Story 6 from ‘Absurd Tales from Africa’ by Robert Gurney
Fran Butterworth was having a hard time at Makerere. His research area, ‘The Death’s Head Hawk Moth’, was interesting but he was finding it difficult to enthuse the students who were on his ‘Flora and Fauna of Buganda’ course. Sometimes he wondered if it was because everything he said was blindingly obvious to anyone who had grown up in the lush Bugandan countryside. He decided to tart his lectures up.
“Do you know, he said, to his somnolent class, that the great English Romantic poet, John Keats, uses the moth as a symbol of death in his ‘Ode on Melancholy’.
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
(Stanza 1)
“What does he mean, sir, by ‘mournful Psyche’?”
“Good question, Musaka, Psyche is a genus of moths in the bagworm family, the Psychidae.”
“Yes, but … .”
Fran felt that he might lose control. He also thought he was in danger of getting out of his depth.
“‘Psyche’ is the name of a mortal woman in Greek mythology, who becomes the wife of Eros.”
“That’s weird, sir.”
“Curiously, it is also the name of a white butterfly”, he stuttered.
“No, I mean the association of death with the erotic. Sounds a bit Freudian, sir.”
Fran felt beads of sweat forming under his armpits. He decided to take a different tack.
“What do you think of this?” he asked. He produced a reproduction of Van Gogh’s ‘Death’s Head Hawkmoth on Arum’. It was one that he liked and he had it on his wall in his Makerere flat.
Margaret Mubende put her hand up. She was a devout Christian and often tried to bring her main interest in life into any conversation.
“Sir, the lily plays a role in the Christian Easter service as a symbol of Jesus’s resurrection. In many paintings the calla lily has been associated with the Virgin Mary or the Angel of Annunciation. It has been linked with holiness, faith, purity and rebirth.”
“Very good, Mary,” Fran said, not knowing what to reply.
“A bit worrying, then, that image of Van Gogh’s. Was he going through a religious crisis?” Kiwanuka called out.
Fran was definitely getting out of his depth.
“Several Death’s Head Hawk Moths were found in mad King George III’s bedroom. You know the moth can emit a squeak that can really freak anyone suffering from dementia.”
“Buñuel and Dalí use it in Un chien andalou, sir”. Okello was into the avant-garde and was a keen member of the Makerere Film Society.
Fran began to become aware of gaps in his general knowledge.
“It seems to be a reference, in that film, to a son’s incest with his mother, sir.”
Fran gulped quietly. “This is getting out of hand,” he said to himself. He decided to make a break for it.
“Class, let me tell you a story.” He looked round to see if the door was closed. He often worried that the Dean, a cadaverous-looking man, might overhear his free-ranging lectures.
“A moth with poor eyesight goes into a podiatrist’s office.
‘Tell me what your precise problem is,’ said the specialist.
‘Oh, there is so much. Where do I start?’ said the moth.
‘Take your time,’ the podiatrist said.
‘I work all day in a government office in Kampala. I work really hard. No one could work harder but the fact is that I am sure that my boss, the Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, seems to be totally unaware of how hard I work. All he does is come in and throw piles of paperwork at me about Nile perch, catfish, tilapia, lungfish, eels and sprat. It seems to give him great pleasure to bury me in documents that he doesn’t want to read himself. “Summarise,” is all he says.
At night I cannot get to sleep. I wander from one end of the house to the other, like a soul in torment, unable to relax.
I turn to my third wife and look at her. She seems to be ageing as fast as my first two. Sometimes, sitting down for breakfast with the three of them, I feel like fleeing away to another country. I lost my favourite daughter last year to AIDS. My son Paul seems to have less courage to face the challenges of life than I do. I look at him and see myself in him, a coward. If only I had the courage to take my old Enfield rifle out of the cupboard and end it all. I feel like a mosquito stuck in the mesh covering my window next to the nest of spiders in the corner of the frame.’
‘Moth, my dear, you are really disturbed. If you don’t mind my saying, you ought to go and see Dr Ephrain Kodoki, the Makerere psychiatrist. He is very good. In fact, I think his specialism is this sort of mid-life crisis.’
‘Oh!’ said the moth. ‘Sorry, I thought … .’
‘Tell me,’ the podiatrist said. ‘Why did you come to see me.’
The moth replied, ‘Because the light was on.’”
The class groaned. There were one or two laughs from those worried about their marks. The bell rang. Fran turned to see, briefly, the dark eyes of the Dean’s skull-like head.
BUY this book from Amazon or DIRECT from the publisher — and support the author Robert Gurney
Story 7 in this series is ‘The Englishman Called Hugh’.
….to be continued.
