Two Hangmen, One Scaffold Book II: In The Hangman�s Shadow

Chapter 1

1 C Chapter 1 is brow puckered, Bomani Kumanda woke up in the night recalling his Catholic past. Recollections of Roman priests, archbishops and cardinals in their immaculate robes and skullcaps, the Vatican and its vaults, irritated him to the point of clenching his fists. Sentient he wasn’t himself for over a decade now, he waited until his sight accustomed to the moonlight. He was lying in a hovel pitched in a thicket. It was 7 December; eight days had passed since the day he took Peza hostage. Yawning, he rose and stepped completely naked out of the crude shelter, which looked like a nomadic shepherd’s temporary refuge. Five other hovels similarly made from bundles of grass and multi-purpose plastic black sheets, together with his, surrounded a structure resembling a waisthigh goat pen half the size of a ping-pong table. The shelters, private quarters for each of his men, were low and open-ended on two sides. In them, each man slept and prayed to his ancestors and the gods of Gule Wamkulu for protection and immunity against arrest, and the arrival of Binga. The crudely garrisoned construction, a circular structure of thin sticks tied together with strips of bark to form a grass-thatched cage, held its sole captive, Peza. The hovels were in a circle with an approximate radius of seven metres. The camp in the thorny thicket was adjacent to thirteen graves. Aside from the cries of nocturnal birds and crickets, the vicinity was quiet. Somewhere in the area, a sentinel was possibly watching him. Taking care to avoid outcrops and walking into thorny bushes, he crossed to the warren in the middle and looked down at the boy. Peza was motionless and snoring like his henchmen in their shelters. Satisfied the bait was secure in his custody; Bomani returned to his hovel and lay on a blanket, his mood meditative. His spirits and gods had never failed him. It was a question of time before they brought H 2 Binga to him; otherwise, he would’ve to kill the boy and take his head to Sakis Mine as he had promised. When he pondered the capabilities of his spirits and gods, he ultimately focused on God, the apex of every spiritual matrix. Yet he was extremely angry with God. When he thought of God, the Madonna, Jesus Christ, angels, and beautified saints, a burning charcoal glowed in his breast. God and His assembly of innumerable saints and legions of angels had failed him. He had banked his trust in the Lord, only to be humiliated, dejected and thrown out of His presence like a leper discovered in a synagogue. Lying on the blanket sleepless, he reflected on his Catholic past, his haplessness and the canard of believing in God in the twenty-first century. The Bible needed rewriting, he ventured, especially where it stated God was the same yesterday, today and forever. Perhaps his anger was unreasonable because, after all, there were chances God had ceased to exist and the universe was freefalling to its destruction. Bomani’s life, beginning when he was in secondary school in rural Malawi, was a series of sad and unbelievable experiences. Now he was sure familiar spirits were in control everywhere, favouring those like him who recognised them. When he was a teenager afraid a curse had besieged him, he vainly set out to protect himself by converting to Protestant Christianity. Then he converted to what he deemed proper Christianity, Roman Catholicism. Fourteen years ago, by a streak of luck, he toured the Seven-hilled city at eighteen when he was a first-year seminarian at the St Joseph Catholic seminary in Thyolo, about fifty kilometres south of Blantyre in the Southern Province of Malawi. The Vatican availed some funds to sponsor poor seminarians who wished to set their feet on the holy ground on which the relics of saints lay and God’s representative on earth, the Pope, had his throne and residency. After writing some tests and attending many panel interviews, Bomani Kumanda met the criterion and was despatched to Rome. 3 In Rome, he met a dozen other seminarians from poor countries. The touring would-be priests, all males, chatted excitedly about their countries, exchanged addresses, and contact numbers. They welcomed him with hugs, kisses and utterances of blessings. Some gave him sweets and biscuits. In the whole of Malawi including...