The Magical Illusion of My Wealth

The Magical Illusion of My Wealth

Mother said I was loaded because I knew how to eat with poor people. I looked at her face as her cheekbones glowed in the reflection of the lantern on the table, for I did not understand what she said.

It was nine p.m. on August 3, 2014. I had returned from exile an hour earlier, and Mother and I were sitting in her slowly collapsing mud house in Origin, enjoying ugali and tilapia.

“When you eat fish with the poor, you do not eat the head,” explained Mother, reciting a line from a poem I had to memorise as a pupil.

Mother’s comment reminded me of something that Raptor told me when we were sitting in The Pub, in the centre of Oslo, a week before my homecoming.

“When you go home, Rich man, just be rich!” he had said after gulping down his half- litre of beer.

I regarded him with surprise. Never had I heard him say anything outrageous; and I looked up to him, owing to what he had achieved in our new home.

Raptor came to do a PhD at the University of Oslo. He strategically impregnated his adviser twice and married her. Twelve years later, she divorced him, seizing both his share of their assets and custody of the children. He quit teaching at the age of thirty-seven and got a disability pension, in spite of having no disability, a fact he boasted about quite a bit. That achievement made him my role model, for I dreamt of earning a disability pension as well, a life in which, said official innuendos and insinuations, the state would pay me to do nothing in perpetuity.

“But I have never worked, never inherited anything, never even bought a lottery ticket, so how could I be rich?” I asked.

Raptor got up, went to the bar, bought another half-litre of beer, sat back down and drank it in one long draught.

“Oh brother,” he said, clicking his tongue in disapproval, “when you are at home, you are rich. You have no choice but to be rich. So, just be rich!”

So, I have no choice but to be rich, reminded of Raptor’s by Mother’s comment, I looked back at her unexpectedly fleshy face, which was surprisingly full of pride.

My beautifully big-boned and carefully constructed Mother was a charcoal vendor in the hot, humid, and chaotic Origin market. She had somehow withstood the ravages of indigence, which had felled far hardier men and women. Another surprise was that she could afford tilapia, and the biggest tilapia at that, like the one in my bowl which sat on yet another sign of opulence, this awe-inspiring table.

I tore flesh from the fish, taking care not to touch meat close to the head, in order to conform to the image Mother had of a man of wealth. I put the meat into my mouth. I chewed slowly, savouring the tilapia’s flavour, while slicing a piece off the pyramid of white ugali on my plate.

“Do Norwegians eat ugali?” Mother asked, her face full of pride.

“No.”

“What do they eat?”

“Rice, bread, peas, pizza, potatoes, porridge, meat, milk, cereals, cheese, coffee, fish, fruit juice, vegetables, stuff their customs don’t forbid, you know.”

“Had I known you were coming,” she said, “I would have bought what you eat nowadays.”

I had been an émigré for seven years but the media never reported it. I had never opposed a government and never attended a political meeting. Nor did I ever illegally cross the border to Tanzania or Uganda, with the political police at the time, the Special Branch, in hot pursuit. Nor was I ever plucked from the Mediterranean Sea after shipwreck off the coast of some European country; nor was I smuggled out of Kenya in a mobile church, mosque or synagogue disguised as a priest, a rabbi or an imam. Not an iota of highly publicised thirst for knowledge chased me away from Kenya. My prosaic exile sprang from love and money.

I was eighteen and in Miranda High School football team. We went to City Boys for a football tournament. There I met a splendid sixty-seven year-old Norwegian with whom I became besotted, occasioning me love and the opportunity to escape pauperism. We married within three months; and I fled to Norway, to love, and to riches, before one year had passed.

In the beginning was my life blissful. My wife was a loving retiree possessed of bountiful bedroom brilliance. Lovemaking constituted everyday life. Nevertheless, marriage became insufferable, when three years had elapsed. My love had petered out into boredom. Yet my wife demanded that we make love, and that our acts of having sex not fail to reach the superlative standard we set soon after falling for each other in City. I sued for divorce, citing the injustice of having to give my wife loveless conjugal rights.

“You are very heavy,” Mother said admiringly.

And fat I truly was and nothing could have pleased me more. I stood at four feet and the fatness compensated for the stature I lacked; and I had bulging eyes on a huge head complete with elephantine ears, hence, it was easy to notice me, and, in this country, what pronounced a man wealthy better?

“I eat well,” I told Mother, but my largeness came from unhealthy and unbalanced diet and overeating. What I ate, according to the Dagbladet, bespoke beggary. In fact, as the tabloid put it, my conspicuous corpulence classified me as penniless poor.

Kenyans who had not lived in the West would prove the fact that I belonged to the poorest poor to be wrong. For that reason, I did not tell Mother I was languishing in extreme poverty. I thought it would be an act of idiocy to lay bare what everyone would confute. Not doing what I knew was impossible was not cowardice. Nor was knowingly doing the impossible courage. I thought too that it was better to be mistaken for a rich man than for a poor one and that I had to be rich and that I did not know the ways of the rich but now that I was rich I was going to give how to be rich a shot.

“Mother,” I said, looking at her lean body, “I will sleep at home because this is my first day in my homeland. Earliest in the morning, I will travel to City, and I will be there for a couple of days, looking for architects and engineers to design and build us mesmerising mansions.”

Mother was still staring at me; my moneyed man status had hypnotised her.

“The Old Man, “she said, “There are builders galore here in Origin…You have achieved much from afar, the first thing you must do is to see your achievements.”

That Mother said that I had achieved something at home while I was away astonished me. I had done nothing. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, Mother had never lied, and Mother had enough money to buy tilapia, in addition to having a majestic table, which hinted that she had lifted herself out of penury to a life of opulence. Was that what I had accomplished?

What astonished me more was that Mother called me The Old Man. As far as I knew, nobody except a grand old man of property with proven patriarchal proficiency could obtain that honorific title. A twenty-something-year-old like me never got it. I had to learn later though that that had changed during my exile of just seven years. Any moneyed man now attained that appellation of supreme honour. A lad too had himself honoured with it, by getting wealth. My fabulous wealth had thus transmogrified me into a propertied old man with proven patriarchal skills. I nevertheless felt obscenely flattered each time Mother called me The Old Man.

“Our home has achieved prominence, so, we must hire girded-headed City engineers to build our mansions with regal splendour,” I said.

“Girded-headed engineers?” Mother said.

“I mean engineers who have girded heads,” I said.

“Who have girded heads?” Mother said.

“Highly super-skilled engineers,” I said.

“The Old Man, practised builders abound in Origin nowadays,” Mother said.

I thought it was not enough to eat fish like a rich man eating with the poor; I thought it was not enough to be fat like a Kenyan rich man; I thought it was not enough to be noticeable like a rich man to be rich. I also thought that, to add gravitas to myself, I had to avoid hiring hometown constructors, and that I had to sound like a rich Kenya man to be rich. I therefore said with pompous nonchalance, “Mother, superbly super-skilled architects and engineers exist nowhere, save for City, where the peerless Diaspora Architectural Services have offices. Mother, it is categorically imperative that we engage no architects and engineers except the aforesaid ones to design and build hypnotising halls in this home of eminent distinction.”

Mother’s face, which was exquisitely glowing with pride, became animated. For a moment, Mother seemed to be thinking. Then Mother said:

“The Old Man, you are not anybody, you have done great things here in your absence, things which you will see tomorrow, after which we will talk about our housing situation. Just eat and go to bed.”

I stayed the night in a stately villa that Mother said was her kitchen. The bed in which I slept under a mosquito net Mother had sprayed with insecticides was as stately as the villa. How I wished I could swap my dilapidated Oslo flat for that villa! How I wished I could swap my mattress in Oslo for the softest mattress on earth I slept on in that villa! How I wished I could swap my Oslo blankets for the spotlessly clean blankets that Mother had in her villa! Was that villa, which was pointlessly pretending to be a kitchen, one of the great things I had achieved when I was away? How had I attained the villa, if it was indeed one of those great attainments of mine? Lying in the warm comfortable bed, as the rain spattered on the roof, I surmised that Mother was better off than I was. Additionally, I remembered that there was a rule saying that a parent could not build their house if their eldest son was not present. I continued to reason that, pragmatic as Mother was, she had circumvented the rule by building herself a secret house in her home, and a villa to boot, and disguising it as an outrageously magnificent kitchen. In fact, there was a room which Mother had barred me from going into, and which she had locked. That room, I reasoned, must have been Mother’s secret bedroom in her secret house in her home, and hence her barring me from stepping into it, since custom forbade adult sons to enter their mothers’ bedrooms, and Mother was not the one to appear to be flouting customs. But, how did Mother perform that miracle, that is, the majestic and magnificently secret house? I fell asleep without answering that question.

I went to Mother’s official house at dawn to wake her up. Entering the hovel, I saw her standing in the sitting room lit by the lantern on the table. She was dignified in a flowery and flowing gown with flared sleeves and flamboyantly multi-coloured head-gear, and elegance, another indication that she had risen to riches. I had an urge to go up to where she stood and shake her hand, for I loved handshakes, Kenyan handshakes especially. I nevertheless stopped at a distance from her, with the table separating us.

“Good morning, Mother,” I said.

“Good morning, The Old Man,” Mother said.

“Did you sleep well?” I said.

“I did,” Mother said.

“I too slept well,” I said.

“I was just about to come to make you wake up, it’s good that…” Mother said.

“I am rushing to City on business,” I said, although the truth was that I thought that word that I had come back from exile had spread and that people would be swarming our home from early in the morning to see me as a rich man and I wanted people to see nothing but a rich man. That is, as being rich was my project in Kenya, I had no choice but to become rich before anyone saw me.

“I have not even cooked breakfast, because our first priority is for you to see the wonders you have done. Once you have seen them, we will discuss our housing situation, and then you can travel to City,” Mother said with finality.

“But why must I see the wonders first?” I said.

“The Old Man, “Mother said, “I am not where you left me, and you must take responsibility for that. Let us go!”

I saw that Mother took my seeing the miracles she said I had worked in absentia very seriously. I felt obligated to change my plans for the day and see them before doing anything else. The villa too, it was apparent, was none of them; and I was intrigued to know what they were.

We walked out of the hovel and out of the compound into a wide street, with Mother, who was almost running, in front. We went along the street for some minutes. Then we branched into a dark alley, and were soon pushing roughly against traders and workers who were going to work. The alley ended abruptly. Then we were into a square. Crossing the square, we turned left into another dark alley, jostling with traders and workers again. We continued walking and jostling until we were on the road from Endpoint to Origin, which was being crowded, mostly with people who were as silent as the dead, when I said,” Mother.”

“The Old Man,” Mother said.

“Why don’t you have a car?” I said.

“To have what is not a necessity is to be a spendthrift,” Mother said.

“But you do need a car, Mother,” I said, panting.

“A car never makes money, it wastes it,” Mother said.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

Mother quickened her pace. I could not keep up. My fatness and sedentary lifestyle had made me unfit. Mother was as fit as a fiddle. She had been a runner of note when she was a student. She was virtually running. We were going to Junction. That was the place where Endpoint- Origin Road and City-Border Highway met. We were to take a vehicle there to the miracles I had been performing from abroad without knowing it.

“The Old Man, a car is nothing more than an ornamental flower,” Mother said.

“A car just a flower?” I said.

“A flower costs a fortune but withers away without its beauty outliving it. That is a car,” Mother said.

“You need a car for transport, Mother,” I said.

Mother stopped. That brought me to a stop. Mother turned her face towards me and said admonishingly, “The sweetness of wealth is in making it and not using it.”

Mother resumed her virtual running.

“Why make wealth but not use it?” I said.

I was struggling after Mother.

“Having wealth is the wisest way of using it,” Mother said.

A tout came jogging towards us shouting:

“Low! Low!”

“Mother, where are you travelling?” said the tout.

“Lovely,” Mother said.

“Please, climb my cockroach!” said the tout, pointing at a cockroach, which was a car used for commercial passenger transport.

“Two people, what is the fare?” Mother said.

“One hundred shillings,” the tout said.

“Twenty-five,” Mother said.

That astounded me. Mother oozed with that confidence concomitant with being wealthy in this country but Mother bargaining betrayed a lack of that air of insouciance with which the rich among us spent money to impress themselves and the poor. I consequently asked myself whether Mother had left where I left her or not, and whether her pennilessness was not the reason she did not own a car. Yes, I asked those questions, despite the fact that Mother had never told me a lie.

“Twenty-five shillings can’t take two travellers to Lovely,” the tout told Mother.

“Fifty,” Mother said with finality.

“Climb my cockroach!” the tout said.

We boarded the cockroach. Which was for five passengers but in which there were twelve. On the driver’s lap sat a passenger. I sat astride the gearbox. The tout squeezed Mother and some people in the boot, with their unexpressed permission. Someone was sitting on a piece of someone. A cloud of smoke billowed out of somewhere. I reckoned Mother was penniless. Her not having a car proved it. Her travelling by that cockroach too proved it. One got on that cockroach if one’s object was self-inflicted death. Suffocation, bone fractures, the ancient car falling apart and many other actions could kill you. Preserving their lives being their chief priority, rich people never entered overcrowded cockroaches, for travelling by an overcrowded cockroach was a suicide attempt. Thankfully though, Lovely was less than a quarter of the suicide attempt, and we were soon Lovely Bus Stop, north-west of Origin.

We silently walked southwards, at Mother’s pace, from Lovely Bus Stop for five minutes. Then I saw a farm that totally commanded my admiration. I associated farms with drudgery and farms inspired in me the fear of backbreaking toil. But not this marvel.

Standing beside the farm and bending her hand across her chest till the fingers touched the left shoulder and slightly tilting the face to the left and then unfolding the right arm and the arm and the eyes sweeping the enchanting farm, Mother said,

“I bought this land.”

“You did?” I said.

“All this is my watermelon,” Mother said proudly.

“All of it?” I said.

I had not stopped looking at the farm; and the longer I looked at it, the more I admired it, and the closer I came to it hypnotising me.

“All of it,” Mother said, her voice filled with pride.

I regarded Mother. Only when she said I was rich because I knew how to eat with the poor had I seen her more proud and never before my exile had I ever seen her proud. I might have admired her more than her farm or I might have admired her farm more. It would be disingenuous of me to claim I gave them equal admiration.

The farm was endlessly charming and charmingly endless. The beginning of the farm was where we stood. I tried to see the end of the farm but I could not.

“How did you do it?” I said.

“Money from overseas,” Mother said.

Money from overseas were remittances from the Kenyan Diaspora, and the Kenyan Diaspora meant Kenyans in the West, particularly in the USA.

“Money from overseas?” I said.

“You send me one hundred thousand Kenya shillings every month,” Mother said.

“But I don’t!” I said.

“Oh yes, you do,” Mother said.

“I have never sent you a farthing, Mother!” I said.

I contemplated Mother and saw same serious Mother I had known since I was a child.

“The Old Man,” Mother said,” this farm is the first wonder you worked while you were away…You often do things, bad or good, without knowing it.”

Mother turned the eyes towards the farmhands spread all over the stretch of loamy soil that was the farm. Mother looking at her workers prevented me from seeing what feelings her face registered at that moment.

“The Old Man, the son of Pin is one of our brothers and sisters abroad,” Mother said, still looking at the people who were working for her, at whom I too was now looking.

“The mother of the son of Pin was in conflict with his wife over who should own him,” Mother said.

“Own him?” I said.

I turned to look at Mother.

“A Kenyan settler overseas is a very wealthy man, you monopolise access to his wealth, and you own him, you…” Mother said.

“I get it,” I said.

“Seeing that her daughter-in-law had become the owner of her overseas son, the mother went throughout Origin town telling everyone that her son sent his wife one hundred thousand shillings monthly but not a cent to her. Nobody believed her dutiful son sending her nothing storyline because she too was obscenely idle and led a life of obscene luxury. The one hundred thousand shillings was nonetheless plausible and, since then, everybody knows what you send me every month without fail,” Mother said.

Mother looked at me contentedly; and I found her contentment beyond comprehension.

“The Old Man, I could not let you down, because I would be letting myself down in letting you down. That is how you worked wonders without being aware of it. You see, I had to prove that I received the regular remittance and that I used it to build my house. I had to work hard and, with the help of micro credit, I did this!” Mother said, pointing at the breathtaking watermelon farm.

“I’m proud of you, Mother,” I said.

“No, it is you of whom I am proud, you did this!” Mother said, sweeping the farm with an extravagant gesture.

“No, Mother, you can’t give me credit for what I haven’t done!” I said.

“The Old Man, had you not gone abroad, I would still be eking out a living selling charcoal in the scorching sun. I would not have developed this fabulous farm, if you did not go and settle overseas. The Old Man, there are things, bad and good things, which you do unknowingly.”

Mother’s logic did not convince me. Nor did I understand it. I had to have a go at being rich. I was not going to argue about who had conjured the magical farm out of my exile. Giving how to be rich a shot was more pressing.

I have to try being rich at once, I said in my heart, but how will I? I did not answer that question. That instant I asked it was the instant I repressed it. I immersed myself thereafter in the joy of the spellbinding beauty of Mother’s watermelon farm with its vines in raised rows of five feet wide and the two-feet-apart blossoming plants in the well-drained soil. There must have been thousands of the enthralling plants.

“How much will this earn you, Mother?” I asked.

“A net profit of ten million shillings,” Mother said proudly.

Envy of Mother struck me. I thought Mother would detect it in my voice. I therefore said nothing. The pain of failure was a second cause of my silence. In spite of the fact that I lived in the West, I had achieved nothing. What is more, in addition to being among the Norwegian needy, I did not have any prospects of earning even a tenth of Mother’s prospective profits. Yet Mother, a mere primary school dropout who started life as a penniless charcoal vendor, had become fabulously wealthy, just out of fear.

“I will show you the second wonder,” Mother said.

Mother took a little used path towards Green Hills, north-east of Lovely. We went up the path for nine or so minutes. Then, I espied a villa that proudly stood in a walled compound, and I blurted out, “Mother, is your more magnificent villa than that one your secret house?”

“Which villa?” Mother said, virtually running.

“The villa I slept in,” I said.

Mother halted, and so did I. Mother turned and faced me.

“Secret house?” she said calmly, her voice and eyes reassuring.

I should talk about this with the utmost tact so as not to sound accusing, it is all about a mother deliberately doing what is to fatally harm her own child, so say this most tactfully, I told myself, then I said,

“Don’t misunderstand me, Mother. You’d a legitimate reason to build a secret house. What I’m saying is that I think you built yourself a house and disguised it as a kitchen.”

Mother’s eyes became benignly reproachful. Mother said,

“How can you go as far as imagining that I would build my house when you were not here? A secret house? That house is a kitchen and a guest house. A secret house, if you can form a picture of something of that sort in your mind, a secret house would hardly have been a way out of my housing predicament. Had I built my house and pretended that it was a kitchen, it would still be my house, and it would still cause you mortal harm. The hovel you left me in, you should know, is the house I have, is the house I sleep in. Build my house when you were away was out of the question.”

“Why?” I said.

“Tradition,” Mother said, her reproachful eyes losing their layer of benevolence, potentially intimating malevolent reproach. Mother turned and continued going up the path. I also began walking again. I tried to keep up with the virtually running pace of Mother. I managed to say,

“You should’ve built a house, Mother. You can’t live in a horrendous hovel like that yet you’re loaded. In our time, Mother, the Diaspora time, tradition needn’t intrude into our lives. I can’t tell you more forcefully than my seven-year exile did that I’ve accepted Norway as my home and might have lived there without ever coming back…”

Mother stopped; I stopped; Mother turned; Mother faced me; and Mother said,

“I live in the falling hovel because I have to want you to be who you were. You, our overseas people, must be who you were; must not break with tradition. Who you are is who you were at birth, irrespective of where you are now. You, Rich, now that you are at home, you must have a house and a wife, you must be normal, you must be who you were when I gave birth to you. I know where you live they live not like us. But you cannot run away from you for that reason. Who you are will always be who you are; and you will always be who you were when you were born. Rich, hearken to me, and thoroughly. I have to want you to be different from other overseas Kenyans. You are my child, you are my only child, you are my son and my only son, I cannot let you let yourself down, and I cannot allow you to be or become someone who ran away from who he was born, a deviant man, a deformed man, an unwholesome man, an abnormal man, like our Kenyans across the seas. That is why I live in the hovel that is as good as fallen.”

As Mother said that, Mother had been struggling to supress her wrath, which, I surmised, I had provoked when I said that Norway might be my home forever.

“So you aren’t proud of me after all?” I said.

“Rich, do you think that you having settled abroad does not disturb me?” Mother said, struggling to stifle her ire. “We who remained in Kenya regard our overseas countrymen as people with deviance or abnormalities or social deformities or social unwholesomeness, “Mother continued. “We see them as Moran, people who are no longer who they were at birth. Ran, the word we derive Moran… “

“I know what ran means, Mother,” I said.

“Rich, “Mother said, “I doubt whether you are capable of apprehending ran in the Diaspora. Ran encompasses every imaginable deviance, deformity, abnormality, unwholesomeness, so that it is the status people slap you with most effortlessly. Divorcees, the mentally ill, bachelors, men who have not built their homes as tradition bids, men who live outside without coming back, are all Moran, are all those who have run away from themselves. Exhibiting any signs of aberrant behaviour, however harmless, categorises you as Moran. It is well-nigh impossible for Kenyan overseas settlers to have socially acceptable homes here in Kenya. Generally, our brothers and sisters abroad have no socially acceptable spouses. Their families typically fail to work properly. They are notorious drunkards and participants in all manner of impermissible debauchery. Some vague mental handicap or the other plague our fellow Kenyans living across the seas. Overseas people dump the dead bodies of our compatriots, in polythene bags, at Kenyan airports. And we collect the cadavers and lay them to rest, to limit shame, and to restore a modicum of dignity to these departed sons and daughters of ours, who ran away from who they were. We who are who we were at birth love the money those who ran away from who they were have; and the latter misconstrue that love for their money as our love for them. Rich, hear me, and hear me most thoroughly. I have no child except you. If you are a pure Kenyan abroad, if you are Moran, or if you are just ran, the abnormal one, or the deviant one, or the unwholesome one, the worst form of ran, then I have failed as a mother. And no stamp of failure is more stinging than being the mother of an only child who ran away from himself, who became not who he was when you gave birth to him, who is ran.”

“The sheer vehemence of your insults is shocking, Mother. I understand your wrath and worries, Mother, but I have a life I chose how to live seven years gone by. I can’t be who I was when you gave birth, I couldn’t even if, you too can’t say you’re who…I’m loaded, Mother, wherever I live I’m as wholesome as you’re wherever you, I’ve to be rich, Mother, I can’t let how you see me spoil…” I said.

“It is how we see you that matters…” Mother said.

“I’ve to rush to City; I’ve just to be rich; so we’d better go on to the second wonder or else…“I said.

We trod towards the north-east at Mother’s tiring pace for a quarter an hour. Then we sighted straight lines of vertical trees five feet apart, a marvel in deep and rich soil in a flat field that stretched to the foot of Green Hills, ten kilometres ahead, and we stopped. An antelope flamboyantly galloped into the fabulous forest as though flaunting athletic prowess. A pair of sunbirds were making a nest not far from the eastern edge, at a place through which a small narrow watercourse ran down from Green Hills. The forest presently erased the memories of that flat field that, before love and money sent me into exile, had been communal grassland where all and sundry grazed animals and fetched grass from to thatch houses.

“This isn’t the wonder…” I said.

“The Old Man, it is! “Mother said proudly.

Her pride! Her pride! Her pride! I said to myself, the pain of failure and envy of Mother stinging again…And she’s proud not of me but herself, now showing off; I said to myself…She knows envy, pennilessness too, what can I from her hide after all?

“Did you buy community grassland?” I said.

“I did,” Mother said more proudly.

“All of it?” I said, appraising the breadth of the blue-green that ran and ran and ran until it climbed conic Green Hills and merged with the blue horizon gleaming in the light from the sun atop Sun Hill.

“Every piece of it,” Mother said even more proudly.

“And Green Hills?” I asked, hoping to hear that Green Hills had survived the money-grabbing mania Mother’s fear of failure had set in motion.

“Green Hills is part of this good thing you did without knowing it, The Old Man.”

Now you are mocking me, Mother! I told myself.

“What will you do with the trees?” I said.

“These are power poles. We didn’t grow them before your going overseas,” Mother said.

“How long before the trees mature?” I asked.

“This is the daughter of South Africa, it takes eight years to mature,” Mother said.

“I’m hearing of that tree for the first time,” I said.

“This tree is cloned eucalyptus. We introduced it from South Africa…We farm it, grow it, and groom it for eight years,” Mother said, as I was getting greener and greener with envy, and the pain of failure was pinching most stingingly.

“Who will buy your tress?” I asked.

“Kenya Power and Lighting Company,” Mother said not proudly.

“How much will they pay you?” I said.

“Not less than ten thousand shillings per pole, “Mother said without a hint of pride.

“How many trees do you have?” I said.

“One million.”

One million trees! Here has Mother ten billions! But me! But me! What have I? Nothing! Nothing! I said to myself, not able anymore to contain the envy and the bite of the pain of my lack of success. Go give how be rich ago! Going to show I’m rich man Mother I’m richer than Mother thought I’m much richer than Mother in spite of wealth Mother’s poor I am rich will never head of a fish eat when eating with Mother, I thought, in the envy’s and stinging pain’s thrall. And, although out of form, I ran away from Mother’s forest to Lovely Bus Stop, as Mother was shouting: The Old Man, what is it? What is it? The Old Man, what is? What is? If you don’t show you’re rich people don’t know you’re rich so you you’re poor in its consequences...it’s better be rich in consequences of being presumed rich than being poor in consequence of presumed poverty, I said, running away from the multibillion forest, as Mother’s shouting died away. A multibillionaire might you be but poor means of transport even poor you have not Mother. Poor penniless Mother multibillionaire. Show you’re penniless I will make you believe I’m richer I will extremely poor I’m but rich fabulously I’m by showing off show I’m rich and rich I’m. Not like you penniless poor multibillionaire Mother…you Mother and me you in abode of penury me in abode of fabulous riches you me going same somewhere in same lorry same bus same car same not possible to imagine now, I kept saying those things to myself as I was running until I was at Lovely Bus Stop. I stood there shortly at the foot of a fig tree; a cockroach came; I raised my hand to flag it down; it slowed down, came to a halt; the conductor came out shouting: Origin! Origin! Origin!

“Origin! Climb the cockroach!” said the conductor.

“Take me to City!” I said.

“We’re going to Origin,” said the conductor.

“I’m hiring the car,” I said.

The conductor went round the rear of the car to the driver and spoke with him, and the extremely small man came out and they came where I stood.

“You hiring my car means I won’t take any passengers?” asked the driver, avoiding eye contact.

“You won’t,” I told him, trying to make eye contact.

“Seven thousand shillings, you pay half here, the rest in City,” the driver said.

Saw Mother haggle over fare so we paid half only, I thought, tell him you’ve less than that, tell him what you’ve is half… No, bargaining isn’t way a man of wealth like me behaves, I thought; and, stretching out my hand to shake the driver’s, I said smiling,

“It’s a deal.”

“It’s a deal,” he said, shaking my hand listlessly.

Not Kenyan handshake I sorely miss, this, I told myself, maybe not Kenyan dwarf...

“But I must pick up something from Origin on our way,” I said.

“No problem,” said the driver with an abortive smile.

The cockroach dropped me at the entrance of The Imperial Hotel City, on Independence Road, one hour later. I took my bag and went to the reception. There in the reception was a pretty petite with lush black hair. To her sparkling green blouse, between terrific breasts, was attached a small piece of plastic inscribed with her glorious name.

“Good day, sir,” said she in the softest and pleasantest voice I have ever herd.

“What can I do for you, sir?” said she, seeing that I just stood staring at her.

“One bedroom apartment,” I told her, not taking my eyes off the attractive and exciting face, enjoying her fragrance, which was natural, hers, and only hers.

“For how long?” she said, in that softest, that pleasantest of voices, seductive eyes mirrors in which I saw the lecherous look in my eyes.

“Four,” I said.

She smiled a heavenly smile and I say for certain that it was not the reply I made that caused it. There was nothing in the reply to call forth any reaction of that kind. She smiled for she had completely bewitched me so that I was lasciviously looking at nothing save her face. Which seemed to have made me forget why I was in the reception. Additionally, she smiled because I must have been just one of the countless men she unconsciously affected in that way.

“Four what?” she asked.

“Years,” I said.

“Four years!” said she, endearingly surprised.

“Weeks,” I said.

“Fully furnished?” she asked most softly, most pleasantly, and smiling most broadly.

“Furnished fully,” I said.

She vanished behind the counter and reappeared that instant of her vanishing, having a form in the right hand.

“Sir, fill in this form, please,” she said smiling superbly.

I completed the form and gave it to her and she went through it, looked at me with an interest way beyond what duty dictated, entered something into the computer on the counter, and said, “Mr Rich, it is eleven thousand dollars, for a superior executive suite.”

I nonchalantly pulled a credit card from one of the bundles I had amassed and paid the rent.

“Mr Rich, it is superior executive apartment 207,” giving me the key, the girl said as seriously and as seductively as possible, intimating that she and I had tacitly made a solemn promise to each other, the knowledge of which had better be left unsaid, unknown.

A tacit covenant, elated, I said, my bag in my hand, walking up two flights of stairs to superior executive apartment 207, which stood in total contrast to the Oslo hovel in which I lived, which, coincidentally, was apartment 207. Exquisitely furnished, this is where me man of wealth now lives, going to give it a go anyway, I said, inspecting the apartment, in which were a radio, a table, a television, two easy chairs, two telephones, a CD player, a reading desk, newspapers, Forbes, a king size bed, an air conditioner.

I threw the bag onto the table and began working on projecting myself as a rich man. While thinking about how to fulfil the covenant with the wondrous girl, I shaved, had a warm shower, brushed my teeth, put perfume and body lotion on my rough skin and put on a grey vest, a white shirt, a red tie, a black suit and a black pair of shoes. I scrutinised myself in the mirror and, seeing that I was distinctively wealthy, I said: A very grand fatness of a rich man, and with that distended belly, those red bulging eyes, that huge hairless head, what else do you have to do to tell your people you are loaded? Presumed rich until proven poor…

But will I being rich speak for itself? Don’t I risk being proven poor? If I don’t have a go being rich? I said, going out of superior executive apartment 207 to Poolside Restaurant. No, my being rich isn’t so easy to see, isn’t self-advertising, self-displaying, self-selling, I must find how to best project my image as a rich man, I said, settling myself at a table in the middle of the restaurant, opposite a more obese lady who was reading the Economist. I must package my image, advertise it, display it, and sell it at a handsome profit, my veneration, I said, while eating a roasted chicken with ugali and vegetable samosas, and while drinking a glass of milk, a glass of apple juice, and a cup of tea.

I went to the reception immediately after I had eaten and to my delight was the glorious girl and her seductive smile.

“Glory, where can I get a chauffeur?” I said to her.

“Wait a moment, please, Mr Rich,” Glory said.

Glory took a mobile phone; Glory rang, devouring me. Glory is that I may fulfil my part of our tacit covenant, I said, not stopping staring at Glory.

“Mr Pond, I have our Mr Rich, he wants a chauffeur,” Glory said in that marvellous sweet voice.

Glory listened enchantingly.

“Just a moment, please,” said Glory.

“Mr Rich,” Glory said, not removing her eyes from mine,” do you have a car? Or are you going to hire?”

“Hiring,” I said.

“I do not mean to be rude, Mr Rich, but may I suggest that you hire your car from your Mr Pond?” Glory said most delightfully.

“Elsewhere,” I said.

“Your Mr Pond’s cars are safe and cheap,” said Glory.

“A chauffeur,” I said.

“Mr Pond, his chauffeur, please,” Glory said, Glory hung up.

“Mr Rich, your driver will be here within ten minutes. You may wait there,” Glory said, pointing at a table surrounded by sofas.

“I need a taxi too,” I said.

“Your taxi is coming in ten minutes time, right, Mr Rich?” said Glory.

“Thank you very much, Glory, you are fantastic!” I said and Glory expanded and sent light strong enough to give light to City County in all directions. Which baffled me, for I did not think my compliment might so potently affect Glory or any other woman.

I sat in the settee. Sitting in it, I saw Glory ceaselessly. However, as if sent by Lucifer to deprive me of Glory, who, thanks to the spell cast on me, I knew would be mine, guests began coming in large numbers when three minutes had gone by. And, after ten minutes, a tall charcoal black man in military uniform came in and strode to me and, offering to shake hands with me, said, “Pit, your driver.”

“I am Rich,” I said, rising to my feet, and shaking hands with Pit.

“You’re Rich son of Mother,” Pit said, looking at me from crown to foot and from foot to crown.

“I am Rich, the son of Rich,” I said.

“Do you know me?” Pit asked.

Why is he attired militarily? I asked myself.

“Now I know you,” I said.

“No, The Old Man, I’m asking you if you know me...I too come from Origin,” Pit said, now looking at me in the eye.

Pit was new but resembled Jet Black Man, a man who used to vend charcoal together with Mother at Origin market.

“I have been away for a while,” I said, and then I asked: why the hell did you say that? You’re damn rich; a damn rich man is never defensive!

“But do you know me?” Pit asked, in a hectoring tone of voice, getting on my nerves, and making me remember how Jet Black Man used to hector even men who were just looking at his charcoal to buy it.

“I know you,” I said and asked if Pit’s question had a subtext and if it was becoming for a wealthy man to ask his chauffer the hidden meaning of a question or something and I said that, because I was omniscient by virtue of having a lot of money, which obviated the need for asking, it was not.

“You don’t know me. Your taxi is outside,” Pit said, but mercifully, not in that bullying tone of voice.

We went out.

Approaching a green taxi, Pit said,” Pond, this is our wonder working man overseas, Rich.”

“The Old Man Himself!” Pond said.

“The Old Man Himself,” Pit said.

“Do you know me?” Pond said, shaking my hand.

“I know you now, Pond,” I said, looking down into the squinting eyes of Pond.

“No, you don’t know me,” Pond said, clearly disappointed.

I had not stopped looking down into Pond’s eyes but I was now looking into them enquiringly. I was still holding his hand of a fatally attenuated poor little toddler. I was seeing him for the first time; but, being rich, it did not behove me to say that I did not know him; and asking what the do-you-know-me-question meant was out of the question.

“You saved us, The Old Man, our man overseas. You did well,” Pond said.

What is he saying? I asked, puzzled. Ask him! Ask! The rich too…No, no, not right for you to, you know everything, you understand everything, I told myself, hiding my puzzlement and knowledge desert.

We got into the taxi; I sat in front; Pit sat on the back seat behind me.

“The Old Man, our overseas man, you did a good thing, you set up this transport trade,” Pond said, and I began asking myself what else I had done without my knowledge… here have I without knowing it hired my own taxi I unknowingly knew nothing about, here am…

“City Car Rental, Pond,” I said.

Pond started the car and speeded off towards City Bus Station. Needing no further proof, I concluded there and then that Pond was as a driver bad, mad, and an absolute idiot.

“For the two years I have been in your employ…it is two years, right, Pit?” said Pond.

“One and a half years,” said Pit.

“And that is one hell of a manager extraordinaire, Mother, your mother. When I need school fees, I just…”

A lorry was coming at high speed. Pond was driving towards it too fast. I closed my eyes. I waited for the crash. Opening my eyes, the lorry was far behind us and Pond was speeding towards cars, cats, cows, dogs, donkeys, rickshaws, hawkers, buses, bicycles, tricycles, motorcycles, pedestrians, police officers, processions, love service providers, that is to say, Pond was speeding to anything from the opposite direction.

“The Old Man you’re lucky to have Mother. She uses your one hundred thousand shillings wisely,” Pit said.

“Mother is our mother too…” Pond started.

We were driving in the direction of the roundabout where Freedom Road meets Independence Road. A car was coming from the left at full speed. Pond was determined to get into the roundabout before it. I thought that it hit our car. I heard its driver hooting maddeningly. Our lunatic driving continued until the cab stopped at City Car Rental on Ring Road. I came out sweating profusely.

“Why were you trying to murder me?” I asked.

“Bump you off, The Old Man?” Pond said.

“The ride was a string of attempted murders of me. You should drive sanely,” I told an astonished Pond.

“Were I not to drive as I do, The Old Man, we would still be at the entrance to The Imperial Hotel City, and your transport trade would have ground to a halt,” Pond said.

“What was the fare?” I asked Pond.

“No, The Old Man, it’s your taxi, you don’t pay,” Pond said.

“No, Pond, this is business, this is not for personal use,” I said and, wondering about who else was travelling by Mother’s taxis gratis without her knowing the truth, I nonchalantly gave Pond a thousand shillings.

A mean looking man at the car rental counter looked at us angrily. We had offended him, forced him to do what he was doing, wronged him in some way or the other, so it seemed; and, since I had been doing things in Kenya without being aware of it, I could not rule out the possibility that what had caused his hideous hostility towards us was my deed.

“Yes!” shouted the man, in a voice that sounded unpleasant, and with an off-putting frown.

“I want to lease a mesmerising limousine,” I said.

“A what?” the man shouted in his deathless voice, his angry frown more off-putting.

I guessed the man was Pakistani. He stereotypically looked and spoke like the ones I had seen in films; and his cinematic unwholesomeness was quintessentially Pakistani. To say the man was not ugly would not be to tell the whole truth, and to say he was not handsome would be to tell a whole lie about him. Clearly, the man was, in that regard, clearly distinct in his pedestrian indistinctness.

“To lease an enthralling limousine is what I want,” I said. Then, being tired, I told myself to lean on the counter; but, remembering that I had to package, advertise, sell, and speak for my being rich, and, thinking that a standing man looked dynamic whereas a leaning one did not, and thinking that, as a wealthy man, I had to look dynamic, I decided against leaning.

“How long?” the man roared in his metallic voice, which was more off-putting than his frown.

“One month,” I said, asking myself why Raptor had recommended City Car Rental.

“ID!” the hellish man bellowed.

I gave the man my passport. The man examined it, examined me, and then yelled, “Credit card! Driver’s licence!”

I randomly fished out one of the credit cards in one of the bundles in one of my coat pockets and handed it to him and Pit gave him his driver’s licence. He moved himself slowly and with effort to another room behind the counter and closed the door behind him with a loud noise. He must have stayed there for seven or more minutes. I was becoming worried when he pushed the door open and dragged himself back to the counter.

“Here! Car outside!” the man yelled, giving me the passport, the credit card, a receipt, the car key, and the driver’s licence.

The brand new Mitsubishi Dignity was a truly mesmerising limousine. Everything about it projected extreme wealth. And so enamoured was I of that hired means of flaunting my wealth that I totally forgot that odious car rental man, even though, at least when he was still fresh in our minds, he was a perfect topic for small talk.

“I’m going to Posh Supermarket,” I said when I had settled in the seat in the passenger compartment of the majestic black limousine.

Pit started the car. We left towards City Bus Station. I decided that Pit was a worse driver than Pond. In addition to Pond’s terrible driving habits, Pit drove as though nothing else was on the road, changing lanes anyhow and for no reason, but miraculously without causing an accident. Pit braked so recklessly that I thought the brakes would wear out even before we were at Posh Supermarket. Pit hooted and hooted and hooted and drove faster than the speed of sound.

Mercifully, at the junction of Freedom Road and Liberty Highway, an articulated lorry blocked the junction and traffic jams formed on Freedom Road, Liberty Highway and Lake Lane; and Pit had to stop with a screech.

“Pit, don’t drive at more than eighty kilometres per hour, no matter what,” I told Pit.

Pit turned his eyes from left to right and hooted.

“But that will be crawling, The Old Man,” Pit said.

“That’s what I want,” I said.

“A very powerful car, this,” Pit said.

He looked at the rear-view mirror.

“It is a Mitsubishi Dignity, the most mesmerising car ever,” I said.

“But automatic, guzzles fuel,” Pit said.

The articulated lorry refused to budge. The hooting was deafening. I thought there was a hooting tournament. I had welcomed the traffic jam but was now getting irritated. People were waiting to see me at home, where I wanted to be, just to be rich, just to show Mother I was richer than supposed, just to make Mother feel I was the rich one and she the poor one; and yet, as if sent by the Devil, this articulated lorry was determined to detain me. And how I wished I was riding a bicycle! For cyclists were swimming through the jam like the tortoise in its water. Pit, notwithstanding his honking, which must have been a core component of traffic culture and did not have anything to do with impatience, seemed to be patience itself.

“The Old Man you’ve done extremely well,” Pit said.

“Eh?” I said.

“We’re very proud of you, The Old Man. The one hundred thousand shillings you send Mother every month,” Pit said.

“I’m just trying to do my best,” I said but was disgusted at taking credit for what Mother had done, although I was taking it without my knowledge and at the self-serving instigation of Mother. My feeling at that moment in the limousine in the junction was the feeling of a sinner seized by pangs of conscience. And I fully realised what reproach, what insults, what calumny, and what opprobrium Mother would have gone through, had she let me down, as she told me earlier in the day, and had her enterprises borne no fruits.

“You didn’t forget where you came from, The Old Man, you’re a man of the people,” Pit said.

To be seen as a man of the people pleased me. For, despite not being a man of the people, I thought that an essential ingredient of my impersonation of the rich was to present myself as a man of the people, and for only then would my people fully appreciate my rich man status, I thought, and only then would I achieve the veneration, which I thought would be the ultimate affirmation of my being rich.

“My father died the instant I was coming out of Mother and Mother never married again. I grew up in extreme poverty and I know what poverty is. Where I look is where came from, the ignominy and the perverting powers of poverty is engraved in my mind,” I said.

The articulated lorry moved out of the junction at last and snaked into Freedom Road, and we drove southwards along Liberty Highway.

“And Mother’s great, she helped you do wonders with your one hundred thousand shillings,” Pit said. “Were Mother for example those women of the Pin Family,” Pin went on, “You know, the first Origin man overseas was the son of Pin. But, people ask, what do the Pins have? The mother of the son of Pin is the queen of complaint. But, people ask, what does she have to complain about? Her son sends her the one hundred thousand monthly shillings. Pin’s son’s wife lives in drinking, debauchery and decadence, boasting that she’s eating her husband’s wealth. What do the Pins have? Not even one potato plant. You’re the luckiest of all our people abroad to have Mother…”

“Mother is enterprising, I am proud of Mother, I am grateful to Mother,” I said, even though I was becoming wearied of that myth Mother had invented to force me to take the glory for her achievements. I asked myself why I should not change the topic. It was apparent that Pit was going to continue telling me about the miracles I had been performing. I nevertheless did not want to change the topic, persuaded that saying as little as possible was the hallmark of a moneyed man. For I had heard Raptor say that silence is golden, that the more you say, the more ordinary you become and I was being rich and, if what many people believed was anything to go by, a rich man was never ordinary; and so by saying almost nothing I wanted to cultivate an aura of mystery about me. Fortunately, however, we reached Posh Supermarket; and I left Pit in the Mitsubishi Dignity, my hired means of showing off my wealth, and I went into the shop.

I bought ten ties, eight handkerchiefs, ten Italian suits, six pairs of socks, seven shirts of different colours and three pairs of shoes and went back to my magnificent means of flaunting my wealth.

“Pit,” I said when I had gone into the limousine, “I’m going to City Bus Station.”

We went northwards by Liberty Highway and, though not exceeding my eighty kilometre per hour speed limit, Pit was driving more recklessly and I thought the speed limit dangerously too high, for we were at City Bus Station in no time.

Pit parked the Mitsubishi Dignity not far from the public lavatory. I made for a nearby shop but saw a woman sitting beside a pile of black polythene bags on the ground and with both hands holding one spread above her bare head. I went and bought four of those large bags and walked back to the limousine and told Pit I was going to the Barclays Bank.

Pit drove by Prestige Pudding, crossing City Pride Road, driving along Independence Road up to the roundabout and driving into Freedom Road through concentrations of vehicles, humans and the occasional cow peaceably chewing the cud on the road, without hitting anyone or anything, and I concluded that perhaps there was a method in the maddest driving I had hired.

I strode into the bank, carrying one of the polythene bags. I searched for the cash machine with my eyes and, as a uniformed guard was beginning to take an interest in me, saw it. I joined the cash machine queue. I stood there for half an hour. I had not a second to waste. People were at home waiting for me. I wanted to be rich; I wanted to show Mother I was richer than she presumed; I wanted to make Mother believe I was rich while she was not. But I had accepted the fact that, unless you were to wear yourself out with frustrations and begin throwing tantrums in public and making preposterous comparisons of how things worked in your new country and how things worked in your homeland, extreme patience was a necessity.

I entered the cash machine booth, the bag in my hand, as the uniformed guard was looking at me with a tinge of emerging suspicion. Applying no particular method, I picked a credit card from one of the bundles in my pockets and inserted it into the cash machine, which informed me that the maximum I could withdraw was forty thousand Kenya shillings. That was a drawback, for in each of my credit cards was over a million and a half shillings, and I had planned to use each credit card not more than once. Because of that snag, I had to keep on withdrawing forty thousand shillings from the credit cards and putting them into the bag, all notes of one thousand denomination, and the armed guard had to drag me out without the bag becoming full. And when I came out of the booth, the queue had elongated, covering the veranda, meandering through a sea of parked taxis to Freedom Road, and I heard a plump matronly woman with red and watery eyes and thick blue bushes of eyebrows say that some people were so egocentric and behaved as if the cash machine was their property.

I put the bag into the boot, climbed into the limousine and shut the door impressively. I am rich, I am, truly, ready to brag about my wealth; when you eat with the poor, said Mother yesterday, you eat not the head; and eat the head I will not, I told myself. Now, following the precepts of Raptor, I am prepared for being rich, for just being rich, for I have no option but to be rich, I thought, sitting in the leased symbol of wealth, almost oblivious of the rented chauffer.

“Pit, “I said, “I’m going to the hotel.”

I left Pit in the Mitsubishi Dignity at the hotel car park, taking what I had bought and the bag in which was the money with me. Entering the hotel, I looked at the reception to see Glory but Glory was not; there was a rather fat woman who was no longer young. My comely Glory, with whom I have a covenant, has gone for lunch or something, I thought, going up the flight of stairs to superior executive apartment 207.

I put the clothes I had bought into the wardrobe. Then I put an Italian suit on, after which I emptied the bag I had come with from Oslo and stuffed it with half of the money in the polythene bag. I also filled up the empty pocket I still had with money. I took the three polythene bags and the bags containing money and told myself that I was now rich and that it was the time I was to begin performing my being rich but I remembered that I did not have bodyguards and that a rich man had to have at least one. And I took the mobile phone out of the left breast pocket of the coat and rang Gangster of Open Government Secret Security Services Limited, which Raptor had recommended.

“You want a professional bodyguard?” asked Gangster.

“A fierce-eyed professional having big red eyes is what I want,” I said.

“Ok, drive towards Lovely Hills, ok? When about there, call me,” said Gangster.

“I will be right with you,” I said.

As I was passing by the reception, the bags in my hands, I cast a glance at the reception to see Glory but saw the matronly woman, and I said that my comely Glory was still at lunch or something. I walked to the Mitsubishi Dignity, put the bags into the boot and told Pit I was going towards Lovely Hills.

We drove in silence except when I enquired as to where Pit dwelt and he said in Slums. I was for most of the drive thinking about how I was to be rich, about how I was to present myself, about whether or not I would be convincing, about whether or not people would see through the performance and discover what I was. I none the less asked myself whether I needed to worry about whether I would be credible, given that people accepted my being rich as true. Did my role not consist in just being rich according to Raptor’s formula? The answer was an unequivocal yes, I said. Then Glory came into my thoughts. I thought Glory not being at the reception was a breach of covenant and I felt disappointed, for Glory having seduced me, for thus had I interpreted the way she had treated me, I had without knowing it decided that she and I had tacitly consented. To what? As what we had consented to was fashioning itself in my mind, we were near Lovely Hills.

I called Gangster and he told me to drive to the Open Government Secret Security Services Limited’s headquarters, and gave me directions.

But the headquarters, it turned out, was the obviously towering ruffian Gangster standing on the side of a road leading to the top of the magnificently overwhelming rock formation, Lovely Hills, overlooking The Lake.

I got out of the Mitsubishi Dignity and went to Gangster.

“I am Rich,” I said, extending my hand to him.

“I’m Gangster, Executive Director of Open Government Secret Security Services Limited,” Gangster said with enthusiasm.

“I want a fierce-eyed professional bodyguard with enormous red eyes, so that people seeing him will trumpet my being a man of wealth,” I told Gangster.

“Armed?” asked Gangster, breathing heavily.

“With AK-47, or better, something to trumpet my fabulous wealth,” I said.

“How long?” asked Gangster.

“One month,” I said.

“Seventy thousand shillings, in cash,” said Gangster.

“Deal,” I said.

I took a number of banknotes out of the pocket. I told Gangster to open his palms. He did. I put the notes one by one onto the palms while counting from the first up to the seventieth aloud. Then Gangster counted the money most meticulously, a smile appearing on his lips from the time he said one thousand and the smile spreading as he came closer and closer to the seventieth note. Having counted, Gangster moved the notes into the inner coat pockets, a wicked look of glee in his bloodshot eyes; then he rang and a thickset thug in Kenya Administration Police uniform bearing an AK-47 materialised from one of the sordid streets.

“Thug,” Gangster said, “you have been assigned to Mr Rich for a month.”

Thug and I shook hands and left to the Mitsubishi Dignity.

His thuggish handshake is worth every penny, a fine catch, he is, I thought. Now that I am rich I am going home, I thought. When people see me there, it is a wealthy man they will see, and they will say Rich son of Rich is a wealthy man, I thought, walking back to my other rented means of showing off my wealth, the limousine, Thug, the best under-the-counter bodyguard money could buy, behind me. Oh no! Mother’s house and I being houseless and homeless will conspire to blight my man of fabulous wealth status, I thought, people will say the son of Rich might not be starving anymore…But he is neither truly nor fabulously rich, because the hovel his mother lives in is a hovel unlike any other, because he is homeless and houseless. Such detrimental impressions of me I must pre-empt. I have to be total in my impressiveness. For I want nothing less than adoration. For I know that, if you are worshipped on account of your wealth, your recognition is absolute and unassailable, and you are an established complete man of fabulous wealth, I thought…

“Pit, this is my bodyguard Thug, Thug, this is Pit, my chauffeur,” I said, when Thug and I had got into the passenger compartment of the limousine.

“Pit, take me to Varsity Plaza. It is in Posh,” I said.

“I know where it is,” Pit said.

Pit started the car and we drove off back to the central business district.

I left Pit and Thug outside Varsity Plaza and entered the building. I took the lift to the seventh floor, where, I had learnt from Raptor, Diaspora Architectural Services had an office. When I got out of the lift was the office right in front of me. Inside sat a man who was probably not older than I was behind a table which nearly took up the whole of the spacious room. Spread on the table were wide sheets of tracing paper and on it were models, pencils, laptops, calculators, clipboards, a smart phone, magazines, rolls of tracing paper, the longest rulers, protractors, measuring tapes, architectural and engineering scales, and other instruments, some of which I did not know.

“I want mesmerising houses, one for Mother, and one for myself,” skipping customary preliminaries, I said, stretching out my hand to shake the man’s. But, the table being too wide, preventing our hands from meeting each other, the man went round the table, and we shook hands Kenyan style, and with the best show of cordiality.

“What are mesmerising houses?” the man asked.

“Mesmerising houses are powerful houses oozing my wealth, presenting me as a fabulously wealthy man, which is what I am now,” I told the man.

The man looked at me appraisingly. The man went back to his seat, thinking.

“I will explain more clearly,” I said. “Mesmerising houses are the brightest billboards displaying in bold and capital letters the words: RICH IS FABULOUSLY WEALTHY.”

The man smiled uncharitably, the man thought, and said with hesitation, “We have upmarket American designs.”

“Show me the designs for the mesmerising houses, the houses which will most forcefully infect whoever sees them with the feeling and certainty that I Rich am a fantastically rich man.”

The man gave me an appraising look that lasted much longer. The man removed everything from the table; the man unrolled wide sheet of paper after wide sheet of paper on the table, explaining this and that design. I understood nothing. Despite this, I did not ask any question. To do otherwise would have been to admit ignorance. A fantastically rich man like me, even if he was a complete ignoramus, was omniscient. Consequently, and following no particular way of recognising the differences among the designs, I unthinkingly said, pointing at two sheets, “This one and this one! You have to come and see the place where I am building the mesmeric palatial houses, see the geology, and give me a quotation. My chauffeur is picking you up tomorrow.”

“And where are you building?” the man asked, his look still appraising.

“Origin,” I said.

He looked at a planner.

“OK, your chauffeur collects us tomorrow at ten in the morning” he said.

“Right, here is my number, just in case…I have yours, by the way…you did a commendable job for my friend Raptor, “I said, and gave the man a piece of paper on which I had written the mobile number.

I left.

Perfectly rich, you can’t be perfectly richer now, I thought, getting into the Mitsubishi Dignity. Saw how borrowed Thug came out of borrowed means of bragging about my wealth, opened the door for me? As I were president himself? You have now packaged your wealth, you can now flaunt it, which is positive anyway, people don’t know you’re rich if you don’t flaunt it, you can now advertise, you can now display, you can now sell your being rich, sell it at handsomest profit, veneration. Your being rich can now speak for itself. Nearly…If not fully rich yet, most conspicuous opulence is what you are now, I thought, as Thug was installing himself beside me in the passenger compartment of the limousine.

“Pit, drive me to Origin,” I said.

Pit drove out of the central business district, taking the wide City-Nairobi Highway, which had new tarmac spread over it, an acclaimed benefit of Chinese imperialism. The Mitsubishi Dignity glided nicely upwards towards Hero, and Pit was often speeding and I had to remind him of my speed limit and he had to slow down. Nobody spoke during the drive until City started running further and further away from us, when Pit said, pointing, “That’s Freak’s, you see, you see that glass building? There will be Posh Supermarket in it, Freak’s.”

I seemed not to have responded the way Pit had expected, and Pit repeated what he had said but this time shooting me a backward glance that I interpreted as meaning that I had either not understood the import of what Pit had said or that everyone reacted with awe to the mere mention of Freak owning the building. I was ignorant of Freak and, even if it were otherwise, I could not have cared the less and I would not have tried to acquire any knowledge about Freak. That was because I was not to be the agent of the revelation of my ignorance. Additionally, I was preoccupied with my future presentation of myself as a wealthy man and with the soon-to-be-enacted demonstration to Mother that I was wealthier than they thought and that I was opulent and Mother indigent and that I eating the head of a fish when eating with Mother was impossible.

“And your buildings in Posh, The Old Man, your Posh buildings,” Pit said.

Ouch! More things I own but don’t know! Things I acquire in absentia without any input from me! What else have I? This is stealing without being aware of it! This is theft out of ignorance! Now on my part too! By omission! I am now in it as much as everyone else! This stealing credit unconsciously from Mother and similarly giving it to me is to me repugnant! I am fabulously rich. I want no stolen things. I would not want even if I were still destitute. I borrowed in indigence but never stole. So why accept theft when grim years are far behind me? No, I am not in this thieving. Is Mother not instigator of self-theft? Is it not Mother who built this machinery for self-theft? Whose victim I am? Mother has knowingly stolen from herself for me without my knowing it. Ergo I am the victim of the theft and not the thief! Victim? No! Beneficiary? Probably, not sole one. Ergo I am the beneficiary of the theft but not the thief. But how did this ludicrously large money Mother in just seven years make? Not the way Mother claimed earlier this day. Did Mother, apart from machinations for taking from herself the credit for achievements and imposing it on me, become someone who steals from other people as well? I thought those thoughts, looking straight ahead at the lines of vehicles, whose drivers were violating all traffic rules and rules of human decency.

“Only MPs, MCAs, clerics, commissioners, tycoons, governors, senators, drug barons, prophets, people hawking charity and good doing, corruption network profiteers and peddlers, lords of commercial love provision industry rent your Posh buildings in Posh. Common people, no. You know, The Old Man, it isn’t easy to compete with the likes of Freak the son of former vice-president Felon, but…” Pit said, after a beautiful silence, his breaking of which irritated me.

It was probably the irritation that shut Pit up, but that Pit said no more pleased me greatly. And the drive towards Hero was silent, the drive on the smoothest road full of traffic, with Pit more often than not overtaking dangerously, often starting overtaking then, to avert accidents, reversing the action, with Pit passing putrefying pigs, goats, felines, sheep, dogs and donkeys on the side of the glittering road. We crawled through the overcrowded Hero and, crossing the swollen River Swift, whose reddish waters were raging in gigantic vaults to The Lake, flooding the plains, the vast and polished section of the road ended at the roundabout where City-Border Highway met City-Nairobi Highway. There we swerved to the right onto the stretch from Hero to Plains, and were into thickets of elephant holes, and hired Pit navigated his way through them with such skill that I would have given him a rise there and then, were I Mother, his presumed employer.

That stretch from Hero to Plains ran through semi-arid but now flooded Thorns. Above the murky water were roofs and fractions of scattered stunted thorns. Grazing on the patches of grass along the road were small herds of thin cows with underwhelming horns. Scantily dressed little children tended the herds. Also sparsely distributed in the dismal place stretching out as far as the escarpments were small houses in incomplete fences. Along the right hand side of the road were men and women, in the water up to the knees, working in small rice paddies, which multiplied as the plains extended towards The Lake.

The Plains-Sound stretch of the elephant hole-ridden road was less flooded but not a trifle different. But just before the steep slope towards Sound, the Chinese were repairing the road. A sign asserting that was in evidence, and Pit had to put the brake on. The repair ended before the slope and we ascended and then cruised past Sound. We then crossed River Sound, which had spread to the land close to its banks, up to The Lake, I guessed, after which we drove up towards Hills. There we passed women selling avocadoes, guavas, oranges, lemons, bananas, mangoes, pineapples, watermelons, boiled eggs, boiled peanuts, boiled maize cobs, roasted maize cobs and went down the slightly steep slopes, with Pit often forgetting to take his foot off the accelerator and the Mitsubishi Dignity speeding up downwards and I reminding Pit of the speed limit. We soon left behind the hills on which were new upmarket American housing styles, the fertile, beautiful, pleasant hills with red volcanic soils of Mumbo the female land, the fertile land…We were midway between Centre and Ring when a dead line of Christians in white robes came into view. Three men carrying red flags, some women gongs, and four men the biggest drums ever seen…When we were in the middle of the procession, a woman, presumably the star singer, started singing and the procession rose from the dead, with gong women hitting gongs, drummers drumming, men and women clapping and dancing. I thought the resurrection was by design.

“The People of the Church We Were Given,” Thug identified the branch of the Christian Church.

“Those are Israel Nineveh People,” Pit said.

Say they are Holy Ghost Israel People, no, no, the less I say, the easier it is for me to cultivate an aura of mystery about me, silence is golden, anyway I don’t know that denomination and I’m all-wise because I’m fabulously loaded, I said to myself.

The procession was behind us after five minutes; and we mounted the slope through the congested Ring, the mountainous bumps in the road forcing Pit to drive at ten kilometres per hour; then we cruised downwards to The Eldest Wife and then upwards and then downwards and then upwards to Origin via The Fig Tree, arriving home at four.

“Park the car here Pit, I do not think there is space inside, “I told Pit, sensing that multitudes of my people were in the compound, for I saw some of them sitting or squatting or standing outside.

Rented Thug opened the door of the Mitsubishi Dignity for me. I got out, picked up the Norwegian bag of money from the booth and held it tightly in the left hand; and, rented Thug behind me, with his AK-47, I strode towards the compound.

“What a powerful car The Old Man our son drives!” I heard an old man dazzled by that hired symbol of my wealth, the limousine, say, as I was entering the compound, following a straight way to Mother’s hovel, a way dividing the mass of people down the middle.

”And the fierce-eyed bodyguard!” a mesmerised old man shouted about Thug, that other rented symbol of wealth.

“And see the red eyes of the soldier guarding our son! See those shinning red stars the soldier has for eyes! Those eyes sting like hornet’s sting! Those eyes see, those eyes scare away any enemy!” I heard a woman shout in a piercing voice.

“That soldier defending The Old Man our son is a whole army! Which enemy, which enemy can defeat that army?” I heard another woman shout, to my delight, for what she said, in addition to what had been said about Thug, showed me that Gangster had leased out to me the crème de la crème, and that having Thug like having the Mitsubishi Dignity trumpeted my being rich, and that my being unimaginably rich was speaking for itself.

“The life of The Old Man is most special. It is the life to protect. You have seen the restaurants, the buildings The Old Man has here in Origin, have you not? You have seen The Old Man’s millions of forests over Lovely, over Green Hills, up to heaven, have you not? The Old Man’s City estates! In Posh! Celestial Posh! The Old Man does not have buildings in Slums, earthly Slums. Where lives The Old Man, our man abroad, is paradise paved with golden money, is paradise paved with golden dollars. The Old Man is richer than Freak the son of former vice-president Felon, Freak landlord of Slums of slums of earthly slums,” I heard a young old man say. Whereupon I said to myself: go, go to the multitude, go, go shake hands of the multitude, go, go sell your being rich beyond belief, go, go be a man of the people, go, go confirm the multitude in their belief in your being rich beyond belief! What, what choice do you have? You have no choice but to be rich, so just be rich, just be rich! Rich son of Rich! Just be rich! [ ] Go, go have ago at being rich! Don’t go sit in house waiting, reach out, have a shot at being rich, sell your being super-rich, show off your being super-rich most extravagantly, most extravagantly, achieve that profit veneration handsomest, veneration, I said to myself and, instead of going to sit in Mother’s hovel, I decided to mingle with the multitude.

And I went into the mass of the people, behind me rented Thug.

“Thanks for coming to see me,” I said, shaking the hand of an ancient old man.

“I am glad to see you, my grandson, but do you know me?” said the ancient old man, shaking my hand with enthusiasm.

“I do,” I said, relishing shaking the hand of the ancient old man, looking up to the limit to make eye contact, and smiling like men of the people, my fellow confidence tricksters, the folksy and populist politicians on the campaign trail [ ]Yes, I said I do, I do. I was all-knowing for I was fabulously rich, so I did was what I had to say.

“No, my grandson, you don’t know me,” the ancient old man stated the truth, for he was a complete stranger, as I was turning to the woman standing next to him, a woman so fat and, happily, so short that she was the exact measurement of my height. Which, at least at that moment, eased a practical problem I had, which was having to stretch myself beyond the limit, especially when I was in a multitude, in order to see the faces of standing people.

“It is my great delight that you have come to see me,” I told the exact measurement of my height, enthusiastically stretching out my hand.

“My prayers have been answered, and I am seeing you, my husband. Do you know me?” she said, heartily shaking my hand with a warm soft palm, giving me pleasure.

“I know you, the mother of my sons and daughters,” I said.

“No, my husband, you don’t know me,” the mother of my sons and daughters said.

And I said to myself, Ouch! What on earth do they mean by do you know me? Why on earth can’t they say what I know? In words I know? Or, have I become linguistically incompetent? Perhaps answer lies in lost language competence, on my part, I said to myself, turning away from the mother of my sons and daughters to a very tall person attired in a white robe, only the hemline of which I was seeing.

“Rich, The Old Man, the son of the daughter of The Blessed Clan of Wrong,” the person said in a hearty male voice, bending down, heroically extending his presumably long hand for my shaking.

“I do appreciate your coming to see me,” I said, raising my hand one hundred percent that I may shake the man’s hand, and my face facing upwards one hundred percent, to see his face. But I was seeing only the mans’ arched torso, or rather his arched robe, his legs, and his outstretched hand way above my head, for shortness prevented me from shaking the hand, and from seeing more of him.

“The Old Man, the son of the daughter of The Blessed Clan of Wrong, do you know me?” I presumed the man said, because I heard that loud, cheerful voice full of energy say that behind me, or, to be more precise, I heard that voice say that behind that hired symbol of my fabulous wealth, Thug, who, to repeat needlessly, was behind me, with the AK-47. Hearing the man’s voice behind me also caused me to speculate that the man was taller than a giraffe or another beast of such height.

“I know you Reverend, “I said, lowering my hand, and looking at his shins. [ ] Reverend, yes, I said Reverend, for, when I was a child, Mother used to tell me about a towering giant of a Reverend…But all I knew, save that, was that I knew less and no more.

“No, you do not know me, “said Reverend. “I am the one who baptised you, the one who blessed you, The Old Man, the son of the daughter of The Blessed Clan of Wrong, so that God made you a man of unimaginable wealth, so that your wealth is far greater than the combined colossal wealth of Felon and his son Freak themselves. I am from The Persecuted Holy Pentecostal Ghost of Holy Ghost God. I dreamt that you came. I told The Persecuted Holy Pentecostal Ghost of Holy Ghost God people what God had told me: The Old Man is come, arise, make haste to see him, to be there to bless him. And the people of The Persecuted Holy Pentecostal Ghost of Holy Ghost God are coming on foot from Hills. I have just got an SMS saying that they are at The Eldest Wife now.”

Reverend’s speech made me remember the procession of Christians which had resurrected between Centre and Ring and that Mother once mentioned that she was a member of a denomination called The Persecuted Holy Ghost of God, or something like that, just before I was born.

[ ]

“Do you know me?”

Oh what a question that was! Do you know me? Whomsoever whose hand I was shaking, or trying to, asked me the question, my answer to which was:

“Of course.”

“I know you.”

“Very well.”

“Of course.”

“I do.”

“I do I do.”

“Of course.”

“I do I do I do.”

“Sure, I do.”

“How can I?”

“Not know you, my sister?”

“How can I not know my brother?”

“How can I?”

“Not know my grandfather?”

“And you my grandmother?”

“I did know you, and I do know you, my cousin.”

“I did, I do, I do son.”

“Who does not?”

“Know his daughter?”

“Oh, I do I do, my wife, I do know you.”

“Who forgets his kinspersons?”

“Who forgets his townspersons?”

“Who forget his path-mates?”

“Who forgets his schoolmates?”

“Who forgets his classmates?”

“Who forgets his dorm-mates?”

“Who forgets his desk-mates?”

“Who forgets his meal-mates?”

“Who forgets his laughter-mates?”

“And who forgets his cry-mates?”

“Who does not know?”

“His county-men?”

“I know you.”

“I know you with whom I went wooing girls.”

“And you girls we went wooing.”

“And you with whom I went to church.”

“I know you.”

“Who I accompanied to a funeral.”

“And you who made the funeral possible.”

“I know you.”

“My fellow market-men.”

“My fellow street-men.”

“And my childhood playmates.”

“Of course.”

“I do, did and did, and I do, county-man.”

“Of course, I did and I do and I did know you always and always and always, my dear countryman.”

Oh, what a question it was! The do-you-know-me question! I answered it in one of the aforementioned ways, or their variants. I answered it even though I was yet to understand it, and even if it was the first time that I was seeing the person who asked it. And the person said, you do not know me, or the person deployed another sentence with the same meaning to contradict my knowing. And the person did that even if the person, whose hand I was shaking, relishing the rich, real, raw, and really reinvigorating Kenyan handshake, was a clansperson or a townsperson or a county-person, with whom I grew up, with whom we laughed together, with whom we cried together, with whom we shared a road, etcetera. I hated the question, do you know me, but I loved Kenyan handshake more than I hated the conundrum [ ] What I loved, what I loved most after intimacy is what I mean. What I really mean is that I, a fabulously rich man was capable of loving trivialities like the act of shaking somebody’s hand with his own [ ] What I missed most in Norway was shaking hands. Not that the country lacked handshaking. On the contrary, it was there where I experienced the handshakes which made indelible impressions on me. But they were stylised formal aristocratic handshakes with the fake bows of the head and so on, which reflected their mandatory regal form. In addition, their setting was the ritualised bureaucratic occasion such as your meeting your dentist, your meeting your divorce lawyer, your meeting your arbitration officials, etcetera. I have no reason to claim that I am above ethnic cleavages, to borrow a phrase from the likes of Uncle Pomposity, who use big words to say the most trivial of things. But, if I am a chauvinist, then I am at not a conscious one. And the terror of being labelled as jingoist by world citizens like my friend Raptor cannot restrain me from not concealing the fact that Kenyan handshake is pure pleasure, that there is no handshake like Kenyan handshake, and that Kenyan handshake is the pride of the universe.

Do you know me? With rented Thug following me with the AK-47, I swam in the multitude, answering that question using the aforesaid forms of words or variations on them, shaking hands with relish, as if not being fabulously rich but shaking hands was what I was trying to achieve; did that till I found myself shaking the hand of a close relative.

”Do you know me?” he asked.

”How can I not know cousin Pope?” I said.

”But, The Old Man, do you know me?” Pope asked again.

“I cannot forget The Pontiff,” I said, for The Pontiff was Pope’s sobriquet.

”I doubt if you know me…I don’t want to presume, The Old Man, but I’ve to say that these people are your guests, these people are our guests. You know, they must eat, and drink. You know you’re a big tree having many branches, a big tree all birds perch on, a big fig tree with a roof-like top, the home of all kinds of birds. Your birds must eat you, The Old Man, and your birds must drink you. If not, they’re going to say you’re mean, and your reputation, will suffer,” Pope said.

“I have planned how to feed my people,” I said, and then I thought to myself, why have I not thought this element of flaunting my wealth? It is no less important than hired hypnotising limousine, hired hypnotising Thug, hired hypnotising houses the architects and engineers are girding their loins to design, to build, for me, and for Mother. My people eating me, my people drinking me, is the key element of my being loaded beyond what is possible. It is the packaging, it is the advertising, it is the displaying, and it is the selling of my being fantastically rich. I am rich, unbelievably rich, so my people are to eat me, to drink me, and to venerate me. However hypnotic rented symbols of my wealth might be, I am not wealthy at all, if multitudes cannot eat me, if multitudes cannot drink me. Ergo, what I have to do is to feed multitudes worshipping me, so that they will forever sing that I am fabulously flush far beyond furthest limits of belief, so that that I will be everlasting object of deepest reverence. Now that The Pontiff has reminded me of litmus test of being unimaginably rich, I must organise how this large crowd of my people, these my birds perching on my branches, are to eat me, and to drink me, at the handsomest profit of eternal veneration, I thought those thoughts, and told Pope,

”But come with me, please!”

And Pope, Thug and I walked to the Mitsubishi Dignity and got into it.

”Pit, how are you?” Pope said.

”We’re fine, The Pontiff,” Pit said.

I was sitting between Pope and Thug in the passenger compartment.

”Pope, this is Thug, my bodyguard,” I said.

”I am the first cousin and playmate of The Old Man,” Pope said.

”Pit, I’m going to Origin Bus Station,” I said.

Pit parked the limousine close to the rear of the public toilet. Pope, Thug and I left the car. With Pope at the rear, and Thug behind me, we walked at my pace, the unhurried pace of the fantastically wealthy, to the centre of Origin Bus Station. We stood by a small shop of tins with wares, that is, combs, bananas, bracelets, dresses, shirts, sweaters, torches, toiletries, umbrellas, mirrors, machetes, handkerchiefs, powdered milk, hanging everywhere so that there was only a narrow window through which was seen the bleached and wrinkled face of a middle-aged woman who wore a funereal wig.

“The Pontiff,” I said, looking at the woman’s face, “It was you I hand in mind for this delicate job of organising the feeding of my guests, who are your guests as well, as a clansperson…”

“I will gladly, The Old Man, what are clansmen there for?” Pope said.

“You buy seven bulls from our clanspersons, at one hundred thousand shillings per bull, and buy as many rams and hens as we need. I pay twenty thousand per ram and five per hen. Those are high prices, The Pontiff, but I am rich and that is one of my ways of helping kinspersons…”

“That’s very generous of you, The Old Man,” Pope said.

Said that in a flattering tone, stands to gain hugely from my being rich, that is why said that insincerely, I thought to myself, and then said,

“Now for labour, The Pontiff. First, hire four catering firms, for the catering. Second, our kinspersons will help with the shopping, as my people are their people as well. You hire three of those lorries!”

I self-importantly pointed at the white lorries parked in a long line, lorries on which scraggy young men were leaning, or in the cabs of which they were sitting looking outside through side windows.

“Those are your lorries, The Old Man, the one hundred thousand you send Mother monthly, and that we cannot appreciate enough,” Pope said.

Ouch! This theft this theft this selfish self-theft of credit from Mother for me stinks! This selfish self-theft knows no bounds! It stinks! It has a dynamic of its own, an inexorable logic wrought by instigator Mother, the logic that has swept away the necessity of I righting the responsibility for Mother’s fortune, I told myself, nonchalantly putting the hand into the bag of money, and counting one million shillings, after which I said,

“The Pontiff, my trucks are not for personal consumption. We just hire three of them at market price...This one million shillings is for cutleries…everything else you need. Let my people eat me and drink me as much as they can!”

My people had eaten and drunk me more than they could by ten p.m. They had filled their stomachs to capacity. I might have clinched my packaging, advertising, displaying, and selling my being fabulously rich. Or I might have not. I began walking through my people to make my impression as a man rich beyond the bounds of belief permanent. I was not sure that my feeding my people, the mesmerising Mitsubishi Dignity, and the armed mesmeric Thug had presented me as an impossibly wealthy man. Nor was I sure that it had made Mother feel that I was richer than thought and that, whereas I was opulent, indigence was her lot. To secure my extremely rich man position, I thought that I had to take a more nakedly financial approach characteristic of my fellow confidence tricksters, Kenya politicians, clergymen, and prophets. I in consequence went round shaking the hands of my people and giving each one thousand shillings as my monetary gratitude to him or her for coming to see me. Its instantaneous result was to tell me what the do-you-know-me question meant. For, when I was turning to the next person, the one who I had given money said the first and more of the following:

The Old Man knows me.

I have eaten The Old Man.

I have drunk The Old Man.

The Old Man has poured money into my hands.

The Old Man knows me well.

The Old Man knows me very well.

The Old Man is generous.

The Old Man is super-rich.

The Old Man is our eye.

The Old Man is our father.

We thank God for our gift of The Old Man.

You know me very well, The Old Man.

The Old Man is the truest God.

My people thus worshipping me made me happy, made me feel how elating being unbelievably rich was, and how elating being admired, extoled, and venerated was. And I truly felt the weight of the tons of thankfulness for Raptor for this pearl: “When you go home, Rich, just be rich!” For without that pearl I would have been the poor wretch I was, confounding everyone, becoming an object of abuse, of loathing, and of indignation, for the phenomenon of a destitute our oversea man was unimaginable, unacceptable, unsavoury. And, hearing those words from my birds perching on my branches, venerating me, intimating the permanent impossibility of I ever being proven poor, I had a metal picture of myself as a gigantic fig tree towering over Endpoint County, over the Lake Basin, and over the Lake Region. And the sense of I gratitude I owed Raptor deepened and I told myself how fantastic it was to be fantastically rich.

Almost all worshippers had left by midnight. I was tired. I was also famished, having eaten nothing, save for what I ate at The Imperial Hotel City earlier that day. I settled in Mother’s hovel. Thug stood by the door. I sat where I had the previous evening. I asked Mother if she had food. She gave me a bowl of bitter vegetable and a plate of ugali of finger millet. She sat in the place she sat the evening before. I started eating. Bitter vegetable was one of my favourite dishes. The bitter vegetable Mother served me was different from that she used to cook when I was growing up and before exile. The bitter vegetable spoke eloquently of Mother’s prosperity. For the bitter vegetable too bore distinctions of wealth. In pre-exilic days, Mother simply boiled bitter vegetables, adding nothing to it. That was bitter vegetable without anything to give it flavour, without anything to arouse physical desire for it. That was the bitter vegetable reserved for the indigent. The choice bitter vegetable I was now eating belonged to our family history. It was what Rich, my great-grandfather who was a wealthy cattle owner in the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, used to eat. It was prepared with unusual skill and to it was added melted butter extracted from milk from the best cows.

As I was enjoying the bitter vegetable and the finger millet ugali, I was studying Mother’s face. Not an iota of doubt was there that Mother was in a foul mood. Which surprised me, thinking that Mother would be happy for what I was, fantastically rich, admired, extolled, revered, and worshipped.

Pope and a distant uncle entered.

“Please take seats!” I said.

Pope sat beside me and the distant uncle sat beside Mother.

“I didn’t see you, House,” Mother told the distant uncle.

Her anger at me was palpable in her voice.

“There were people everywhere, Mother, but it is The Old Man our man overseas with whom we have come to talk,” House said.

I looked at House.

“The Old Man our man overseas, we our clan have problems which we are requesting you to solve for us. You are our eye, our overseas man, The Old Man, and your generosity has burst the borders of our county, Endpoint County. Our problems are big and numerous, but the most urgent are outstanding funeral rites, having to bury our departed clansmen in demeaning coffins, coffins for the disadvantaged…”

“What our clan should do is to establish funeral funds, coffin funds…” I said.

“But we do not have money,” House said.

“Money is not a problem,” I said.

“But we cannot wait for coffin funds to be formed…” House said.

“How much money does the clan need for coffins, funeral rites?” I said.

House looked at me in amazement and Mother looked at me with eyes full of fury. House, obviously calculating, thought for some moments and said:

“Fifty thousand shillings.”

I washed my hands, dried them with a handkerchief; I slipped the right hand into my bag of money under the table; I took a bundle of notes, counted them up to fifty thousand, and held them out.

“Don’t take it!” Mother said.

House grabbed the money and Mother tried to snatch it but House jumped up and ran out of the hovel.

“That isn’t your money!” Mother said wrathfully.

“The Pontiff, thank you very much for organising the feeding of my people,” I said.

“That’s what relatives are for, The Old Man,” Pope said.

“And, The Pontiff, I don’t want to impose, but I would like you to help me with some things tomorrow. From ten in the morning, if it’s okay with you,” I said.

“Of course, it is okay with me, The Old Man,” Pope said.

“Then I ring you when I come from City. See you then,” I said, and Pope left.

“Leave us, please!” Mother told Thug.

Rented Thug looked at me and I signalled him to do as Mother had bid him and he left.

“I’ve grave concerns about you,” Mother said, her voice more wrathful than her face, on which was now no pride at all.

I regarded Mother, waiting for her to tell me what her anxieties were.

“You’re squandering your wealth on vanity,” Mother said.

“I’m using just a small fraction of my limitless wealth,” I said.

“You’re squandering your wealth. Today you fed Origin town, and as if that wasn’t stupid enough, you gave everyone in Origin and beyond one thousand shillings each, and then the fifty thousand you’ve given House. What’s all that, if not wasting your wealth stupidly, carelessly? Yet none of those people came here to see you, or because they like or admire you. They came to steal from you, to encourage you to squander your wealth. They know you’re one of our ordinary brothers and sisters abroad. Do you know what that means? To them it means you’re a wealthy ignoramus, a wealthy deviant, a wealthy someone who ran away from himself, a wealthy man they can’t accept but want to con money out of,” Mother said.

“Didn’t you hear those words of veneration they said about me?” I said.

“Do you know what they truly said?” Mother said.

“I heard what they said, I heard it with my own ears,” I said.

“What you heard was what they said, but it was not what they truly said. What you heard is deception nobody except those who ran away from themselves can buy. It is all deception. Everything is deception,” Mother said.

“But my wealth is not deception,” I said.

“Unless you stop squandering it,” Mother said.

“I am not misusing my wealth. I am fabulously rich. I am just being fabulously rich. I have no choice but to be rich,” I said.

Mother gave me the most reproachful look I had been unfortunate enough to encounter. The look reduced me to a piece of worthlessness, as if it stripped me of my being rich by borrowed means, leaving me naked for the world to see me for the deception I was. But that feeling of worthlessness did not last. For I had to show Mother that I was richer than she might have thought; for I had to manipulate Mother into feeling that I was loaded while she was very poor. My being rich fabulously was deception, but so was everything else, if what Mother had said was anything to go by. Had Mother herself not deliberately made herself and everyone believe that her watermelon farm, her multibillion forest, and much more I conjectured she owned but I did not know were miracles I had been performing in Kenya while I was abroad? If we had interwoven a web of deceit and placed ourselves in it, why would I let anyone take away from me my being deceptively rich? What grounds did I have for not participating in the web of deception? Moreover, was to be rich not criminal? Inherently criminal? Was it not more criminal to be poor than be rich under false pretences? I steeled myself against Mother’s determination to preserve that phantasm which we had constructed, my fantastical wealth, and I determined not to let Mother reduce me to worthlessness again.

“So, Rich, you’re just being rich? Rich, what aren’t you telling me? I wanted you not to be the same as the rest of our overseas brothers and sisters, but that was a dream. Rich, the wisest way of using wealth is to have it, never eat your wealth; you cannot eat your wealth and still be wealthy. The key to getting riches, experience has taught me, is making sure you keep whatever can make you better materially. The key to being rich is keeping your riches. A rich man never uses his riches, a rich man keeps his riches, or wisely invests them,” Mother said.

While Mother had been saying that, her look had been becoming more and more reproachful, her look had been piercing my body like sharp needles, and my resolve to counteract what she intended to achieve with her look had been growing stronger and stronger. And I had the suspicion that Mother thought that being rich consisted solely in amassing wealth with no end; and I hoped that my suspicion did not have any taproots and that, if the contrary was the case, Mother’s philosophy of wealth was of an era long gone by.

“Mother, I’m fabulously rich till death, not to be rich is what I can’t afford, I’ve to care for and protect a reputation I’ve built, I’m the fig tree all birds perch on, my birds must eat me and drink me, what you saw wasn’t misspending, I having my wealth was what you saw today, to be stingy…”

“The niggardly are the ones who die rich,” Mother said with so much conviction that, were my being rich not deceit, and were I squandering my wealth, I would have reconsidered my standpoint. Additionally, a cursory mental survey of the histories of the Origin rich confirmed Mother’s assertion. But I was not going to let mere truth spoil my being rich beyond belief, and I was determined to prove to Mother that I was richer than I was supposedly and that, unlike me, she was destitute, for that proof was the ultimate success of my being fabulously rich.

“Mother, the more you use your wealth, the wealthier you become, and conversely, the less you use your wealth…” I said.

“You can’t use your wealth and still have it,” Mother said.

“It’s getting late, I’ve to travel to City,” I said.

“You’re just one of our brothers and sisters abroad, people who ran away from themselves,” Mother said.

“You know that’s unfair, Mother,” I said.

“Do you know you’ve forgotten something?” Mother said.

“I don’t have a wife and you can’t have grandchildren if I don’t,” I said.

“No,” said Mother, her look expressing ever more and more stinging blame and criticism.

“Don’t you know that your grandparents passed away?” Mother said.

“I do,” I said, ever determined to thwart the intended effects of Mother’s look.

“Have you thought about going to lament for your grandparents?” Mother said.

“But my grandparents died the day I flew to Norway. I don’t think there’re even graves to go to,” I said.

“You’re a true overseas Kenyan, a person who left who he was born. Were you who you were born, you would have known that, if you haven’t mourned a person, as far as you’re concerned, his grave’s fresh. What is more, graves don’t age, and the dead people we’re talking about are my parents…They were buried close to the flat-topped gum tree. You should have gone to grieve for them today. Your uncle Pomposity will show you the graves,” Mother said, her look stinging me most.

“I can’t see any point in going to mourn people who died seven years ago,” I said, and left for City.

When I came to The Imperial Hotel City that night, and when Pit had taken a taxi to his Slums home, I went to the reception to find out if I could rent a room for Thug. There was a woman of cheerful countenance, who I had not previously seen.

“When is Glory coming to work?” I asked the woman, after paying for the room, giving Thug the key, and dismissing him.

“Glory isn’t coming to work,” the woman said.

“Why?” I said.

“Glory’s visiting,” she said.

“What do you mean Glory is visiting?” I said.

“It means nothing but that,” she said.

“What is that it means?” I said.

“That it means is Glory is visiting,” she said.

“Where is Glory visiting?” I said.

“I’ve said too much,” she said.

I took all the notes out of the bag of money and laid them on the counter.

“If you tell me where Glory is visiting, all this money is your money,” I told the woman.

The woman stared at the money with the greediest eyes I had ever seen, giving me hope, making me want to dance for joy, telling myself, there came the information I needed that I might fulfil my covenant with Glory. Then the woman said,

“You can’t buy that.”

Why would anyone not make haste to take such improbably mesmerising mounds of money? I asked myself, seeing my hopes incomprehensibly dashed.

“I fed Endpoint County and beyond today. I can buy where Glory is visiting too, if I want to, even if it is Nairobi County. I am loaded, unbelievably loaded. But it is not where Glory is visiting I want to buy. It is your divulging it,” I said.

“It’s disclosing where Glory’s visiting you can’t buy,” the woman said.

“I have money. Why can I not?” I said.

“I’ve said more than I should,” she said.

“Do you believe in God?” I said.

“Who doesn’t?” she said.

“Then why can’t you take these hypnotising heaps of money and tell me where Glory’s visiting?” I said.

“It can’t be told,” she said.

I went away from the reception downcast. I had to keep my covenant with Glory, my covenant which, according to the then more maturing interpretation, I seducing Glory comprised my keeping. I had planned to seduce Glory in the morning the following day. Glory had seduced me to seduce her, had seduced me without her knowing it. She was to be there for me to seduce her, that being her fulfilling our covenant. But there was no Glory. And all I knew was that Glory was visiting. And although money had bought me the hypnotic car, the hypnotic bodyguard, the hypnotic clothes, the architects and engineers with girded heads, my being falsely wealthy fantastically, and veneration, and although money could buy me where Glory was visiting, money could not buy me what was most important to me, that is, the knowledge of where Glory was visiting. [ ] Lying in bed in superior executive apartment 207 dejected that night, what Glory was visiting meant and what was so special about it that even millions of shillings could not buy its being disclosed preoccupied me. Sleep eluded me, consequently; and doubts assailed me subsequently, to be more precise, at about three a.m. Doubts about the packaging, the advertising, the displaying, and the selling, of my being fabulously rich at the handsomest profit, veneration. Those doubts assailed me. Is my being rich speaking for itself? How eloquently? Is my being fabulously loaded having an impact? Were those words of veneration my worshippers said about me deceptions, as Mother claimed? No, my flaunting my extreme wealth succeeded. But not well. Its success wasn’t the ultimate success I plotted. Mother doesn’t believe I being richer than thought. Nor does she believe her being in abject poverty and I fabulously rich. My flaunting my extreme wealth succeeded. But not resoundingly, but not as well as thought it would. Why didn’t it? What didn’t work? My multitudes ate me and drunk me. But did they dance me? No. My flaunting my extreme wealth wasn’t the resounding success I’m craving for. What did I not do right? What? Damn it! Amateurism! Damn it! That is it! That is it! Amateurism! Damn it! Did not use professionals! Damn it! Should have rented professionals! Boasting professionals! The crème de la crème! Damn it! Amateurism! Damn it! Must hire boasting consultants in the morrow morning! Crème de la crème. Must be in City. No, no, damn it! Fabulously rich man like me cannot admit ignorance, consulting be admission of ignorance, of incompetence. Omniscient is what I am, being loaded fabulously. Why should I not exploit my dear departed grandparents? Why not? Just go to Wrong to boast about your wealth in the most extreme way profitable! That your multitudes may eat you, drink you, and dance you too! Achieve apogee of your boasting! Ultimate success. Mother believing you are wealthier than they presume. Mother believing your opulence, and her destitution. Create illusion of grandeur unparalleled. Grand illusion of fabulous wealth. But no, to exploit the dead would be to take boasting too far. It would be to treat the dead with disrespect. No. Who does not nowadays? What are burial ceremonies? What is mourning the dead? What are contributions to funerals? What are funeral announcements? What are funeral orations? Eulogy? What is eating at funerals? What is drinking at funerals? What is dancing at funerals? Nowadays is what I mean? It is exploiting the dead. It is treating the dead without respect. It is consuming the dead. It is eating, it is drinking, and it is dancing the dead. We all do it. We all consume the dead. Why should I not do the same? We all eat the dead, drink the dead, and dance the dead. Should I be different? Why? I did not do my share of consuming my grandparents. Going to mourn grandparents in Wrong will be a golden opportunity to show off fabulous wealth in most extreme ways, attaining zenith of being fantastically wealthy, making Mother believe I am richer than thought, making Mother believe she is penury whereas I fantastical riches, ring, ring Uncle Pomposity! Ring him! Ring him! I therefore rang Uncle Pomposity.

“Pomposity, hallo,” said Uncle Pomposity.

“This is Rich,” I said.

“Rich? The Old Man? Scion of Rich?” said Uncle Pomposity.

“Your nephew,” I said.

“The son of my sister, scion of Rich, The Old Man of The Rich Clan, you have graced The Republic of Kenya with your presence?” said Uncle Pomposity.

A graduate of Oxford University in England and, according to self-description, a former top civil servant, Uncle Pomposity was Mother’s elder brother.

“I came yesterday, uncle,” I said.

“Why did the uncle of The Old Man and scion of Rich not receive the intelligence prior to his so honouring The Republic?” said Uncle Pomposity.

“I’m coming to mourn my grandparents,” I said.

“The Old Man, our man overseas, it is evident that you are also eminently distinguished in your ideas and intentions concerning your people generally, and grandparents particularly. It is not only that, in marked contrast to your compatriots abroad, you have not prioritised partaking in debauchery, but also that you have chosen to show respect for your forebears, and yourself. That notwithstanding, our clan The Blessed Clan and I wish to obtain information regarding the day The Old Man our own Kenyan from overseas is coming to mourn his grandparents,” said Uncle Pomposity.

“On Friday the 8th of August,” I said.

“The Old Man, the son of my sister, I’m afraid to say that coming at such short notice...”said Uncle Pomposity.

“Don’t worry, uncle, fabulously rich as I am, I finance, I organise everything…” I said.

“It is not the wherewithal to finance the victuals and the organisational side of the event of this year that is the issue, the son of my sister. It is the scarcity of time constraints arising from the necessity of requisite formulation of encomia commensurate with the dignity of and respect for the departed grandparents of a man of your standing, the of dearth of time limitation imposed upon The Blessed Clan in general, and me in particular, that constitutes the problem...” said Uncle Pomposity.

“Are two days not enough, uncle?” I said.

“The laudations shall not merely be of mandatory formal content competence, the son of my sister, The Old Man, they shall be lofty, soaring, elevated, way above past and present panegyric standards, they shall be congruent with the position…” said Uncle Pomposity.

“What I’m asking you to do for me, uncle, is to tell my Wrong relatives to come to your home with their friends and people they know, to eat and drink me in honour of my grandparents. Would it be okay if I came on Friday the 8th of August?” I said.

Early in the morning, when I had eaten breakfast at poolside restaurant, I rushed to the reception, carrying the Norwegian bag of money. I had replenished it at night, having asked Uncle Pomposity to assemble my relatives in Wrong and their friends and acquaintances in his home on the eighth day of August 2014, in order that I may mourn my grandparents. To be exact, so that large crowds of Wrong people may eat me, drink me, and dance me. To repeat needlessly, that is, I made the bag full of money again after arranging with Uncle Pomposity about my going to Wrong to consume my defenceless grandparents, with the purpose of achieving the conclusive success of my being rich beyond belief. The conclusive success which was Mother believing that I was wealthier than what the illusion said and I confirming Mother in her fiction that she was penniless whilst penurious me was boundless wealth.

“Good morning!” I said to the receptionist.

“Morning, sir!” he said.

“I wish to know where Glory is visiting,” I said.

“I can’t tell you that,” he said.

“I am a man of extreme wealth; I buy whatever I feel like. Just tell me where Glory is visiting, I will wash you with any amount of money,” I said.

The man stared at me in disbelief.

“Someone’s told you too much, sir, we aren’t to say anything about Glory,” the man said, wiping the enormous lump of flesh, his nose, with the back of his hand.

I put the bag on the counter, opened it, showing the receptionist the money. I looked at the receptionist for a moment, prodding him with my eyes to take the cash and make where Glory was visiting known to me. The money did not dispel his disbelief. He was staring at me, his nostrils dilating. I picked a bundle of the notes, caressed it with the glee of a child who has just got a new pet, then I said,

“This is forty thousand banknotes, and there are four hundred bundles of forty thousand banknotes, like this, in this bag, you can count the bundles, the notes, if you want to verify unnecessarily, and I have countless notes abroad, abroad paved with golden money, abroad where I dwell. If you reveal the knowledge of where Glory is visiting to me, you get the whole bag of money, sixteen million shillings, in exchange.”

“You aren’t getting it, sir, you can’t buy what can’t be bought,” the receptionist said.

I regarded him disbelievingly.

“Why can’t you sell me the knowledge?” I said.

“That knowledge can’t be sold, can’t be bought, sir. You don’t get it, do you?” he said.

“Oh, yes!” I said, “I am fabulously rich, I get it!”

“Do you?” he said, still staring at me, but the disbelief changing into benevolent contempt.

“Why can’t you sell the knowledge of where Glory is visiting to me?” I said.

“You really don’t know, “he said, the contempt on his countenance dissipating.

“But I am extremely wealthy, I am all-wise,” I said.

“I can’t sell what doesn’t exist,” he said.

“So where Glory is visiting is not?” I said.

“Where Glory is visiting is, but it is just non-existent knowledge,” he said.

“It is not, since Glory is visiting somewhere someone knows,” I said.

“No, you don’t get it. Of course, somebody knows that somewhere. But I don’t know it, I don’t know anyone who knows it, so, for me, it isn’t, and I can’t sell it, even if I wanted to. Count yourself lucky, sir, I’m not a conman, I’d have sold you non-existent knowledge, “the receptionist said.

It dawned on me that I could not buy the knowledge of where Glory was visiting from that receptionist. I staggered to the sofa on which, wanting to see Glory all the time, I sat the day before. My bag of money on my lap, I sat there for a little while wondering about what was right about that receptionist, that is, what was not Kenyan about him. I thought that he did not believe in God, and that that was what was right. For I thought he would have sold me the knowledge at less than nine shillings even, were it otherwise. Yes, yes, that is it, that is it; it is not just that he is not a conman, as he said, he does not believe in God, that is what is right, what is un-Kenyan, what is un-us, what is ungodly about that man, I told myself, then rang rented Thug. Who came at once, armed with the AK-47. Then we went to the hotel car park. From where Pit drove me to Standard Chartered Bank, on Freedom Road. Where I filled one of the polythene bags with money from the cash machine, after which we left.

We drove to Origin. I was thinking about Glory all the time. Glory was visiting. What did that signify? Why was the site of Glory visiting secret? Why the silence on Glory? Why were her whereabouts non-existent? Were it not, would I have bought knowing it? If the person with knowing it believed in God? If the person was Kenyan, that is? If the person was not un-us? I asked those questions without constantly, and, when we were driving into Origin town, I caught myself comparing Glory with Love, eponymous heroine of a piece of music which was always playing on the radio. Love left her sweetheart Beloved to sit examinations, promising him to come back soon after. Beloved waited and waited in vain. Enquiring, Beloved heard that someone had married Love, wrecking his heart. I was in a worse situation than Beloved. Between Glory and I was an unspoken covenant and I loved Glory more than I had ever loved. I had additionally construed her disappearance, and the injunction against divulging the location of her visiting, as a breach of her covenant with me. Because, knowing that Glory had unconsciously seduced me, and that we had similarly entered into the covenant, I was nonetheless asking myself why she had seduced me to seduce her only to disappear without trace, yet my seducing her was the fulfilment of the covenant on my part. Was our covenant, like everything else, according to Mother, mere deception?

Before I could answer that question, Pit asked whether I was going home directly. I told him to park near the Cooperative Bank. He cruised up the road, past Origin Bus Station and the market centre. He made a right turn. He parked that mesmerising symbol of my fabulous wealth, the limousine, atop a rubbish heap sandwiched between a group of motorcycle taxis and a place where there was an auction of a motley collection of furniture, cutlery, radios, bicycles, clothes, peace, terror, stones, slings, machetes, bribes, politics, amulets, bibles, curses, blessings, prayers, healings, charity, narcotics, heaven and sex. Rented Thug got out of the car. I also did so. I strolled down the rubbish heap and then to a restaurant near the bank, with Thug, carrying Ak-47, just the shortest toe behind me. All the while were people’s eyes turning towards me in awe; all the while were some in awe pointing at me, and at the hired symbols of my wealth. I was all the time thinking about whether my tacit covenant with Glory was deception, whether it was, as Mother had said, mere deception like anything else.

We settled at a table at the centre of the restaurant. The waitress came anon.

“A cup of sugared tea with milk and coconut donuts, please,” I said.

“Tea and bread,” Pit said.

“Tea, ten pancakes,” Thug said.

The waitress left. She was back almost immediately with a tray in which were the teas, the donuts, the pancakes and the slices of bread. A newspaper seller came in. I bought a copy of the Lake Region Tribune. I perused while eating. I found in it an opinion piece Pope penned. It taught me Freak:

That Mrs Felony Felon is plotting to make Freak Slums MP is moral, social and political illiteracy, illegitimacy and ingratitude at its height. Much as I am aware of the singular dearth of knowledge in the ruling class, I find it astonishing that Mrs Felony Felon, and the Frauds generally, do not know the public knowledge that Kenya and the Lake Region are on the verge of apocalyptic dynastic precipice and commoditisation of the masses most complete. That is why Mrs Felony Felon’s scheme, more so because Kenya nation and Lake Region tribes have been living dangerously for years, is to say needlessly worse than dangerous. Freak’s father former vice-president Felon succeeded former vice-president Fraud, by legal fraud and terrorism, setting Kenya and Lake Region ethnic communities onto the path to decay, decadence, and doom. Felon having taken Fraud’s position was zero year forwards thirty-one years backwards. Mrs Felony Felon imposing Freak on Slums be it by fraud or terrorism the means of Frauds’ monopoly of power is his first step to becoming successor to Felon as Lake Region tribal dictator and Kenyan leader of the oppositional exploiting terrorising power elite. Freak succeeding Felon is in fact far worse than Felon having succeeded Fraud. It is no year forwards but fifty-one years backwards since it will accelerate Kenyan and the Lake Region’s fall into the abyss of damnation dystopian dynastic domination where political personnel are recruited from a few privileged thieving terrorising families which are also the ones benefitting from political leadership our weirdly politically perverted pseudo-political pseudo-capitalism.

Pope Leo The Pontiff, in Origin.

What Pope was saying I understood not but reminded me of what I read in Tacitus’ The Annals of Imperial Rome Raptor lent me. I understand you not believing it given the singular dearth of knowledge in me but I read and what I read was a book and from cover to cover and nothing coerced me. Livia Drusilla in that book power made Tiberius emperor then executed his emperorship or constrained him from executing it. What was not right about the mother of Freaks Mrs Felony Felon seeking power through Freak? There was in Tacitus Agrippina scheming for Nero contriving a plan to rob her son of the power she stole for herself through him causing his perpetration of matricide. Why papal insinuations that Mrs Felony Felon who bore Freak should not plot power path through Freak? In those powers of books were mothers advancing positions by advancing sons’ positions. Was Mrs Felony Felon mother of Freak so different? Was Freak’s mother Mrs Felony Felon not doing what they all do? Which is? By any means extracting resources through sons of theirs also for sons of theirs had not Mother not done that had Mother not robbed herself for herself through me for me through me for me? Had Mother not through me interwoven webs of deceptions for us for her and for me? Who sent Pope to school his mother who paid school fees for Pope Deaconess his mother? What Pope was lamenting I did not see but it explained to me why Pit expected me to react in awe when he showed me City glass house that Freak owned apparently that Freak was apparently heir apparent in Lake Region dystopian damned dynastic damned house of commoditisation Kenya nation damnation complete most or something where was Pope?

It was a half past ten when we had eaten but Pope had not come yet I had told him to meet me at ten and the idea that I fill more bags with money for flaunting wealth came to mind. So said to Pit to give me car key Pit did after I paid for food told Pit to tell Pope to wait went out with Thug following strode to Mitsubishi Dignity on rubbish heap took polythene bags walked to Cooperative Bank cash machine stood at tail of long line of people armed Thug behind me standing. Near cash machine sleepy or drunken man or woman guards apparently sitting chairs standing between legs of guards nozzles of AK-47s of guards pointing upwards or similarly something somewhere of something. Across street traders displaying merchandise making me remember Mother selling charcoal throng in out of post office across I wondered if bank saying it belonged to women was deception like Mother’s villa kitchen villa I wondered if the traders the guards the queue the standing the scheming mothers Mother’s watermelon farm forest fabulous wealth exilic covenant with Glory. I wondered if it was all deception or was it nothing but participation in webs of deception we had without knowing it interwoven I wondered in queue observing streets getting crowded cars bicycles rickshaws motorcycle taxis pedestrians cows goats sheep fowl pig women carrying bundles on heads backs chests lower backs of hands. More than half hour had gone by I was wondering whether that congestion too was deception when a man huge having a tiny head came out of cash machine booth cursing saying not working clicking.

One guard got up walked into the bank came back soon after walking behind someone similarly sluggishly walking they entered the cash machine booth coming out a short time after the man from the bank said it will be repaired temporarily said temporarily repaired listlessly pointing at Kenya Commercial Bank cash machine ten metres away. There I strode Thug following strode people waving at me in queue came my turn anon closed booth door randomly picked credit cards from bundles filled bag with notes came out to limousine striding into boot put money to restaurant strolled elated at people affirming my fabulously rich man status shouting The Old Man Rich a man of the people!

It was a quarter past eleven Pope had not come had not told me even where he was why his lateness when his coming so I thought I should find someone else to organise my going to exploit my dead grandparents in Wrong to show off my fabulous wealth in Wrong. I considered hiring consultants I said I am contracting top-notch crowing consultants but at a half past eleven Pope joined us at the table in the restaurant you are too late The Pontiff I said. Pope said The Old Man I had to rush my daughter to Origin Hospital then the mother of my wife went into her death throes therefore I had to travel to Endpoint to take her to Endpoint Hospital The Old Man it is the woes of people living here in Kenya Pope excused himself. No watch Pope wearing no watch wearing man or woman in the restaurant time might be money to me but not to these people I told myself in spite of myself surveying the restaurant in spite of myself. Make The Pontiff think his lateness is less important than it is The Pontiff is in any case not to be trifled with the job he did yesterday given he is skilled and priceless being fabulously rich I am not the one to tell people I am ignorant by engaging consultants on the sly as well I said to myself. Asked Pope if Pope wanted something to eat Pope ordered piles of pancakes a kettle of tea Pope began munching pancakes as the rain started spattering on the roof such violent drops of rain that one hardly heard what the other said there was consequently no way to tell Pope what I wanted. Said The Pontiff I am going to mourn my grandparents in Wrong Friday this week did that when the rain had stopped said you must treat the dead with respect parents grandparents God forbid offspring also said that after the cessation of the rain. An ancient man coming smiling towards me arms outstretched shouted The Old Man Rich man a man of people man I am the one who facilitated your admission to City Boys do you know me I gave that ancient a thousand note his smile widened his teeth whitened since he knew I knew him since Diaspora Kenyans expressed knowing you only with the meaning of do you know me give me money cash! I told the waiter to bring the stranger tea slices of bread the stranger said The Old Man Rich man a man of people man our man overseas man may you become richer than you who know us said the stranger then the stranger installed himself at a corner table in front of us on the left hand side.

(STOP)I was telling you The Pontiff I was going to honour my dead grandparents is what I am asking you to help me organise I am a man of extreme money who does nothing but the spectacular I am thus to spectacularly honour my grandparents with my entourage to be mustered within Thursday to fill more than ten buses. I watched the waiter take a cup of tea and a plate of slices of bread to the ancient stranger who had not stopped smiling and who was furiously ringing saying something I could not hear. I watched the waiter come to me her eyes pregnant with discovery so you’re our brother abroad son of Mother she said I am I said you you eat drink anything without paying she said I asked why she replied you built this restaurant Mother employed us to work for you. Ouch again the credit for what Mother has done is mine I thought tell the truth let Mother take responsibility for her deeds you too have now accomplished this theft I thought I said I own this business Miss but I must pay for everything I eat or drink or consume otherwise. I watched the waiter go to the counter disappointed the waiter I mean the employee I had employed without my knowing it thanks to the self-serving self-theft Mother had committed so as not to let me herself me down herself. Pope said I am going to advertise it in the radio we will gather enough mourners to fill more than ten buses you should also put posters all over Origin town and nearby market centres I said excellent idea Pope said but word of mouth too added Pope I asked Pope if he had pen and paper Pope gave me.

You are invited to accompany The Old Man Rich to Wrong where he will be mourning his grandparents with respect on the 8th of August 2014. The Old Man Rich will bear all expenses including the formal clothes you will be wearing. The Old Man Rich will give you something as a token of his gratitude. Come to his Origin home at seven sharp in the morning of the appointed date.

How is it I asked Pope when Pope had read what you may if you will call the draft Pope said it sounds fine get it typed printed put it on all walls in Origin and market centres in its environs then I said then I asked how much will it cost and twenty thousand shillings not excluding Pope said. Strangers suddenly invaded the restaurant strangers asking me the do-you-know-me question I glanced at the ancient stranger who had said he facilitated my admission to City Boys I never attended for it was to Miranda I went saw the ancient leisurely drinking his tea eating his slices of bread slyly smiling. I shook not without pleasure and characteristic Kenyan handshake cordialities I shook strange hands telling strangers by giving them one thousand shilling notes that I knew them but strangers came in ceaselessly nevertheless. As to from where the strangers were coming I had not a clue as to why the strange ancient called them was obvious nonetheless but I was held up in that restaurant I owned unknowingly I a poor victim of being fabulously loaded Thug it was who took me out of it through the door at the back of it. Thug Pit I had to take a motorcycle taxi which went up the hill to Freak For Slums Campaign House then to the County Court and back to the street went Pit by the that motorcycle taxi and fetched rubbish top Mitsubishi Dignity and Pit picked us up at the entrance of the court one p.m. it might have passed.

I went back to City at once City where anonymity would grant me the chance to quietly plan going to Wrong to exploit my grandparents and more importantly a necessity for me was to find where Glory was for notwithstanding Mother having said that everything was deception I had jettisoned the deception theory of my covenant with Glory. My emerging conclusion that that covenant was a constituent web of deceptive webs of deceptions you and I had interwoven too had suffered the same fate and so I finding Glory was a pressing business. For fantastically rich I was but Glory eluded me and when it came to Glory’s whereabouts I was a complete ignoramus and not a secret one if you took into account those un-us un-Kenyan unbelievers working at The Imperial Hotel City reception. Finding Glory was my existential imperative its validation and my being fabulously rich was not it was unexpectedly not it you may say so legitimately and I was boundless excitement when entering The Imperial Hotel City I saw Glory in the reception Glory was there that I may fulfil my part of the covenant with her. My seducing Glory was drawing nigh if you are magnanimous enough to excuse the influence of Uncle Pomposity on that phrasing that is if you agree that seducing Glory not being a triviality deserves a bit of if not the best of avuncular pomposity. Seducing Glory was the imperative of my existence was the very validation of my existence my being rich beyond belief was unexpectedly not it you may say with a modicum of legitimacy and excuse how I treated Thug as I was on the threshold of covenanted seduction of Glory remember Thug we are leaving before dawn I said dismissing Thug. I must have been galloping as I was dismissing that rented symbol of my fabulous wealth Thug I must have been galloping to the reception the bag of money in the left hand I base that supposition on my in no time being at the reception without knowing how my being there in no time to launch Glory seduction.

Glory I said my heart throbbing stretching out my hand to shake the hand of Glory I am Gloria Glory said not shaking my hand Gloria Glory I said Gloria interrupted sir I am not Glory I am Gloria she said dumbfounded I stood there I stood for a long time for a long time stood there studying Glory. Of course you are I said finally I am not Glory I am Gloria the bemused girl said when I said of course you are Glory enchanting eyes voice pleasant breasts terrific seductiveness unwitting Glory your smell Glory I enthused Glory is my twin sister Gloria said where is Glory I asked Gloria she said Glory is visiting. Visiting what is Glory visiting I asked Gloria I have told you what I should not Gloria answered where is Glory visiting I asked Gloria I cannot tell Gloria said Gloria I said I urgently need to know where Glory is visiting nobody can disclose where Glory is visiting said Gloria what does that mean Gloria I asked Gloria. What it means is what it means said Gloria it means what it means was like what the burning bush told the shepherd I have to have Glory so that I may fulfil my covenant with her hearing that Gloria smiled what the smile signified I knew not. Gloria might be Kenyan Gloria probably believes in God I thought I put the bag of money on the counter opened it tested Gloria’s faith in God look at this I said showing Gloria the money if you tell me where Glory is visiting all this money all one thousand Kenya shilling banknotes all this is yours I tempted Gloria. Gloria regarded me with superior disgust she believes nobody is to reveal where Glory is visiting anti-Kenyan Gloria said I looked at her with utter amazement but was not the one to accept her ungodliness just like that look here Gloria I am rich beyond the fabulous I buy heaven I will quadruple this money if you tell me where Glory is visiting. The knowledge of where Glory is visiting is a secret never to be sold unbeliever Gloria said cryptically are you Kenyan I needlessly asked that un-us of course I am Gloria asserted yet you say we Kenyans are corrupt money worshippers prove what you see with your eyes and hear with your ears and believe thus atheist Gloria more cryptically.

In burst a guest and away I went more downcast than when I received the news about Glory visiting and the secrecy in the location of the visiting I walked lethargically up the flight of stairs to superior executive apartment 207 and for the rest of the day stayed in bed lethargically working out a better way of converting The Imperial Hotel City reception workers who disbelieved in God to God that is to say converting them to us to Kenyan so that they would tell me the Glory visiting location the location visiting Glory and also lethargically in bed throughout the last part of the rest of that day plotting how to best take advantage of my dead grandmother and grandfather to show off my beyond fabulous wealth plotting how best to exploit granddad and grandma to flaunt my more than extreme wealth to flaunt it in Origin and from Origin to Wrong to possibly flaunt it from Wrong to Origin and to flaunt it in Wrong and not impossibly to flaunt it from Wrong but possibly not to Wrong Origin to flaunt it in most extreme ways and I arrived home the following day before the rising of the multitudes for I had to tell Mother without again being a victim of my more than most extreme wealth that I was going to mourn my granddaddy dearly departed dearly with the greatest respect and also grandmamma no less dearly departed dearly departed either after all after all mourn my granddaddy and grandmamma with the grandest of respect I had to tell I had to tell Mother.

You are dissipating your wealth Mother thundered as I was stepping into the house you are dissipating your wealth Mother thundered without even greeting me I said I am just being beyond fabulously rich I said in the sitting room where we stood the table on which was the lantern separating us. That Mother would viciously attack me in order to protect my fabulous wealth I had anticipated and I had in consequence been cautious enough to order Thug to stay in the Mitsubishi Dignity parked outside the compound so that in case the multitudes invaded to ask me the do-you-know-me question it might be easier for me to escape from them. Why had you to put placards all over Busy Border Wrong Hero Ring Origin Hills Low Plains Kite Thorns Endpoint Eldest Wife all over Lake Region Homeland inviting the world to travel with you to Wrong Mother thundered the glint of anger and disappointment in her eyes shining in the light from the lantern thundered Mother. I have to show your people Mother that your son is more than extraordinarily rich Mother a man of beyond fabulous wealth like me does more than mesmerising things or nothing I said the beyond fabulous nonsense retorted Mother who needs to be shown you are rich sneered Mother in the most toxic tone with which misfortune ever hit me. I must avail myself of every opportunity to show off my more than extreme wealth I said and Mother pursed her firm and grim lips the relentlessly scorching glint of anger and disappointment in her eyes showing no promise of fading away. What you are broadcasting Rich is that you are a typical Kenyan settled overseas and even worse you are telling the world that you will die destitute Mother thundered and I said Mother you have to accept the fact that I am more than fantastically rich for life and that I need to boast about it in the most extreme ways ever Mother riposted if I knew I would have borne more children but I thought you were son like father like mother but how wrong was I you are not mean you are vain you are a spendthrift that is what you have become wealth is beyond your comprehension you cannot become rich riposted Mother.

That stung me like a wasp but I could not let the sting distract me from defending myself I could not let it distract me from being more than rich beyond belief I could not let it distract me from showing Mother that I was wealthier than she thought nor could I let the sting distract me from making Mother feel that I was rich while she was necessitous and so I said I can feed clothe house defend educate entertain transport and multiply and fill Kenya. Rich is there something you are not telling me Rich are you not telling me how destitute you really are Rich this obsession with bragging about your wealth is it not just the tip of the iceberg a narrow line of light into your indigence Mother thundered. That slant on truth stung me more than would a hornet and for one reason or the other making me feel guilty that sting almost shattered my determination to defend myself to be more than fabulously rich to prove to Mother I was wealthier than presumed and to manipulate Mother into feeling I was well-to-do whereas she was very poor. And that sting made me question my strategy might I have overdone my being rich beyond fabulously rich might Mother have seen the despicable lie I was dramatizing who else might have had should I tell Mother the truth was there any palpable probability that I had failed to show Mother that I was wealthier than presumed or was Mother merely trying to trick me into confirming what she had hypothesised but was yet to prove should I just tell Mother the truth. No I said I said no I will not give up yet how would I tell the truth Mother might after all say is a lie why not just live my lie in this Kenya where lies are truths and truths lies in this Kenya where we truthfully say things that we know to be untrue in this Kenya where we untruthfully say things that we know to be true has Mother herself not said everything is deception and above all I love being more than extremely rich more than anything else besides carnal pleasures and I have just to convince Mother that I am richer than she thinks and I have just to make Mother feel that she is unlike me indigent in spite of her being a multibillionaire and in spite of my by rented means being a rich pauper. It is a paltry fraction of my most extreme wealth I am using to flaunt my wealth in the most extreme ways ever I said and Mother thundered are you really my child Mother thundered are you really my child so these days that I have a different attitude to wealth I am not your child I said and Mother fleetingly smiled superciliously and the smile needless to say was no relief from her withering attitude Mother thundered that wealth you are squandering is mine too I have serious wealth making and preserving business to attend to Mother thundered and Mother went out into the darkness of wealth.

At the front of the line of vehicles which left Origin for Wrong at one post meridiem on the eighth of August 2014 was the Mitsubishi Dignity in which were travelling Pit Thug Pope and I behind that rented symbol of my fabulous wealth were ten buses full of the people I had hired to help me exploit my dearly beloved grandparents long gone to speak vaingloriously of my fabulous wealth in Wrong speak vaingloriously of it in Wrong and to Wrong and maybe from Wrong at the back of the tenth bus a bus full of bands a bus full of dancers a bus full of singers and a bus full of showmen and musicians after that a lorry of bulls a lorry of rams a lorry of goats a lorry of pigs lorries of fat beasts to be slaughtered for my entourage and my Wrong relatives in Wrong and their Wrong friends and Wrong acquaintances in Wrong who were to eat me to drink me and to dance me certifying my becoming my being The Saviour of Our Community that supreme swindle that permanently venerated more than fantastically rich for life that truly fantastically loaded all through life. Following those lorries of borrowed beasts for flaunting my fabulous wealth were lorries of servants of seven catering firms all by means which I had borrowed without their owners knowing it and which to repeat needlessly I did not intend to return following the lorries of catering labourers was a lorry of armed Administration Police officers to maintain my law and order and at the tail of the line of vehicles were three articulated lorries carrying hens ducks doves quails cocks eggs rice flour yeast onions salt milk honey fish fruits bottles of soda vegetables water pepper sugar curry powder ground ginger tea leaves water tomatoes loaves of bread cooking oil cooking utensils plates cutleries soap tooth paste toothpicks beds blankets sheets mattresses pillows pillowcases clothes chairs tables tents podia public address systems also to add needlessly all bought by means of borrowed money never to be returned all to say needlessly again means of the multitudes eating me drinking me and dancing me resulting in I clinching being the peerless conman The Saviour of Our Community that is clinching being an exploiter a community exploiter especially rich for eternity more than beyond belief for eternity.

Handsomely paid Pope had organised my vaingloriously speaking in Wrong of my fabulous wealth but this had to be best boasting this had to be being beyond fabulously rich at its greatest I had to control being what I was not I left nothing to chance even deciding the order of the vehicles in the line of vehicles to Wrong. And to underline the importance of my being a man of the people The Saviour of Our Community the man of the far more than fabulous wealth the consummate community exploiter the Kenya priest prophet politician commercial love service chieftain union captain bureaucrat charity peddling leeches profitably peddling plight I had imposed a speed limit of ten kilometres per hour. For the snail’s pace was The Saviour of Our Community’s for otherwise he undermined his simulation of being more than extremely rich his excellent conman-ship and the end of my stay in Kenya was to be way beyond fabulously rich to be that most crooked jungle beast of the jungle The Saviour of Our Community.

And so we were travelling south-eastwards to Wrong at a speed of ten kilometres an hour and the rain was unrelenting as purposeless keeping most people away from the road thereby thwarting this vaunting my being indescribably rich but the rain notwithstanding the snail’s pace accorded me a restricted privilege of savouring the sublime beauty of the landscape. On the left side of the road rose hills towards the horizons hills on which ran slender strips of farms downwards slender strips of farms of coffee of farms of cabbages of farms of tea of farms of tomatoes of farms of bananas of farms of avocadoes of farms of pawpaw of farms of trees of farms farming farms. What must have been terraces to check soil erosion stopped the downward flow of the slanting slender strips of the charming farms. Which in bewitching beauty were nothing compared to Mother’s true watermelon farm which save for I having created it without being aware of it was not deception its tangibility like the intangibility of Mother’s secret villa house that is her house she called her kitchen being there for anyone with seeing eyes touching hands smelling noses etcetera.

The true tangibility of the watermelon farm Mother had was as self-evident as the true tangibility of the trees along both sides of the road to Wrong the trees some of which were young some ready to be felled to be fuel to be sold or to make power poles or to build houses making life constituting trivialities. The trees some of which they soon cut down to enable our conspicuous funereal boasting that is to say so that we made multi-million shilling coffins to exploit the dead to show off our wealth. The true tangibility of tree farming that was not a common activity before love and money sent me into exile but was now though small-scale and paled beside that young greenness Mother planted that limitlessly young greenness the only deception about which was my having achieved it without knowing it. The true tangibility of tree idolatry I say I once heard Raptor say there was one Guy de Maupassant who worshipped the cow who said the cow was better crafted than us there was one Guy de Maupassant who joined Aaron and his people in cow worship so said Raptor. That Guy de Maupassant was entitled to bovine idolatry as I am to tree idolatry to me tree is life tree is life itself tree is what links life nodes tree is what forms life coordinates without tree we can neither eat nor live according to old science school teacher someone empirically demonstrated the contrary resoundingly unconvincingly. The true tangibility of tree idolatry began first moment of first exilic life when they forced me out of first country the womb the tree is the fulcrum of life as Mother told me when before I started to crawl I declared that I had burning forestry ambitions consisting in adult me containing tree plantations. For the tree is life the tree we eat the tree we breathe the tree we live in the tree we sleep in the tree we eat on the tree we sit on the tree we are born in the tree what we are from the cradle to the grave. What are we buried in what is our most cherished means of conspicuous boasting it is the upmarket coffin in which we bury the dead in order that we impress friends colleagues clansmen rival clans etcetera with our wealth even when the tangibility of our indigence needs no substantiation. The true tangibility of tree idolatry is clear for the tree is the thing that does no harm it is true as you may say that the tree may fall on your house and suchlike property or that the tree may fall on you prematurely returning you to dust. You would nonetheless not say the tree did it of its own free will or out of a desire to harm you more correctly would you say someone or something such as wind caused the tree to fall or you may say a malevolent being say a magus or the Devil possessed the tree. You may add more correctly too that the being used the tree as an instrument of precipitating some unpleasant something that was certain to happen particularly your demise giving your relatives friends colleagues etcetera the opportunity to boast by contributing to your funeral by buying you multi-million shilling coffins. You are right they buy you those multi-million coffins even if by omission or otherwise they abet the malevolent being’s use of the tree against you that is the being using the tree to kill you gives people who are alive the opportunity to show off their wealth to exploit you in death when your vulnerability is at its peak. Without the tree no existence I mean our existence without the tree no boasting I mean boasting is essential to our existence without the tree no sin no Golgotha crucifixion no repentance no redemption man and woman said God said we may not eat the fruit of the tree and man and woman ate the fruit of the tree. The tree is to me the object of contemplative idolatry indeed Moses rightly broke the tablet because of Aaron’s bovine idolatry for without the tree is nothing for in the beginning was the tree that is the tree is life the tree said my old science school teacher is a necessary part of our breathing of oxygen or something. Without the tree was the essential synthesis I don’t know which one I don’t know whether it was on land synthesis in forest synthesis or whether it was theological synthesis which needs the tree the tree the Golgotha Crucifixion needed I mean was a necessary condition for the Crucifixion and where would we be without the Crucifixion. It was my primary school teacher of theological affairs who said that the Golgotha Crucifixion had to happen adding that the tree was a necessary condition and that punishment lasting forever would be our lot had the Golgotha Crucifixion failed he said with oracular sagacity. By way of adducing reasons just to speak like Uncle Pomposity tree idolatry unlike Guy de Maupassant’s bovine idolatry and that self-idolatry about which I will say something in due course was founded on the first exile breath burning forestry ambition Mother’s fulcrum wisdom indubitable scientific theological knowledge synthesis schoolmasters synthesised and duly and dutifully imparted. The tree is contemplative idolatry I told Mother as a toddler that I would one day contain tree plantations contain the word I used and that long before I heard Raptor say someone said that someone contained multitudes. No I am being confused I did not hear Raptor say it I saw it in a book in his eastern Oslo apartment I saw it in Leaves of Grass or something I only saw that someone’s declaration that that someone contained multitudes. And that was long after I told Mother I would one day contain tree plantations you see that someone who said he contained multitudes was entitled to his self-idolatry just like Guy de Maupassant to his bovine idolatry and Aaron and his people to their golden calf but for me the tree is the statue to worship. For the tree contains life for would the Golgotha Crucifixion take place without the tree and where would we be without the Crucifixion at Golgotha eternal sin anti-us anti-Kenyan atheism heathenism punishment. But trees were to me more than objects of contemplative idolatry I loved trees way beyond deification but I did not love Mother’s secret house kitchen villa guest house the tree made possible for it was self-substantiating tangible deception if you were endowed with seeing eyes smelling noses touching hands etcetera. Mother’s house known only by her I loved not but hated not a bit either I loved the tree beyond deification but what I loved most was the promise that that limitless greenness was for me to contemplate worshipfully.

And I was on the verge of worshipfully contemplating the tangible trees as we were turning into Highland-Border Highway when Glory the object of sensual idolatry I loved more than that promise that that endless greenness was for my worshipful contemplation took control of my thoughts. Glory sinuous object of sensuous idolatry how to get sensuous Glory how to know where sensuous Glory was visiting what The Imperial Hotel City reception immoralists the incorruptible meant when they said the object of superordinate idolatry Glory was visiting. I thought nothing save the object of sinuously superordinate idolatry I asked if I should employ a detective to find out what where was visiting during the rest of the journey thought nothing except erotic idolatry thought nothing but that crawling up and down descending ascending hills crossing bridges to exploit grandparents lying flat on their backs in graves. And unbelievers working at The Imperial Hotel City reception anti-Kenyans the incorruptible standing between me and the object of superordinate sensuous idolatry refused to tell me where the sinew of erotic idolatry was that I might sublimely sensualise her covenant with me. By sensuous idolatry visiting did those atheists incorruptible anti-us mean sensuous idolatry had become someone’s wife in disregard of the covenant without I eroticising sensuous idolatry her eroticisation of me to sublimely sensualise her without sensuous idolatry would showing off extreme wealth in extreme ways be incomplete I incessantly said nearing funereally flaunting my beyond fabulous wealth in beyond none-deception styles.

It was not until seven p.m. when we reached the deserted homestead of my grandparents in supine position inside Wrong soil Uncle Pomposity and his relatives were waiting beside grandparents’ ten acre out grower farm the farm had reverted to bush in the middle of the bush majestically stood the tangible flat-roofed gum tree I contemplated worshipfully as a child. Thug was behind me beside the bush I had not a clue as to what Mother meant by grandparents having been interred close to that statue to worship not that it mattered I was in Wrong to exploit grandparents to show off my far above fantastical wealth in the most extreme ways I could invent. Perhaps seeing I was at a loss Uncle Pomposity said herein lie your forebears entombed he said pointing at the object of contemplative idolatry turning this simulacrum into true deception is tempting but it would be foolhardy to venture into this bush I thought I should stand here and pray. I thought I stood there I prayed powerfully as would a virtuous atheist prelate possessed of the gift of prayer with that prayer ended deceptive mourning continued funereal exploitation more openly with Thug following me I strolled to Uncle Pomposity’s home to perfectly be what I perfectly was not to achieve the best boasting.

My entourage Wrong relatives the friends and acquaintances of Wrong relatives were making themselves comfortable in Uncle Pomposity’s home the home was like an overcrowded chaotic sports stadium tents being set up everywhere chairs tables being arranged public address systems put everywhere podia popping up everywhere. Excellent lighting it was night but we were under the bright sun the work of Uncle Pomposity Blaire’s band was arranging instruments in front of the awesome house of flamboyant dresser Uncle Pomposity and in front of the house of Uncle Pomposity’s son by the entrance to the compound was Mongoose playing his harp weaving didactic praise tales.

Making the setting for the apotheosis of my bragging about my beyond the fantastical wealth took three hours during those three hours the bag of money in the left hand and Thug behind me I was in the five-acre compound walking through the people boasting about my wealth confirming the people in my being The Saviour of Our Community. I fished a one thousand shilling note out of the bag I said to the person I am The Saviour of Our Community I know you I shook the person’s hand Kenyan style leaving the note in it the person said The Saviour of Our Community you know us as we know you are the apple of our eye. Infinitely elated I turned to the next person to hear the same words from his mouth upon my boasting words of veneration words that contrary to what Mother had claimed were not deceptions were truer than truest words. I could boast forever so easily was I boasting that I concluded I had a facility for it but then Pope sent me a text message requesting me to go to the main tent where Blaire would be performing music there I went reluctantly where Uncle Pomposity holding the microphone was standing beside Pope on the platform.

I mounted the platform the crowd chanting The Saviour of Our Community The Saviour of Our Community I got a kick out of the chants I craved veneration I was getting it I felt it pure I felt it free of deceit. The chanting knew I knew them they had not asked me the do-you-me-question but I had monetarily answered it as they expected one from the Diaspora to do. The chanting were worshipping me I had said I knew the chanting I had said it with money to be worshipped felt so good I wanted the chanting to worship me ceaselessly that was not to happen like Satan on the day the sons of God came to attend to Yahweh was Uncle Pomposity. The preeminent Saviour of Our Community members of the Rich Clan members of the Blessed Clan the people of Endpoint County the people of Border County ladies and gentlemen Uncle Pomposity said into his microphone it is obvious that The Saviour of Our Community needs no introduction I will in consequence say just a word in lieu of presenting him. The Saviour of Our Community instead of boozing squandering wealth in ten-star bars ten-star hotels undertaking reprehensible transactions in the commercial love service provision market partaking in debauchery and kindred delectations which affront God and our moral sensibilities as would his Diaspora homologues has executed a heroic deed. He has honoured his forebears with mourning reserved for superstars superstar presidents superstar prophets making us proud I am the proudest of you the son of my sister the Blessed Clan are the most proud of you our Endpoint County eye The Saviour of Our Community you may officially greet your whole people.

The Saviour of Our Community The Saviour of Our Community sang the crowd as I was taking the microphone what Uncle Pomposity had said had overwhelmed me the chants of The Saviour of Our Community overwhelmed me more the chants constituted the ultimate reverence which made up ninety-nine point nine per cent of achieving the best boasting. The crowd honouring me with the chants was their elevating me to their chosen one their admitting me into the core of their worshipping me to hear those chants was to hear that the hearts of the people belonged to me that I was a super confidence trickster. Those chants declared that I dominated the hearts of the people that I would not have ascended to that domination unless I were rich beyond belief unless I had boasted about it in extreme ways unless I was a consummate community exploiter a conman extraordinaire above Felon Fraud Freak Fraudster. The kick I got out of the crowd honouring me with their heart the kick I got out of the crowd putting me zero point one per cent from the apotheosis of the best boasting the zenith of conman-ship something better than contemplative tree idolatry was such that it was denuding my mind of power. So that I stood on the platform silent more silent than those gone I stood on the platform the microphone in hand as those victims of exploitation no the victims were grandparents in supine positions beneath our feet as those co-exploiters of mine showered the chants on me I felt dizzy like containing tree plantations I felt I was fainting. I said now that you are approximating the peak of what you are not why let inexplicable weakness spoil it you are above the improbably rich Freak Felon Fraud that is a man stronger than Fraudster Felon Freak walking on The Lake at night that is what you became just say something dismount podium just say some things something. I fabricated something the something passed for a speech this is not the day of speeches I say nevertheless that you have thrilled me by coming to help me mourn my beloved grandparents this is not the day of speeches this is the day of you eating drinking and dancing me in honour of my grandparents. This is the day of I knowing you better the day of I knowing you knowingly knowing you knowingly this is the day of you knowing me similarly knowingly knowing me knowingly please you are my guests of honour eat me whatever you fancy drink me whatever you fancy dance me whatever you fancy in honour of my grandparents. Enjoy yourselves have a great time a thousand thanks to you all for coming to eat me and to drink me and to dance me in honour of my grandparents you my multitudes in me my whole people in me eat me drink me dance me will you please in honour of my dearly departed grandparents.

The veneration chants followed amid the chants I gave Pope the microphone got off the platform strode into the crowd that hired symbol of wealth Thug behind me to resume talking about more than extreme wealth too proudly to make co-exploiters intoxicating me with words of veneration keep existing forever. To institutionalise co-exploiters’ affirmation of I being beyond fabulously wealthy nearing the summit of fulfilment which what Mother had asserted notwithstanding was furthest from deceit had surpassed Fraud Freak Fraudster had transcended the transcendence of contemplative tree idolatry was moving closer to eclipsing eroticising idolatry closer to eclipsing idolatry of eroticism of erotic idolatry. Our community eating drinking dancing The Saviour of Our Community all night long refreshments Pope said I was swimming in co-exploiters I was approaching the best boasting Blaire began performing Love the student reminding me of Glory glorious object of erotically erotic sensualisation of erotic idolatry community of co-exploiters dancing me trumpeting me I thanked Raptor who counselled being rich.

Blaire finished performing Love the student the people settled at tables the caterers started serving refreshments the bag of money in the left hand and Thug at my back a split into boasting about my wealth and yearning to eroticise my tacit covenant with Glory caressing the eroticisation of the erotic object Glory erotic sensualisation of idolatry hit me. No I am misstating it no it was that beginning sensation touching me gently sensual pleasure more rewarding than the fullest apotheosis of the apex of the best boasting touching me gently that is if you accept the proposition that I have not again wrongly stated what struck me. The split into boasting and yearning so I said although eroticising the subjective object is the end of the best boasting you are here solely to exploit your dead grandparents to achieve the fullest apotheosis of that apex you are here to be worshipped not to worship stay above your co-exploiters that they may revere you forever. Motivating myself that way I propelled myself to table to table taking a thousand shilling note out of the bag putting it into the hands of community exploiters telling them eat me drink me and dance me that I may honour my grandfather and grandmother. Not to be outdone the exploitation fellowship were saying The Saviour of Our Community you are our truest God and my sense of fulfilment my being beyond fabulously rich its indestructability was in its fullest state almost that is and I saw it was not deception it was good I wanted it. Wanted it never to end as fellow community exploiters were taking refreshments I was financially telling them I knew them and they were tangibly telling me I was the truest God and singers dancers showmen were performing and my fellow community exploiters were watching intoxicated with eating me with drinking me with dancing me. Given that the exploitation fellowship was secure in its certainty of getting myriad turns to eat those borrowed means of being way beyond fabulously wealthy the one thousand notes law and order was self-maintaining being more than fabulously rich was the most peaceful event Uncle Pomposity would postulate that I had negated the police and kindred law and order instruments. That was just a postulate it was not a boasting theorem more than extreme wealth even if nothing more than fiction led to universal peace if its result was universal monetary inebriation in a fellowship of community exploiters as it happened in my Wrong exploitation of grandparents in Wrong to climb to the summit of the best boasting about wealth.

The caterers had cooked the victims of boasting the animals which the exploiter community were to eat in the universal peace boasting had brought about Pope said through the public address system lend me your ears please Pope said The Saviour of Our Community has requested you to eat drink and dance him all night long. The moment of eating him really eating him is here where we are if you want eat a hen eat it whole if you want a gigantic fish eat it whole a goat eat it whole a ram eat it whole and you wish to eat whole bulls The Saviour of Our Community has granted you your bull eating moment. The omniscient Saviour of Our Community knows mourners who are allergic to meat so he has a wide variety of vegetables for us too you fellow mourners in those tents there just line behind that big house there and be served and eat him drink him and dance him. Or dance him then drink him then eat him it is first tent first served your stomach is the legitimate limit eat The Saviour of Our Community drink The Saviour of Our Community and dance The Saviour of Our Community he has requested you to have and given you eating drinking and dancing moments.

Eating drinking and dancing me peaked at three I could then not boast better than I had done I could then not be richer than beyond the fabulously rich I could then not overstretch it further than the limit I rang Pope saying The Saviour of Our Community wanted to eat himself. I with Thug behind me soon after went to the table which had been set for me in front of the house of Uncle Pomposity’s son a majestic mansion screaming at me my and Mother’s housing hardship could there be a better place to exploit myself to eat myself. It was only fair to my co-exploiters that I too exploit myself what was their coming to help me exploit my grandparents to flaunt my more than fabulous wealth what was their allowing to me to brag to them about my more than extreme wealth if not each exploiting himself eating himself. The exploiter community to which boasting gave rise was a group of that proverbial beast that ate himself for what were we if not self-eating cannibals or something more bizarrely ingenious than self-exploitation in addition to the exploitation of even the dead and it was not deception I saw and I saw that it was good. I previously propounded the fact that the tree was essential to life that without the tree would the Golgotha crucifixion never have taken place and that eternal anti-us atheism heathenism anti-Kenyan damnation would have been our fate without the tree that the tree was the life-giving theologically synthesised scientific theological scientific synthesis. What nonsense it is not even boasting which is the necessitous element of existence remember the Last Supper and accept it and move on he took his body gave it to them and to himself to eat it is self-eating besides eating the community which creates existence which was the necessary and sufficient condition for the crucifixion at Golgotha. I saw the light without the benefit of my teachers of scientific theological affairs or of anything else without the benefit of Mother’s wisdom like I invented containing tree plantations before I saw that man who claimed he contained multitudes I will gladly describe my eating myself it was at the table more magnificent than Mother’s. Pope Pit Thug and my cousins were at the table sitting opposite me were three delectable wenches one of whom was big and fat and devastating sensuality she sat directly opposite me eyes on me but did not eroticise my erotic subject the wenches were designed to be eaten and exploited to eat and exploit to self-eat and self-exploit.

I was eating roasted rams with ugali and drinking tea soda cocoa coffee water the eaters of my flesh at the table were eating whole rams from basins and drinking out of jugs out of pails out of barrels and out of tanks…[ ]. I had broken my body and given it to my eaters and said eat it and do unto others as I have done unto you I had given the drinkers of my blood saying this is my blood drink it and do unto others as I have done unto you and unto me and you unto me. That was I eating my flesh as self-eater Mongoose was playing his harp singing about how he played his harp one Saturday night resulting into nobody going to Mass the day after and a struggle between God and Beelzebul for the ownership of Mongoose God said Mongoose is mine Mongoose is mine said Beelzebul then I Mongoose jumped into heaven. That song Mongoose sang inspired me to boast more I devoured my basins of rams my stomach full of my flesh and blood I went from table to table showing the fellowship of those who ate their own flesh and drank their own blood that I knew them and calling forth the tangible words of veneration until dawn. When I was attaining being best at what enjoying every millisecond when I thought I was the topmost opulence of the self-exploiting exploiters the cannibals most excellent it was the finest feeling I had ever I felt ever more grateful to Raptor for having said when at home in Kenya Rich just be rich. Being a community of people who eat their flesh and drink their blood is what makes us humans once opined Raptor there was of course my ingenuity the bedrock of my borrowing the means of establishing the community of exploiting self-exploiting exploiters the means of the exploitation of me at the top of the exploitation chain too. The means of eating fellow members of my community of making my community eat themselves of I eating myself the means of making Mother feel that I was richer than thought and that I was rich and she poor my ingenuity the foundation of my transcending the potentialities of self-eating cannibalism the piece of Raptor wisdom.

As I was walking to the mansion of Uncle Pomposity’s son to sleep at dawn I could not go further than beyond fabulously wealthy which was where I had reached but my object of erotic idolatry Glory was not with me and the coming height of my fulfilment was consequently incomplete. The coming height was the near perfection of the cannibalistic community my extreme boasting had founded it was a hollowness filling me when after telling Thug to stand by the door as Blaire was performing Happy Girlie I entered the mansion. Entering I found the three wenches who had sat facing me while I had been eating my flesh and drinking my blood they were sitting in a red settee ready for non-erotically sensualised non-erotic promiscuous consumption. Each was oozing with irresistible craving each was inviting me to instant activities of non-erotic eroticising gratification without idolatry to exploit each so that in that way each would exploit herself and me. Using proximity as the criterion I picked the one with devastating non-erotic sensuality she stood up walked into the spacious bedroom which seemed to be entirely filled up by a bed on which was a tailor-made mattress on which were white blankets pillows and top sheets. White incense burning on high golden stools lit the bedroom the girl leisurely put off the shoes the dress the bra and the underpants revealing symmetrically gigantic breasts a beautifully proportioned body of endless beauty and a genital area blanketed by hair so thick and long that it gave the impression that there was a horse’s tail sticking out there. Her eyes on my eyes she got into the bed beckoning me with the first finger and she lasciviously lay on her back thighs parted no you are not Glory I eroticising you or you eroticising me would be in contravention of the covenant and consequently humdrum I said although dying to unburden myself of a purposive non-erotic erection. My manhood terribly itching as though I was having a paranormal erection however I climbed onto the bed and I began by touching her breasts then I moved down to her abdomen then to her genitals my fingers running through that thick bush discovering that all those actions were gratuitous. Given the girl’s size her agility was inexplicable she made love with great skill but was too wet for my liking I nevertheless wanted to continue making love to her but when I was ready to mount her again she said no The Saviour of Our Community you need more than one wife and she left me invited to polygamy. The two other beauties came in and lay on the bed the one with a lot of flesh on the left and the slender one on the right The Saviour of Our Community I am first the slim one said no her first I said. Thereupon the fleshy one turned facing me and I lay on top of her as she manoeuvred her body it did not take me time to figure out that all that constituted her idea of making love was lying on her back with her thighs away from each other. Would you say my not wanting to exploit her anymore was wrongdoing the slim one had no pubic hair was possessed of imaginative lovemaking with a soft warm hand she caressed my body from the head to the back then the chest the stomach the penis when she knew the stiffness was perfect she inserted my penis into her. For she had fought to be on top and had won and she went on riding my penis until I did not know what was going on and when I was again able to notice what was happening I was on top and the pleasure was not waning one bit and she could not release me. She locked me between her celestial thighs which were a pleasantly warm sunshine preparing me for the next round of heavenly sexual intercourse naturally smelling wonderfully what is your name I asked her as she was devising a new lovemaking routine worthy of my ex-wife enjoy Mary Magdalene she said. And enjoy Mary Magdalene I did and it was not until ten in the morning when I heard a loud bang on the door but I nevertheless went on making love to Mary Magdalene having forgotten the purpose of my being in Wrong to exploit my grandparents to flaunt my extreme wealth in the most extreme ways I could invent.

It was Thug who had hit the door in a way that it made a loud noise Uncle Pomposity had demanded that he do that the fornication I had committed in the house forbade Uncle Pomposity from getting into it he was said to follow moral rectitude to the letter where self-eating cannibalism did not forbid it. The Saviour of Our Community shouted Uncle Pomposity the Blessed Clan would like to discuss fundamental issues with you he shouted and left I shaved I washed my body I brushed my teeth and I perfumed myself. I was dying of ferocious fatigue but because I occupied the top of the exploitation chain because I was the chief self-eating cannibal owing to being more than fabulously rich and having boasted about it successfully enough to cause a community of self-eating cannibals I was never tired and I had to conceal the fatigue. [ ]. I put on special clothes out I went there stood Uncle Pomposity he declaimed The Saviour of Our Community the son of my sister we wish to discuss cardinal issues with you matters bearing on the moral fibres of your character and of the Rich Clan the Blessed Clan Endpoint County Border County and the Lake Region Community at large. Uncle Pomposity walked away through the eating drinking dancing community of self-eaters and self-exploiters boasting had created a community whose members ate and exploited one another with alacrity did I say we were a fellowship of that proverbial beast that gobbled himself. I may or may not have gone after Uncle Pomposity and Thug came after me a sickly sun was up in the sky a sickly sun with sorrowful eyes it smelt funereal sorrow after burial it smelt ceaseless death it stank ceaseless death everywhere evident signs of barbarically exploitative primitive cannibalism signs of cannibalistic self-exploitative barbaric primitive cannibalism. The exploiter self-gobbling cannibals were eating drinking and dancing me no more The Saviour of Our Community chants I surmised the self-exploiter exploiting cannibals had overeaten overdrunk over-danced and over-forgotten who the food the drink and the dance was whose exploitation and cannibalism it was exploitation and cannibalism like that party had its owners perched atop the exploitation cannibalism chain. I however stood next to the imminent apogee of my fulfilment at the time I had left the beyond fabulously wealthy I had flown upwards approaching the top of being what and I was securely inside an indestructible illusion of the illusion of my incredible wealth of exploitation cannibalism unbounded. The attitude of my community beneath me my fellow self-exploiting and self-wolfing cannibals their attitude towards me thus made no difference to me and we went through the cannibals with mouths covered with blood to the foot of a darkly dreary tree. Under which dismal bottles dismal bones stripped clean of flesh and marrow bits of slices of bread lumps of ugali and of rice. Sitting in armchairs round the dying old tree The Slender One Uncle Pomposity’s delectable and winsome wife who looked older than her age a mean-looking under-height underweight teenager who Uncle Pomposity indecipherably called his uncle and a woman barely thirty years of age but I had to call Grandmother. That was the Blessed Clan so grave and dolefully looking that you must forgive my thinking that they had mistaken my flaunting my wealth for my mourning my grandparents and that they were being genuine fake mourning participants in self-exploiting and self-devouring cannibalism.

The son of our daughter declaimed Uncle Pomposity when he had sat beside The Slender One and I in the chair in front of the Blessed Clan much as you are The Saviour of Our Community and much as we extol the one hundred thousand monthly remittance that has secured your family the topmost rung in the property ladder. We the Blessed Clan are afraid to say that that notwithstanding we have a foreboding feeling of facts we are saying that we have taken cognizance of some factors which will ineluctably impair the prominence of your being The Saviour of Our Community to the extent that the probability of you recovering from it will be nought. Uncle Pomposity glanced at me trying to gauge whether I understood his convoluted verbiage I thought he deserved a moniker such as Grandiloquent Gibberish for Uncle Pomposity was in fact his real name he swallowed saliva he was obviously angry because I was anything but responsive. Mercifully though on account of brevity it was Precocity the uncle of Uncle Pomposity who berated me you are our eye in Endpoint County but your mother lives in the most shameful house Precocity upbraided me. I asked myself whether I should ask the Blessed Clan whether there was something wrong with their eyes and if the contrary was the case why they were pretending not to have seen Mother’s secret house in her home her stately villa she had openly disguised as a kitchen who had a better house if than Mother. I thought asking those questions unbecoming of the supreme self-exploiting self-eating cannibal I thought it would be rude and reckless I thought my tongue might slip using that expletive about their eyes that expletive that cannot appear in this account of self-exploitative self-eating cannibalism. I thought it was better not to ask them what the what was what wrong with their what eyes what eyes I thought it was better to exploit Precocity’s chiding me to boast about the houses that were to project me as a man of more than fabulous wealth and the super-skilled engineers and architects I had forgotten to ring. I said I have hired engineers and architects with girded heads they are girding their loins to design and build Mother a much more than most mesmerising mansion next to which her kitchen villa will pale more than ten times I said more than ten times. The very shameful house your mother lives in is not the biggest issue The Saviour of Our Community went on Precocity speaking calmly slowly maturely and stingingly you are our eye our only eye in Endpoint County but you do not have a wife. The worry of the Blessed Clan is that our daughter’s place may be lost that you may throw your mother’s place away the uncle of Uncle Pomposity regarded me asking me to answer him their daughter’s place being lost meant that since I had neither a wife nor children Mother might die leaving behind no person related to her. That I was later to learn was the worst thing that might happen to Mother or to anybody that was the failure of failures Precocity saying that Mother’s place might be lost made me think about Glory and I almost blurted out Glory is the woman I am going to marry my sweetheart Glory with whom I have tacitly covenanted. But that fiction would have been gratuitous the first thing I had to do was to discover the meaning of Glory was visiting and where Glory visiting was taking place. There is no Glory I said what the Blessed Clan said with one voice I am saying I am married your wife where is your wife asked the Slender One flies were buzzing on the bottles the bones and the pieces of bread and the pieces of rice. A beetle was rolling a ball of cow dung into a hole I raised the eyes and looked at The Slender One my wife is in Norway is she our daughter Granny said she is German I said Norwegian Brazilian Indian Tanzanian German. Notwithstanding the fact that that woman might be married to you in accordance with Norwegian laws traditions and customs we will under no circumstance accept her as your wife. You are a prominent man and a prominent man must enter into matrimonial contract under the laws traditions and customs of his own people and a prominent man must have a home a home built according to his laws traditions and customs not just a house of work. All the aforementioned conditions must be present in order for us to be assured that our daughter’s place that our daughter’s race that your race will be perpetuated we are not trying to prevail upon you to divorce your German or Norwegian German or Tanzanian Indian sweetheart. No far from it we are asking you to marry a woman so that you may reproduce the genes of my sister by having your home your place not just your house of work by procreating your race by being genetically strategic and anthropologically correct in your matrimonial decisions declaimed Uncle Pomposity. Your German wife is not a full wife she is a mere girlfriend to you in that cold country you must just marry a proper wife a proper woman a real woman we mean a Lake Region Kenyan wife a wife a Kenyan Lake Region woman is the woman the real woman real wife. If you do not marry a real wife Grandson you are just one of our brothers and sisters abroad you are not anymore you are a deviant an unwholesome man you are not who you were anymore you are Moran you are a person we cannot accept but whose money we must eat to the last cent said Granny.

I felt insulted I did not even know this Granny yet she was lecturing me about my wife yet she was telling me what she thought of me yet she was telling me that I was a deviant Moran yet I saw myself as anything but deviant or Moran yet I did not see myself as deviant Moran. What made this raid on my life so revolting was that I lived where I was free to live as I wished where whether I was Moran deviant or deviant Moran where whether I was weird weirdo deviant weirdo Moran weirdo was a matter of my personal choice was something society would normalise by changing itself without fussing about anything. What was even worse was this that this committee was depreciating my being The Saviour of Our Community my exploiting myself and my eating myself while pretending that its proposed invasion of my marital situation was its way of preventing the depreciation of that cannibalism status of mine the highest status in the land. What was deception if not that anyway who were these people why was I listening to them I was for sure their eye but did that justify my listening to them Mother must have been behind this deception I knew Mother was mad about my being beyond fabulously rich which in her view was wealth squandering. Had Mother knowing that I was in Wrong only to show off my more than extreme wealth instituted this Marriage Committee to thwart my being fantastically rich beyond the possible to thwart my success as a self-exploiting and a self-eating cannibal. Finding this hypothesis implausible to use a Raptor word I rejected it The Saviour of Our Community said The Slender One as I was going to lash out at that Central Executive Marriage Committee there is a girl in Busy where I come from the goddess of beauty without blemish Gloria is her name. She is an excellent wife material for The Saviour of Our Community she is of impeccable character she is a cannibal who takes advantage of herself and others and who eats herself she is of perfect divine beauty and she is a poem written in blood she is red as a ripe tomato this girl is your girl. Her name is Glory Divine Glory I asked Gloria said The Slender One and her skin the divine colour of a red ripe tomato bloody colour I asked her skin is better her skin red ripe tomato fresh from heaven The Slender One said. She is a twin sister all perfect cannibals I asked a triplet all of whom eat human flesh perfectly The Slender One said a triplet three female cannibals I said two boys who enjoy human flesh and a girl who eats nothing except people The Slender One said. Why is she not here if you wanted me to marry her the voracious cannibal is visiting said The Slender One visiting I said Gloria the enchanting human-eater is visiting said The Slender One what does visiting mean I said nothing but that said The Slender One. Where is Gloria visiting I asked The Slender One said nobody knows I must find where Glory is visiting whatever visiting may mean I must find where that object of my covenantal erotic cannibalistic idolatry is visiting I said to myself I see your concerns for Mother and her place. I said I must nevertheless tell you that whether I choose to marry or not whomever I choose to marry is none of your business I say that with all due respect the Blessed Clan of Mother. You the Blessed Clan of Mother should know that women be they German Brazilian Indian Brazilian Greek Norwegian American Tanzanian and so forth are exactly identically equal what is crucial for the genetic continuity of the daughter of the Blessed Clan of Wrong is the fertility of my wife my wife’s nationality is immaterial… The son of my sister the grandchild of the Blessed Clan of Wrong the scion of the Rich Clan declaimed an irate Uncle Pomposity batting his flaming eyes being fiendishly adamantine casting the place of my sister into that perverted putrid putrefying putrefaction…

I got up I rushed towards the entrance to the compound I rushed through the apathetic self-exploiting self-eating devourers of human flesh the community my exemplary boasting had founded I rushed the Norwegian bag of money now well-nigh empty in the left hand Thug hurrying behind me I had to locate Glory. I rushed I stood at the side of the Mitsubishi Dignity that borrowed symbol of my fantastical wealth I said I stood I said in the mobile phone Pope I have to travel to City bring the show to an end I will pay the entourage tomorrow I said I had to locate Glory. All right The Saviour of Our Community Pope said I settled on my limousine seat Thug settled beside me we drove off I had to locate Glory. I said I had to locate Glory the car soon turned into Wrong Kite Road Pit drive as fast as you can I said Pit put his foot down so that we were on Highland-Border Highway a short time after travelling at one hundred and seventy kilometres per hour but it felt as though we were crawling.

We were nearing Highland I remembered that I was nearly out of money I told Pit that we were stopping in Highland stopping there I went to the cash machine at National Robbery Bank. I took credit cards from the bundles in my pockets haphazardly into the cash dispenser I inserted the credit cards one after the other the cash dispenser told me that the transaction was unauthorised I did not understand for half an hour I tried to take money out of the credit card accounts there the cash machine said unauthorised transaction. I went to the cash machines in Borrowers Bank Barclays Bank Cooperative Bank Exploiters Bank Equity Bank Cannibals Bank Diaspora Bank Self-Eaters Bank Standard Bank Women Bank Family Bank Anti-Kenyan Bank Politicians Bank Self-Exploiters Bank Prophets Bank Commercial Love Service Provision Bank Bribery Bank I made efforts to get money from credit cards the message was the same unauthorised transaction.

And I left Highland having just a few bundles of banknotes yet I needed not less than two big polythene bags full of money I needed that to stay higher than close to the summit of being beyond fantastically rich. I needed not less than two big polythene bags of money to enable me to make Mother see that I was richer than I was said to be I needed those bags of money to make it possible for me to manipulate Mother into feeling that while I was rich she was penniless. I needed at least two big polythene bags of money to maintain the illusion of being at the top of the exploitation cannibalism chain the illusion which I had performed using the means which I had borrowed on the sly. I also needed the bags of money in order to achieve my first goal to find Glory visiting that I may cannibalistically sensualise the object of my erotic idolatry Glory that in tacit fulfilment of my tacit cannibalistic exploitative covenant with Glory I may eroticise her exploitatively. Not having at least two big polythene bags full of money I went to City experiencing high levels of anxiety my borrowed means of deception my borrowed means of deceptive opulence my borrowed means of deceptive self-exploitative self-eating cannibalism my deceptively being atop that chain had apparently stopped working correctly what might have hit me I asked myself.

I left Pit in the car at The Imperial Hotel City car park at two post meridiem I went into the hotel with Thug following me my Norwegian bag of money clutched in my left hand in the reception was neither Glory nor Gloria I saw entering. Glory was not there Gloria was not there either instead was the woman who had told me that Glory was visiting come back after ten minutes I told Thug I went to the reception has Glory returned I asked the woman. Nobody can tell the woman said yes she said nobody could tell why not I said nobody is to say anything about Glory the woman said the woman said that about Glory. Where did Glory go to visit I asked nobody says nothing about Glory the woman said about Glory I asked is Glory visiting in City Glory is to be treated with the utmost respect the woman said frowning. I only want to know where Glory is visiting and I swear by my beyond more than fabulous wealth that I will treat that knowledge with the most extreme respect I told the woman treating Glory with the greatest respect means nothing but saying nothing about Glory the woman said about Glory saying she was saying nothing about Glory. You told me Glory was visiting and I am asking you to tell me the scene of her visiting I said nobody denies saying something she should not and nobody gainsays you are not the one who knows what you are talking about the woman said a dark Mephistophelian mask covering her face. You see this bag I said dangling my Norwegian bag of money if you tell me where Glory is visiting I will give you three bags like this full of one thousand shilling notes I said dangling my Norwegian bag of money. Nobody not even Freak not even Felon can buy any knowledge of Glory the woman said the mask covering her face becoming darker becoming forbiddingly more Mephistophelian.

I saw the futility of trying to persuade the woman to sell to me the knowledge of where Glory was visiting she did not believe in God she was not Kenyan she was anti-us she was not one of us Kenyans she was not a cannibal not a self-eater not a self-exploiter so self-evidently so. I saw the pointlessness of trying to buy the knowledge from such a staunch atheist I struggled to superior executive apartment 207 coming towards the door I saw a cleaner getting out I said here at last is a believer she must be a faithful believer in God a Kenyan a cannibal a self-eater a self-exploiting pro-Kenyan exploiter. I said that without why I said that without knowing why is what I mean hujambo I greeted the self-exploiting pro-Kenyan theist cannibal in Kiswahili sijambo she said in a voice so endearingly cannibalistic so Godly that I said to myself the knowledge of where Glory is visiting is nigh so that I began brandishing my Norwegian bag of money. Glory yuko wapi I said brandishing the bag of money the bag of God smiling beckoningly Glory knows where Glory is she said in the most atheistic anti-Kenyan un-cannibalistic un-Godly voice I have ever heard she said with the result that my heart sank the hand tightly holding the bag of money the bag of God almost went limp. And where does Glory know Glory knows Glory is I managed to say I say I managed to say only because locating where Glory was visiting was my priority number one for I had to cannibalistically sensualise the object of my erotic idolatry Glory erotically I had to in fulfilment of my tacit covenant with her. How would anyone know where Glory knows Glory is Glory knows where Glory is said the deceptive self-exploiting pro-Kenyan theist cannibal why would you not I managed to say. Glory knows where Glory is said the fake self-exploiting pro-Kenyan theist exploiter cannibal do not give up Rich son of Rich you have to fulfil your tacit covenant with the flawless cannibal Glory I told myself so I said to the fake you see this money tell me the place Glory is visiting and you take this money. If I was a thief if I was Felon if I was Freak I would point to Freedom Road and take your money but unfortunately I am neither a thief nor Felon nor Freak the deceptive self-exploiting exploiter pro-Kenyan cannibal believer in God said leaving.

I emptied the pockets of the old bundles of credit cards I made the pockets full of new bundles I sauntered with Thug behind me to the car park Pit take me to Liberty Highway and drive as fast as you can I told Pit. Pit sped we were in Liberty Highway immediately there the four polythene bags in my hand I went to the Looters Bank cash machine I systematically tried to take money out of the new credit cards the machine insisted that the transaction was looting. I went to Over-Stealing Bank cash machine I similarly tried to withdraw money from the new credit cards not stealing said Over-stealing Bank cash machine so I went to the Corruption Bank cash machine it said the transaction was bribery. Perhaps I would have luck at the Clergymen Bank cash machine it said thou shall not transaction strictly forbidden what would the Standardised Women Bank say well not male transaction was what it said. Atheist Bank simply told me that the transaction was not divinely authorised Money is God’s Bank asserted that the command was not the Devil’s Bribe Me Bank screamed at me attempted bribery transaction with a red exclamation mark. [ ] Pit drive me to Freedom Road I told Pit holding the four polythene bags tightly Pit drove me to Freedom Road I went into the Gay Bank cash dispenser I tried to take money out of the credit cards in a careful and logical way the cash dispenser said that the transaction was not straight it invariably said it. I staggered to the Bachelor of Arts in Stealing Bank I entered the cash dispenser I tried to use the cards in the most methodical manner the Bachelor of Arts in Stealing Bank cash dispenser shouted you are stealing. I proceeded to the Master of Arts in Stealing Bank I worked there as hard as I could to withdraw money from the cards the message was you are re-stealing. Take me wherever streets you know there are cash machines I told Pit he drove me I wobbled into the Heathens Bank cash machine the polythene bags in hand there I laboured away to take money out of the credit cards I laboured according to my system in a determined way the cash machine said seek Christian authorisation. The machine insisted that I seek Christian authorisation for the transaction I tottered into Equity Exploiters Bank cash dispenser I slogged away there at taking out money the machine always shrieked at me unequal un-exploitative transaction punctuating it with three red exclamation marks. I staggered into Cannibals Bank cash dispenser I stood there for a moment not knowing why I did that then I started toiling but the cash dispenser was all the time telling me that it had rejected the card that the card was not vegetarian. I wobbled on to the Felon Freak Bank cash dispenser I slaved away there with no success I went into the Politician-Turned-Prophet-Turned Commercial Love Service Provision Bribery Bank cash dispenser the hard boring work I methodically did there bore fruits so I went on to the Master of Philosophy in Stealing Bank cash dispenser under-stealing it shouted at me. The PhD in Stealing Bank was just across the street there I went steadily moving from side to side there I systematically slaved away at withdrawing money from the credit cards the message was always over-stealing. [ ] Pit take me to the hotel I said the four polythene bags clutched in my hands Pit took me to the hotel I dismissed Thug at the hotel car park I dismissed Pit too I struggled to superior executive apartment 207. I slumped down in the chair facing the bed my knees parted my crossed arms rested on my knees my eyes on the floor I had no money save for the few bundles of banknotes in the Norwegian bag. Gone was my borrowed means by which I had achieved much more than being beyond being high above the top of being more than fantastically rich. Gone was my borrowed means of deception with which I had created the illusion of being at the top of the exploitation cannibalism chain the illusion of my wealth. Gone was my borrowed means of being what I was not my borrowed means of maintaining the fellowship of cannibalism I had founded. What calamity had hit me what could I do while in Kenya I had to be close to the summit of being more than extremely wealthy I had to show Mother that I was wealthier than thought I had to manipulate Mother into continuing to believe that I was well-to-do whereas she was not. I had created an illusion I had to maintain for that illusion was now the sustenance of my life I had to bribe someone there had to be at least someone who still believed in God someone I could bribe to tell me where Glory was visiting. Because life even as the illusion I had constructed was nothing unless I found Glory the object of my erotic idolatry unless by seducing her sensualising her cannibalistically I fulfilled my tacit covenant with her that she would eat me that she would eat herself that I would eat her that I would eat myself. Why had my borrowed money with which I had built the elaborate deception without which I could now not live disappeared why that why that why was the why of my life for solving it was the key to how I could maintain the grand illusion I had conjured out of borrowed money and on which my life now rested.

I rose I ambled to the poolside restaurant I ate listlessly I came back I lay on the bed I fell asleep a horrendous craving for sex struck me it struck me out of the blue it did not evince the normal trajectory of an erection it hit me with the implacable viciousness of the Bad Man Satan himself. Already fully developed when it hit me it was already the stiffest erection in my erection history I had the strong sensation that it was already fulfilling its purpose whatever that purpose was that I was already ejaculating yet the strangely weird paranormal craving for sex had barely begun. The erection was itchy though not painful but it was nonetheless no less insufferable you had to have the misfortune of having that paranormal erection to feel how it felt it was cataclysmic waves of ejaculations in progress with no manifestation apart from what I was feeling. I managed to take the mobile out of the coat pocket Pit take me somewhere now I said can it not wait The Saviour of Our Community Pit said. Urgent I said when Pit came the craving was more than unbearable the paranormal erection was ever getting stiffer and stiffer my manhood was itching as though the leaves of the stinging bush had been rubbed all over it I was having incessant flows of powerful cataclysmic ejaculations having no physical manifestations whatsoever. [ ] Rush to Freedom Road I say where is the bodyguard Pit says off I say we sped to Freedom Road where Raptor had hinted that relief from such weirdly strange para-normalising sexual cravings could be found. Just drive at low speed I tell Pit my strong desire for sex ever intensifying he does I say stop I say seeing a girl walking with a cannibalistically angelic gait stepping from the pavement onto the road. Pit stops get into the car I tell the girl she gets into the car her heavenly sensual cannibalistic smell I have been looking for is familiar to me the girl sits beside me with unconscious exploitatively self-exploiting self-eating seductiveness my erection disappears instantly there is no trace of my craving for sex. It is like the Centurion who said say just a word and my servant will be healed and he who was to the Golgotha Crucifixion said your servant is healed and so he was. The girl performed a similar miracle curing me of my para-normalising erection healing me just by my coming into the unimpeachable beauty of her cannibalistic exploitative presence. I am taking you to my home and you and I will spend the night there I tell the girl although I no longer want to buy love services from her or from anyone for I am healed like Centurion’s servant. Seven thousand shillings the girl says in the most pleasant voice ever the most cannibalistic voice ever the voice purely eroticising sensualising calling forth covenantal erotic idolatry potentially that is. Six thousand I say ok the girl says I cannot remember where I have heard this purely seductive cannibalistically sensualising erotic voice before this voice for which I have been yearning the voice of pure exploitation pure self-exploitation pure self-eating perfect cannibalism. Pit take me home I say Pit took us to the hotel the girl and I left Pit at the car park the girl and I went to superior executive apartment 207. Just take off your clothes I said when we were in the apartment I said without knowing why since I did not want love services anymore since I was healed I went to the toilet after saying that. Glory I exclaimed coming out of the toilet after some moments I am not Glory said the naked girl desirably standing beside the bed said the unimpeachable cannibal her skin as red as ripe tomatoes fresh from heaven from the heaven of cannibals of exploiters of self-exploiters of self-eaters of we Kenyans. Oh yes you are Glory oh yes your eyes your exquisite face your fresh fleshy body your skin red like ripe tomato skin fresh from the heaven of cannibals the heaven of exploiters the heaven of self-eating eaters the heaven of us. Oh yes you are Glory the object of my erotic idolatry says the tacit covenant between you and I your delectable breasts your unconscious seductiveness. Oh yes you are Glory with whom I have a tacit covenant who I have to cannibalistically and exploitatively eroticise and sensualise according the covenant. I am Janet June the girl said you are Glory the perfect cannibal the cannibal the Kenya for whom I have been searching for eternity with whom I may fulfil my covenant on the table were the girl’s wigs. [ ] Mr Rich the girl began how did you know my name I said your photo is on mourning posters all over town the girl said most cannibalistically pleasantly no nobody but you Glory says Mr Rich as you do Glory I said you are my perfect cannibal. Mr Rich I am here to satisfy your desire for love we women who are engaged in commercial love service industry work exclusively for money so Mr Rich if you do not want my ten-star services put my money into my hand and I will leave the girl said. The girl said seductively extending the most symmetrically cannibalistic palm the girl said in a cannibalistic voice which made her employment in commercial love service provision sound like work in a disrespectable high status occupation requiring the strictest moral rectitude of its members.

The girl was Glory but it was pointless to try to persuade her to admit it I therefore proceeded to lovemaking intending to trick her into admitting in the heat of sexual activity that she was my flawless cannibal. [ ] The lovemaking started with the missionary position growing more and more out of the ordinary as the night wore on until I was almost in a dream sexual pleasure world the girl being mistress of her craft even though not as accomplished as Mary Magdalene with regard to imaginative technique. I want rent your ten-star services for a fortnight I said towards dawn I provide you with my love services for two weeks she asked we live together for two weeks I said I live here she said that is right I said. [ ] I know without a shadow of doubt that you are the one I have been looking for I say let us see that will be sixty thousand shillings you pay me in advance she says. We were lying in bed facing each other but you’ll play my betrothed I say you pay me everything in advance she says I say right now no in the morning she says I say fine. One more thing she says say it I say I will stay in the room most of the time I will have to disguise myself also when getting out of the hotel and when coming back she says I accept I say.

Although immersed in swell sex I was steeling myself against going home I was running out of money I had to maintain the illusion that I stood atop being more than extremely wealthy that I was atop the exploitation cannibalism chain. That illusion had now become my life I had additionally to prove to Mother that I was rich beyond the fabulous that Mother was penurious. I had also realised that the fact that the community of self-exploiting self-eating cannibals my boasting had founded had been indifferent to me on my last day in Wrong indicated that my bragging had not been as successful as I had imagined. I had also realised that I had not professionally plotted and executed my boasting I asked myself why had I not used a helicopter I told myself that even a car as mesmerising as a limousine was no longer an effective instrument of flaunting your wealth. To boast intoxicatingly becoming a permanent The Saviour of Our Community one needed a helicopter why had I not seen that why had I not rained the money on my multitudes from a helicopter instead of dishing it out the way I had done the why was that I did not consult boasting experts. I needed to hire a team of boasting advisers and consultants to enable me show off my wealth more successfully perhaps I had to hire a mobile airstrip and a mesmerising airbus. Only boasting advisers and consultants had that kind of technical know-how but how could I hire them I was almost as broke as I was in my Norwegian destitution into which having divorced my wife I had fallen. [ ] I was steeling myself against going home not only because the supply of my money was ending but also because I did not want to argue with Mother. I had to respect the way Mother thought and felt about wealth and I wanted to be on good terms with her. [ ] Not just because she was Mother and my only relative but because nothing divided us and she had done for me more than what any parent could for anyone. But I was in a quagmire Mother knew I was squandering my wealth but the truth was that my personal net worth stood at zero. I thought I should confess my pennilessness and beg Mother her forgiveness but would Mother believe me if I told her I was an indigent man who had conjured a grand illusion of being beyond fantastically rich out of borrowed means that I had done that to be what just one of our brothers and sisters abroad was expected. That my sin was the same as her having given me all the glory for her achievements I was going to confess when I was home three days after my return from Wrong. [ ] The Confessions of a Prodigal Son no I said no I was not satisfied with that title I said as I was composing the confession The Confessions of a Deceptively More than Fabulously Rich Prodigal Son Following Practical Prodigal Wisdom of a Friend and Being Ingeniously Pragmatic Orchestrated his being above the Summit of Being beyond Fantastically Rich. I would deliver that confession but I had to solve our housing problem first.

I came home at ten a.m. on the 12th of August accompanied by Thug and the girl I found the architects from Diaspora Architectural Services I had telephoned and asked them the previous day to come home I found them arguing animatedly with Mother in front of her house. They were arguing about Origin Architects who Mother had called and were sitting in the house I shook the hands of the architects from Diaspora Architectural Services then my heart throbbing for it could not contain my not making the confession I said Mother I want to have a quick word with you behind the house. How are you my daughter Mother asked the girl who was not disguised Mother asked the girl as Mother the girl and I were walking to the back of the hovel fine Mother Hope said the girl. My heart was beating strongly it was beating so strongly that the significance of the fact that Mother called the girl my daughter and that the girl knew Mother’s name escaped my notice for I had told the girl nothing about my parents. [ ] The confession dominated me I was asking myself whether I should execute the confession and face the consequences which included Mother not accepting it or whether I should cling to my illusion of being at the top of the exploitation cannibalism chain and use the little that was left of my borrowed means to sustain that illusion. I instead of answering those questions began by introducing the girl I thought introducing the girl might show Mother that I was doing something on the wife front. Doing something on the wife front would tell Mother that my chances of having progeny were far from nil that her place would not be lost it would in addition tell Mother that I was a Kenyan living abroad with a difference and that I was not someone who was no longer who he was at birth. Mother this is my betrothed Janet June. [ ] She isn’t Janet June she’s Glory Mother said I’m Janet June Mother Hope said Janet June. Mother she’s Janet June and she’s promised to marry me no Mother Hope I work in commercial love service provision Mr Rich paid me to pretend to be his fiancé said Glory. Where did you meet him Mother asked. He was looking for love services on Freedom Road where I was working at night said Glory go and sit in the house Mother told Glory I’m Mr Rich’s fiancé Mother Hope he bought it said Glory just go and sit in the house I said. [ ] Glory left a long silence followed Mother was thinking the glint of anger and disappointment in her eyes was ferocious my heart was beating more strongly than previously. I was very near the moment of the confession I asked though why I would make a confession nobody would take seriously. Mother rang up someone hello sister Glory is here in Origin Mother said Glory escaped about a week ago the sister said. She is at my home Mother stammered come and fetch her Mother stammered see you Mother said. That is your aunt who is married in Hero she has twin daughters Glory and Gloria Glory has often episodes of psychosis during which if she is not hospitalised she plays the commercial love service provider in City streets. She had an episode was sent to the hospital for treatment but escaped three days ago and nobody knew where she was Mother said. [ ] I was shocked I had been told that Glory was visiting I had been willing to spend millions of shillings on finding out where she was only to meet her in the street hawking commercial love services. I had been willing to use millions of shillings to find Glory that I may eroticise her according my covenant with her only to discover after she had given me the second best sexual experience of my life and after I had handsomely paid her to participate in misleading Mother that my perfect cannibal was a psychotic cousin of mine. [ ] How could you do this Rich consorting with women in commercial love service sector and why were you trying to deceive me Mother said. A man must buy love services in the commercial love service provision sector a man must once in a while I said. Nonsense there are countless proper women marry one otherwise women will help you squander your wealth Mother exclaimed. How to build the houses is what we came to talk about I said to steer the talk away from women and wealth squandering. The three wenches you were given in Wrong what faults did you find with them Mother said. What is urgent is how to build our houses I said what is a house to me if you are throwing my place away Mother said when I marry is none of your business I said. My place does concern me so it is my responsibility to ensure that you marry Mother snapped the glint of anger and disappointment in her eyes had only grown in ferocity. The Wrong women were sluts they were mistresses of orgies and they were not for marriage I said. The girls played at being sluts because they thought yours was a life of depravity Rich sluts too bear children sluts are in fact the ones who bear children I want my grandchildren Mother said in a rather persuasive tone. I will marry when I want I am still young I said you are extinguishing my house Mother said. By I extinguishing her house Mother meant I was not giving her grandchildren. I do not live here that is why our housing situation is on the top of my agenda it is the architects from City whose heads are girded who are qualified to design the mesmerising houses I am going to build I said my heart pounding. Give me my grandchildren Mother said you should also hear what I am saying Mother. [ ] What type of houses Mother said Mother asked that question without interest and I could see concerning what house she wanted that she had made up her mind palatial houses each costing forty million shillings at least I said. You spendthrift Rich a house that costs one million shillings is good enough for me Mother exclaimed. As for you Rich you cannot build a forty-million-shilling house in somebody’s home you will have to leave this home and build your own somewhere else do not spend more than half a million on your house here Mother said. I’m building myself a palatial house I’m atop over the summit of being more than fabulously rich I’m just one of our brothers and sisters abroad opulence itself I said my heart beating hard for I knew I should have made my confession and faced the consequences instead of going on bragging about my imaginary wealth. Okay Mother said resignedly. Okay what I asked my heart beating too quickly and too loudly. We are building ornamental houses each costing at least forty million shillings but on two unnegotiable conditions. The first is that your architects and engineers design and build your house and my architects and engineers mine. The second is that you deposit the eighty million shillings into my account and that I oversee the construction of the showpieces Mother said.

My knees weakened I practically fell prostrate I very nearly shouted forgive me Mother I am a mere confidence trickster I have not squandered any wealth because wealth is something I have never had Mother I am neither an exploiter nor a cannibal. I am the wretched of the wretched where I am Mother I am not that proverbial animal that ate himself I am not self-exploiting I am not self-eating. What you have seen since my coming is a hideous lie I have been dramatizing yes Mother it is a masterly deception all of it. To achieve it Mother I borrowed money without telling their owners that I did so. I borrowed the money with no intention of taking it back. That is what your only begotten son is a mean wretch who has never eaten human flesh. The meanest wretch who has never exploited anyone who has never eaten anyone who has never even tasted himself. When I eat fish with the poor Mother I eat the head it is when I eat fish with the rich like you that I never eat the head I am not anywhere near exploitation cannibalism Mother I am a fraud. I did not perform that confession I do not have a clue as to why.

I had to raise the eighty million shillings I could not do that in Kenya my flight was due in two weeks I changed the ticket I promised Mother that I would deposit the money into her account within three months then I would return after which we would build the houses on her terms I travelled back to Norway.

I heavily sat down in my worn-out chair in council flat 207 in Grønnland a residential district where most of the non-white immigrants lived. It was the noon of Friday fifteenth of August 2014. I was thinking about how to get the eighty million shillings for the mesmerising houses. My grand illusion of being at the top of the exploitation and cannibalism chain had to survive. Living without the illusion was impossible the illusion would not continue to exist unless I built the houses. The obstacle was that thanks to my delusions the solid underground base of the illusion had crumbled into dust. That on my last day in Wrong my community of self-exploiting and self-eating cannibals my boasting in extreme ways had created over-forgot me testified that to boast more effectively I needed an army of the best boasting advisers and consultants that money could buy. I had not been servicing and paying off the credit card debts. The people whose names and particulars I found on the Internet and on whose names I got the credit cards had unexpectedly not been paying the debts and interests. The issuers had apparently done what they had to. [ ] Until five p.m. that Friday I was sitting in the worn-out chair thinking about how I could earn money I rose I went to the worn-out kitchen out of the decrepit freezer I took the tilapia I had brought at an immigrant shop near Brugata street in Oslo some months earlier I put the tilapia into the sink to defrost. Why not call that mine of brilliant ideas I said coming back to the sitting room. I phoned Raptor this is Rich Raptor I said where are you man he said at home I said. When are you coming back Raptor said I’m at home in Oslo I said. Raptor laughed so Norway is home nowadays he said home is where you live I said. No Rich man home is where we came from where we live here are our houses of work Raptor said. That notion of home is contrary and repugnant to life as we live it I said adding your home here is perhaps your house of marriage. Your philosophy of home being contrary and repugnant to life as our people live it will incite objections to itself in our people who will reject it Raptor said adding marriage too is work in this country so where we live here are our houses of work. Our concept of a home is antiquated the diaspora phenomenon has overcome it I said. What is that Raptor said the diaspora phenomenon this discussion is a digression what’re you up to I said. I’ll be going to The Pub Raptor said why not drop in where’re you I said. In my house of work in Vestli did you bring fish Raptor said lots of fish I said I’m taking the tram I’ll be at your home in two hours’ time Raptor said.

I went to the worn-out wardrobe I put off the mesmerising clothes I put on a pair of worn-out jeans and a T-shirt I had bought at a second-hand shop seven years previously. I brewed third-rate coffee I took three cups while sitting in the dilapidated chair trying to figure out how to make the eighty million shillings. I with effort moved myself slowly out of the chair at about seven I set about cooking the tilapia. To say I cooked the animal is to misrepresent it. The worst cook I particularly lacked fish cooking expertise I chopped the fish anyhow into pieces I put the pieces into a saucepan. I cut onions paprika and tomatoes anyhow I threw them into the pot I poured a spoonful of oil into the pot after which I sprinkled what was in it with carry powder and salt poured water into it and put it onto the cooker and boiled it anyhow. [ ] The fish boiled I waited for Raptor it was too long a wait it was not until nine that he came. Do you have a beer he said entering the apartment slightly drunk I said in the fridge as we were shaking hands the handshake was nothing compared with Kenyan handshake. I said you are good at making ugali I said Raptor walked to the kitchen took a bottle of beer opened it gulped half of it down and put it on the rickety kitchen table. He took a saucepan examined it poured water into it and carefully put it on the cooker which he switched on. He asked so were you rich he asked gulping down the other half of the bottle I was now sitting on the worn-out sofa watching what he was doing. I said what choice did I have he said I’m happy for you Rich you didn’t make a fool of yourself you were rich. [ ] Raptor went closer to the cooker he stood staring at the water up to the point it started boiling he picked a bag of maize flour and the stick for making ugali he picked them from the kitchen table. I said you know what I found out Mother became a multi-billionaire when I had become a diaspora statistic not strangely though Mother believes I am rich while she is destitute. Raptor put the flour and the stick back to the table and took another bottle of beer opened it put it on the table and turned to look at me and said somewhat sententiously Rich man just be the rich one. You have no choice but to be the rich one let your mother be the poor one it does her no harm you are in any case rich whether you are rich or not whether you like being rich or not you have no choice anyway you are rich. You do not need a Nyerere to tell you that being rich or poor is an attitude of the mind let your mother be the penniless one subjective destitution does her no harm. [ ] Raptor proceeded to make the ugali as methodically as though he were conducting a delicate scientific experiment the ugali smelt marvellously tasted wonderfully. The fish too was excellent despite the lousiest cook having cooked it we ate at the kitchen table with Raptor eating the head of the fish. I’m not going out I blurted out when we had eaten why not you had enough chicks at home Raptor said. Travelled throughout the night that is all I said.

Raptor got out I washed hands in the sink in the kitchen I went to the desk I turned on the laptop. I entered the Internet to collect data. I had invented a consumer loans business while eating. I was going to use other people’s personal information to take out loans. I obtained the information I needed. I studied it. I saw I was to set myself up in the loans business easily. I made a list of forty people whose personal information I would use. [ ] The enterprise would be profitable I concluded using a pocket calculator to calculate the profit. I was to borrow four hundred thousand kroner in the name of each person in the list making sixteen millions in total or two hundred million Kenya shillings. I was elated looking at the figure. Calm and contentment descended upon me. I saw our palatial houses mesmerising the crowds my community of self-exploiting and self-eating cannibals that had eaten me that had drunk me that had danced me. I saw The Saviour of Our Community he was myself he was everlasting The Saviour of Our Community status was everlasting. I saw Mother believing that I was richer than thought and that she was poor whereas I was wealthy. I saw my grand illusion of standing highest over the peak of being beyond fabulously wealthy. I saw my grand illusion of being atop the exploitation cannibalism chain. I saw it preserved for posterity. I saw the fellowship of self-exploiting and self-eating human flesh eaters that had been indifferent to me on my last day in Wrong. I saw the fellowship confirmed in my status by the cream of boasting advisers and consultants I purchased from the Kenyan boasting consultancy market. Then as if hypnotised I sat there at the desk staring at the grand illusion staring at my ambulatory airstrips staring at my jumbos raining banknotes on my exploiting self-exploiting self-devouring cannibals. I sat at the desk getting more and more intoxicated with my grand illusion until the doorbell rang. I got up I walked to the door in a complete daze. I opened the door. Good evening said one of the policemen showing his identity card. Good evening I said. I am Odd Samuelson of the Police Economic Crime Unit we are looking for Mr Rich said Odd Samuelson. I said I am Rich.