Story 3 from ‘Absurd Tales from Africa’ by Robert Gurney
It’s a miracle! The cry went up from the crowd surrounding Claude’s body. Despite being pronounced dead by the ambulance men who had arrived, one of his feet was seen to move. Claude had fallen on to a bush in a freshly dug flower bed.
Father Mukasa was delighted. He took pity on Claude and welcomed him into his church. It took Claude months to recover. He was left with such bad injuries, though, that ringing the church bells was out of the question. Father Mukasa encouraged Claude to ring the small bell that is traditionally rung at key moments in the Mass.
Indeed, it was during Mass that Claude glimpsed his way forward. He spoke to Father Mukasa about it and they agreed on a plan. The Church would finance a course on hand bell ringing for Claude. An expert was flown in from London.
Claude took to his course like a duck to water. He worked his way through the syllabus in no time at all: Four Bells, Six Bells, Weaving, Echo, Gyro, Malleting, Martellato, Plucking, Shaking, Singing Bell, Tower Swing, Thumb Damp. Claude was in seventh heaven.
The Vice-Chancellor of Makerere made the charitable decision to allow Claude to continue on full pay as a research fellow until such time as he was back on his feet. Some muttered, “That will be never”.
And so his life continued happily in Kampala. He was often to be found in Rubaga Cathedral. Father Mukasa allowed Claude to practice in the vestry. For the priest it was more than an act of charity. He genuinely liked the Englishman. Claude combined an endearing light-heartedness with an engaging seriousness.
However, all was not well in the cathedral. Complaints were beginning to surface that Claude’s hand bell ringing could be heard during some services. Father Mukasa asked Claude to tone it down a little but Claude was now so into his new pursuit that things eventually came to a head. Following a phone call to the Head of Music at Makerere, and without Claude being aware of what was going on, he was offered space in one of the tiny practice booths on campus. Students used to gather below the window to enjoy his sweet chimes.
Another cloud began to form on the horizon. One or two bad-natured students began to complain that their access to the booths had been affected by Claude being there too long each day. It came up at the departmental board of studies and, by a narrow majority, it was decided that Claude had to go.
He felt lost. He took to wandering around the city in search of venues. He had by now acquired a suitcase specially designed to take a rack of bells. The only places he found that were vaguely tolerant of his hobby were bars.
He first of all set up shop in the Makerere staff bar. The majority of Claude’s colleagues were tolerant of his eccentricity. He would ensconce himself in the games room or in a corner of the bar. Staff would smile as the sweet notes rang out.
Again, he faced another obstacle. A couple of writers, one American, the other from Latin America, were planning a joint talk on the theme of ‘The Dignity of the African Good-Time Girl’. They liked to explore such topics. It gave them scope to do field research and data-gathering. They encouraged their students to go out into the city to gain first-hand experience. They were discussing whether the girls they were researching were proto-feminists when their deep thoughts were interrupted by the quiet sound of bells.
The American stared icily at Claude. Claude became aware of the fixed stare coming from the end of the bar. At first, he shook his head. The person did not seem real. He looked like one of those personalised cardboard cut-outs that were becoming popular in Kampala. There was one of a glamorous air-hostess in the East African Airways office in the city centre. A fellow lecturer had purloined it one day by simply walking out with her with his arm round her. She looked so real that nobody raised an eyebrow.
The glaring became more intense. Claude could almost feel the reflected light sparking like electricity from the American’s round, steel-framed glasses. There wasn’t the slightest twitch of a muscle in the cold, hostile face. At that moment, all Claude was aware of was this menacing, white, emoticon-like white circle emanating ill-will towards him. He packed up his bells and left.
He decided to go and drown his sorrows in Okello’s Bar. He took a taxi to the outskirts. Okello’s Bar was no more than a tin shack built on bare earth. The earth was swept clean each day and had acquired a shiny look. Claude liked it there. It felt real and Okello liked to welcome wazungu. It wasn’t just that he liked their company, which he did, they also made him feel a little safer. Okello showed Claude a machine-gun that he kept under the counter. “They’ll try to come and get me one day,” he explained to Claude. “I’ll be ready.” Claude never asked who they were. He wasn’t sure but he assumed Okello meant the Baganda. Okello was from the north.
Claude ordered his Tusker and opened up his case. At first, Okello was fascinated by this phenomenon. He liked Claude’s version of ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’. Englishmen often surprised him with their interests. One of his customers, Alex, a Scotsman, would sometimes fetch his bagpipes from his car. It was good for business. Word would get around and the bar would fill up. Claude began to frequent Okello’s bar more and more. Initially, Okello saw that his sales were going up but, after a while, they began to go down. Customers were growing weary of Claude’s bells. Okello asked Claude politely but firmly to take his bells elsewhere.
He installed himself in the Gardenia but soon the girls were complaining that their enjoyment of the Animals’ ‘House of the Rising Sun’ and Millie Small’s ‘My Boy Lollypop’ was being ruined by the sound of Claude’s bells. The owner tried turning up the volume of the jukebox but it didn’t work. He asked Claude to move on, in spite of the fact that Claude was now consuming large quantities of Nile and Tusker.
Claude tried the Rugby Club. He didn’t last five minutes. He told me that the mocking words of the song “Why was he born so beautiful, why was he born at all?” were still ringing in his ears as I dropped him off at Mitchell Hall at Makerere.
His next port of call, and what turned out to be his last in Uganda, was the City Bar in the very centre of the town. Claude was totally compos mentis. He knew that his music could irritate people but he just had to practice to keep himself sane. Babu, the owner, was very liberal, very compassionate. He invited Claude to sit out on the veranda at the front of the bar, overlooking Kampala Road. He calculated that the roar of the traffic would mitigate the effect of Claude’s bell-ringing.
Now, the country was entering difficult times. Tribalism was raising its ugly head at all levels. The terrace of the City Bar was no longer the safe haven for the weary, the thirsty and the lost that it had been in better times. For example, Melvyn, the barman at the rugby club, who appeared constantly to wear a triumphant smirk on his face — it was, in reality, a product of his embarrassment at his physical ungainliness and his lowly social origin — made the mistake one day of raising his beer glass and grinning at a passing lorry load of soldiers who were clearly from the north. The lorry screeched to a halt. Melvyn dashed for the door at the back, got into his car and shot off before the offended soldiers could find him.
A similar thing happened to Claude. He was tapping away on his bells when a passing Land Rover stopped and an angry officer, a colonel, stepped out. I am not sure what Claude was playing. I have heard that it was ‘Ding dong bell, pussy’s in the well’. Whatever it was, the soldier heard what he thought was either a subversive tune or an insult. Babu stepped in, placing himself between Claude and the angry colonel. Claude began to pack his case up rapidly. He felt slightly annoyed when he saw Babu tapping his head and nodding towards him.
It dawned on Claude’s friends at Makerere, myself amongst them, that Claude was no longer safe in Kampala. The former kind atmosphere of ‘live and let live’ was fast disappearing. The dictator was beginning to flex his muscles. Even London, it was rumoured, could be reached by his tentacles. Stories were circulating that the king, who had gone into exile in England, may have been poisoned. Paris, it was felt, was becoming the only safe destination for those fleeing the death squads. The staff at the embassy there, who had been in post since the early sixties, had somehow managed to prevent infiltration by hit men. I suggested that Claude be flown to Paris. This was agreed. The authorities at the university said that his salary would be paid to him there, at the Embassy, until he found suitable employment.
Claude loved Paris and Paris took to him. He would sit on a folding chair in the Place du Tertre and play his bells to passing tourists or to people having their portraits done. Coins mounted up in his hat. His crowning achievement was to play in harmony with the bells of the nearby Basilica of the Sacré Cœur. He became known to Parisians as “le Sonneur de Montmartre” and appeared quite often on French TV.
Fate is a funny thing. Claude loved to stand on one of the bridges that cross the Seine by Notre Dame Cathedral. He loved to contemplate the sheer beauty of the building. One New Year’s Eve he was there. You could just hear his bells tinkling above the roars of the crowd as they welcomed in the New Year. Rockets went up in the air and the crowd gasped in awe, falling back as they looked up. Claude, who had been drinking heavily, lost his balance and fell over the parapet, still clutching his rack of bells. As he sank into the depths of the river, some say that they swear that they saw a smile on his face and that they could hear him singing: “I’m ringin’ in the Seine / Just ringin’ in the Seine / What a glorious feelin’ / I’m happy again / I’m laughing at clouds”. Then, nothing: Claude just disappeared into the icy water.
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Story 4 in this series is ‘’.
The Dust Devil Chaser of Amboseli
Owen set out in his Land Rover from a friend’s house in Nakuru. He was on his way to the Ecotopia Hotel in Amboseli to discuss his research interests with a colleague from Nairobi. He had nearly completed his journey when his vehicle broke down. He looked out through his side window and saw some elephants ambling by in a cloud of dust.
….to be continued.
