The Thief’s Fortieth Day
There is a manyatta close to Wamba where water is never far away and wood is plentiful. During the rainy season, the cows pasture near the manyatta and there is milk for everyone. Life is at its easiest, and the people are usually contented. In the evenings, especially when the moon is bright, the morans who take care of the cows gather with their friends to sing and dance in the moonlight. They are joined by the children, and, of course, by the young women. The elders stay indoors and talk. Despite so many good things, at the time this story takes place, everything is not perfect. A thief is working the manyatta. One morning, someone says to her neighbor, ‘The baby goat that was tied by the fire is missing, but I have no idea how the thief got the goat out of my house.’ The thief did not steal every day. Sometimes a week or more would pass, then someone would say, ‘The lamb tied just inside my door is missing. In the morning I found the door unlatched. I think the thief came around midnight.’
There is a saying in Africa that a thief has forty days. Not forty days to live, but forty days to steal. The thief knew the manyatta well. He was a moran; tall, handsome, and strong: a fine dancer. The manyatta knew his name, but everyone referred to him as The Dancing Moran. There were many lambs the Dancing Moran could have stolen on this night, but for some reason there was only one lamb that he wanted. Unknown to him, this was to be his fortieth night.
The Dancing Moran waited until there was no moon. While still outside the manyatta, he took off his sandals and his clothing and set them, along with his blanket and weapons, in the branches of a tree. He approached the manyatta fence and dragged towards himself the branch of the thorn tree that closed the entryway, stepped inside the manyatta, and then pulled the branch back into position. The manyatta dogs knew him so they did not bark. This was a big manyatta, it had six houses, so it was easy to find a place to hide in the middle where the animals are penned for the night. He crouched by a hutch that held baby goats and waited.
When he judged everyone was asleep, the Dancing Moran stood up. He moved cautiously, deliberately, to the house where he was to steal. The house itself, like all manyatta houses near Wamba, is shorter than an adult is tall. Draped in the night, he crouched beside the front door and listened. There were the night-sounds of animals — breathing, the movement of many feet, and the occasional cough of a cow or bleat of a goat or a sheep. Within the house he heard snoring.
Working slowly, quietly, so that nobody would hear him, he pulled dung from the outside of the house and then worked a space between the sticks so that he could get his hand and arm inside to unlatch the door.
But the thief had misjudged his victim. The beautiful lamb was owned by an old man who was ever-alert, always watchful, suspicious. With the Dancing Moran’s first touch the old man was awake. ‘Listen,’ he said to his wife, ‘the thief is here.’ His wife woke up. She felt fear. She knew her husband. He was hard, callous, unforgiving. He took pleasure in being cruel. ‘It isn’t the thief,’ she said, ‘it is termites, or a rat making a nest.’ As her husband moved off the sleeping mat he hissed at her, ‘Shut up you stupid woman.’
Silent, cat-like, himself like a thief, he slipped past the fire that smoldered on the floor. Crouching, he waited as the Dancing Moran removed all the dung, pushed the sticks aside, widened the hole and inserted his hand and arm. The old man didn’t need light; he followed even the smallest movements. Was the Dancing Moran careful? The Dancing Moran was ever so careful! But the old man could not be fooled.
The moment the Dancing Moran had worked his arm so that he could touch the latch the old man lunged. He grabbed the thief’s arm, braced his foot against the bottom of the wall, and pulled the Dancing Moran’s arm inside the house, right up to his arm pit. The old man then shouted to his wife, ‘Come here you garbage woman! See your rat!’ She came. He then told her to bring him the hammer along with four nails from the box. She didn’t move. He shouted at her. She still didn’t move. She said, ‘Please, forgive him, let him go!’ Astonished, the old man told her to come closer. He grabbed her hand and closed it around the thief’s wrist. He said to her, ‘If you won’t get the hammer and nails, then keep hold of him. If you let him go I will do to you what I was going to do to him.’
The Dancing Moran felt her strength and did not try to pull away. Instead, he used his most beautiful voice to plead with the woman. ‘Mama, please, let me go. Please don’t let him hurt me. Mama, please, forgive me.’
By now, the whole manyatta was awake. Everyone was standing around the thief. The manyatta was amazed to see who was caught with his arm inside the house. ‘Ah, it is you who are the thief, the Dancing Moran, the one with the girlfriend who is so beautiful, the dancer we like so much! You stole our goats and sheep, grew fat on them, and then came here to dance and be praised!’
‘No, no, it is not me! I was just defecating over there when this man grabbed me, dragged me here, and did this to me.’ But everyone knew that he was the thief. He cried; he was shaking; he said, ‘Please, forgive me, everyone makes a mistake. Don’t let me die here. I am naked.’
From inside the house the old man shouted, ‘If you are naked then you must be the thief.’ The Dancing Moran started to say something, but the old man cut him off, ‘Shut up you fucking thief.’ He then grabbed the thief’s arm, pushed his wife away, and forced the thief’s arm against the door. He took a nail and drove it through the man’s arm just below his elbow. The Dancing Moran screamed, tried to pull away, but couldn’t. He pleaded, ‘Forgive me, don’t kill me, please, don’t kill me, I didn’t come to steal from you.’ But the old man didn’t hear. He continued the work of driving nails into the Dancing Moran’s arm and hand.
When he was finished, he called out to everyone to go back to bed and have a pleasant sleep, ‘We’ll deal with him in the morning.’ The manyatta felt no mercy. They all went to bed, except for the old man’s wife. She stayed by the door. The Dancing Moran was suffering so much. He was making terrible sounds. From his place on the cow skins the old man told his wife to get away from the door and come to bed or he’d smash her face with the hammer.
In the morning, before dawn, the old man got his wife up. He made her start the morning in the usual way. He made her restart the fire. He then pulled open the door, not caring what pain he caused, and pushed his wife out the door. The old men walked around the manyatta, giving the morning blessing. The cows were let out, and the goats milked.
Rather than take tea, as they usually did, during the lull in morning chores, everyone from the manyatta gathered around the Dancing Moran. The old man spoke first. He said to hang a tire around the thief’s neck, pour in paraffin, and burn him up. There was discussion. Some said that it would be best to cut off his hands. Others suggested stoning. The old man didn’t pay attention. He walked away from the discussion and came back with the tire the children used for their games. Someone then ran to get paraffin. Every house had fire.
Everything was in place to put the necklace on the moran so that he could perform his last dance, when the police arrived. Before dawn, one of the moran had left the manyatta for Wamba. There are those who want the old ways to end and for the government to punish, not the manyatta. It was such a moran who brought the police.
The police asked what was going on. They took the tire. Then they broke apart the doorway to the house and carried the moran away still nailed to the door. The police took him to the Wamba Catholic Mission Hospital. The doctor told the moran that his arm and hand were ruined and would have to be amputated. ‘Chop, the Dancing Moran said, ‘nothing could be worse than this.’
When the Dancing Moran recovered he was sentenced to prison for three years and then released. He sometimes comes to town. When he does, he hangs out near the tobacco sellers at the market. He make a little money buying tobacco in town and selling it in the bush, but most of the time the One Armed Moran stays at his manyatta where he spends most of his time drinking.