Petals of Blood

by Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong'o

  ‘A whole month, and I did not know. I heard about it only the other day and that from a mere stranger!’

  And she explained how an acquaintance had asked after Wanja’s health, whether she had recovered from the fire. And Wanja’s mother had felt very weak at the knees and she was only able to stand and walk because of her faith in the mercy and the infinite justice of Christ.

  For the next few weeks they just talked, softly, treading toward the past, but never quite bringing it into the open. The only thing they discussed at length was their refusal to go to Tea. Wanja was thinking: maybe nobody could really escape his fate. Maybe life was a series of false starts, which, once discovered, called for more renewed efforts at yet another beginning. Suddenly she could no longer keep her fears and hopes from the elder woman:

  ‘I think . . . I am . . . I think I am with child. No, I am sure of it, mother.’

  Her mother was silent for a few seconds.

  ‘Whose . . . whose child?’

  Wanja got a piece of charcoal and a piece of cardboard. For one hour or so she remained completely absorbed in her sketching. And suddenly she felt lifted out of her own self, she felt waves of emotion she had never before experienced. The figure began to take shape on the board. It was a combination of the sculpture she once saw at the lawyer’s place in Nairobi and images of Kimathi in his moments of triumph and laughter and sorrow and terror – but without one limb. When it was over, she felt a tremendous calm, a kind of inner assurance of the possibilities of a new kind of power. She handed the picture to her mother.

  ‘Who . . . who is this . . . with . . . with so much pain and suffering on his face? And why is he laughing at the same time?’

  3 ~ Abdulla and Joseph sat outside their hovel in the New Jerusalem, talking. Joseph was now a tall youth in a neat uniform of khaki shirt and shorts. He held Sembene Ousmane’s novel, God’s Bits of Wood, in his hands but he was not reading much. The sun was brilliantly warm over Ilmorog but it also made the smell of urine and rotting garbage waft through the air to where they sat. But they were used to the smells. Joseph was saying that he was confident of passing his exams. He would have liked to go to another school for his Higher School Certificate but this was not possible because he had not applied to move. Abdulla’s mind was elsewhere. He was glad he had saved Wanja. But he still did not know what to make of the experience. So Munira was capable of such an act? He did not know whether to admire or to be angry with him: to loathe his sneaking cowardice or to praise his courage. After all, he had carried out what he, Abdulla, had contemplated doing without ever bringing himself to do it. Joseph was still chattering:

  ‘It’s very strange,’ he said. ‘It’s very strange that Chui was killed at the time he was killed.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Abdulla perfunctorily. But he was jolted by Joseph’s reply.

  ‘Because the students were planning another strike.’

  ‘Another strike? Why?’

  ‘Chui ran the school from golf clubs and the board-rooms of the various companies of which he was a director, or else from his numerous wheatfields in the Rift Valley. The junior staff – the workers on the school compound – were going to join us. And one or two teachers were sympathetic. They too had grievances, about pay and conditions of work and Chui’s neglect . . . This time we were going to demand that the school should be run by a committee of students, staff and workers . . . But even now we are determined to put to an end the whole prefect system . . . And that all our studies should be related to the liberation of our people . . .’

  Abdulla lost interest in Joseph’s catalogue of ills at Siriana. He was reviewing his own life. He recalled his own childhood at Kinyogori, remembered the many elders, men and women who used to come and talk long into the night. Ngang’a wa Riunge. Johanna Kiraka. Naftali Michuki. Ziporah Ndiri. True patriots of Kenya. They would talk and whisper long into the night, reviewing the history of Limuru, denouncing those who had sold out to the white foreign interests like Luka, but praising those who had stood up and fought against settler encroachment. They talked about how in years to come all the land in the area would be returned to all the mbari ya Limuru, the children of the soil. KCA. KAU. They talked about all this and they would end up singing songs of hope and songs of struggle. How Abdulla had loved those songs. How they had moved him to heights of glory to come! He saw Nding’uri, he reviewed his own narrow escape, his flight to the forest, his arrest and detention, his return home to loss and to a kind of gain. And suddenly Abdulla felt he should tell Joseph the truth about his past. He felt guilty when he remembered how he used to curse at Joseph, taking out his frustrations on the little one, and the little one bearing it, thinking that maybe it came from his returned brother. It was strange how Joseph had never asked him about ‘their’ parents and, except for his delirium during the journey to the city, never referred to his childhood. Maybe he knew the truth. Maybe . . .

  ‘Joseph,’ Abdulla suddenly said, as if he had not heard about the strike in Siriana. ‘If I have treated you wrong in the past, forgive me.’

  ‘Why? There’s nothing to forgive,’ Joseph replied, struck by Abdulla’s sudden change of subject and tone. ‘I am very grateful for what you have done for me. And also Munira and Wanja and Karega. When I grow up and finish school and university I want to be like you: I would like to feel proud that I had done something for our people. You fought for the political independence of this country: I would like to contribute to the liberation of the people of this country. I have been reading a lot about Mau Mau: I hope that one day we shall make Karuna-ini, where Kimathi was born, and Othaya, where J. M. was born, national shrines. And build a theatre in memory of Kimathi, because as a teacher he organized the Gichamu Theatre Movement in Tetu . . . I have been reading a lot about what the workers and peasants of other lands have done in history. I have read about the people’s revolutions in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Guinea, Mozambique . . . Oh yes, and the works of Lenin and Mao . . .’

  He was talking like Karega, Abdulla thought, but he did not say anything. Maybe . . . maybe, he thought, history was a dance in a huge arena of God. You played your part, whatever your chosen part, and then you left the arena, swept aside by the waves of a new step, a new movement in the dance. Other dancers, younger, brighter, more inventive came and played with even greater skill, with more complicated footwork, before they too were swept aside by yet a greater tide in the movement they had helped to create, and other dancers were thrown up to carry the dance to even newer heights and possibilities undreamt of by an earlier generation. Let it be . . . Let it be . . . His time was over. He was fated by the present circumstances to remain a petty fruit-seller on the verge of ruin. But he was glad that he had saved a life when he was on a mission of taking one, and he would be happy to know that Wanja was happy and that sometimes she remembered him.

  4 ~ Just before the trial, Munira’s father and mother and his wife, accompanied by Rev. Jerrod, came to see him. They all found it difficult to hit on an appropriate subject of conversation. Munira looked at his tall father who, despite having traversed Kenya’s colonial history – he was more than 75 years old – was still very strong and healthy. What did he really think of this world? He who had seen the pre-colonial, feudal clan-heads and houses decline and fall; who had witnessed the coming of missionaries; of the railway; the first and second war; the Mau-Mau upheavals; the post-Independence trials – the murders of Pinto, Mboya, Kungu Karumba, J. M., the detention of Shikuku, Seroney, oathings to protect properties – all this: what did he think of it? Munira inquired about his brothers and his sisters and it was as if they were not blood relations at all, so remote and removed they seemed to be from the present circumstances:

  ‘And where are the children?’ he asked. They looked embarrassed. Munira frowned in anger. He snorted: ‘You don’t want them to see their father, a failure, eeh?’ And suddenly his mother broke down.

  ‘Why did you do it? How could you do such a thing?’
she asked.

  She had broken the taboo of silence on the subject. Rev. Jerrod chimed in:

  ‘And to know you were here all the time and I didn’t . . . I might have helped.’

  Munira more than ever before was struck by the hypocritical stances around him. He recalled the forthrightness of Inspector Godfrey, who at least was clear as to what laws he was serving, and he felt kindly toward the detective and his eccentric ways of investigating crimes.

  ‘Return to the path . . . turn to the Light . . .’ Munira intoned, standing above them, suddenly filled with pity and anger at the same time. The others looked at one another, except Waweru, who stood apart and seemed far away in his own past.

  ‘You, my father—’ Munira called with authority.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘One question, only one question I want to ask you. Do you remember that in 1952 you refused to take the Mau Mau oath for African Land and Freedom?’

  ‘What has that got to do with your—’ and Waweru pulled himself up short, wondering about the new Temptations of Satan.

  ‘And yet in 196—, after Independence, you took an oath to divide the Kenya people and to protect the wealth in the hands of only a few. What was the difference? Was an oath not an oath? Kneel down, old man, and ask the forgiveness of Christ. In heaven, in the eyes of God, there are no poor, or rich, this or that tribe, all who have repented are equal in His eyes. You too, Reverend—’

  ‘What has got into his head?’ his mother cried out again, frightened.

  ‘You remember that once in Blue Hills you received some people from Ilmorog—’

  ‘I can’t quite, eeh, remember—’ he said, wondering what was to follow.

  ‘A cripple among them? Drought?’

  ‘Yes . . . aah . . . yes.’

  ‘I was one of them: and you sent us away thirsty and hungry.’

  ‘I didn’t know . . . If I had known . . . but . . .’

  Munira coughed once: he cleared his throat and then dramatically pointed a finger at them:

  ‘The Law . . . Did you obey the Law of the one God? . . . Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. Then they also will answer, Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee? Then will he answer them: Truly I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me. And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

  They went away weeping for him. At the Ilmorog Anglican Church they knelt down and all of them said prayers for Munira.

  ‘It is these revivalist cults that claim to speak in tongues and to work miracles. Going too far . . . They must be banned . . .’ said Rev. Jerrod, sadly.

  ‘Yes . . .’ agreed Munira’s father. But he was thinking about Karega and Mariamu and how it was the woman who had, through her sons, hit twice at him. Maybe . . . it was his sin of attempted adultery . . . weaknesses of the flesh . . . But how could this be, seeing that he had not quite . . . and in any case he had repented? Then he recalled a recent coincidence. Kajohi, who had sold him all of the Kagunda Mbari land in the 1920s and disappeared into the Rift Valley, had now come back, an old man half blind, to ask for assistance. Mr Ezekiel Waweru had, through his contacts and friends, found him a place at an almshouse run by the church in the city . . . God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform, Ezekiel muttered. He would know now how to write his will . . . how could he then question God’s wisdom?

  5 ~ Karega received the news and his face did not move. But despite attempts to control and contain himself, a teardrop flowed down his left cheek. He watched the drop fall to the cement floor. He was weak in body because of the early beatings, the electric shocks and the mental harassment. These, he could bear. But to hear that his mother was dead – dead! That he would never see her again . . . that he had never really done anything for her . . . that she had remained a landless squatter all her life: on European farms, on Munira’s father’s fields, and latterly a landless rural worker for anybody who would give her something with which to hold the skin together! ‘Why? Why?’ he moaned inside. ‘I have failed,’ and he felt another teardrop fall to the cement floor. Then suddenly he hit the cell wall in a futile gesture of protest. What of all the Mariamus of Kenya, of neo-colonial Africa? What of all the women and men and children still weighed down by imperialism? And for two days he would not eat anything.

  On the third day the warder who had broken the bad news came again.

  ‘Mr Karega . . . there’s a visitor to see you . . . you had better come out . . . Mr Karega, I . . . we want you to know that despite what has happened . . . some of us are glad to know of your struggle for us workers . . . we feel with you . . . only that we endure because we must eat . . .’

  For us workers – Karega repeated in his heart. His mother had worked all her life breaking the skin of the earth for a propertied few: what difference did it make if they were black or brown? Their capacity to drink the blood and sweat of the many was not diminished by any thoughts of kinship of skin or language or region! Although she insisted on her immediate rights, she never complained much, believing that maybe God would later put everything right. But she had now died without God putting anything right. She had got no more than what she had struggled for and fought for. Could Wanja have been right: eat or you are eaten?

  He saw the girl from a distance and wondered who she was. As he approached the barbed wire, her face seemed vaguely familiar. Then he remembered that he had seen her at the factory: she looked after the seed millet for making Theng’eta – she spread it out to the sun to dry, and things like that. She looked shy and she spoke in Swahili.

  ‘I have been sent to you. I have been begging to be allowed to see you. This warder helped me.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Akinyi. They sent me—’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The other workers . . . with a message. They are with you . . . and they are . . . we are planning another strike and a march through Ilmorog.’

  ‘But who—?’

  ‘The movement of Ilmorog workers . . . not just the union of workers at the breweries. All workers in Ilmorog and the unemployed will join us. And the small farmers . . . and even some small traders . . .’

  He stood still . . . so still. The movement of workers . . . it must be something new . . . something which must have started since he was held.

  She told him more about the workers’ protest and rebellion on the Sunday he was arrested and also about the condition of the workers wounded then. She told him about the death of a very important person in authority . . .

  ‘Really?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. In Nairobi. He was gunned down as he waited in his car in Eastleigh, outside Mathere Valley. He was waiting for his chauffeurbodyguard to bring him the rent . . .’

  ‘He profiteered on the misery of the poor. It was probably robbers who did it, but all the same—’

  ‘Not robbers. According to Ruma Monga it’s more than that. They left a note. They called themselves Wakombozi – or the society of one world liberation . . . and they say it’s Stanley Mathenge returned from Ethiopia to complete the war he and Kimathi started . . . There are rumours about a return to the forests and the mountains . . .’

  Mathenge back? He turned this over in his mind. It could not be possible. But what did it matter? New Mathenges . . . new Koitalels . . . new Kimathis . . . new Piny Owachos . . . these were born every day among the people . . .

  ‘What are they going to do to you?’ she said, interrupting his thought-flow.

  ‘Detain me . . . I amsuspected of being a communist at heart.’

  ‘You’ll come back,’ she suddenly said, looking up at him boldly.

  Her voice only
agitated further images set in motion by her revelation. Imperialism: capitalism: landlords: earthworms. A system that bred hordes of round-bellied jiggers and bedbugs with parasitism and cannibalism as the highest goal in society. This system and its profiteering gods and its ministering angels had hounded his mother to her grave. These parasites would always demand the sacrifice of blood from the working masses. These few who had prostituted the whole land turning it over to foreigners for thorough exploitation, would drink people’s blood and say hypocritical prayers of devotion to skin oneness and to nationalism even as skeletons of bones walked to lonely graves. The system and its gods and its angels had to be fought consciously, consistently and resolutely by all the working people! From Koitalel through Kang’ethe to Kimathi it had been the peasants, aided by the workers, small traders and small landowners, who had mapped out the path. Tomorrow it would be the workers and the peasants leading the struggle and seizing power to overturn the system of all its preying bloodthirsty gods and gnomic angels, bringing to an end the reign of the few over the many and the era of drinking blood and feasting on human flesh. Then, only then, would the kingdom of man and woman really begin, they joying and loving in creative labour . . . For a minute he was so carried on the waves of this vision and of the possibilities it opened up for all the Kenyan working and peasant masses that he forgot the woman beside him.

  ‘You’ll come back,’ she said again in a quiet affirmation of faith in eventual triumph.

  He looked hard at her, then past her to Mukami of Manguo Marshes and again back to Nyakinyua, his mother, and even beyond Akinyi to the future! And he smiled through his sorrow.

  ‘Tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . .’ he murmured to himself.

  ‘Tomorrow . . .’ and he knew he was no longer alone.

  Evanston – Limuru – Yalta

  October 1970–October 1975