7.

Isaac got his first break during his O-level vacation. Sasa, a deejay who owned a mobile disco, took him on for lifting and handling. But Sasa had a restless tongue, especially after he had been drinking, which was most of the time. Isaac soon found out that deejaying was a trade that attracted transient, laid-back, but arrogant people. Sasa’s assistant deejays came and went so fast that he became suspicious of Isaac’s loyalty. After rowing with an assistant, Sasa would ask Isaac, “How come you’re not leaving with them? You must be robbing me somewhere I don’t see.”

But Isaac would just shake his head and carry on with his work. In time, Sasa came to rely on him. He started to apologize after a shouting bout. “Don’t listen to me, Isaac, it’s the drink talking.” Gradually, as deejay after deejay abandoned him, usually just before a performance, Sasa asked Isaac to help. He became familiar with turntables and vinyl. He learned beatmatching, phrasing, and slip-cueing.

When it was announced on the radio that the O-level results were out, Sasa insisted on going to Kololo High with Isaac to pick up his results. When he looked at the slip and saw eight distinctions, Sasa cried. Isaac, being cried over for the first time, melted too. That day, Sasa took Isaac to the Speke Hotel for a meal. Then he invited Isaac to come and live with him. A month later, Sasa came home with a second-hand three-piece, pin-striped suit, a bowler hat, and a walking stick. When he tried the suit and the hat on, he looked like a broke black gangster from an American film. The following day, Sasa walked in front of Isaac like a no-nonsense father all the way to Makerere College School.

When their turn came to see the headmaster, Sasa walked in and slapped the results slip on the headmaster’s desk. “There,” he said as he pushed the slip in front of the headmaster. “My name is Mr. Sasa Kintu, my son Isaac Newton has achieved the best results you’ll see in a long time. We selected your school as our third choice. Kings College, his first choice, wants him. Namilyango, his second, wants him. But we have chosen to come to you. Ask me why.”

Isaac expected the headmaster to tell them to leave his office but instead he clasped his hands and asked, “Why, Mr. Kintu?”

“Because I am a single father. My wife died when Isaac was born. I have this one only child,” Sasa waved his forefinger. “A single matchstick—you light it wrong, ooopi! You’re plunged into eternal darkness. Do you get me, Mr. Headmaster?”

“I understand.”

“I’ve brought him up on my own and in spite of this old suit, I am poor and don’t want him to go away because he runs the family business. I understand you have a non-boarding section in your school.”

“Yes, Mr. Kintu. We, unlike other so-called First World schools, are not entirely boarding.”

“So, what can you do for my son?”

“Isaac has a place with us as a non-boarder.”

“Is that all?” Sasa threw his arms in the air in disbelief.

The headmaster looked at Sasa, bewildered. Isaac squirmed. He had not discussed anything of this with Sasa prior to coming. Isaac had imagined that Sasa was only escorting him. Sasa clarified their position.

“You mean you have no schemes or bursaries for such poor high-fliers like my son?”

“Oh, I get you, I get you, Mr. Kintu. Leave it with me. I’ll get in touch within a week or two. Meanwhile, don’t look elsewhere.”

Sasa turned to Isaac and growled, “You see this kind gentleman? You see the chance he has given us?”

Isaac nodded.

“I suggest you come to his school. Join the rich boys and make trouble, I swear upon your mother’s grave I’ll take you to the school assembly and caress your backside with this stick like I’ve never—” Sasa turned to the headmaster and said, “He won’t be trouble,” and shook his hand. Leaning heavily on his walking stick, Sasa snapped at Isaac. “Let’s go, lad.” They walked in character all the way home until they got into the house and collapsed into laughter.

Their relationship did not, however, improve entirely. Oftentimes, Sasa threatened to throw Isaac out. But Isaac never talked back. If it hurt, he never showed it. Later, Sasa would say, “That’s why I love my man Isaac: he knows me. When I rage he keeps quiet, saying to himself, Sasa doesn’t mean a word he says.”

Isaac’s eyes were so set on Makerere University that Sasa’s rants were nothing. Besides, his own family had been worse. So what if Sasa, a stranger, screamed? He knew that Sasa asked him to move in with him so he would not leave him, but it suited Isaac. He had not only walked out on Tendo and her children, but he paid no rent and did not buy food. In any case, Isaac suspected that he loved Sasa no matter how flawed their relationship. Apart from his grandmother, no one had ever shown him this level of care.

Isaac received his admission letter to Makerere College School and started his A-levels. At school, he was shy, unable to look a girl in the eyes. He worked hard at his studies especially on those nights when they did not have a gig. Thankfully, sex was one of the fringe benefits of deejaying. After years of being shunned and called ugly, followed by shame and disgust at his soggy, sticky dreams, Isaac had stopped trying to figure out girls. They frightened him, yet the way his body wanted them alarmed him. For a long time, he relied on his imagination. However, disco music, a darkened room with dancing lights, large headphones across his head, him hiccupping in the mic, and his phenomenal dancing, kept a steady supply of sex. But it was sex in shadows against walls with dark figures who were, more often than not, drunk.

One weekend, Sasa had such a bad headache that he could not bear to be anywhere near music. Isaac hired an assistant and a pickup truck to transport the equipment. For the two nights, Friday and Saturday, while the helper played his selection, Isaac manned the door and took the collection. On Sunday, when he showed Sasa the take, Sasa was not interested. On Monday, when Isaac came home from school, Sasa was so weak he could not walk to the road. Isaac hired a taxi and took him to Mulago Hospital where he was admitted. On Wednesday, the doctor explained that Sasa had a rare strain of meningitis and asked if Sasa had ever taken an HIV test. Isaac had no clue. Was Sasa sexually active? Isaac had never seen him with a woman but he could not be sure. How old was he? Isaac did not know. Should we carry out a blood test? Isaac said if necessary. That week, Isaac tried not to think about the fact that he did not really know Sasa at all. He went straight to hospital after school to nurse him. When he asked Sasa about his family, he replied by crying for his mother. Sometimes, when he was delirious, Sasa cried in a language Isaac did not understand. Hearing a grown man crying for his mother was heart-rending. Isaac would go home and cry too because this man with a skin darker than night, with tribal scars on his cheeks and a gap between his front teeth, wanted his mother.

The following weekend, Sasa was unresponsive. Even though he was sedated, Isaac explained to him that he had to go to work to pay the hospital bills. On his way to perform on Saturday evening, he visited to bring juice, but by then Sasa had lapsed into a coma. The HIV results were not back yet. When he returned at midday on Sunday, Sasa’s bed was occupied by another patient. Relatives of other patients said, “You’re late, lad! Your father left early this morning.”

Isaac was too frightened to cry. He had not anticipated Sasa dying. What was Sasa’s real name? Sasa is a Swahili word for “now.” What was his tribe? He suspected, because of the way he twisted words and the scarification, that Sasa was either Kakwa, Amin’s tribe, or Nubian. It now occurred to Isaac that Sasa could have been one of Amin’s people who fell from grace after the war. It explained the name, the fact that no one had ever visited Sasa in the two years Isaac had known him and why he never talked about his past.

Isaac slunk from the hospital like a thief because he did not intend to pay the bill. There was something fraudulent about paying a huge medical bill only to take home a corpse. In any case, where would he take Sasa’s body? Isaac went home and packed his bags, ready to run in case Sasa’s kin turned up.

He mourned quietly. For a week, he sat outside their two-roomed apartment and stared at people and cars and clouds going past. The silence in the house was oppressive. Sasa’s nicotine smell was thinning but his clothes, hanging on the wall, were difficult to ignore. For the first time, Isaac looked at the trees around the house. There were long nandi flames on the roadside but close to the house was a eucalyptus shrub. They were indifferent to his plight. Their leaves shook at the slightest breath of wind as if Sasa, who had lived so close to them, had not died. Isaac wondered where his grandmother was buried. He cried alone in bed because he had told no one about it. Then he went back to school. If Sasa was watching somewhere, he knew that Isaac had mourned him like a son. But Sasa would also know that he owed him. It was only fair that he made as much money as possible before the scavenging relatives turned up.

A month later, not a single inquiry had been made about Sasa. By the end of two months, Isaac had made so much money he did not know what to do with it. He opened a grocery shop in the market where his mother worked and asked her to operate it. The money was to help with her children’s school fees but he would be keeping an eye on it. Then he opened an account in a bank and deposited the rest of the money.

During his A-level exams, Isaac put away the music and concentrated on his studies. He had no doubt that Sasa’s relatives would come one day. If they did, there was money in the bank and he still had the whole set of equipment to give them. When he thought about the things other people would have done with Sasa’s money, Isaac was not sure whether to marvel at his own goodness or to cringe at his stupidity.

After the exams, Isaac took the ageing decks and speakers, sold them off one by one and replaced them with new ones. He changed the name of the disco from Sasasounds to Isaac New Sounds. He moved out of the house in Kavule to Banda. He turned up regularly at the grocery shop to balance the books, stock-take, and help with wholesale purchases. But he did all this silently. Afterwards, he would tell his mother how much money she could put to her children’s school fees without hurting the shop. Then he would leave, despite his mother asking him to stay and eat with them, despite his siblings’ gratitude for his kindness—Isaac remained uncommunicative.