It was at Elburgon that his father and mother quarrelled. She complained about her triple duties: to her child Nding’uri; to her husband, and to her European landlord. She was expected to work on the European farms; to work on her own piece of land; and to keep the home in unity, health and peace. At the same time she never saw a cent from her produce. Usually her husband would take it and sell it to the same European farmer, their landlord, who fixed his own buying price; and her husband in turn gave her only enough to buy salt. She rebelled: she would not work on the settlers’ farm for nothing and she demanded a say in the sale of her produce.
He beat her in frustration. She took Nding’uri and ran back to Limuru where she begged for cultivation rights from Munira’s father. At first Brother Ezekiel had refused. But looking at her eyes, he had felt a sudden weakness in the flesh and he had allowed her to build a hut, but he made sure she built where he could visit her without being seen. She had refused him, all the same: and thereafter his weakness and her refusal became a kind of bond between them, a shared secret. He feared that she might expose him to the world.
But she was not interested in exposure. She had her son Nding’uri to look after. He was a tall youth who was splendid in his self-confidence. Nothing could ever perturb him and he, throughout the hardships of the Second World War, and through the famine of cassava, had acted as her main support, often laughing away her anxiety and her fears for him. It was he who in fact had suggested a reconciliation with her husband. She had felt ashamed this coming from a son, and she had briefly returned to her husband in Elburgon who had now added a Nandi bride to his others. The reconciliation was good for only one month and the same pattern of quarrels re-emerged. She ran away again but Karega was the product of that brief reunion.
Munira and Karega walked into the shop almost as soon as Wanja and Abdulla had left. They were both rapt in different thoughts about a past they could not understand. Joseph stood ready.
‘It is all right, Joseph. Just two bottles of Tusker,’ said Munira.
‘I don’t drink,’ Karega said. ‘Let me have Fanta, please.’
‘Do you know what Fanta means? Foolish Africans Never Take Alcohol. You see I am an avid reader of advertisements. Occasionally I even try my mind at a few slogans.’
‘The trouble with slogans or any saying without a real foundation is that it can be used for anything. Phrases like Democracy, the Free World, for instance, are used to mean their opposite. It depends of course on who is saying it where, when and to whom. Take your slogan. It could also mean that Fit Africans Never Take Alcohol. We are both right. But we are both wrong because Fanta is simply an American soft drink sold in Ilmorog.’
Munira laughed and thought: he is too serious and he is already beginning to lecture me, probably from a book!
So he drank alone and retreated into his own private thoughts. He had caught up with Karega and he had managed to persuade him to stay for the night. But he did not know how to introduce the subject of their earlier conversation. It was obvious that Karega avoided any reference to it. Munira formed mental pictures of Siriana, the Ironmongers, Fraudsham, Chui, Nding’uri, Mukami: Aah, Mukami – her image was the most alive in his mind: she had been serenely beautiful but with impish eyes, especially when she laughed. She had loved practical jokes. She once placed a drawing-pin on a chair – he had sat on it and jumped up to everybody’s laughter, and he had been very angry. Later she told him that it was meant for her father – she had wanted to see how he would react with his holy-looking face. Munira had laughed. How and where did Karega fit into the picture? This was a case of history repeating itself, and indeed for him at that moment the cliché seemed to acquire new significance. Yet did anything ever repeat itself? He opened the next bottle of Tusker and poured beer into the glass. He watched the foam clear into a thin white bubbly ring at the top. He watched the air-bubbles race up to the top. Before 1952 Africans were not allowed this kind of drink and Munira, as a boy, used to think of those bubbles as sugary sweetness. He could not finish the second bottle. There is a depression, an acid drop in the pit of one’s stomach that no amount of beer can wash away. His evening with Wanja was ruined. He would not be able to walk her home because she was already there. But he still needed a human voice to remove that feeling inside. He bought six bottles of Tusker.
‘Let’s go to Wanja’s place,’ he told Karega.
Again they hardly exchanged more than two words all the way to Wanja’s hut. He knocked at the door and he was grateful when he heard the hinges creak because now there would be more company to absorb Karega’s resentful silence.
‘Karibu, Mwalimu, karibu,’ Wanja called. ‘Oh, you brought another guest. You really know how to bring warmth to my hut.’
‘His name is Karega: I found him waiting for me at the house and we had a little talk.’
‘But don’t talk standing. Sit.’
‘Karibu, Mwalimu,’ said Abdulla. ‘You could have brought Karega to the shop to celebrate. It was your turn to walk Wanja home today.’
‘Abdulla, you surprise me. You mean you were not glad to walk a girl home?’ said Wanja in pretended anger.
‘It is only to make sure that my turn tomorrow is still there,’ Abdulla said, and he laughed.
The hut was well lit by the pressure-lamp placed on a small table near the head-end of the bed. Abdulla was slightly hidden by a shadow from the folded curtain which Wanja normally used to shield the bed from the sitting place. But his face was aglow, his eyes intensely bright. Munira handed Wanja the six Tuskers he had brought and sat on a cushioned armchair near the small table. Karega sat next to Munira, his shadow falling on Munira’s face. Wanja started looking for an opener in a small cupboard by the wall.
‘Forget it,’ said Abdulla.
‘You’ll open them with your teeth?’ she asked.
‘Just bring the beer here.’
He held one bottle firmly on his knee with his left hand: then, holding another in his right hand, he placed the grooves of the tops against one another and opened the first with an explosive plop. He twice repeated the performance with the insouciance of an actor before a captive audience.
‘How do you do that?’ asked Wanja. ‘I have seen it done in bars but I’ve never found out how.’ She filled their glasses while Abdulla tried to demonstrate the act.
‘I do not touch drinks.’
‘Would you like a glass of milk?’
‘It is strange to see a young man who does not drink these days,’ commented Abdulla. ‘You should keep it up. But I fear that in a few weeks I shall find you completely drowned in wine . . . and women.’
‘I hope not to give in.’
‘To what? Women or wine?’ pursued Abdulla.
‘Abdulla, how can you put women and wine together? He’ll choose women and leave wine to you two. Milk?’
‘No. Let me have some water. A glass of water.’
She fetched him water and sat on the bed between Munira and Abdulla.
‘You ought to get a job as a bottle-opener,’ she told Abdulla.
‘Put an advertisement,’ butted in Munira. ‘Experienced bottle-opener seeking a highly paid job.’
‘Munira, did you tell Karega that we are celebrating an addition to your school?’
‘No. But he has just met Joseph. Joseph, who is Abdulla’s younger brother, is starting school on Monday.’
Karega looked puzzled.
‘There is nothing to celebrate,’ Abdulla explained. ‘It is true that he is returning to school. But that is as it should be. We are celebrating new life in Ilmorog, and the beginning of the long-awaited harvest.’
‘How was the harvest? Did it yield much?’ Munira asked.
‘Not much,’ Wanja said. ‘It’ll be a lucky farmer who’ll fill two gunias of beans.’
‘Maybe the maize . . .’ Munira said.
‘That . . . it does not look as if it will be much, though my donkey will be grateful for the dry stalks of maize,’ Abdulla answe
red. ‘Or what do you think Wanja? You are a barmaid farmer.’
But Wanja did not hear the compliment. She was looking at the still serious face of Karega.
‘Karega . . .’ she said aloud. ‘What a funny name!’
‘Ritwa ni mbukio,’ Karega quoted the proverb. ‘Somebody a long time ago asked the question: What’s in a name? And he answered that a rose would still be a rose even by another name.’
Talking as if from a book, again thought Munira. Wanja countered:
‘Oh, then it would not be a rose. It would be that other name, don’t you think? A rose is a rose.’
‘Names are actually funny. My real name is not Abdulla. It is Murira. But I baptized myself Abdulla. Now everybody calls me Abdulla.’
‘You mean, you thought Abdulla was a Christian name?’ Wanja asked.
‘Yes. Yes.’
They all laughed. Even Karega. Abdulla took another bottle to open. Munira said: ‘Let me try: I too might become an assistant bottle-opener.’
‘Oh, Mwalimu,’ she cried in ecstasy. She was really in high spirits with not a trace of the troubled voice and face of yesterday or of the earlier part of the evening. ‘Abdulla has been telling me such impossible stories. Did you know that he actually fought in the forest? He used to go for days and days without food and water: they had trained their bodies to accept little. I am sure I would have died. Abdulla, you were going to tell a story about Dedan – Dedan Kimathi.’
Munira’s stomach tightened a little at the revelation. He always felt this generalized fear about this period of war: he also felt guilty, as if there was something he should have done but didn’t do. It was the guilt of omission: other young men of his time had participated: they had taken sides: this defined them as a people who had gone through the test and either failed or passed. But he had not taken the final test. Just like in Siriana. He looked at Karega who had today brought back that other past. He still held the two bottles. Karega sat up: his body was taut with curiosity. He gazed at Abdulla: he was once again ready to devour the past from one who was then present. Wanja looked at Abdulla: she thought that now he would tell the secret behind his crippled leg. Abdulla cleared his throat. His face changed. He suddenly seemed to have gone to a land hidden from them, a land way back in a past only he could understand. He cleared his throat, a prolonged slow roar. Suddenly a bottle-top flew from Munira’s hand. Wanja and Karega threw up their arms to their faces and in the process somebody must have hit the table on which the lamp stood. It fell down with the sound of broken glass. The light went out. They were plunged in darkness. Abdulla was the first to see the other light: a small flame had caught the folded curtain. Wanja in a voice of terror shouted ‘Fire!’ but by this time Abdulla had sprung up and put out the flames. It all happened so quickly. Munira struck a match. Wanja said: ‘Behind you, Karega, there’s a Nyitira.’ Karega gave the Nyitira to Munira who lit it: but this was a poor substitute for the pressure-lamp. The light was pale and their faces and their shadows on the wall were large and grotesque. Wanja collected the glass and the pressure-lamp and put it aside and then turned to Munira.
‘It is nothing. You will get me another one and also a box of wicks. Abdulla . . . we must do something about the stock in your shop.’
Her voice was shaky and she stopped, cold silence in the hut. The shadows on the wall kept on moving in a grotesque rhythm to the erratic movement of the smoking thin flame from the Nyitira. Wanja poured the drinks. Munira wanted to tell of an advertising slogan about beer so that they could resume their drinking and small irrelevancies, but he changed his mind. The drink remained untouched. Karega hopefully waited for Abdulla to tell the story of Dedan Kimathi. But Abdulla suddenly stood up, excused himself and said it was time to go. He might find Joseph’s leg pulled by a hyena. Karega was disappointed and stared to the ground as if with Abdulla’s departure he had lost interest in the company. Wanja looked at him and something, a small puzzled frown, came to her face and then passed away. She stood up, looked for her shawl which she now draped round her head, letting it fall onto her shoulders. She once again turned to Karega and for a flickering second her eyes were laughing. Karega felt his blood suddenly rush through his veins. But her voice was serious, and genuinely gentle. ‘Please, Mr Karega, keep the house for me for a few minutes.’ Then to Munira and a note of slight impatience crept into her voice: ‘Come, Mwalimu, take me for a walk, just a little walk. I have a knot only you can untie!’
They walked in silence through the yards of the village, through lanes between the various shambas. They caught one or two voices of mothers shouting to the children to ‘hurry up and finish – why did you have to stuff yourself so? – or else you’ll be eaten by hyenas’. Otherwise the ridge was generally quiet except for the dogs of the village which kept on barking. In Munira’s mind buzzed many thoughts: who was Abdulla? Who was Karega? Who was Wanja? What did she want now? He felt guilty because of his clumsiness which had lowered everybody’s spirits. But as they sat down on the grass on Ilmorog hill, his heartbeats drove away unpleasant thoughts, warmth started suffusing his body, as he felt her breathing so powerfully near in the dark. Of all his thoughts the one that came out in words was mundane and sounded odd in the dark.
‘I bought you two kilos of the long-grained rice. But I forgot to bring it along.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said in a quiet distant voice. ‘You can always bring it along tomorrow. And anyway you had a visitor. Who is he?’
‘It was very strange. Some weeks ago I told you about Siriana, and Chui – all that. Today comes this young man whom I once taught in a school in Limuru and he tells me about Siriana and a strike and mentions Chui. Almost a repeat story of my past. But unfortunately he did not finish it.’
And he told her a little about his earlier encounter with Karega. But he omitted all references to Nding’uri and to Mukami. Karega had a knowledge about Munira’s past – how could Munira tell Wanja about the fears awakened in him by Karega’s visit? ‘It was strange his having been to the same school as I had attended and he ending in a similar fate,’ Munira concluded and waited for Wanja’s response.
But she was only half listening. She sat holding her knees together with both hands so that her chin rested on them as she gazed toward Ilmorog plains below. She was contemplating live mental images of places and scenes to which she had once been. Though she tried to hide this to herself she knew that these scenes were indelibly embedded in her deepest memories of pain and loss, past victories and defeats, momentary conquests and humiliations, resolutions of new beginnings that were only false starts to nowhere. She now spoke quietly, to herself it seemed, holding a dialogue with a self that was only one of a myriad selves.
‘You talk of the past coming to visit you . . . There is one picture that always comes to mind. Wherever I go, whatever I do . . . well . . . it follows me. It is a long way back. In 1954 or ’55, anyway the year that we were moved into the villages and others into “lines”. You know that some people in Kabete side did not go exactly into villages but they built on either side of roads close to one another, but we still called them villages. My cousin – but let me first tell you about her. She had married a man who kept on beating her. There was nothing that she could do right. He would always find an excuse to beat her. He accused her of going about with men. If she had money through working on the land, he would take it away from her and he would drink it all and come home to beat her. So one day she just took her clothes and ran away to the city. Later her husband became a white-man’s spear-bearer – you know – Home Guard – and he was notorious for his cruelty and for eating other people’s chickens and choice goats or sheep after accusing them of being Mau Mau . . . Anyway my cousin would come from the city and she glittered in new clothes and earrings. All the men, the ones who had remained, eyed her with desire. Her husband, it is said, trembled and wept before her as he asked for forgiveness. She had with disdain dismissed his several approaches. We, the children, liked her becau
se she would bring us things . . . rice . . . sugar . . . sweets . . . and those were lean years for us all. One Saturday she came home with her usual gifts. Now my aunt – my mother’s true sister – traded in the market. That day she must have been delayed in the market. So my cousin came to our house. We all admired her dress, her white high heels – how we would often follow her in the streets – her everything. She looked very much like the pictures of European women we saw in books. Even her gait and the way she held up her chin as she spoke, had “staili”. It was now dark. My cousin stood and she said that she was going out to the latrine and also to see if her mother had come back from the market. My mother who was strangely quiet looked at her gait and I could tell disapproval in the eyes. All at once we heard a scream. It was – it was – it chilled words – blood – it’s difficult to describe it because it was not like a human cry at all. My father and my mother and us children rushed outside. At the sight a few yards away, my mother screamed, but I couldn’t scream or cry, just urine trickled down my legs. “My sister, my only sister,” cried my mother as she rushed forward toward the burning figure of my aunt. There she stood, outside her burning hut, and she aflame and not uttering a sound at all . . . just . . . just animal silence. Now were other screams and hurrying feet and noises . . . “put out the light . . . put out the light,” were her last words.’
Munira looked about him, a little uneasy. It was as if this was happening now in Ilmorog. He felt the terror in Wanja’s voice, felt the desperation hidden in the very offhand tone she had adopted in telling it.
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