"Mona, listen to me," she said, taking the girl's hands into hers. "The dagger that fell that day is still falling. It is stabbing all the life and love out of you. Don't let it kill you, too, Mona. Get out of this room. Close it up and say farewell to the ghost that lives here. You belong to the land of the living. Arthur would want it that way. And there will be someone in your life whom you can love, I promise you that."
Mona dried her eyes with the back of her hand. Her dark, slate eyes became bleak; her voice was full of loneliness. "I know what lies ahead of me, Aunt Grace. Now that my brother is dead, I am the heir to Bellatu. All this will be mine someday, and I am going to make this plantation my life. I am going to learn how to run it, how to grow coffee, and how to be independent. The only master I shall ever have will be Bellatu. It will be the only thing I will ever love."
There was a light in Mona's eyes that suddenly reminded Grace of another memory, also from eighteen years ago. She and Valentine were standing on this very spot, on a barren hill where the house would someday go, and she was listening to him talk about the plans he had for this wilderness. Grace had heard the conviction in his voice when he had talked about possessing this land; she had seen a strange illumination in his dark eyes as he had described his vision of the future. And Grace suddenly realized that she was witnessing it all over again—in his daughter.
"It will be a lonely existence, Mona," she said sadly. "Just you, all alone in this big house."
"I will not be lonely, Aunt Grace, because I will be very busy."
"With nothing to live for except coffee trees?"
"I shall have something to live for."
"And what is that?"
"To see that David Mathenge pays for his crime."
"Mona," Grace whispered, "let it be. Lay your grief to rest. Revenge never succored anyone!"
"He'll come back here someday. He'll come out of hiding, from wherever he is, and he'll come back here. And when he does, I will see to it that David Mathenge pays for my brother's murder."
A door slammed downstairs. Footsteps thumped through the house. Finally, Mario's voice rang down the hallway. "Memsaab Daktari!"
"Good gracious," said Grace, getting to her feet. "I'm in here, Mario."
He burst in. "Memsaab! In the forest! You must come."
"What is it?"
"An initiation, memsaab! A big one! Very secret!"
"Where? Initiation for whom?"
"In the mountains. Over there. For girls, memsaab."
Grace suddenly understood the odd behavior of her nurses, the absence of the Bellatu staff, the mission compound strangely quiet. They had been amassing for a huge secret initiation, the first in years. It was the forbidden ceremony of female circumcision—the clitoridectomy—the operation that had killed Mario's sister.
"Memsaab," he said, "the girl Njeri Mathenge—"
Grace flew past him and down the hall.
Mona remained in the window seat, listening to their footsteps fade. She looked out and saw Grace and her houseboy hurry across the lawn to the path that led down to the mission.
A moment later a car—an official car—pulled up from the opposite direction. When Mona saw a district officer get out, she left her window seat and went downstairs.
Geoffrey stood up when she came into the living room. "What's going on?" he said.
"A policeman's just arrived. It must have to do with the initiation."
But the officer wasn't there for that reason at all. He had brought a telegram, which he now handed to Mona. "It's for Dr. Treverton, but no one down at the mission seemed to know where she was. I was wondering if you would give it to her."
Mona frowned down at the yellow envelope. When she saw that the telegram had been sent from Uganda, she quickly opened it. It was from Ralph, Geoffrey's brother, and it said: AUNT GRACE. SERIOUS OUTBREAK OF MALARIA. MOTHER IS DEAD. FATHER DYING AND ASKING FOR YOU. COME AT ONCE. BRING GEOFFREY.
"Oh, my God!" she cried.
Geoffrey took the telegram, and before he could react, Mona was running down the veranda steps in the direction of the river.
When she reached the ridge, where she could see the mission compound, the polo field, and Wachera's hut, Mona could not see her aunt anywhere.
32
T
HE CEREMONIAL SURGERY WAS CALLED IRUA, AND IT consisted of three steps: the removal of the clitoris, the trimming of the labia, and the suturing shut of the vulva.
Its purpose was to discourage lust in girls, to curb sexual promiscuity, and to make masturbation impossible. With the sensitive part of the genitals cut away and the vaginal opening reduced to the width of a little finger, it was believed that girls would be deterred from experimentation before marriage. Later each girl, upon being purchased by a husband, would undergo an examination to assure him of her virginity, and an incision would then be made to allow for intercourse.
Irua was one of the oldest, most revered rituals of the Kikuyu; it marked a girl's official entry into the tribe and celebrated her passage into womanhood. Those who underwent irua were honored and respected among the clan; those who did not were outcast and taboo.
Wachera had been preparing her instruments and medicines for days.
It had been many harvests since she had last performed the sacred irua—her people's fear of the white man's reprisals had stopped the practice of many important Kikuyu rituals—and so she felt proud and honored to be performing it today. The ancestors were pleased; they had told her so. Just as they had told her of her son's hiding place—in the land where the sun slept.
However, they hadn't told her when he would come home.
But Wachera was patient. She had faith that her son would someday return to Kikuyuland and take his place as a leader of his people. On that day, Wachera was certain, David would reclaim his land stolen by the white man and drive him out of Kikuyuland.
For was not her thahu working?
The terrible curse Wachera had spoken many harvests ago in the bwana's big stone house had finally claimed the life of the bwana's only son. The rest of the thahu would work in time, the medicine woman believed, wiping out the seed of the man who had torn down the sacred fig tree. The day would come when the bwana and his family would no longer exist, and it would seem as if they had never been.
Still, the fruits of revenge were small succor for the pain Wachera carried night and day in her breast, the pain of missing her only son, of yearning for him, of worrying about his safety and happiness. She received some consolation, however, from the knowledge that David was undergoing a special trial of manhood, just as the warriors of old had done. Whatever he had suffered at the hands of Chief Muchina and in the white man's jail, whatever hardships he now endured in the lands to the west, Wachera knew that her son would return a warrior, a true Mathenge.
She paused in her final preparations to listen for the girls' singing, which would indicate they were coming from the river, ready to be operated upon.
No one helped the medicine woman in her secret work. Irua, because of its sacred nature, required special ritualistically clean and spiritually pure attention. Not just anyone could wield the surgical razor, in the same way that not just anyone could observe the procedure. Only those women who were themselves circumcised and in good standing with the tribe could watch. And men were so taboo as to incur punishment should they try to spy on the ritual.
Wachera knew that what she was going to do today was denounced by the white man. It wasn't against his law; no matter how hard the missionaries had tried to stamp out the ancient ritual, they had not succeeded in making it officially illegal. Yet they strove in other ways to turn the Children of Mumbi away from the traditional practices, and in such ways the missionaries were being largely successful, as in the instance of barring any circumcised child from their schools. The missionary schools were the best, and since most parents wanted their children to grow up with the white man's advantages and education, they entered into a sad bargain with the mi
ssionaries, giving up the ancestral ways in order to receive the crumbs that fell from their white overlords' table.
Such had been the feeling in Kikuyuland until the day of David Mathenge's arrest.
But from that time on, through the persuasive speeches of the girl Wanjiru and others like her, the Children of Mumbi were starting to see what an empty covenant they had entered into with their white oppressors. On the day of the big protest in Nairobi, when David had escaped and the soldiers had fired shots into the defenseless crowd, the Kikuyu had had their eyes opened. One by one they had come to Wachera, asking her what they must do. And she had said, "Return to the ways of the ancestors, who are unhappy."
Even though many Kikuyu did not agree and refused to take part in today's irua, believing the missionaries, who called it monstrous and barbaric, true Children of Mumbi were bringing their sisters and daughters into the forest to be circumcised.
She listened again for the singing.
While Wachera worked in the privacy of the initiation hut, girls from all over the district, ranging in age from nine to seventeen, were bathing up to their breasts in the icy waters of the river. While female elders of the tribe stood guard on the bank to be sure that no man or non-Kikuyu spied on them, the initiates shivered and froze in water meant to numb them, for there would be no anesthetics used in the surgery. They sang the ceremonial songs and dropped leaves into the river as a symbol of drowning their childhood spirits. They would stay in the freezing water until they had little feeling below the waist; then they would follow a path to a specially built homestead in the forest.
Wachera had bathed at the river before dawn and shaved her head. Now she painted her body with sacred paint—white chalk from Mount Kenya and black ocher. She chanted as she painted herself, holy words which made the chalk and ocher strong medicine against evil spirits. When this was done, she checked again her healing leaves, the "banishers" that made spirits of infection flee, and the mixture of milk and soothing herbs that would be sprinkled on the fresh wounds. Sweet-smelling leaves were set aside for the last part of the operation, when they would be bound between each girl's legs before she was carried to the healing hut. Lastly, Wachera inspected her iron razor. It was sharp and clean, as her grandmother the elder Wachera had taught her. Few of her girls ever felt pain at the time of cutting or died from blood poisoning.
Singing in the distance brought Wachera to the door of the newly built initiation hut. She saw aunts and mothers merrily constructing the ceremonial arch of banana plants, sugarcanes, and sacred flowers at the entrance of the temporary homestead. This arch was a medium of communication with the ancestral spirits; no one but the initiates might pass under it. Other women were laying out fresh cowhides on the ground; the girls would sit on these during the operation. And still others were preparing the feast of roast sheep and sugarcane beer which would follow the ordeal.
Irua was one of the most solemn yet joyous celebrations among the Kikuyu. Wachera's heart swelled to see her people united again in the old ways. Surely the God of Brightness was pleased! Surely this returning to the ways of the ancestors was a sign that the white man was soon to leave Kikuyuland! It meant that her son David was soon to come home.
Wachera Mathenge, for the first time in many years, was suddenly very happy.
GRACE DIDN'T HAVE to ask Mario where the girls were. She could hear them singing down at the river.
Before she reached them, her way was barred by men—the fathers and brothers of the initiates, Mario explained—who were passing around calabashes of sugarcane beer. They were polite to Memsaab Daktari, but they would not let her pass. Already there was a district officer, Assistant Superintendent Shannon, who had left his car on the road and trudged through the bush with two African askaris. And arriving at the same time as Grace were two missionaries from the Methodist church in Nyeri and a very disturbed group of priests from the Catholic mission.
"Hello, Dr. Treverton," Assistant Superintendent Shannon said as he came up to her. He was a tall, stiff military man who ran a tidy district and who knew when to keep out of "native" affairs. "I'm afraid this is as far as they'll let us go," he said, nodding in the direction of the happily drunk fathers and brothers. "The girls are in the river. But they'll come along this path. It'll be your only chance to see them."
"Where is the ceremony to take place?"
"Up there, through those trees. They've been weeks at clearing a homestead."
"I hadn't expected to see you here. Are you going to try to stop it?"
"I'm not here to interfere, Doctor. I'm here to keep the peace and see that no nasty business comes out of this." He was referring to the missionaries, who were looking stormy and in a mood to obstruct. "Believe me," the officer said quietly, "I don't condone what the natives are doing, any more than you do. But I haven't the authority to break it up, and I wouldn't want to try if I had it. Those Africans outnumber my small force, and they're quite drunk. They've been stirred up by some political agitators. These people are getting harder and harder to control."
"I hadn't even heard a word about this!"
"None of us had. They kept this one a real secret. It's all wrapped up in the David Mathenge business."
"Do you have any idea where he is?"
"Only rumors. Some say he's in Tanganyika; others, in the Sudan. The governor hasn't the manpower to search all East Africa for him, and now that this other boy has confessed to killing your nephew, well, quite frankly, Doctor, I don't think anyone gives a hang where David Mathenge is."
"Mi scusi, signor," said a white-haired priest, coming up to the police officer with a distressed look. "You must stop this abomination!"
"They're not breaking any laws, Father. And I advise you not to interfere. If you try to, I'm afraid I shall have to detain you."
"But this is outrageous! We are not the ones performing the ungodly ritual! For the sake of those poor girls, you must stop them!"
"Father Vittorio," Shannon said in practiced patience, "You know as well as I that these people will not listen to me. And if I try to stop them, there will be bloodshed. Wait until Sunday, Father, and then lecture them from your pulpit."
The elderly priest glowered at the policeman, then turned to Grace. "Signora dottoressa," he said, "surely you want this stopped?"
Yes. Grace wanted it stopped. She felt so strongly against irua that six years ago she had gone to Geneva, where, under the auspices of the Save the Children Fund, a conference on African children had been held. Grace, along with several other European delegates, had spoken out against the barbarous custom, declaring that it was the duty of all governments under which the custom was practiced to make it a criminal offense. Clitoridectomy was practiced not only in Kenya but throughout all Africa and the Middle East; hundreds of tribes from the Bedouin in Syria down to the Zulu of South Africa forced little girls to suffer a painful and traumatizing ritual that posed complications in later life, especially in childbirth. Grace had told the members of the conference about Gachiku and the Caesarean delivery of Njeri.
However, the conference members could not wholeheartedly agree to total abolition of a people's sacred and deeply ingrained social custom and opted instead for education of those people to help them turn away from such practices by their own wish.
As far as Grace knew, there had not been an irua in this province for years. If what Officer Shannon said was true, that this mass ritual was tied up somehow with David Mathenge's arrest, then today's irua implied something far more significant than a simple tribal get-together.
It was meant to be a slap in the white man's face.
"Here they come," said one of the Methodists.
It was the only time during the whole ritual when others might look upon the initiates. As the girls, naked except for a single necklace each, followed the path from the river to the homestead, they sang ancestral songs of a mournful nature, in slow and gentle voices. The girls walked in pairs, with their elbows bent and pressed to their ribs
, hands raised and curled into fists with thumbs inserted between first and second fingers, to indicate a readiness to withstand the coming pain.
Grace was shocked into immobility. Nor did the priests or missionaries react because they had not been prepared for the sight that now passed before their eyes.
The girls were grave and stately, singing in perfect beautiful harmony, their heads newly shaved, their nude bodies gleaming with river water. They didn't look to either side of the path or behind themselves, for that would have been bad luck; they didn't acknowledge the Kikuyu men, who now stood soberly at a respectful distance, or the Europeans, who stared speechless. The initiates walked as if in a trance; they mesmerized themselves with their melodious chant; their slender bodies swayed as they walked.
Their ages, Grace guessed, ranged from seventeen down to eight or nine. Such a broad span would not have been known in former times, but since there had been no irua in recent years, the older ones joined the younger. And she knew most of them. There was Wanjiru, the articulate fighter who had orchestrated David Mathenge's escape from jail; there were the nurse Rebecca's three daughters; there was Njeri, David's half sister and Rose's companion.
Grace could neither move nor speak.
When had they organized this? How had they managed to keep it a secret? There were a hundred girls, at least, in the monstrous procession! Why hadn't a single white person gotten word of it?
Grace suddenly felt cold. For the first time in her eighteen years in East Africa she felt a strange, dark fear. There was something awesome about these innocent naked girls, something raw and primeval. Grace had the sensation of looking back into time. It was as if she were watching girls who had lived a hundred years ago, on their way to the ancient test of strength and courage and endurance.
And it frightened her.
When the girls were out of sight, the Kikuyu men closed in behind them and warily watched the Europeans.
"Why don't you all go home?" Assistant Superintendent Shannon said quietly to the missionaries. "There's nothing you can do here."
Green City in the Sun Page 35