, when the battle was won and lost, got up,
60

showered, dressed and went out to read water meters. That morning too they
had had no milk.
The big wench came back some weeks later to plead for her property. But
by then Toto was broke and tried to sell her her stuff back for twenty shillings,
which she did not have because it was during the Nylon Scare and the men
were not having concubines for fear of coming down with the terrible disease.
She pleaded with him for a long time but eventually had to leave without her
property. She never came back to Dacca House. The lonesome shoe was finally
discarded, half devoured by mice and cockroaches. The headdress was later
traded for a night of action with one of Totos army of adoring amazons while
the afro-wig made a perfect floor mop.
Dusman could not whether it was this same woman or another loving bar
girl who had presented Toto with the whoring tomcat that committed suicide.
Damn, Toto cursed, searched all over himself then swore again.
Dusman uncovered his head and turned to squint at him.
I got somebodys wallet, he swore again.
He had the wallet in his hands and was examining it closely, his face
furrowed by a worried frown. The wallet was the same size and colour as his
but it was not his and, when inspected, contained only scraps of paper with
phone numbers, used bus tickets and dust. He threw it on the floor and sat on his
bed sad and defeated.
Ive got to get my money back, Dusman, he said finally.
Thats a good idea, Dusman told him. How?
I dont know.
Good luck.
If Ive got to rob another guy, I will get my money back, Toto said after a
while.
Those friends of yours will kill you.
What friends?
The ones you fight with. You look ugly, Dusman said and covered his
head again.
I have been robbed, mate. Is that all you are going to say?
No, Dusman uncovered his head, swearing vehemently. I lie awake half
the night listening to your drunken babbling and then you wake me up at dawn
to talk to you. A man has got to sleep some time. And dont tell me about your
money. If I had asked for a pound, you would have said no.
61

But I have been robbed and Oh God! he said to the watch with the
broken chain strap. I am late again.
He grabbed his coat, made a few confused rounds of the room, then
clashed out.
After a thoughtful moment Dusman got up to close the door. Cockroaches
scurried for cover. He kicked Totos tattered clothes under the bed. Toto had
scared the sleep away on this first day of sick leave. He needed a cigarette to
settle down again but the half-dozen or so cigarette packets on the table were
empty. He crushed one and tossed it into the kitchen corner. The garage
downstairs resounded with life. Once again Grogan Road was back in business.
Panel beaters beat hell out of crashed car bodies. Ailing car engines groaned
painfully and mechanics called obscenities to their spanner boys. Grogan Road
was very much alive.
Dusman opened the window to allow the trapped heat escape, then lay
back of the bed, his permanent squint turned up at the ceiling where it was grew
with mould and swollen from the years water had been leaking through the
rusted tin roof. Rainwater had washed away the paint from one wall, leaving a
dark brown stain that hung in jagged tails like an old cloak on the grey. Last
time Dusman had suggested repainting to Tumbo Kubwa, the honest man of
God had admitted it was a good idea and vanished in a huff. That was the
closest any tenant ever got to having the landlord acknowledge that his building
stank.
It had happened months back. On the morning of the night Dusman had
met a nameless woman lost in the rain on Campos Ribeiro Road. She was big
and beautiful and she had given him a nasty taste of the Hong Kong Terror
which took old Dr Patel two months to sort out.
It had been a rough and tough battle for the good old Dr Patel, but to
Dusman that chance encounter with the woman of the night had grown to be
one of the few better experiences of his life. He remembered nothing of the
month it had happened of the week or the day, but the event itself he
remembered most clearly.

62

Five
It was a miserable night. The kind of night the sorceresses of the world
would choose for an international witches symposium. There was no thunder
and lightning ripping apart the dark skies, but there was an ocean of water
around, just waiting to be choreographed into a thoroughgoing tempest.
Dusman flicked the cigarette end into the middle of the street, where it
glowed red for a second before the cold drizzle put it out. The rain had been
falling all day, the streets were covered with a panicky, confused mass of water
seeking a way into the blocked drainage vents and temperatures had dropped
drastically.
He turned left along the Tom Mboya Street, walking up against the drizzle.
The mean builders had left little cover overhead. The rain lapped at his shoes.
He navigated round reflection puddles, hugged the shop windows and
quickened his pace. Speeding cars raced down the deserted street, their tyres
sighing on the wet road surface.
He ran across the street, down along the darker, emptier Campos Ribeiro.
Rain droplets tickled his face, his stomach rumbled. He walked into an almost
empty caf down the road and picked a table next to a young couple drooling
over the last crumbs of their fish and chips. She was a small girl with a pathetic
cold face, an oversized afro-wig and well-built thick legs. The boy, in a heavily
patterned shirt and tie and a black waistcoat, was desperately trying to make a
point.
My friends house is O.K. I mean about
A waiter drowned the rest of the dialogue. He towered over Dusman like a
redundant orang-utan, demanding to know what he wanted.
Menu, Dusman told him.
He reached for one from the next table. It was not much of a menu. The
fare consisted mainly of chips, curry this, curry that, chicken, macaroni it was
one of those joints where they fried their chips with motor oil, served watereddown tomato sauce and mixed their fresh milk with powdered milk to make a
profit, and they did. Dusman studied the prices. Nothing cost less than five
shillings except tea, coffee and a glass of milk. Their prices were not the highest
in town but they were too close for comfort. He had five shillings, barely
enough for a hamburger, which knew would in any case be a lousy investment.
Their idea of a hamburger was a miserable piece of rotten meat between two
apologetic pieces of dry bun. He handed back the menu.
Nothing I want, he told the waiter.
What do you want? the waiter asked.
63

Boiled cockroaches.
Boiled what?
Boiled roaches, havent you ever had any?
No.
Try it some time.
The waiters mouth sagged. Dusman followed the young couple outside.
There had to be a place in the world where they age roaches, he thought. We
should get an import licence. Dacca House roaches, fattened on you-knowwhat, best in the market. It was still drizzling. The young man called a taxi and
Dusman wondered what the two had settled on. Silently, alone, he headed down
the street. Things had to improve soon. As Toto said every day, they would have
to get organized. Payday was a week away, heralded, as usual, by the stifling
moneylessness that threatened to suffocate even bankers. Payday and big money
were coming. One could almost feel it, crouching, grinding into gear, revving up
the engines and waiting to surge in with plenty.
He crossed a by-road. The rain was now sharp and cold. He rubbed his
hands vigorously together and stuffed them deep into his pockets. A finger
found a hole at the bottom and wiggled through, tickling the hair on his thigh.
He retracted it, the hand balling into a tight, bulging fist. Whatever had eaten the
hole in his pocket could not have been money. For a long time he had not had
enough coins to do that. The frustrated fist had done it or the cockroaches back
home. Dusman often wondered what kept the monsters alive in the house. There
was rarely enough food for human population, let alone the cockroach
epidemic. Food, lots of food, was what was needed. Enough food to feed the
humans and their unwelcome dependants, the roaches. But on five shillings, one
could not eat much anywhere in town. Not even broiled roaches.
The times had changed. It used to be, with five shillings, one could eat all
the fish and chips in any of the numerous take-away places in town. Not
anymore. Stampeding inflation, vicious avarice and lack of proper price control
on food prices had changed all that. Opportunism had caught up with the
hitherto respectable restaurant business. Prices had risen to the roofs. They still
wanted to harvest more money, but the chips people could not increase the
prices any more without appearing absurd and losing business. Still, they were
not to be easily licked. To counter the situation, they reduced the size of their
take-away paper bags and retained the old prices.
They certainly duped the governments price control board, and they may
even have deceived some of their starving customers, but they did not fool
Dusman. To register his protest, he wrote a letter to the editors of the daily
papers, which was again never printed, and went on a private strike against
64

eating potato chips. But apart from himself, no one knew or cared about his
personal battle with the money-makers.
Down the road was another restaurant. The smell of food and the murmur
of voices drew him in, but the stuffy smell of beer and cigarettes arrested him at
the door. Another of Tumbo Kubwas enterprises. There was a fair crowd in the
place. Some were eating, others drinking and still others were just sitting and
witnessing. Everyone had a strange hungry look on their faces. The waiters
appeared the most underfed. Like Dusman, they had not eaten for years.
The walls were covered with the familiar sooty murals, a trademark of
cheap boarding and lodging houses throughout the country. It was like a
fantastic dream, green elephants grazed in a forest of blue trees, under a red sky.
On the opposite wall people were painted sitting on chairs longer than their own
legs, drinking from glasses larger than the green elephants and black and white
giraffes. It was a frozen nightmare, stretching over the four smoky walls. Inside
it, real human beings ate and drank but continued to look hungry.
A greasy menu, painted in the same crazy colours, reposed two metres up
the stained wall. They had struck out the old prices and painted in the new ones
in their obsession to keep up with the ever-increasing demands for food. A
board under the menu warned would-be creditors: Terms strictly catch today.
For credit come yesterday.
The restaurant also served, as indicated by another schoolboys illustration
on the same wall, four-legged chicken and winged cows and goats.
Dusman gave the joint one more look over and his appetite fled screaming
with terror to take refuge at the base of his stomach. For credit come yesterday!
It neatly summed up what the eaters thought about the hungry. He retreated into
the cold night and hurried down the street. He tried to whistle, found it too
chilly and gave up.
He had found her then.
She stood under a neon light and flashed Grand Sale in red, one of the
numerous permanent sale signs that decorated all rip-off shops in town. She was
a tall, heavy duty, curvaceous black amazon, of the type that drove Toto out of
his mind with desire. She was dressed in a seductive short skirt and a blouse
with so low a neck-line that her shapely bosom, ripe and tempting, hung half
out. She was a street walker, out for a fast pound. In this kind of weather,
Dusman thought, she was more likely to catch pneumonia than a pound. Just out
of reach of the rain, her poise was miserable and dejected. Maybe she was
hungry like him, but it was none of his business.
Hello, she said suddenly.
Her sleek voice brought him to a jolting stop.
65

Hello, he responded lamely.

Got a match?
The cold had done no damage to her all-weather smile. Behind ready
smiling lips was a row of beautiful evenly-spaced teeth. He smiled back, his
numb mind doing quick computations. He inhaled deeply on his own cigarette,
rubbed his cold hands vigorously together and studied her. A little too big for his
liking but quite a scorcher.
No match, he told her.
Do you mind? she motioned with her cigarette.
Smiling she rammed the cigarette into her mouth, between those sensuous
lips and leaned forward to light it from his. He did not mind at all. Slowly he
withdrew his cigarette and she, in following the fire, placed her hand on his
shoulder. He withdrew a trifle further and her warm garlic-scented breath
tickled the hair on the back of his hand. Her warm woman-smell stirred a
hunger in his belly that had nothing to do with food. It had been a long time
since he had last encountered the animal odour of raw desire. He let her have
the fire. When she looked up straight into his eyes, the knot in his belly
tightened further.
Thank you, she said.
He nodded acknowledgement, and looked round the deserted street,
wondering.
Expecting someone? she asked.
Hell, no. are you?
I dont know, she dragged on her cigarette. Maybe I have just found him.
Maybe not.
And she smiled again. Identities now firmly established, common sense
urged Dusman to start walking and keep at it until he was in his bed. Five sorry
shillings and an empty stomach were pathetically poor allies for handling her
size and class. He had been around long enough to learn that. The better they
looked, the more they cost to maintain.
How much? he asked her.
She smiled that ready-made smile to assure him he was number one in her
file. If it was anything to go by, she liked him.
For a friend, she said in answer to his question. Not much.
How much is not much?
How about two, she said smiling.
Two what?
66

Pounds of course.
Of course, he mimicked her. Since when?
Where have you been Mister? she said. They have been raising the cost
of living while you have been away.
For milk and bread, he told her. Not for
I didnt fix the prices, you know, she countered, almost sorry for the poor,
exploited, love-hungry men. The Committee sets the rates, and, being a
member, one has to you know, stick with the gang.
The citys street-walkers had recently formed Walkers Committee the
WC Gang as cynical newspaper reporters referred to them to protect
themselves from pimp exploitation, to fight official police harassment and to set
price guidelines for a commodity most male citizens did not believe in paying
for. But the male chauvinist bastards were not about to let them have it all their
way. Just to prove the point, the WC committee heads were all rounded up and
clamped into police cells on their partys inaugural night. They were later
charged with various offenses, ranging from smoking bhang to indecent
exposure, to loitering for immoral purposes and making a disturbance likely to
cause a breach of the peace.
Dusman shook his head in sympathy, but she took his headshake as a sign
of disapproval.
Well, she said, here had lightly massaging here shoulder. We could work
out a compromise when we get home.
Where is home? he asked.
Not far, she said. Jerusalem.
From where they stood Jerusalem was no less than eight kilometres away.
All the way across town to the other side of hell and still, to her, not far.
How do we get there? he asked her.
There are taxis.
And who pays for the taxi?
Well the customer, of course.
Of course, Dusman thought. They had not changed the rules yet. He had
travelled this way before and he remembered every nasty bump, and there were
many. He could now almost predict the next move, the sensual assault. She
moved in close and he, instinctively, put out his arm and encircled her waist,
drawing her in. she settled in his big arms and purred like a giant kitten.

67

Listen, baby, his voice was husky with emotion. That is no way to treat a
friend. You know how I mean, I just gave you a light and and I am not a rich
American tourist.
Tourists pay more, she said.
Get yourself one then. He tried to disentangle himself.
She clung to him, for there were no tourists around, that much was clear,
and a one-eyed fish beat the hell out of no fish at all, any time. Business was
really bad. Her firm body felt good clinging to his.
I could pay for the taxi, she said suddenly.
He hesitated. Now she was talking fish and chips, which was fine except
that there was no way he could raise the two pounds there and then. He had five
shillings and not a cent more. With only five shillings in the bargain no deal
could be deal enough. Taking his hesitation for submission, she smiled cleverly.
But that will be all the discount you get, she told him.
Forget it, he renewed the half-hearted struggle to release himself.
She hung on tight and for a fleeting second Dusman visualised himself
ravished by this powerful woman right there in the street. Wishful thinking. Her
full warmth enveloped them, her perfume filling his head like a balloon. Her
breasts were firm and soft on his chest. For a moment the rain receded to the
back of his mind.
She pursed her red lips and scrutinized him like a serious fisherman
weighing in a poor catch. He could tell by the crumped look on her round face
that he fell far below par. He felt insulted, and he squeezed her to impress on her
his muscular superiority.
Well? he cleared his throat. Are you going to set me free or do I scream
rape?
Scream, she said, and they laughed.
The woman shrugged and disdainfully threw some weight on the scales.
I know a little place near here that is that is just right, she said. But
then that is, what do you say, quick service?
He looked her up and down and swallowed The bait was already well
down his throat. She turned on a wicked witch-smile and drew in the line,
hauling him in. this is it, he thought. Now was the time to run or forever hold
his peace. He realised it, wished he could run. But there was the cold April
drizzle still falling and the devil woman was warm and she smelled delicious
and it was only eleven oclock. No reason to be hurrying back to Grogan Road.

68

How much? his voice was flat and monotonous as the rain, suppressed in
an effort to smother the throat-catching emotions racking his body.
She smiled, worked herself closer and set him on fire. He wished he could
take her home to Dacca House. But for five lousy shillings one could not buy
oneself a meal, let alone a piece of solid gorgeousness this size. He shook his
head to clear the mirage.
How much? he repeated.
How much have you got? she asked.
Five shillings, he said automatically.
Only five? she wormed herself into him while the five shillings burned
his chest. Her big bare thigh found his and rubbed against it, her hard breasts
pricked his chest.
Five shillings, he said. Five only five shillings.
She cocked her head in thought, shrugged and smiled up at him.
Just for a friend, she said smoothly. I wouldnt touch it from anyone
else.
He did not know what to say next. He stood uncertainly and waited for her
next move. She laughed and put her arm round his waist. She glanced around,
turned and hastily led him down the street. The cold drizzle hit them as they left
shelter and took a dimly-lit alley to the backstreet. Instinct stalled him. But she
had her arm tight round his waist and her perfume wafted to his nostrils,
drowning the smutty stink of the garbage cans and urine. A large black cat
skimmed across the wet street and dived for cover into an upset dustbin.
The woman propelled him into a darker lane that led to a cul-de-sac. There
was no way out but back the way they had come. He didnt want to go back.
Large ominous dark doors led into the high walls on three corners of the closed
end. They were all shut. A signboard hung askew over the upset trash cans, the
wet letters just legible. Do not litter. The woman glanced around nervously then
disappeared into a dark recess in the high wall. He tried to follow and bumped
into her.
What the hell now? he swore, stepping back.
We are there, she told him.
There, where?
He peered into the dark surroundings but could not make out where they
were. They were nowhere as far as he could tell. It took a moment for the
message to penetrate his enchanted senses, and even then he did not want to
believe it. She had to be crazy if she thought him wretched enough to stand in
the rain.
69

Is this the nice little place that is just right? he demanded gruffly.
She was busy taking off her things and did not answer. He looked round
him once more. The close was dimly lit by stray light filtering from the
buildings behind the high stone wall. Nothing moved. It was still drizzling.
Is tis it? he asked less fiercely.
For five shillings, mister? she said with forced patience. What did you
expect, a Hilton suite? Yes, goddamn it, this is it. Then slowly so that each
word, each syllable, came out with a force like a hammer. This-is-it!
No offense intended, he mumbled, thinking what a beast she was.
She did not just look, feel and smell like a wild mare, she was one. It was
this essence that had drawn him to her in the first place. He had to peer to see
her better. She threw up her mini skirt and the drizzle stung his eyes, and fogged
up his mind. Everything else happened fast, uncontrollably so. As he moved
into the attack and she leaned back and braced herself to meet it, he had to
admit that she was quite amiably crazy.
Half in the drizzle and half out of it, his bowed back quickly soaking wet, a
savage growl escaped his drawn mouth. It was a tortuous uphill trip, his mind
and body drugged with passion and abandonment.
The rain fell on, forgotten.
Suddenly it was over, his calf and arm muscles aching with the strain. She
sighed and tidied herself. After a few seconds during which they regained their
breath. She turned to him.
Please, she said.
Yes?
Five shillings, she said.
He fished in his pockets and wondered what she would do if it turned out
that he had let her five shillings at home. Would she cry rape, or robbery?
Would she demand to have his watch or allow him credit?
Across the lane another ghostly board materialised out of the surrounding
gloom. Hawkers prohibited. The City Council again! Even here, where only
cheap women landed with their cheap loot. No wonder Sukuma Wiki loathed
City Hall and all that it stood for. Dusman found her five shillings and handed it
to her. She deposited it in her brassiere.
She ought to set up a stall around here, he thought. That way they would at
least be out of the rain. For five lousy shillings, she was a scream. Value for
money, or so the advertisers would say. Special bargain for citizens only, hurry
while stocks last.
70

They walked out of the close and into a puddle. Water flooded his shoes,
the only part of his body left undefiled by the rain. She yelped and clung to him.
He laughed. He felt good. All he had to do now was get out of the sodden
clothes. Back in the bright neon lights of Campos Ribeiro, they stopped to
inspect the damage the water had done. He had borne the blunt of it. Her hair
sparkled with galaxies of silver droplets, but otherwise she was dry.
How will you get home? he asked casually.
Taxi.
Of course, he said.
It was O.K. with him as long as she paid her own fare. The rain was falling
lightly as they walked hand in hand down the street. She stopped for a cigarette,
and offered him one. He lit them both with the spirit lighter he had not had
earlier on.
A police patrol car cruised up the street, the occupants gaping at them from
the dark interior. A few metres on, he flagged down a passing taxi for her.
Thank you, she said. When shall we meet again?
We will meet again, perhaps, he told her. Same place, same time, same
day, weather permitting.
She laughed, hopped into the waiting taxi and drove out of the murky
street. Apart from sleeping night watchmen, the streets were devoid of human
life. Homeless mongrels and stray cars rushed urgently form dustbin to dustbin,
searching for food.
A furious stream of rainwater washed down River Road and disappeared
gurgling in the sewage system. He tossed the cigarette into the dirty water and
dashed across the road. There was no shelter for the last two hundred metres
down Mkokoteni Lane to Grogan Road. Dusman hesitated, then dived into the
rain, covering the distance in long, fast strides. As he hauled himself up the
precariously inclined stairs, he could make out distinctly the choking smell of
the blocked toilets above the stench of the overflowing trash cans. The toilet,
which, like the cold shower, was shared by over forty tenants, had been blocked
for a week. The stink was progressing to an epidemic level and spreading into
the living rooms. The garbage cans were breeding bigger, healthier, more
voracious families of rats and roaches. Nothing was done about them either.
That very morning, Dusman had found a giant rat drowned in the toilet bowl, an
old-fashioned floor-level horseshoe, probably drowned reaching down for food.
It looked swollen and ugly, floating upside down with tiny pink legs up, the
pink underbelly showing where the hair had fallen out during the struggle for
air. One of these fine days, the landlord would have to fish his rent money out of
the overflowing toilet.
71

Toto was home already and the door was bolted. Dusman rapped on it.
Nothing happened. He banged on it, nothing. He kicked the door hard.
Who the hell? Toto yelled from within.
Open up.
More complaining sounds, then silence. When Toto was drunk he became
unreasonably irritable. Dusman waited for a minute, the realised that Toto had
gone back to sleep. He banged the door so loudly that Sukuma Wiki came out of
his room to urinate. More snorts, the bed creaked and the light came on. Still
grumbling and protesting, Toto stormed out of bed, kicked the tin water basin so
hard the noise echoed all over the yard, upset the chair and opened the door. He
stood for a moment leaning on the door, studying Dusman through sleepy eyes.
What time is this to wake the world? he asked gruffly, his eyes squinting
in the light.
Not midnight yet, Dusman told him.
Toto retreated, mumbling incomprehensibly. Dusman followed him inside
the stuffy room. Toto climbed back into the ruffed bed sleepily and breathing
heavily. Cockroaches scampered for cover, across the room and under
everything. Dusman crushed a couple under his shoes. Two monsters, huge
enough to drag a plough and work for their eats, lazy thieving, dirty bastards.
One of these fine days hed teach them a lesson in self-reliance.
He lifted the upset chair. From the look of the kitchen in the corner, there
was no food in the house. Just to make sure, he uncovered a few pots. Nothing
at all. From everything he opened or uncovered, roaches popped out and ran for
cover.
I am hungry, he said.
He had hoped against hope to find some food in the house. He grabbed
Toto violently and shook him awake. Toto spitting mad, but he controlled his
rage.
What are you doing? he cried.
I am hungry, Dusman told him.
So, who is not hungry?
Where is the food? he asked. That is all I wish to know. Food.
What food?
It was your turn to cook today.
Toto blinked in the light, lay back and closed his eyes.
Whose turn was it to buy the food, mate? he asked quietly.
72

Dusman sat on the chair and deflated slowly. He took off his flooded shoes
and soggy clothes. He would have loved to take a shower to clean off the strong
smell of the woman that clung to his body like a second skin, but it was too
cold and still pouring outside: besides, a neighbour had stolen the shower room
light bulb to use in his own room. The shower room, which had no window, was
now as dark as the inside of a pit latrine. He bolted the door, got into his bed and
fumbled for the bedside switch, hurling the room into darkness. Hell and
damnation, he thought. Is there any end to this
Toto spoke suddenly in the dark.
You look like a drowned rat, he observed.
I know, he said.
What happened?
Go to sleep, he said.
Toto did not press the point. He sighed and settled down to sleep.
You really want to know? Dusman asked.
Yes.
You wont believe it, he warned.
Tell me.
Dusman told him.
In the rain. Youve got to be joking.
She took our five shillings food money.
In the rain?
You know the way they are.
You could both die of pneumonia, you know.
She didnt seem to mind.
You are cracked, Toto told him matter-of-factly. Why couldnt you come
home?
Dont think I didnt consider that, he said. But then five shillings if
five shillings.
Toto pondered that for a moment. He examined the various angles. When
he spoke next, his voice was more curious than critical.
How was it? he asked.
You ought to try it sometime, Dusman told him without much conviction.
You want my advice? he asked a moment later.
73

No, Dusman answered.

I think you ought to see a doctor, he said. You are a sick man. You have
gone completely screwy.
Dusman said nothing. Looking back on it, he realized it was a silly and
stupid way to spend ones last five shillings. But all things considered, he had
had a good time.
A week later, Dusman Gonzaga did have to go and see a doctor. Not the
sort of doctor his roommate had meant, but a doctor all the same. Dr Patel K.
Patel, MBBS, B.Sc. Vet., SSC. BOMB., the mens specialist on Hasrat Road.

74

Six
Dr Patel is the best doctor in town, all amorous city men tacitly agree. The
best at any price, and yet his charges are the most humane compared to those of
other medicine men.
At sixty years of age, Dr Patel K. Patel MBBS, B.Sc. Vet., SSC. BOMB, is
a shrivelled fatherly figure with lead-coloured hair, a freckled, rugged face and
deep, sad black eyes that inspire confidence in the most cynical of his male
patients. He dresses in baggy black suits and white or light blue shirts with
neckties less white laboratory coat with a breast pocket lined with blue, red,
green and black ball-point pens which he rarely uses. The thick black
spectacles, used during examinations, match the black rubber-smelling
stethoscope.
If not the oldest doctor in town, Dr Patel K. Patel is certainly the next
oldest. He arrived in the country about the same time as Kachra Samat, but
while the latter came as coolie to abet the construction of a British colonial
empire by providing cheap slave labour, Patel came as a newly-fledged
veterinary doctor with a new medical bag, bundle of reference books and only a
few rupees change in his pocket. His first practice ever was along the new
Grogan Road, which the coolies had just built after completing their railway
line, in a squeezed corner of Bombay House, a block away from Dacca House.
He named it Dr Patel K. Patels Animal Hospital. Business was bad then, and
for long hours he stood outside his surgery awaiting customers. Occasionally, an
old white woman brought her beloved Chihuahua for deworming but apart from
that, he was idle all day. There were no animals on Grogan Road since Indians
did not keep dogs or pets of any kind then, and the Africans, who grazed herds
of scrawny native cattle on the outskirts of the city, had no money to pay a
veterinary surgeon.
Circumstances had finally forced Dr Patel K. Patel to convert to human
medicine through a long and tedious correspondence course and six months of
practical medicine at the London School of Medicine. During the era of relative
social progress, he had moved up from Grogan to River Road. Over a period of
thirty years, he had treated and cured thousands of Indian and African maladies;
no white man would stoop so low as to consult a coolie quack. Many of the
diseases Patel cures are as yet unrecorded in white books. He is an expert in
tropical medicine, but first and foremost, his reputation rests on his magic touch
with the complaints of wayward men.
*

75

When Dusman Gonzaga first made his acquaintance, Dr Patel K. Patels

surgery was situated at the lower end of Hasrat Road at the junction where
Hasrat empties its load of human indignities into River Road. It was situated on
the ground floor of Home Building, now the property of Tumbo Kubwa,
councillor and prominent businessman. It had been Central Butchery before the
old doctor renovated it and moved in with his faithful following. Next-door to
the surgery was the rickety-chaired Home Restaurant and Bar, where fat-legged
barmaids with behinds like city buses served four legged chicken and flat beer.
Upstairs was another twenty-four hour bar. The four floors above the bar were
managed under a trade licence in the name of Home Boarding and Lodging but
it was a rooming house, with a difference.
The sixty teenage girls who rented the four floors of the building paid
thirty shillings every day. Honourable Tumbo Kubwa, in his shrewd
businesmans fashion, supplied them with the beds, two or three to a room and
divided the room with cheap kitenge curtains so that there was a certain amount
of privacy around each bed. Then he left the girls to their own devices. Every
evening he came or sent his brother to collect the days rent. At his rates, it was
the most expensive rooming house in the city. In absolute terms the rooms
fetched more money than tourist hotels in town. Here the girls had protection
from pimps, the police and thugs. This same guarantee of security brought the
men in hordes from the bar downstairs and from the crowded street below.
The girls, who would have been otherwise out in the hostile streets,
hunting, were quite satisfied with this arrangement. When the times were good,
the men rich and drunk, the business booming, a girl could make a tidy fortune
without getting off her back except for a quick douche after every third
customer. The men came by instinct, like a pack of male canines after a bitch in
person.
During the era of the inauguration of the Walkers Committee, the Home
girls had tried to join their bigger street sisters to organize the fight with the
government for professional status. The civil rights mood had been quickly
squashed by Tumbo Kubwa and his contemporaries, who turned all the girls out
into the streets to be arrested together with their sisters. How could a creature
who depended on a man for her very life dare to strive to be free from him! So
went the argument.
It was not by pure chance that Dr Patels surgery was situated there. He
had done a quiet scouting around before approaching Tumbo Kubwa. He had
laid down a firm strategy. Most of his regular patients bought their troubles
from the lodging upstairs. Dr Patels was the nearest place they could find
refuge and understanding after that. They rushed to him repentant and dying
with shame. After a few days downstairs with him, they rushed straight back up
to the trouble merchants for more. Then again they came back down
76

embarrassed and confessed to Dr Patel. Then back again, and again, in a

seemingly endless cycle. Their frequency could be charted against whatever
stain of virus was in fashion at the time, by whatever style of microbes was
being volleyed to and fro like tennis balls upstairs. Dr Patel was the best referee
in the town. He never admonished anyone or complained about their suicidal
tendencies. It was the sign of the times, the new way of a new people. He did
not sit around and bitch at them. He had a more important duty to the
population, and a reputation to uphold.
During the great Nylon scare, his office was packed with anxious men
waiting for him to discover the tell-tale nylon threads that would spell the end of
not only their virile lives, but also of their mortal lives. Dr Patel went
mechanically through his routine of question and answer and assured them
repeatedly that they were absolutely healthy, and that there was no such thing as
the dreaded Nylon anywhere in his medical books, and he had many. But they
did not believe him. They left shaking their heads in awe, only to rush back as
soon as they had jazzed another bar girl. Again the good old doctor went
through his interview. He gave them aspirins to quieten their consciences and
sent them home. Some did not come back, but most did. Finally, tired of treating
a non-existent disease, he told his more regular clients the lie. He had at last
diagnosed it. Nylon, the incurable deadly monster, was in town. Word went out
fast. The good doctor had confirmed the rumour. The rumour spread through the
citys lodging houses like fire in the dry savannah. In the new set of rumours
doing the rounds, a few men had died from the incredible Nylon.
The news shook the flesh industry to its very bones. Even the staunchest,
most dedicated Casanovas lost heart. They steered painfully away from the bars
and brothels. The bar girls went hungry and Dr Patels business went down.
Tumbo Kubwas money-making machine ground to a halt. The girls could not
afford to pay their daily rates. Cruel and too nave to understand the plague that
had invaded his domain, Tumbo Kubwa evicted the first batch of girls and got a
new batch. Those too could not pay the rent and he evicted them and got a new
lot. They could not pay him either. Nor could Dr Patel, his only other tenant.
During those lean and hungry days, the doctor was to be seen standing in
his white coat outside his surgery, hands held behind his back, looking
expectantly up and down Hasrat Road, hoping for a patient. None was in sight.
He could have cursed himself, but he did not. He knew the truth about men. It is
impossible to keep them away from women indefinitely for any reason. He had
made history, a landmark in their lives. From then on, the era came to be known
as the Nylon Era. For this his name would live forever wherever men met for
the one purpose.
His clients did finally come back, singly, at first, then in the normal endless
droves. The lodging house upstairs chugged with life once again. The city was
77

back to the good old simple flu, and once more business was good. Dr Patel
treated them, and as usual, handed them his standard advice, no beer, no women
and no hot pepper. And just as before, no one paid any attention to his
instructions.
His clients sat in the waiting room as before, a dozen or so embarrassed
misadventurers, and whiled the minutes away reading the various Gujerati and
Hindu periodicals in a language no one understood. They sat quietly, a group of
strangers, smoking and fretting. The more mortified ones hid their ashen faces
behind the periodicals wisely provided by the doctor for the purpose.
*

John James, the aged attendant called.

The man so called sighed with relief and dashed suddenly into the
examination room, where the patriarchal doctor waited with his sacks of
capsules and kegs of penicillin. The others waited impatiently and read without
understanding. Dr Patel had the weirdest collection of old periodicals anywhere,
in his waiting room. He knew it did not make much difference what he provided
since no one read to understand. He had construction engineering magazines,
romance weeklies, Newsweek, Womens Own, though no woman who could read
ever came for treatment. He had old copies of Joe Humour Magazine which,
though read avidly, somehow could not excite laughter inside Dr Patels surgery.
Most of these were dog-eared from numerous absentminded perusals by
nervous hands.
In the twenty years that he had been with the doctor, Juma, the attendant,
had promoted himself from being a toilet cleaner to a messenger and finally,
when the times were such that Dr Patel could not afford a secretary, Juma had
become a receptionist-attendant-teat maker. When the clients came he gave
them forms to fill in with their names and particulars. These calling cards were
then stacked on the table in the order of arrival and read off as the doctor
progressed with the examinations. Sometimes when business was suddenly
heavy, as was the case during the Nylon epidemic, Juma was allowed to give
penicillin injections after a few instructions by thee doctor. The two were almost
the same age and had been together for such a long time that Juma had begun to
refer to himself as medical attendant, when the doctor was not listening.
Peter Jones, the attendant next called, as John James limped blinking out
of the examination room, loaded blind with drugs.
Peter Jones disappeared behind the smoked glass door and consulted the
doctor in low tones. None would speak in a normal loud voice because the
others outside were probably listening. But they knew they were all suffering
78

from the same after-effects of a good time they had had with the same ladies at
Home. The waiting party dug their bottoms into the antique overstuffed seats
lined against the walls. Extra borrowed seats had been added during the Nylon
epidemic to deal with the influx but they had all been returned when the
situation was resolved. The dirty, blue-walled waiting room used to have
women and children as well, but the stream of humiliated males had gradually
crowded everyone else out and Dr Patel was left with just the one royal
clientele. Looking out through the glass window, where the original name
Central Butchery had been unsuccessfully scrapped off, the attendant could see
women and children enter and leave surgeries on the opposite street. Juma had
never been to any school, but as his confident, wrinkled face testified, he had
been around Patel for a long time, and had seen a great deal.
Peter Jones emerged from the examination room rattled by the painful
injections, more chagrined than ever. He slunk out without looking at any of the
waiting men, paused fearfully by the exit and made sure there was no one who
could recognize him on Hasrat Road and that his fly was done up. Then he
rushed head down into the flow of traffic towards River Road.
Jack was called next, then Tim Joe, George, Edward, Frank, Simon, a
whole spectrum of phoney camouflage names. Dr Patel lived in a world as false
as the one in the rooms upstairs. His esteemed customers went by non-existent
identities and faces that said nothing. But he understood. If he visited the dark,
smelly cubicles in the lodging above his workshop as often as his clients did, he
too would need more than one name. A single name would die of shame.
Steve, the attendant called at last.
Dusman sighed, emerged from his hideout, a three year-old Newsweek, and
entered the slaughter house. He had been waiting for exactly an hour. His case
was different from those of his fellow sufferers. This time he had not got his flu
from above the surgery. He had caught his share walking in the rain, a fact he
could have boasted as a first ever, if he were not as concerned about the cost of
the unique trip to Dr Patels. He closed the dirty glazed glass door behind him
locking himself up alone with the silver-haired doctor and the familiar
anaesthetising smell of medicines. One table across the room was piled high
with tins and plastic bags full of capsules and tablets. A smaller metal table held
disposable hypodermic syringes and bottles of penicillin and other concoctions.
The butchery had not changed much since the Nylon epidemic.
Sit down, Steve, Dr Patel said to the man he already knew as Felix,
Anthony, Francis, Robert and Dan.
Dusman sat down on an unsteady chair across the dark heavy mahogany
desk opposite the freckled old geezer. The doctor took off the heavy bi-convex
glasses, rubbed his tired dilated eyes and sighed.
79

You got trouble, he said.

Yeah, Dusman said.
What trouble?
Well, Dusman shrugged, since the old bastard knew anyway, since no one
came here with any other complaint. Same old trouble.
Woman trouble, he nodded wisely to himself.
Yes, Dusman confirmed.
Good, good, the doctor said. Your
No, Dusman said. I have no wife.
Is your
Not exactly. You see
Patel was already nodding with understanding. They had been through this
routine of the same questions and the same answers so many times that they did
not have to talk at all to conduct the examination. However, this was an old
system with Dr Patel and his patients, and old habits die hard.
Good, good, he nodded to himself. Does it
No, Dusman answered.
Good, good.
He was not supposed to recognize his customers or guess their troubles.
Take off your trousers, lie down on the examination table.
The plastic was cold and sticky on Dusmans bottom. The doctor put on his
glasses and started the examination. This was the part Dusman found most
embarrassing. Once he had actually told the aged Indian: Come on, Doc. You
know the problem. Stop playing Doctor and get on with the treatment. Patel
had pretended not to have heard. He was not to be hurried. He did things as he
had learned in Bombay thirty years ago.
Have you ever been here before? he asked unnecessarily.
No. Dusman lied as they all did.
Good, good, Patel said, nodding.
Again the fatherly doctor understood. He unhooked the stethoscope and
listened to Dusmans organs. He nodded to himself thoughtfully as though he
had heard the mole-like viruses eating away at the cells. He cleared his throat
breathing onions into Dusmans face.
When did it start?
Yesterday morning.
80

Good, good. Pull up your trousers. Dr Patel unhitched the stethoscope

from his ears and let it dangle from his neck. He scrubbed his hands in a basin
full of antiseptics and sat down again behind the desk.
Sit down, please, he said.
Dusman returned to his seat.
My friend you have the Hong Kong flu, Dr Patel said point-blank.
How the hell is that? Dusman asked when no more information was
forthcoming. I have never been to Hong Kong.
It is Hong Kong Terror. A breed between Chinese and European flu, a
tough breed to destroy. There is a lot of it around these days.
He paused for the dramatic effect while he rubbed his nose, which, unlike
most Indians, was hooked like a vultures beak. Dusman waited patiently,
wondering how the hell he would settle the bill.
This is more serious than the normal Nairobi trouble, or even the more
common trichomoniasis. You understand, I have recently treated a lot of the
Hong Kong strain. It was introduced to this country by sailors and tourists. He
shook his head sadly. You know this country could be clean if only they would
keep out the tourists and sailors. They bring us new strains years before the new
drugs get here. Now normal Nairobi flu, thats nothing
Dusman at once knew he was going to be screwed out of a good lot of
money. When professionals talked at length or talked in technical terms, they
screwed you. They said the same thing in three different ways and charged you
three times as much money for the consultation.
Dr Patel K. Patel was the best in the business however. Everyone knew he
used to be a veterinary doctor who had suddenly got sane and opened his eyes
to reality. The fact was that there were more sick men than dogs and cats in the
city. There was a screaming demand for good mens doctors, and only he took
up the call. From the dingy rooms upstairs and from the numerous other
boarding houses on this and the next street.
You will need four injections, he said in the usual unhurried manner. and
tablets and capsules. In a week you will be fit again. Dont worry, I will cure
you fine!
How much for? Dusman asked and suddenly realised that the same
question was put more times to bar girls than to anyone else in any other
profession. The wrong answer to the same question had landed him on the
doctors doorsteps.

81

Eighty shillings, Patel told him. The injections are twenty shillings each.
The tablets and capsules are on the side because you are my best customer. I
give you best treatment.
Can I have just the capsules and tablets? Dusman asked hopelessly.
Still eighty shillings, Patel said without a flinch.
Thats too much. You always charge me too much.
You are very ill, Doctor Patel said sympathetically and shrugged. I give
you the best medication. Others charge more, thirty shillings for injection try the
one down the road. Just try one and see. Then you will come back to me and
thank me.
Dusman believed him. Patel did not bullshit as much as most of the others
did. He was straight as the profession would allow.
Can I bring you the money tomorrow? he asked.
Dr Patel shook his head sadly. He had learned a few good lessons in the
thirty years he had been in the profession. If you wanted to be friends with and
keep treating Africans, never accept cheques from them or cure them on credit.
The cheques always bounced back and the customers never returned. He did not
have any grudges against his darker brothers. Only they seemed to find it
extremely difficult to be honest.
Dusman had once asked, in fun of course, on account of Pussy, Totos
wenching tomcat, whether cats ever caught the flu. The ex-veterinary doctor had
paled slightly and wondered what his client had been up to lately. Dusman had
quickly tried to explain Pussys incredible escapades but Patel, still holding him
by the handle in the process of examination, had shaken his head and continued
his work. He treated straying men not cats.
Guarantee you will be O.K. in a week, he now said quietly. Otherwise
any further treatment will be free. Guarantee.
Seventy shillings, Dusman said and lowered his trousers.
He lay face down on the cold rubber-smelling examination table while Dr
Patel pumped his side full of penicillin and other stuff.
Others give you wrong medicine, the doctor said as he worked. This is
the best in the market. Lie down for a while, the pain will go away. Just relax
for a minute or so.
Dusman lay face down, teeth clenched until the pain eased off. Then he got
up, dressed and coughed up the seventy hard-earned shillings, which left him
with only ten shillings to live on for the rest of the month.
Capsules. The doctor gave him three different types. One of each after
meals in the morning, afternoon and night.
82

One each? he grimaced with awe.

Now some tablets. He got out three different colours and sizes as well.
Same as capsules, one of each after breakfast, after lunch and after dinner.
Dusman wished he could mention that he did not eat three times a day, and
the medicine might be all the food he ate for the next seven days. He could not
tell the doctor though. His bottom hurt too much. He wished he had bought
himself some food with the five shillings he had given to the woman in
exchange for her terrible flu.
No beer, no women and no hot pepper for a week, the doctor told him.
Come back after next Monday. Leave your name with my assistant. You should
be well in seven to ten days. Good-bye.
Six weeks later, he was still visiting Dr Patel and paying for the visits. The
guarantee deal did not hold true and any more after he reluctantly admitted a
week later that he had done everything the doctor had forbidden except eating
hot pepper. He had been unable to resist Totos beer offer and he had then met
another street girl, paying her back in her own lousy Hong Kong currency. Dr
Patel was no fool. He wanted the truth. But Dusman could not explain how the
medicine played havoc with his anatomy so he pissed the rainbow, and spent
many working hours trotting erroneously from parking meter to parking meter
like a doped ass. With his mind so buggered that he saw everything in
Technicolor, a man needed a drink. And after the drink he needed a woman just
as bad. If Dr Patel understood that, his weathered face showed no sympathy at
all. No woman, no beer and no hot pepper, he repeated sternly. Then he pumped
him delirious with drugs and gave him hundreds more to eat for meals. Dusman
wished that it was Nylon he had so that he could die of it and incense the
medicine man.
On his way to work that day, he had had a freak dope-inspired brainstorm.
He realised for the first time what the initial K in Dr Patel K. Patels full name
stood for. It stood for Klap.
That was months ago.

83

Seven
If anyone could help Dusman Gonzaga out of his present rut, the
recommended Dr H.C.R. Bates would be the one to do it. Only a doctor could
understand the dangers of working in an unsuitable occupation. It rotted the
brain and dulled the senses like continuous deep intoxication. Only a man with a
good education background could understand that Dusman was never cut out to
be a meter reader. He was made for the more interesting chores in nation
building, administrative and intellectual work. He could quote his deteriorating
squint as an example. If more proof was needed. He would drag in the whole
Dacca House.
The blond secretary in Dr Bates office made him wait for five minutes
while she hammered away a noisy electric typewriter. There were no other
visitors in the spacious expensively furnished waiting room. The magazine
stools held current issues of Time, Newsweek, Business Times and numerous
medical and scientific journals. It was a far cry from old Dr Patels butchery on
Hasrat Road.
At ten oclock sharp, the bespectacled secretary looked up and nodded,
allowing him to proceed into the inner office where Dr Bates waited for the first
patient of the day.
He was a tall lean man with slouching shoulders and a sickly tanned skin.
His thinning hair had started to turn grey at the temples. He regarded his client
with intense blue eyes that stared steadily through a pair of horn-rimmed glasses
precariously balanced on the bridge of his nose.
Good morning, he bellowed in a voice surprisingly heavy for one so lean.
Good morning, Dusman responded. I am Dusman Gonzaga of
How do you do Dusman?
Very
Sit down, sit down. Mr Kimende rang me about you.
He did? Dusman was amazed.
He is a good friend of mine, the doctor said, wringing his hands. Sit
down and make yourself comfortable.
Dusman took the indicated chair, wondering. The Superintendent
telephoned? Impossible, it could not have been him. It had to be the secretary.
The desk between them was bare but for a couple of ashtrays and a
cigarette case by Dusmans elbow. The floor was covered with a sea-green
carpet that extended to all parts of the room and not just under the desk like the
Supers. One wall was hidden from view by a row of glass-fronted bookshelves
84

holding hundreds of reference books and periodicals. A stool at one end

supported a tall, thin glass vase of fresh, carnations. At the other end was an
almost new examination table made of shiny, chrome steel and soft black
leather. On a trolley next to it was a collection of instruments and professional
gadgets.
Against this big-money establishment the Indian doctor, Patel, would have
been a depressingly out of place as a brand new refrigerator in Dacca House. It
was such a far cry from the condemned surgery on Hasrat Road that it made
Dusman Nervous.
How are you feeling today, Dusman? the doctor asked with forced
cheerfulness.
Not too good, Dusman answered.
No white man would ever fool him again with his wide-toothed grins and
cold contemptuous eyes. He had seen too many. One had smiled at him every
morning for over two years, sold him a worthless car and then fired him. He
would never smile at another one again in his life.
Dr Bates office is twelve floors up a building that prides itself on being
one of the tallest and most modern, and expensive in Africa. Out of the window
one sees right across the city to the African slum locations of Jericho and
Jerusalem, lying under a smoky haze out in the dry naked plains. Out of the
other window is a view of the tall trees and green bushes of affluent suburbia,
where Dusman spent so much of his life and energy reading water meteres.
How he longed to go back there! Looking Dr Batess windows cone is on top of
the world.
Some coffee, Dusman? the doctor asked.
As stealthily as a ghost, the secretary had come into the room. She stood
by the door rubbing her hands apprehensively together, smiling for no apparent
reason. She was short and plump in the right places. For a white woman, she
was quite good-looking.
Black or white? she asked.
Black like me, he said.
He had not intended to embarrass them. It just popped out, the title of a
ragged book a tattered vendor had tried to sell to him on River Road. The two
blushed and tried to cover it up with white-toothed, cold-eyed grins.
Two black, the doctor said to the secretary.
Sugar? she asked Dusman.
Dusman nodded. The woman withdrew to return almost immediately with
two steaming cups. She deposited them on the desk, swayed her firm backside
85

out of the door and closed it softly behind her. She was quite pretty. In spite of
his having a nose like a banana, Dr Bates knew how to take care of himself.
The doctor sipped his coffee. He opened a drawer and took out a notepad, a
pen, a black file and deposited them on the desk in front of him. From the breast
pocket of his dark blue suit he took out a handkerchief and wiped his glasses
then put them on.
Now, Dusman, he said, grinning again. This is going to be a very
informal consultation. Just relax and take it easy and he indicated the
cigarette box. You may smoke if you wish. As for me
Out of another drawer he took a black pipe and a can of tobacco. He
pushed a table lighter across at Dusman and placed a box of matches on his end
of the desk.
Dr Batess therapy was based of the firm and unshakable belief that money,
women and power, the greatest motivators in all progressive human endeavour,
were also the root cause of all mental disorders affecting the male of the species.
That theory had never failed him, and he could, with a handful of well-timed
questions, diagnose a thousand-and-one syndromes.
He sipped his coffee again, and filled his pipe. He sucked on it until the
fire caught, then took another sip of the coffee. He was ready to begin. He
leaned back in the reclining chair and looked his client straight in the eyes.
Now, he said finally. Suppose you start by telling me something about
yourself.
Something like what? Dusman wondered.
Anything, Dr Bates said. Home, family, job, hour hopes and dreams,
things like that.
Dusman scratched his hair, left uncombed for the purpose of impressing
the gravity of his ill-health on the doctor. He opened the cigarette case and
extracted one of the special cigarettes. He lit it, ever so leisurely, took a few
quick puffs and nodded his approval. The doctor had good taste, and the money
to satisfy it.
Anything at all? he asked. Everything?
Anything you wish, Dr Bates grinned. Everything you wish.
He thought quietly again. There were things he would have liked to tell the
doctor which, however, he could not. Among them was the fact that he had
decided to kill Magendo, the racketeer, for what he had done to the Bathroom
Mans wife. No, he could not tell the doctor about Magendo.
Well, he finally began.
86

He told Dr Bates most things, and the doctor took notes as Dusman spoke.
He told him about his work, how he had lost his job at the Sunshine Hotel and
how he became a water meter reader until the Umbwa Kalis had threatened to
drive him crazy. He told the doctor about Grogan Road. He painted the picture
of Dacca House in words and expressive gestures at great length. Through him
Dr Bates made his first acquaintance with Sukuma Wiki, the rugged vegetable
peddler, his wife and their horny-toed children. He was introduced to the shy,
withdrawn Bathroom man; the perpetually grinning landlord, honourable
Tumbo Kubwa, councillor and businessman; Chupa na Debe, the merchant of
trash; the mice; the cockroaches and the silent faceless ones.
When you refer to the silent faceless ones, Dr Bates interrupted to ask,
exactly what do you mean?
It was a reference term Dusmans roommate, Toto, had coined to
encompass the seventy-five per cent of the inhabitants of Dacca House of whom
very little or nothing at all was known. These were the ordinary folks who lived
ordinary lives, had no distinguishing marks by way of character, appearance or
profession and would probably die without any. Dusman perceived them as
white sheep in a flock with a handful of spotted, patched and tainted
companions. Few of them had names, faces or voices one would remember even
vaguely twenty-four hours later. Dusman did not see them in Dacca House for
weeks on end, although he was all the time aware of life around him in the form
of a soft cough or a loud breaking of wind out in the yard. He detested them for
this, their being present and absent at the same time, real but unreal, alive but
dead.
As he explained this contradiction of all time, Dr Bates sucked on his pipe,
jotted down notes and regarded him with eyes as blue and empty as the
cloudless August sky. When he had finished explaining, the doctor heaved a
heavy sigh, emptied the bowl of his pipe and refilled it. He did not light it.
Instead, he cleaned his glasses with a large white handkerchief and replaced
them on his long nose.
He was an Oxford and Cambridge graduate, the best medical schools in the
world, according to the British. Now for the first time ever in his long illustrious
career he was lost for words. He could not think of a suitable place to begin.
He lit his pipe and sucked on it for what seemed to Dusman like eternity.
Dusman was beginning to wonder what was the matter when the doctor cleared
his throat and boomed out, What makes you think you are insane?
That is not my idea, the patient said quietly. That was the Supers
conclusion after I told him about the ghost parking meter by the lavatory wall.
He believes only crazy people see ghosts.
And what do you believe? Dr Bates asked.
87

Thats why I came to you, Dusman answered. To find out the truth.
Dr Bates was thoughtful for a moment.
Have you ever had your eyes checked? he asked next.
There is nothing the matter with my eyes.
How do you know?
They are mine, Dusman said. I can see you and I know my eyes are
right. Dont let the little squint fool you. I got it from reading meters in the
midday sun.
Dr Bates could not have realised it, but sometimes deep inside Dusmans
person lay a deep-rooted loathing for specialists. He would never have visited
Dr Bates but for the fact that he might be understanding and hasten the transfer
to water meters or even to the promised but now forgotten clerical job.
How is your relationship with women? he asked next.
What has that got to do with it?
A great deal, the doctor answered. Believe it or not, most male problems
have their origins in the female of the species. This has led some wise
philosophers to the common theory that ninety-nine per cent of the worlds
problems are initiated by women.
I consider myself a normal, sexually healthy African male, Dusman told
him. I dont let women give me any but the obviously unavoidable trouble.
Dr Bates nodded and perused the confidential data in the file on his desk.
He frowned, nodded and talked to himself. He had one hell of a case here.
Back to the matter of the parking meters, he said, staring across the huge
desk at the patient. Has it occurred to you that you could he actually obsessed
with your manhood?
What have meters got to do with it? Dusman asked, puzzled.
A great deal, the specialist said. A great deal. When you eh look at a
woman, what do you see?
A woman, of course.
And when you look at a nude female?
I dont look at naked people.
Not even women?
We dont look at other peoples privacy. It is indecent.
Then how do you
We turn off the lights.
88

Dr Bates shook his head in despair. It did not make enough sense.
Why do you hate this the man who lives in the bathroom?
The Bathroom Man?
What is his real name?
He has no other name I mean I dont know. No one ever calls him.
And you hate him?
Yes.
Why?
Just dont like him, Dusman said lamely. May I smoke?
Go ahead, the doctor indicated the case by his elbow.
Dusman lit one of the specialists cigarettes, casually noting he had been
answering absurd questions for quite some time. Questions to answers that had
no obvious link.
The white man brushed dust off his blue suit and relit his pipe. He was
beginning to get ruffled.
He makes me nervous, Dusman volunteered.
What does?
The Bathroom Man.
How? In the same movement flinging the burnt matchstick in the ashtray.
I dont know, Dusman said through smoke. But it gets so I want to
scratch when I see him. I guess well, I havent met many people who live in
a bathroom with a wife and a retarded child. I mean why I mean you
know what I mean.
The doctor shook his head.
Why, Dusman asked. Why should a human being live in a dank
bathroom and pay for it? I mean, why do they let it happen?
Why does who let it happen?
Whoever is in charge of this sort of thing, Dusman said. The government
the tribunal for instance.
Have you notified them?
No.
Why not?
Its just a hopeless waste of time, Dusman said. We wrote to them, me
and Sukuma Wiki. The old man I told you about who sells vegetables. Well, I
89

used to write letters for him, you know, complaining to the City Hall about
licencing of poor low income hawkers and harassment by the citys
constabulary; as a matter of fact, we wrote one together yesterday. Well, no one
ever answered his letters, so I gave up writing them for him. He kept begging
me, and would say, sorry, mate, no time. So one day I got fed up and told him,
Look, old man, why dont you write to someone who knows how to answer
letters for a change? Like who? he asks. I think. I think, why not? And
together we draft a letter to the Tribunal. They never replied either.
I believe they are quite busy these days, the doctor said. You should also
understand the fact that the problem of lack of enough decent housing paves the
way for a lot of irregularities.
You dont understand, doctor, Dusman told him. The situation is graver
than it sounds. You have got to live in Dacca House to understand. You have got
to live in Dacca House to understand. We are all paying for a dead ass, and the
Bathroom Man is just one of many. You could never understand.
I am not certain about that, Dr Bates said. Do you ever see yourself in
his place?
I could never live in a bathroom, Dusman answered confidently.
Why not?
Why should I?
He does.
I just told you that.
The doctor shrugged and puffed on his pipe. He thought for a while.
The Bathroom Man is not the only person you detest, he said finally,
quietly, as though discovering another side to the patient. What did you say the
other man was called, the fruit man?
Sukuma Wiki?
Yes. This Sukuna Miki
Sukuma Wiki.
Whatever you call him, why why dont you like him?
There were numerous things Dusman hated about the old vegetable
hawker. He puzzled over the mans baggy corduroy trousers with suspiciously
stuffed pockets and the heavy military surplus shirts he wore from the
secondhand market at Kariakor. He distrusted Sukuma Wikis vegetable card
and regarded his amazon wife with awe, mainly because she as large as Dacca
House and yet lived inside it. But Dusman could not explain all this to the
neatly dressed busineslike Dr Bates. He could not trust a white man to
90

understand about Sukuma Wikis clandestine afternoon trips home when all the
neighbours were out at work.in fact Dusman had disclosed it only once before,
to Toto.
*

Why does Sukuma Wiki Jazz his wife during the day? Dusman had
puzzled during one of the extremely rare occasions they met for lunch in Dacca
House.
Does he? Toto had wondered.
Right in the middle of the afternoon when the sun is so hot it makes your
blood boil. And she moans and yells and their bed rattles worse than his fruit
cart.
Toto strummed on his box guitar, a cigarette stuck carelessly in the corner
of his mouth.
And I have to lie here listening, Dusman said plaintively.
It did not make any sense to him. If Sukuma Wiki had been a teenager and
his wife his first love, that would have been made some sense. But two old bags
like them it was just too much to fathom. He came home right in the middle of
the afternoon heat when everyone had gone back to work, his big boys back to
school and the little ones hunting for lizards and rats by the trash cans, and
Dusman the only one around to hear. Why?
Why? he cried out loud.
Why what? Toto said from far away.
Why does he do it?
Cant a man do what he likes with his own wife?
During the day?
Why not? Toto said without looking up, the cigarette bobbing up and
down his full lips and dropping ash on his spotless black market jacket.
Why should he? Dusman asked, looking out of the window at the
shimmering yard.
Because, Toto said pausing to face him. Because it is his room, his time
and his wife, and he wants to use them that way. And you dont have to
listen, you know.
I dont listen, Dusman protested. How can I help overhearing when she
cries like that?
91

So what? Maybe she likes it that way too, he stopped to flick the ash off
his jacket then looked balefully across the room at Dusman. You know,
Dusman, you are just full of shit. How in the world do you expect me to know
why the bastard rocks his old girl? Why do you always ask me only the stupid
questions?
Why should he when he ought to be out pushing his fruit wagon to make
them a living? Dusman anguished. Why only while I am siestaring and have to
lie here and hear her sing? Why doesnt he do it at night like everyone else in
Dacca House? What makes him think he is so special?
Why dont you ask him? Toto had finally shouted, rising to go back to
work. You know, Dusman, if any sane person tried to reason everything out the
way you do, he would go out of his mind?
Why? Dusman had shouted after Totos fast receding back.
Dusman had sworn to himself then. One of these days he would knock on
their door while they were right at it and ask them why?
*

Well, I dont exactly hate Sukuma Wiki, Dusman admitted to Dr Bates.

But you know how it is. Some you like, some you dont.
Telling everything to the doctor would have been unfair on the vegetable
merchant. One just must not tell white people such things. They would never
understand.
He laughed nervously. The doctor retained his fixed countenance, casually
acknowledging the remark with a curt nod. He flicked through Dusmans
scraggy case book slowly taking shape on the desk in front of him. So far, apart
from the private data provided by the employer and the patients own story,
there was nothing more than scraps of information salvaged out of the erratic,
unpredictable answers.
I would like to add something, Dusman volunteered yet again.
Go ahead, Dr Bates looked up quickly.
I really he licked his dry lips. I really abhor the smell of stale
bathrooms and mice and the dark brow creased in concentration, and
dancing cockroaches.
Dr Bates mouth fell agape. His mind whirled fast, tried to capture the
meaning in all that incoherent gibberish, one single word that the might have
encountered in his years as a therapist. The words meant nothing. Maybe he had
been wrong about Dusman after all. Perhaps after all the man was absolutely
and irrefutably deranged.
92

And blocked toilets, his patient added.

Exactly what the doctor swallowed and fought to keep his
bewilderment under control. What do you mean dancing cockroaches?
Just that, Dusman answered soberly, Roaches dance, you know. When
they have a good time. In Dacca House they dance all day and all night. I hate
them. Then he added, And they hate me too, I guess.
Oh, really? The doctor knocked his pipe out on the large ashtray. Then he
cleaned his monstrous bifocal eye glasses, once again lost for words.
Oh, really? he mouthed.
Now he appeared to be minutely scrutinizing Dusman for signs of latent
imbecility, searching for the hoses in his head out of which his sanity might
have escaped.
Really hate them, Dusman affirmed.
Why He swallowed hard. Why do you hate them? he could think of
nothing more sensible to ask.
They are dirty thieving bastards, thats why, Dusman said. Should I like
them? Do you like cockroaches?
Not really, the doctor said uncomfortably, adjusting his tie.
That is just what I meant, Dusman told him.
He shrugged, shook his head and replaced his glasses. He proceeded to
refill his pipe. Dusman was not the kind of client he had expected to be able to
judge at one sitting. Time was running out fast and they were not getting very
far. This far, all the doctor could hazard was that, together with whatever else,
Dusman was suffering from an age-old mental disorder, as yet without a
scientific name, referred to simply as fed up to here. The cure was by no means
as simple. It include breaking the subject apart and re-assembling him, using a
completely different instructions manual.
The dismantling involved launching the subject on a deep soul-searching
exercise that would in the end, if the diagnoses had been correct, unearth either
the whole defective personality trait, or a loose thread to lead the therapist down
the eye of the turbulence. The difficulty lay in starting the curative treatment.
While one chance statement during a consultation may reactivate the selfregenerating process, the therapy could go on forever without any tangible
results.
You could well, he said to his patient hesitantly, kill them.
Kill a blocked toilet? the patient sounded hurt.
I mean the dancing cockroaches.
93

Dusman shook his head sadly.

You you dont understand, he said gravely. You just dont
understand.
Dusman was almost certain now. He would never get one honest answer to
his numerous questions. Questions that had plagued him ever since he moved
into Dacca House and met the Bathroom Man. Questions like before he
became the Bathroom Man, what was he? Who was he? And what would he
become if he tired of, and quit being the Bathroom Man? Would he ever quit it?
What did he say to his wife when they retreated into the bathroom when he
loved her? Did he make love to her? Did he kiss her, caress her, whisper to her,
promise to someday take her out of the lonely bathroom into the bigger rooms
with the rest of the human race? What did he really say to her? Did he talk to
her at all? Did he ever play with his soft-brained offspring? Did he ever ask,
or even wonder why they lived alone in a bathroom by the smelly toilet? Was it
a boy or girl? That was one of the greatest posers. It was always dressed in
patched neuter gowns, depriving it of a recognizable sexual identity.
But what made Dusman maddest about the Bathroom Man was how the
hell could he have sold his wifes shoes and lived with her afterwards.
Let us get back to the original point, Dr Bates told him. Who else do you
hate?
Parking meters.
The doctors mouth parted in a slow enduring grin, one identical to the
Superintendents after Dusman had mentioned the disappearing parking meter.
His face was suddenly furrowed by a deep ponderous frown as he re-lit the pipe
which had gone out without his realising it. He took a few deliberate pulls.
My boss hates them too, Dusman added.
Hates whom?
Parking meters.
How would you know that?
He told me so, Dusman said. And, if you ask me, he is as crazy as they
come. Is it true he is your patient?
I am the companys doctor, Dr Bates said cautiously and shrugged.
What are you treating him for?
The doctor shook his head. He wished he knew the exact answer to that
one himself. He was treating Mr Kimende, the Meters Superintendent, for a
variety of recurrent nervous disorders arising from a mild case of schizophrenia.
But whatever he did, the doctor could not seem to persuade the patient from the
conviction that his juniors were plotting to topple him from power, or that the
94

Mayor was planning to replace him with a white expatriate as head of the
sewers and meters.
Why, he asked Dusman, do you hate parking meters?
I told you, Dusman squinted back across the desk, wondering how
anyone could smile like that, like a carnivorous animal.
Tell me again, the doctor said.
He told the specialist about the apparition against the toilet wall. He related
the incident slowly, recreating the pictures with words, then spreading them on
the desk in front of the specialist, like a losing hand of cards, stark naked in all
the ugliness.
The doctor studied him long and hard before turning to the file on the desk,
he turned a few pages and then looked up.
It says there, he said, that your duty is to read parking meters. Now
what does that entail?
Noting out of order meters, Dusman said. And giving parking tickets.
That sort of crap.
Thus far, Dr Batess theory concerning money, women and power was
barely hanging on. There were a thousand missing links in the compound. The
power ingredient, the craving for it was totally missing from the pot. Unless it
was somehow synonymous with parking meters.
Now, he read from the file, I want us to get to the bottom of this this
thing. It says here that, as you told me, your dreams are mainly about money,
women and parking meters. Now exactly what do you dream about wome?
The same thing all men do. You know
You mean a twinkle in his eye.
Yes.
Always?
Always.
and, he rubbed his tired eyes. What about money?
The usual bull, you know, doctor. Winning sweepstakes, finding money,
losing it. That sort of stuff. Like getting mugged carrying a million.
What happens then I mean when you get mugged and the million is
gone?
Nothing, Dusman answered. I just go back to Dacca House. I return to
Dacca House and they are all laughing at me.
Who are laughing at you?
95

Everybody, the faceless ones, and the mice and the cockroaches.
Why?
Dusman shrugged. It was more complex than just the act of laughing. The
truth was that whenever he dreamed of money, it was all somehow connected
with his departure from Dacca House for some far away and fantastic
destination which, however, was never quite clear. And when he returned to
Dacca House empty-handed and dying of shame, they all came out in the yard
and laughed him awake.
What about the parking meters? Dr Bates asked. Where do they come
in?
In nightmares, Dusman answered. They hate me and try to kill me.
Why?
I dont know, he said honestly. Maybe because I hate them.
Why do you hate them?
Because they hate me.
A shadow of disappointment crossed the doctors rugged face. For a
moment there he thought he had gleaned the truth. Now they were right back
where they had started, with too much information that said nothing. There were
too many apparently bottomless pitfalls in this case.
Do you ever dream about women and parking meters? he asked next. I
mean together.
Never.
Then what the hell do you dream of, the doctor thought. He studied the
notes he had taken. His patient showed very faint signs of being psychopathic.
He showed distinctive symptoms of megalomania, but it still did not add up to
much. Now the doctor added to the notes phallic complex negative! He dotted
it several times thoughtfully. Damn it, there had to be something, something
somewhere.
Women always alone with me, the patient said with all signs of sincerity.
Parking meters and money together.
There it was again. The doctor now wrote money and ticked it several
times.
Tell me, he said. What is your lifes dream?
What do you mean?
Your goal in life, if I may ask. You do have one, I presume.
Dusman shrugged and reached for the cigarette.
96

I dont know, Doc, he said as he took one. It seems to change with every
new season. Right now the greatest occupation of my every waking hour is
connected with my getting out of Dacca House.
Why?
I told you, his voice rose in dismay. I thought I just told you that.
All right, the doctor said, though that was far from the truth. All right.
Tell me, when you get out of Dacca House, where do you go to?
I dont know, Dusman answered. It is a big and green place, fresh and
healthy like like some places I have seen out in the suburbs. But it is never
clear where it is because I never get there. Something violent happens like
like a door shut and I wake up on Grogan Road.
He dragged thirstily on his cigarette while the doctor shuffled his sheets of
paper, chewed on the pipe and tried to come to some sort of conclusion.
As you probably know, the doctor finally cleared his throat. As you
probably know, I am required by your employers to present a full report on your
mental health. And, I must admit, I have not been able in the time you have
been here to quite, eh pin down the exact core of your problems. You have
been most co-operative, I must admit, and I really appreciate that, but there
appears to be nothing seriously, eh wrong with you. I should like to be able
to help you, and therefore I suggest you come back in two to three days time,
say next Wednesday?
Dusman nodded.
Great, the doctor wrote the date down. But, just to be on the safe side, I
would eh suggest you get a pair of prescription glasses for you eyesight, and
try to get yourself a regular, eh woman. You know what I mean, I am sure.
I have no problems in that area, Dusman said. Believe me, doctor, I have
no trouble with the ladies.
Get a new one, on doctors orders, he laughed alone. Now, to get back to
more important matters. I have compiled here a rough outline of the report I am
requested to submit to your employers. It is not much, but I will do a quick
read-through and you can tell me if you think it is a fair summary of what we
have discussed so far.
Dusman dug his behind into the chair and listened quietly as the specialist
read out loud. Just as the doctor had warned, it was not much. The way Dusman
heard it, it was nothing. It completely missed out Grogan Road and Dacca
House, his chief witnesses in the case of Dusman Gonzaga versus City Hall. It
should have been much heavier than that, a fuller, more thorough report,
detailing not just his own experiences but those of the people closest to him.
97