Breaking Point

One, two, three, four…The Man begins his count at the General Post Office when he alights from the number -28 bus. He stops by the glass door of the gray building that houses The Bureau, where he works. He has counted his footsteps countless times before and knows that, give or take a couple of steps, they number a hundred and twenty to the glass door. But that’s only when he cuts across the faded zebra-crossing, adjacent to the wooden stand where a news vendor in a blue dust coat sells newspapers. If The Man were to walk straight up to the building, from the bus stop it would take less than a hundred steps, he estimates. 

Some would consider The Man’s obsession with minor details like counting his footsteps, madness. Who even cares to count their footsteps? What sort of person indulges in such nonsense?  But not so for The Man. For him such trivial details are crucial. Properly-mined and stored, they are a treasure trove. Sounds, scents, faces, names, landmarks, distances; things many consider inconsequential, all mean something to him. They all carry hints that are vital in his line of work. 

Five, six, seven…The Man then counts the stairs that lead down to his office in the basement. He knows the stairs are twenty-six in number. That is if you omit the last two, at the entrance to his office. The place is dank. The paint on the walls has long peeled off. There are no windows to bring in the sunshine, nor the sounds of life outside.  The way the place was built it might as well be a cave. It’s the way it was intended to be.

The Man nods at a dour-faced cleaner-woman who does no more than edge her wet mop to the side to let him to pass. Though he’s never asked her name, he knows she is, Faith Nyiva. That, like him she is an Aquarian. That she hails from the Eastern part of the country; a place called Makueni. He once rummaged through her tote bag and took a peek at her National ID, when she’d stepped out. One must try to get as much information as possible about those around them. You never knew when it could come in handy. 

The Man steps into his closet-size office, pulls out a packet of Sportsman and lights his first cigarette of the day. The smell of tobacco blends with the stench of urine from the single washroom at the far end of the corridor. He settles back at his desk and reflects on his current assignment which is to break a university student already in his custody.  The boy is to appear before the Chief magistrate’s court on Friday to answer to charges of sedition and being a member of an underground movement that has sworn to overthrow the lawfully elected Government. The Man needs to soften the boy, ensure he enters a plea of guilty. It will save the state time and money. 

The phone rings, and it is someone from the Director of Prosecution’s office. “Will the boy be ready for plea on Friday?” a curt voice at the other end asks. 

“He will, sir.”

“No mistakes this time.”

“I’II make sure there are none, Sir.” The Man modulates his tone, hides his irritation. No need to antagonize people higher up. 

“I don’t want him appearing in court all bloodied and bruised. You won’t be there to answer to the magistrate and press.” The voice says and the phone goes dead.

“Pompous bastards,” The Man mutters under his breath. He hates the smooth-talkers from the DP’s office, always ready to take all the credit for his work. Until things back-fire, then they are quick to blame others. If they were half as smart as they make themselves out to be he would not have to squeeze out confessions from suspects before they are hauled off to court. “Bruised and battered, my ass!” He mimics and lights another cigarette. Do the idiots have any idea how difficult it is to break a suspect in under a week without leaving visible scars? He has a good mind to dispatch the boy, unbroken, so that the DP ends up with egg in his face. That would teach the bastards a lesson.

Eyes wide with terror, the boy with short cropped hair and pressed flat against his head, cringes in a corner of the cell as The Man enters. As though hit by an invincible-barrier, The Man himself stops in his tracks. He shuts his eyes tight, fights hard to block an image that never seems to go away. An image of his own father advancing at him with a thick leather belt, as he cringes in a corner of his bedroom. He shakes his head to clear the image and at first it lingers. He grits his teeth and shuts his eyes, hard and this time shakes it off. With trembling-hands he reaches for a cigarette, strikes a match, only succeeding to light it on his third attempt.

“Smoke?” He extends the boy a cigarette.

 The boy shoots up and reaches out, but The Man is quicker. He crushes the cigarette under his heel, and lets out a throaty laugh. “You want one you’ll have to tell me what I want to know.” 

 The boy sinks back to the floor, averts his eyes. 

“I’m not sure if you know this other boy?” The Man pulls out a photograph from his pocket and throws it at the boy, who scrambles for it. “That is what happens to enemies of the state.” He snarls at the boy, whose eyes are glued to the photo. 

The boy’s eyes are wide with terror. An involuntary gasp escapes his lips. His shoulders slouch. “No! No!” His scream is anguished. He wraps his hands over his head and begins to shiver. Tears roll down his cheeks. He slaps his palms against his thighs over and over again.

The Man settles at his desk. From his drawer he pulls out an extra copy of the photo he showed the boy and peers at it. Were it not that he is privy to how it had been doctored, he’d be fooled just like the boy. All it had taken Ole Kenta; the makeup genius, was the cooperation of the colleague of the boy. Upon the promise of freedom, he had been more than willing to strip to the waist to allow Ole Kenta work on his face with make-up. In no time he’d looked as dead as a corpse in a morgue. Once the official police photographer had taken snaps of him, he’d been allowed to clean up and go home, with a warning to keep out of trouble. That was the photo The Man had shown the boy in the cell. At times one needed to let the small fish go, in order to net the big one. 

     “We’ll be collecting the boy at two in the afternoon.” Someone again from the DP’s office was on the line. 

“Yes Sir. He is as good as new,” The Man assured. 

 “And ready to plead guilty, I suppose?” 

“Affirmative sir. He is ready to admit to anything.”

“Good.”

The Man is convinced, what he does at The Bureau is a science. He believes he has mastered the ability to determine the breaking point of any man. Through observation and with a little information on their socialization he can map out the best interrogation method bound to produce the desired results. Some situations require physical-violence and others, psychological. A good interrogator should be able to balance the two.

The Man has learnt that it is easier to break the youth. That the thunder and fire in them is superficial. And their physical fitness does not necessarily translate to mental strength. And that once the electric cathodes make contact, they are prone to screaming out names, dates, venues, implicating everyone.

 On the other hand, the older men, posed the greatest challenge. Those deluded academicians wearing tweed coats and thick glasses were hard- nuts-to-crack. They held out longer. They hung on to abstracts like principles and conscience. And It was easy for an overzealous interrogator to push them over the edge, end their sorry lives, generating bad press. 

The thing that amused, The Man the most was how his subjects often swore to the truth. 

Which truth?

What truth? 

Who was even interested in the truth? 

Why couldn’t they understand that all truth was within the purview of the state. And that it was the state that determined, what was true. And that the truth was malleable and always changing. Today’s truth would not be the truth, tomorrow, depending on whom it served. The Man pulls out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, lights up and begins to fill the requisite blue forms that will accompany his subject. 

The Man begins to have disturbing dreams. He dreams he is an eagle, swooping down to bury his sharp talons into the arched backs of scurrying rodents. Some nights, in his dream, he is a sea hawk, swooshing down at shoals of fish, his wings flapping – tapa, tapa, tapa, before he rises into the blue sky, a silver fish quivering in his beak. 

He dismisses the dreams as just flights of fantasy, far removed from reality. But what manner of dreams are these? Is there a meaning in there, a message perhaps? Something to do with his work. The Man prays the dreams are temporary and will cease. But they persist and continue to paint his sleep with vivid images of rolling hills, green forest-canopy, rolling silver-waves, sky-blue-seas, fleeing-prey, screams, blood. 

Then one night, The Man’s dreams invert, into a nightmare. While earlier he was flying and his victims fleeing, now he is fleeing, with his victims hot in pursuit. His feet pound hard against the earth, as their wings flap above him. There is glee on their faces, fear and apprehension on his. He awakens to the sound of his own screams. His hands tremble. His lips quiver. His face glistens with sweat. 

On a night when he has a particularly bad nightmare, his wife, Rachel starts awake, peers into his frightened eyes. She draws him close, tries to console him, but he pushes her away. He tries to talk, but the words seem trapped in some inaccessible, distant part of his throat. For days after that, he is hit by a high fever, stays away from work, and will not touch or even talk to Rachel.

For over a month now the nightmares have not ceased. If anything, they have increased in frequency and intensity. In the place of a solitary eagle or hawk, The Man now has to contend with multiple birds of prey, pursuing him. They soar above his fleeing form. They multiply to ten. Then twenty. Thirty. They keep multiplying until the sky is one big-black-cloud of flapping-wings. Try as he does to flee from them, they are never far behind. It is only when their talons dig into his back that he awakens, with his body drenched in sweat.

Unable to cope, Rachel packs her stuff and moves in with her mother.

One afternoon, The Man slips out of his office and walks to the not-too-distant, Holy Family Basilica. He still remembers compulsory mass in the tiny chapel behind the senior dormitory at St Augustine Secondary school, which he attended. He remembers Father Gillian swinging a golden thurible. He remembers the scent of incense wafting through the crowded space. How can he possibly forget the short, Irish-Priest, his arms half raised as he’d intoned the eucharistic prayer, in his baritone voice?  He remembers the breaking of bread. The raised chalice. The confessional he attended, more out of curiosity than anything else.  The Man fights to shut out those memories and genuflects in the dim interior of the basilica’s confessional box. His heart races. His hands tremble. He is as contrite as only a condemned man can be. 

“Forgive me Father for I have sinned,” uncertain whether he is doing it correctly, he whispers. “It is over twenty years since my last confession,” his words are drowned in tears. He hears the rustle of cloth and the clearing of a throat from behind the latticed opening, but does not wait to hear the words that might follow. A voice in his head harries him out, and he is running between the pews of the empty cathedral. He bursts out into the sun-drenched afternoon and onto the busy street, where he sits on the sidewalk, shuts his eyes and is soon wading through a sea of blood, broken-limbs, tormented-souls, broken-men, clothed in unpopular convictions. Men with the blank-look of lunacy in their eyes. The sound of despair in their voices. All hope dead. 

The Man falls into a trance, and when he awakens, his eyes dart about the gathering dusk. He rises to his feet and starts to walk as the voices in his head sound out a beat to the rhythm of his footfall – one, two, three, one, two three…he marches headlong into a skinny woman, whose eyes are the color of curd, her lips crimson, and the stench of death in her breath.  

“What’s the hurry? Why hasten towards the blazing gates of hell?” the skinny woman shovels words from the dark caverns of her rotting mouth and hurls them at The Man.

He shuts his eyes to keep the images away, clamps his sweaty palms against his ears to shut the sounds out. But alas, the moaning, the groaning, the pleas for mercy by men whose faces are contorted in pain, their eyes sunken with fear, stay with him.

Left, right, left, right… His arms swing. His feet stomp hard against the grey, concrete-sidewalk. Left, right, he floats above his marching form. Above his stomping feet, away from his flailing arms. Separate. Apart. He sees his coat on the pavement. His shirt, shoes and trousers too. He looks down at his naked form and it does not bother him anymore. He is no longer subject to the dictates of right or wrong, good or bad. He is at one with the voices in his head. He is at one with the images in his mind. He is the image. He is the voice. 

The Man begins to shiver, slightly at first as a cold wind caresses his naked body. Then uncontrollably as he sheds off all remaining vestiges of reality. 

The Man is free at last. 

As free as he will ever be.

There is a tall, bald man who sits by a mound of garbage at the intersection of Tom Mboya Street and Luthuli Avenue. All day he mumbles to himself and has a blank look in his eyes. His graying beard is matted and save for a dirty tiny strip of cloth around his waist, he is all but naked. Tales abound about how he ended up there. Some say he was a student at the University of Nairobi; a victim of the dark days of an intolerant regime. Others swear he was part of the edifice that marked its intolerance and that he was the cause of much suffering. But who can tell? In these confused times, when truth and falsity walk hand in hand, side by side, one feeding on the other, who can tell them apart? Who can tell, the victim from the perpetrator? Who can tell the breaking point of either?  

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