One Man Dancing Read online

  Kiri sobs quietly. Mara has raced away.

  Charles cannot bear to see the fine kingdom of Abafumi in such trouble. But the king is down. And now the king exits the room without another word. They are left to face their admiring backstage public alone.

  “He cannot do without us,” says Joro. “It will be all right.”

  “We cannot do without him either,” says Beth. “He is this company.”

  Next morning in the hotel, their tension is palpable. Charles and Joseph have called a meeting. Robert is edgy but agrees to come. Everyone is waiting for him when he arrives.

  Robert’s gaze sweeps the room. Pouring himself a coffee, he sits down. Waits. “Talk to me,” he says finally. “What do you want to tell me?”

  Behind beige blinds, the streets roar and sweat. Charles, in his capacity as company manager for the São Paulo portion of the tour, will speak for them. He tries to articulate the humiliation of the previous night’s performance, how they witnessed their beloved founder and director debase himself and give in to personal rage at the expense of the play. How this action has devastated them all. “You have broken your own rules, sir,” concludes Charles. “We don’t know how to continue now.”

  Robert’s eyes are small hard pellets. Charles looks around at the others, knowing what comes next.

  One by one, each Abafumi member stands and looks directly at Robert.

  “I am Beth. I am Baganda. And I resign.”

  “I am Susi and Muganda. And I resign.”

  “I am Willy and Muganda. And I resign.”

  “I am Kiri and…” She stops, unable to look at anyone. She starts to cry. She sits down. The others continue.

  Robert is stunned into silence. He did not expect this response. Their names. Their roots. Their decisions to leave him. So profoundly taken.

  Charles speaks last. “I am Charles. I am Bahima. And I resign.” These are the hardest words he has ever spoken. He doesn’t mean them at all. Nevertheless, he knows that only unity, now, can help change anything. Robert has taught them that focus is the power of theatre. And this is a piece of theatre. No doubt.

  They need Robert to know what it is like to live by rules he himself invented. And then break them. How dangerous the breaking of those rules can be. They want him to know he is responsible for this. They want him to know consequences.

  Mara stands and apologizes to them all.

  Kiri stares at the floor but says softly, “It is not you Mara. It is Robert. He has put his own selfish needs before the company. Robert, you have compromised me personally and all of us artistically.” She speaks haltingly to this king of kings, this magnificent man whose turbulence, whose love of female flesh has taken them all down.

  He watches. He listens. He has avoided all their eyes but now he stares straight at Kiri. As though the others are not there. As though this is only between the two of them. But it is not.

  “We are willing to continue,” she says, “but only if you resign. We will be Abafumi without you.”

  Robert takes a moment to absorb this. Almost in a whisper, he begins his response. “This is my company. I have control. You don’t dismiss me. I dismiss you. All of you. I’ll form Abafumi again with others. I am Abafumi. Not you. I do not accept your ultimatum. You can all leave.”

  “All right then,” says Joro. “We have our answer. We also have our plane tickets home. You perform tonight by yourself. We are leaving.”

  Slowly, they file out.

  “Robert…” Charles hangs by the door, hoping for some last minute reversal of his fate.

  “No more words, Charles. It is finished for now.” Adding a moment later, “How could you turn against me too? How many chances have I given you?”

  “If I have betrayed you, it is by remaining loyal to your own principles,” Charles says reluctantly.

  “Go home then. Take your treason and find another director for it.”

  Numbed by Robert’s accusation, Charles embraces his treason, takes firm hold of it, insists that it give him something. Decides to change the plane tickets and return to Uganda almost immediately. When he informs the others, they agree it is the only course.

  They all hand in their tickets. That afternoon, Charles and Joro trudge morosely along to the airline office, determined to take charge of their own fate. Determined to take the company home. Not knowing what awaits them.

  But treason doesn’t come cheaply. They are appalled at the cost of changing flights.

  “Charles, it’s a sign,” says Joro. “We are not meant to do this.”

  Standing before the counter where a clerk smiles mechanically at them from behind his official forms, pen ready to sign away their money, their loyalty, and their future, Charles needs no persuasion.

  Every instinct tells him this is wrong. You do not walk out on family. You re-group. You discuss, argue, and debate. But you never break the circle. So they retreat.

  Robert sits alone in the hotel bar. It is late afternoon. Those who walk by him see a stone man, stiff and solid. Inside he is a volatile mix of disgust, pride and frustration. Bouncing through space. Rapidly losing light. Tired and scared, he is almost ready to let go. Let the solar winds blow him out.

  Charles announces to the actors privately that they cannot return home. It is too expensive. “We must perform.”

  They are all in the theatre when Robert arrives. He surveys the traitors as they file past. Watching as they get into costume. Framed. Caught. They all squirm in their turn. The mocking make-up mirrors flash everyone’s misery. A wall of masks shunning the sun.

  Their performance that night is abysmal. At low energy, they stagger through one mea culpa after another. Beat the drum of contrition. Renga Moi, no longer a hero, is transformed. A pig-headed opportunist. Nakazzi, a tiresome whiner. The Priest, a vindictive bully. And the villagers a shrill chorus of complainers.

  At the end of this travesty of their masterwork, it becomes blindingly obvious to Charles and perhaps all of them just how much the power of Abafumi is the power of ensemble. The multiple and often simultaneous sparkings of the group into a blaze that Robert may ignite but that, only together, can they fuel. And keep alight.

  It is cold ash, however, that piles up in the Green Room. Robert sits before them in silence, his mind frozen. He has killed their spirit. Can he raise them up? Does he have any right? Is he worthy?

  Charles feels plagues dropping. Judgement. Hatred. Blame.

  And bounties. Love. Hope. Need.

  Robert finally speaks. “I was wrong to let my personal life interfere with our work. I was wrong and I’m sorry.”

  The pause is eternity.

  “But you were so right about the results,” says Joseph at last, putting the whole tangled problem into perspective for them. “It is devastating for the work. We cannot let it happen again. The work is primary.”

  “How do we avoid it, though?” asks Charles, feeling responsibility. “Especially on tour. What if a critic had been there tonight?”

  “I think we must refuse interviews from now on,” says Joro. “Those puff pieces distort everything. And we should be very choosy about participating in the roundtables. Even though they are part of every festival, they can turn nasty.”

  “I think we need some time to heal,” says Mara in a childlike voice, looking wistfully at Robert.

  “Let’s cancel these last performances. I want us to get back to basics, our regular routine of running and working,” Robert says finally.

  Their days, however, are still tentative, floundering now between wish and reality. They struggle with the realization that fame and, inevitably, politics have sucked purity out of them, creating expectation, making them demand things. That they have been competing with one another for spotlight, celebrity, recognition.

  They all know they have traded wonder and excitement for aggressi
on and acquisitiveness. How can they protect their art from this contamination? How do they nourish it again?

  Numerous new invitations shimmer before them, a fluttering of indulgence.

  They agree to go to the Caracas Festival — one of Latin America’s most prestigious experimental gatherings. There they will regroup, play for a full week to a formidable battery of international critics including, for the first time in Abafumi’s career, American critics. One from Miami and another from New York. The festival is the wealthiest in Latin America and will help cover various extra costs they’ve now incurred.

  Robert’s negotiating ability is back in top form. He continues to revise his life for them. In the interests of professional and dramatic peace, he has even sent his wife and children back to Kampala. Where he hopes they will be safe.

  Yet the company remains wary and suspicious. They see Abafumi’s substantial house of theatrical reflections thinning to glass. An intricate geometrical space, brittle and transparent. Revealing and exposing them. Randomly. Hazardously.

  In Venezuela, unable to hide, they shine reluctantly in a light they cannot extinguish. Fine artists whose fame has travelled before them, even overcoming rumours that their country is dying. That they have abandoned their country after so many months away is transparently clear. But the company’s future is not so clear.

  Beginning with the increasing presence of people who now seem to be watching them even more closely, grey-suited strangers, always in sunglasses, alone or in pairs. Regularly they see Robert in fleeting conversations with these figures in the hotel lobby where he sits, expressionless, before murals of seas and mountains, while messages are passed to him, from him. Envelopes that show up later when their payroll is due.

  Among themselves, the actors whisper questions to each other. Privately. Nervously.

  They are uneasy in their new Hilton home, bristling amid the stiff white forest of highrises in Caracus, a dazzling city. In this American bastion of comfort, they can almost forget the city’s barrios erupting sullenly on the hillsides. But here Americans are everywhere.

  Robert, wanting to make amends, has booked them in this luxury intentionally, ensuring they are splendidly arrayed across several private suites, so they may take their ease on plush couches, behind thick brocade curtains, ordering room service on wheeled tables covered with snowy linen, gleaming glass, and delicate china. Money flows so easily.

  After a series of moderate hotels on the tour and good intentions notwithstanding, they warily accept privilege again. His apology to them all. Signing for everything. Watching him buy drinks for the world.

  A company of internationally famous African theatre professionals. Adored and afraid.

  In the luminous lobby Charles catches Robert’s eye — stern as a gargoyle scowling out of stone — and they start a conversation.

  Over whiskeys in the bar, Robert asks simply, “How is it with everyone? Are they still angry with me?”

  Charles feels flattered to be asked. “I think Kiri is hurt.”

  “Yes she is.” Robert admits he offered her jewellery. A pearl necklace. “I told her I would dive among sharks to find them. Practice abstinence until I have the perfect pearl.’’

  “That’s quite a line, Robert,” says Charles smirking. “Did she believe it?”

  Robert smiles. “It is a good line but it’s not mine. You know the Spanish colonizers used to forbid their pearl fishers any sexual activity until they had recovered their quota of pearls because they believed that sexual gratification made their divers more buoyant, preventing them from penetrating deeply enough into the pearl beds.”

  “Did she believe you would save yourself for her?”

  “She told me I was trying to buy her.”

  “Were you?”

  “Of course.”

  Robert shows Charles a lustrous set of black pearls. They glow in the palm of his hand. The colour of the sea in deepest sleep. “I know what is truly valuable. I was very proud of how you all stood up to me when I failed you.”

  “We failed you too.”

  An older woman, shimmering in recognizably Ugandan cottons, suddenly strolls into their view. She looks at Robert, at Charles, and then quickly turns away. Robert is about to excuse himself when Charles, suddenly emboldened, asks the unaskable question. “Who are these people you are always meeting? These men?”

  “Forget you ever saw them,” says Robert in sudden anger.

  “Who are they?”

  “They can help our country. That is all I can tell you.”

  “Are they Americans?”

  “Don’t ask, Charles.”

  “Some of the others think they are CIA. Are they CIA?”

  “Stop,” Robert commands.

  Charles takes a long breath, searching his mind for a less controversial subject. “So who is that woman who just came in?” he finally asks.

  “She is our safety here. She is one of us. On our side.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She keeps me informed. She tells me things that will protect me, protect all of us. Think of her as a good witch.”

  “Why do we need protection? Is she Ugandan?”

  “President Amin has been asking about us. Concerned we are spending too much time abroad. He has also told the Ministry of Culture that unless we return immediately, we will not be given a licence to perform at home. I am, however, afraid that if we do go home, we will not get out of the country again. That is why I have been extending the tour.”

  “That woman told you all this?” Something stirs in Charles. A tall woman of regal bearing. A strong woman with gourds and beads.

  “She has also given me a stone. In a special iron box. She brings it to me everywhere I am. It is my shield.”

  Was it not a woman like this who once called Charles Kiti? Who still hovers at the edges of his dreams?

  “She is never out of my awareness. She protects us all.”

  Suddenly Uganda floods into Charles once again.

  At the opening night party, the Ugandan ambassador is smiling. As is the Director of Uganda’s National Theatre who has made the long trip from Kampala to be here. Government and cultural officials appear everywhere. All eyes are on Abafumi. But why?

  Perhaps, Charles thinks, the whole show is just national public relations. After all, this is the biggest festival they have yet played. So many companies here from Europe and America, from Asia and from all across the Caribbean. But they are the Festival’s first African company.

  The press badgers Robert’s actors constantly with political questions. “Are reports of Amin’s brutality true? Can rumours about his cannibalism be confirmed?”

  “No comment,” they have been told to say by Robert. “We are only actors. Perhaps you should ask our director.” And Robert always deflects such inquisitions with grace and style. But when they are out of journalistic range and with people who might really know, Abafumi seethes with the same questions.

  They corner the director of the National Theatre, Byron Kawadwa. Robert has spoken of him many times as a cultural leader, as someone who can be trusted. A playwright, Kawadwa is precise with words. He cautiously hints at what is happening, beginning sarcastically. “He evicts the Indians yet advertises Uganda with their good food,” he sniggers to Joro.

  Later in the scented darkness of the garden where, one by one, they have inconspicuously joined him, his soft voice continues. “Amin has turned on the Christian community as well now. Only Muslims have rights these days.”

  “We have heard that,” says Robert. “How bad is it?” The group gathers round him, shadows among flowers.

  “He announced on the radio that Allah came to him in dreams one night declaring women should not wear short skirts. And if they did not cover their heads, they would be imprisoned. Oil money is coming in to support him from Liby
a. Gaddafi wants to see Uganda as an ally. Perhaps it’s because of his money that Amin is going this route.

  “Even buying a car is difficult,” Byron continues. “Or getting a good apartment unless you have a Muslim name. It is ethnic war. That is what is really happening. And he is violent. Cruel.”

  “We heard that western dress is no longer allowed,” says Joro.

  “Oh, it’s allowed but not if you want to be safe. You will not recognize your friends when you return. Amin has put everyone in jellabahs. We all look like Gaddafi’s people. We must also eat rice with our hands now. He has banished forks, everything modern and western.”

  “But we are a country of Catholics and Protestants too,” states Joseph. “How can he abolish these religions?”

  “Of course. Everyone protested. And then he started murdering the protesters.”

  “It really began with the priest,” says Joro, looking pointedly at Charles. “You remember that?”

  The priest. Charles will never forget that day, the torched car, the charcoal body slumped in its seat.

  “Maybe it is time go back,” says Robert.

  “Not right now,” Byron cautions. “Stay away as long as you can. Unless you want to convert. Amin has built a giant mosque high on a hill overlooking Kampala. So now we can all hear the mezzuin’s call to prayer, like a siren through the air. At regular intervals, we all have to stop what we are doing and bow to Mecca.”

  “Do they?” asks Joseph. “Does everyone stop?”

  “At first, they all laughed at the order. Then people started disappearing. We heard of shootings and bodies dumped in Namanve forest. So now, everyone obeys the call to prayer.”

  “How about food? Can people still get what they need?”

  “There are queues everywhere,” says Robert. “Salt, sugar, kerosene are all in short supply. These were all things managed quite efficiently by the Indian businessmen. Without them…”

  “And now he’s left the running of the factories to people who know nothing about it,” says Joro. “He is trying to nationalize all the big companies. Only the Americans and the British are stopping him.”