Free Uhuru Street by M. G. Vassanji Page B

few people about. The boys took the stairs in single file in silence. When they reached number six, Kanji, with a glance towards the rest of them still climbing up, knocked twice onthe door. Sumar came to stand beside him and the other two stood behind.
    The door opened a crack, and a black ayah peeped out.
    ‘Is that his wife?’ someone whispered at the back.
    ‘His mother,’ said Lalji, and tittered.
    ‘Yes?’ said the woman, her voice rising. Her face was round and fat, her eyes large and yellow. When she opened the door, the rest of her was big and wide and blocked the view in front of them. On one side of her was the kitchen door and on the other a window.
    A faint sound came from behind her: a child’s voice, a spoon scraping.
    ‘We want to see the mama of the house,’ said Kanji, a little hesitantly, as if asking permission. The others were silent, behind him.
    The ayah heaved and stepped sideways in one motion, a block partition yielding, and they saw her, the second woman, at the head of the long table slurping at her tea, playing with her spoon. She looked young and old. Her face was smooth and pink, her hands delicate and small; her hair was long and dishevelled and fell in grey and white streams around her face to the table and the cup and saucer. Her front teeth were missing.
    ‘Wha’ you wan’?’ she said. It was the voice of a crone. ‘Professor … he gone …’ Then she broke into a language none of them understood.
    Lalji let out an involuntary grunt, like a muffled sob; then he forced a brief and nervous giggle. Kanji, in front of him, took a deep breath and stepped back, pushing them all out, and closed the door behind him.
    The next morning Stuart strode into class as usual. There were no more formal lessons these last days of the year and the affairs of the school were finally winding down amidst rising excitement and impatience. The mood infected one and all. There was even a trace of levity on the usually scowling face, but the quiet thatconfronted him caught him by surprise and he looked up as he went to the blackboard to place the cane on the chalk tray.
    There was something taped on the blackboard which drew his notice mid-stride. It brought his head up with a jerk. It was the cover from a paperback edition of
She.
It showed in garish colours an ogre-like woman. Under it someone had scribbled in chalk: ‘ SHE WHO MUST BE LOVED !’ Beneath that someone else had added for extra effect: ‘Frankenstein’s monster!’ in a strangely uneven hand.
    Stuart turned slowly to face them: behind the sternness this time traces of his pain.

The Sounds of the Night
    Yes, I would say for many weeks after, I have seen Satan. I have seen the face of Azazil. And at what other time than the quiet stillness of that deepest point of night, at four, when the spirits take dominion and most men sleep; only a few hardy souls venture out to seek the eternal. At that hour there are no cars on the road, no bicycles. The breeze has not started to blow and the air feels dull and spent … and the street lamps let out a glow that hangs suspended in a haze that never quite makes it to the ground. Into this quiet an occasional sound of feet would wander in and as quickly wander out.
    I was eight years old then. I would sit on our second-storey windowsill looking down at the street, knees and forehead pressed against the cool iron bars, half curtain pulled aside on its slack spring, awaiting this occasional wanderer. Often only the sound of footsteps came in rapid clip-clops, with no person in sight as whoever it was walked otherwise silently among the shadows, anonymity preserved. And when I did see someone, it would be all of a sudden; my head would come up with a jerk, my eyes strained wide to check my wakefulness. The person who appeared in my sight would walk rapidly by and disappear, and the clip-clop sounds would gradually diminish to a point beyond which there was no certainty. At that hour they were