Petals of Blood

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  ‘Mukami!’

  ‘Yes . . . just before she died.’

  ‘Mukami . . . my sister . . . did you . . . but how could she . . . ?’

  ‘Your father I believe had told her.’

  I tried to figure out all this: what had this stranger to do with my father and Mukami and Nding’uri’s death of years before? I wanted to know more – to know where or how Karega came into all this . . . but how could I ask a stranger, and a boy at that, about a mystery involving my own family?

  It was he who changed the subject and talked as if the revelations were incidental to his visit.

  ‘But that is not why I came . . .’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘I have come to you because you taught me at Manguo. Don’t you remember?’

  An urgent insistence had crept into his voice. But how could I remember? So many people had worked on my father’s farm and lived there as ahoi. So many pupils had passed through the schools where I had previously taught. A few I could maybe remember. But this young man before me? Ah! who was I to keep a storehouse for all the eyes I had taught? I turned the silhouette in my mind, this way, that way. I looked at Karega. His face was pained, young, eager, and suddenly from the mist his outline, as he was seven or nine years back, rose before me. He was my pupil at Manguo and was one of the first to get a place in Siriana. This was considered a great honour to the school and the region. Although he knew that I was not the headmaster, he had come to me with papers demanding the signature of a responsible elder who could testify to the candidate’s character, etc. Who was I to grade people’s morality? But for him I suppose it must have been a way of showing comradeship: I who had been there before him had to be a witness of his departure to higher realms. I put my name to the documents and shrugged off the nagging thought that if they ever checked records my name would work against him. And now, many years after, he was back, maybe to tell me of a new departure for even higher realms. Indeed this was the real compensation in teaching: occasionally you found one who later had gone beyond your wildest dreams, beyond your fondest hope, such a one returned to thank you and you were glad. I was suddenly in a light euphoric mood. I forgot my fatigue and Wanja. I put on one side thoughts about Mukami and my father and all that. I seemed to like him better, indeed I felt honoured by a visit from a university scholar.

  ‘And you successfully smashed your way through Siriana? Did you go to Makerere or Nairobi? How is life at the university? You don’t know how lucky you are: Uhuru has really increased chances for us black people. How many universities now? Three. In our time we only counted that number of high schools. So which university? If I went to university I would like to study law or medicine: nothing else for me – just law and medicine – an advocate or a doctor. You know you can make a lot of money in those professions – but a teacher? We only work for God. I suppose you roamed the Big City looking for vacational employment? Pocket money . . . I know how it is. At Siriana my father used to give me two shillings. What do you study?’

  I had so enthused on his success that I interpreted his fidgeting as a sign of modesty. He fingered his cup and then put it on the bench.

  ‘The point is – well, I have not been to anybody’s university – well – except maybe the university of the streets. I was expelled from Siriana.’

  ‘Expelled?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From school – Siriana?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why?’

  He was quiet, absorbed in himself, as if seeking some nervous energy for the leap.

  ‘It is a long story. You heard about the strike?’

  ‘Strike? Which one – I mean where?’

  ‘It was last year, toward the end. There were editorials on it in the newspapers – all the dailies.’

  I was never really a great one for reading newspapers or for listening to the radio. Whenever I bought a newspaper I just glanced at the headlines: I never read editorial comments or any other features or news stories, especially of a political nature, only advertisements and court stories, especially on murder. Those I would read avidly, sometimes over and over again. Now that he had said it I thought that I had heard something about a strike in Siriana, but in my mind it had got mixed up with the past I would rather forget and I never followed up the matter. I told him:

  ‘I hardly ever read newspapers. I have lived in a world to myself. I did hear something about a strike over food or something.’

  ‘They always attribute every students’ grievance to food,’ he said rather bitterly. ‘And the newspapers never wrote anything about our case: only editorials blaming us – you know, the usual homilies: so much taxpayers’ money spent, and all they care about is their stomachs! It comforts them in their blindness. But no doubt you read about Fraudsham?’

  ‘Fraudsham, Cambridge Fraudsham?’

  ‘Yes. You know he went away?’

  Gone! Cambridge Fraudsham gone? How? I could hardly believe this: Fraudsham was Siriana and Siriana was Fraudsham. I cursed my lack of interest in newspapers. I suppose if he had been murdered or something – but Fraudsham! My obvious ignorance was to Karega like cold water thrown over a guest on his entering a house. His excited enthusiasm subsided even as my curiosity and excitement rose. Another strike involving Fraudsham, ending in his defeat and final departure!

  I have since that night read Karega’s own incredulous reaction to the man’s departure. His words carried poetry and beauty and sadness and momentary triumph:

  I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that

  our united strength, untried before,

  could move mountains where the prayers of

  yesterday had failed. Still, he was not there:

  he was not there any more at the blowing

  of the horn and the raising of the flag—

  our flag. It is of three colours,

  rightly sang the poet: Green is our

  land; Black is black people; and

  Red is our blood.

  But at that moment, sitting in the midst of the neutral gloom of my house, I just felt strange inside: here I was, embers of curiosity stoked to a glowing intensity by his revelations, yet I was unable to ask questions. It was Karega who now unleashed question after question, hardly giving me breathing-time to answer or to react: what years had I been in Siriana? I told him. Did I really know Cambridge Fraudsham? Yes, a little. Well, I must have known Chui – Shakespeare or Joe Louis. I stood up despite myself. What? Chui? I had that eerie feeling of a dead past suddenly being resurrected before me who had been totally unprepared for the second coming. I knew at the same time that I had irretrievably let Karega down, I who must appear an impostor, a cheat, before his interrogating eyes. He too was now on his feet. I tried but could not make him resume his seat. So I stood at the door and watched him go. The sun about to set left shadows of grass and bush long on the ground. What else had he wanted to find out?

  I was once again surprised at the depth of my concern. Had I not done away with Fraudshams, Chuis, Sirianas, strikes and politics, the whole lot, years ago? Now and then one occasionally would hear of Siriana’s brilliant success at state examinations under its eccentric headmaster, but I could never really become involved in the glory of a school which had rejected me. Why should it follow me to Ilmorog? I felt a sudden nostalgia for that time, not so long ago, when my school and Abdulla’s place were my whole life in Ilmorog.

  I thought I should make myself another cup of tea before walking over to Abdulla’s for the celebration. Tea was a good stimulant, Reverend Hallowes Ironmonger used to say, and he always thought of heaven as a place where there would be an unlimited quantity of tea and sausages. There! I was drifting back to the same past. It had started with Wanja and this last month my life had been lived in broken cups of memory between this ghost of a school, the backyard of Abdulla’s shop and Wanja’s hearth.

  No, I must not lose my hold on the present. My earlier trip to Ruwa-ini for instance. Would Mzigo eve
r make it to Ilmorog? I didn’t care now if he came or not, though only recently I had feared he might suddenly turn up and, finding no pupils, or seeing that they were so few or that each class took only half the day, he would transfer me back to places and people I had left behind, denying me the challenge of nation-building in remote Ilmorog, my new-found kingdom.

  Try as I might, I could not dismiss from my mind that inconsequential visit by a former pupil. The visit had left too many questions unanswered: what really was the secret purpose of the visit? What could have been behind the strike at Siriana? Behind Fraudsham’s departure and Chui’s equally sudden return? A cold fear of Karega’s visit settled uncomfortably in my belly. But what was it that scared me? That I would have to face something I had forever left behind? Or was I simply afraid of being drawn into somebody else’s life and inner struggles, an unwilling witness of another’s wrestling with God? . . . and Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob he touched the hollow of his thigh, and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him and then he said I will not let you go unless you bless me . . . Let me go, let me go, I cried to myself: why awaken voices from the past?

  I closed the door and went out. I would now go over to Abdulla’s place. As if it read my mind, Abdulla’s donkey howled through the air, and it somehow startled me. I stopped. Where would Karega get a matatu at this hour? On the impulse, I went back to the house, took my bicycle from against the wall and raced after him. He might as well shelter here for the night. I would find out more about him: Siriana, Mukami, everything. But I felt what I had felt on my first encounter with Wanja, that this was another threat to my self-imposed peace in this land.

  4 ~ Wanja, too, twelve years later, recovering in the New Ilmorog Hospital, tried to recall this period: the night of her first narrative and her anxious vigil the following day loomed large in her troubled mind.

  The idea of celebrating Joseph’s return to school; the beginning of the harvest; her own expectation, had all been her own created drama. Now, in hospital, she recollected the details of that day, long ago.

  She had woken up early and accompanied her grandmother to the shamba. It was always good to pull out beans in the morning before the sun became too hot. On this occasion they had additional shade from the maize plants which seemed too slow in maturing and ripening. There were not many bean plants to pull out and to thrash and by late the same morning they had finished winnowing. The beans could hardly fill up a sisal sack.

  ‘What a harvest!’ Nyakinyua exclaimed. ‘Our soil seems tired. It did not receive enough water to quench its thirst. Long ago land the size of this piece could yield eight to ten containers each the size of this sack here.’

  ‘Maybe the maize will yield more,’ Wanja ventured to say.

  ‘These strings!’ Nyakinyua said deprecatingly, and did not add another word.

  They took home their harvest. Nyakinyua walked across to other fields to see if her neighbours were faring any better.

  Wanja went to Abdulla’s shop. It was in the afternoon. She knew that no customers would have arrived yet. But she wanted to start her work as a barmaid in Ilmorog and also to kill time, so anxious she was for the celebration before the moonrise at midnight.

  Throughout the afternoon Wanja arranged and rearranged things and parcels on the shelves. It was a busy afternoon with the three of them – Abdulla, Joseph and Wanja – somehow finding something to do. Joseph had not started school: it was closed for the day because of Munira’s absence in Ruwa-ini. It was a thorough cleaning-up operation. Wanja demanded that Abdulla repair a few of the shelves and also the table in one of the back rooms in the shop that served as the bar. Abdulla said that he himself would do that some day soon. Wanja and Joseph swept the floor of the bar-room and splashed water on the dust. Outside the building she had put up a signboard: SHOP + BAR CLOSED THIS AFTERNOON – STOCKTAKING. But there was very little stock to take and customers, especially in an afternoon, were few and far between. Nevertheless Abdulla was pleased with Wanja’s innovations and especially the professional seriousness with which she did her job. She was in command of the situation and she was so involved in dusting up here and there, and writing up things in an exercise book, that she forgot the fatigue of the morning bean harvest. Abdulla could only marvel: so his shop and bar could be something after all.

  Toward the end of the afternoon she removed the stocktaking sign and put up another one: SHOP NOW OPEN. They sat behind the counter and waited for customers. But nobody came. She was up again. She put up another sign. PERMANENT CLOSING DOWN SALE and on an impulse drew sketches of a shop and people running toward it in a hurry.

  A few children came to buy sweets. They laughed and commented on the little sketches of the men. They tried to spell out the words on the notice-board and recognizing the word close and sale ran to their parents to say that Abdulla’s shop was closing and he was giving away things. Within a few hours the place was full of customers who soon found out the mistake of the children. But they liked the new-look shop and a few remained to gossip and sip beer. Wanja took out chairs for them so they could sit outside on the verandah and while away the time drinking and talking about the harvest.

  But even these later went away and Wanja sat patiently behind the counter waiting for a new lot. Her mind started wandering. Tonight the BIG moon would come out: tonight was the day for which she had been waiting since she came to Ilmorog and she hoped that nothing would go wrong. Celebration of Joseph’s impending return to school was only part of her scheme – a coincidence, although it was one with which she was genuinely pleased. Suppose Munira did not come – but he would, he must. She was somehow sure of her power over men: she knew how they could be very weak before her body. Sometimes she was afraid of this power and she often had wanted to run away from bar kingdoms. But she was not really fit for much else and besides, she thought with a shuddering pain of recognition, she had come to enjoy the elation at seeing a trick – a smile, a certain look, maybe even raising one’s brow, or a gesture like carelessly brushing against a customer – turn a man into a captive and a sighing fool. Still in her sober moments of reflection and self-appraisal, she had longed for peace and harmony within: for those titillating minutes of instant victory and glory often left behind an emptiness, a void, that could only be filled by yet more palliatives of instant conquest. Struggling in the depths of such a void and emptiness, she would then suddenly become aware that in the long run it was men who triumphed and walked over her body, buying insurance against deep involvement with money and guilty smiles or in exaggerated fits of jealousy. She would often seek somebody in whom she could be involved, somebody for whom she could care and be proud to carry his child. For that reason she had somehow avoided direct trading, and that was why she had run away from her cousin who had wanted her straight in the market. No, she preferred friendship, however temporary, she liked and enjoyed the illusion of being wooed and fought over, and being bought a dress or something without her demanding it as a bargain. She liked it best at the counter. There, sitting on a high stool away from the hustle and bustle, she could study people so that soon she became a good judge of men’s faces. She could tell the sympathetic, the sensitive, the rough, the cruel and the intelligent – those whose conversation and words gave her especial pleasure. But she had come to find out that behind most faces was deep loneliness, uncertainty and anxiety and this would often make her sad or want to cry. Otherwise she did not often brood and she enjoyed involvement in her work so that she was much sought by employers. She liked dancing, playing records, memorizing the words of the latest records: on one or two occasions she tried composing but no tune would come. She always wanted to do something, she did not know what it was, but she felt she had the power to do it. When live music was being played – a guitar or a flute – she thought she could feel this power in her, this power to do – what? She did not know. The music would
often take the form of colours – bold colours in motion – and she would mix them up into different patterns with eyes and faces of people – but only as long as the music lasted. She wandered from place to place in search of it or for a man who would show her it. And then she thought she knew. A child. Yes. A child. That is what her body really cried for. She had learnt to take precautions because of her first experience. But now she abandoned all preventives and waited. For a year or so she tried. The more she failed to see a sign the more it became a need, until in the end she could not bear the torture and came to seek advice from her grandmother. Nyakinyua had taken her to Mwathi wa Mugo and it was he who – or rather his voice – who had suggested the night, the new moon. But she did not say anything about her first pregnancy.

  No other customers came for the evening. She started to fret. Even Munira had refused to come. Despite his promise. It pained her. Something was wrong with today. Something was wrong. Perhaps even the moon wouldn’t come. Perhaps – and who was Mwathi after all? A voice! Just a voice from behind a wall. What superstition!

  ‘Abdulla – please – I want to go home,’ she suddenly told Abdulla in the middle of a drink.

  ‘I don’t know why Munira hasn’t come. Perhaps he was delayed at Ruwa-ini. But it is still early and he may yet come . . .’

  ‘All the same, I must go,’ she said, and Abdulla was surprised at her many changes of mood. But he was pleased with her work and the look of the shop.

  ‘I will walk with you part of the way.’

  ‘All the way,’ she said, suddenly laughing. ‘What a celebration! Joseph didn’t start school today, the harvest of beans was nothing; Munira didn’t come; I haven’t sold much beer.’ She added pensively: ‘Will the moon really show in the sky?’

  Karega’s father and his two wives had left Limuru and moved into the Rift Valley in the ’20s. They had lived as squatters on different European farms providing free labour in return for some grazing and cultivation rights on the settlers’ lands. They would be given a piece of land in the bush: they would clear it and after a year they would be driven off and shown other virgin lands to clear for the European landlord. Thus they had moved from one landlord to the next until they ended in Elburgon. By this time their goats were depleted either through death, or fines, through forced sales ‘to prevent the passing on of tick and other diseases’ and they turned solely to working full-time on settlers’ farms for wages.