The Last King of Scotland (1998) by Giles Foden

Author:Giles Foden
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 1998-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

22

It was about a week after the boat trip that Wasswa called me at the hospital. Choosing a reverse, vaccinatory way of trying to cheer myself up after the Marina disaster, I’d taken a long lunch to visit the Kasubi tombs. These were the long, dark grass huts in which the Kabakas, the Baganda kings, were laid to rest. An official called ‘Keeper of the King’s Umbilical Cord’ kept watch there. According to legend, the cord was the living king’s twin and any harm done to it would affect him physically. Like voodoo, or sympathetic medicine. But at that time, as I have explained, the king was dead, and his young son living in exile in England. The new king, I suppose, if you can be king without a land.

Wasswa was frantic when he got hold of me, having tried to reach me for the last two hours. “Come quick,” he said, “the President is sick. He is at Nakasero.”

It was stormy that day, too, and busy. Though it was about three o’clock, there were still patients huddled in little groups outside the hospital. Several of them tugged at my clothes as I ran to the van with my emergency bag in my hand.

As I drove, I passed four women walking along the tarmac, shawls pulled over their heads as a pointless protection from the heavy rain. Suddenly there was a screech as a VW Combi overtook me and skidded to a halt in front of the four women. I passed the Combi in turn, just in time to catch a glimpse of the sliding door opening at the side and one of the women being pulled in. It was like something from a Punch and Judy show, but very disturbing all the same. I didn’t see it properly, as it was raining so hard, and in trying to look in the mirror I nearly hit something – there were rocks and mud in the ruined road.

So I was pretty shaken up by the time I reached Nakasero. One of the guards led me over to the door of the Lodge, and I rushed up the steps to where Wasswa was waiting.

“He is inside, he has a pain in his stomach,” he said.

Wasswa led me upstairs, through a maze-like series of rooms. We finally came to the master bedroom, which contained a large four-poster bed. Through the pink gauze of the bed curtain, I could see a hunchback mound of sheets and quilts, suffused with a mildly genital light. I don’t know why I wrote that – did I just mean gentle? – but it seems right somehow, because that was the colour, and it was mild. And all around hung an animal smell: fox’s earth, badger’s sett – something, in any case, rank and bolt-holeish.

On one side of the bed was a vast wall of books: smart, red-hide bindings, and the letters in gold – Proceedings of the Law Society of Uganda, followed by a roman numeral. On the

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