Green City in the Sun

by Wood, Barbara

  "I warn you, gentlemen, not to be deceived by looks. That woman sitting in the dock is not as helpless as she would have us believe. She is a woman who knowingly harbored an enemy soldier, who kept his whereabouts a secret when she knew of the widespread manhunt for him, and who then engaged in a sordid and illicit sexual affair with him. Such a woman, I say to you, is not beyond committing cold-blooded murder!"

  While the prosecutor spoke, a bailiff made his way from a side door to the table where Mr. Barrows sat and handed him a note.

  Barrows read it, then stood at once. Sir Hugh Roper, the Lord Chief Justice, recognizing an interruption, turned to Barrows, who requested permission to make a submission in the absence of the jury. The courtroom erupted in surprise and speculation when the Lord Chief Justice declared an adjournment and called the two barristers into his chambers for a private conference. To bring a halt to the proceedings at such a late time—in the middle of the Crown's closing remarks!

  No one strayed far from the building while the legal conference was going on. In fact, word got around so that more spectators pushed their way inside when the court was reconvened, and everyone watched in excited wonder as a new, surprise witness was called by Mr. Barrows.

  "Will you please tell the court your name?"

  "Hans Kloppman."

  "Where do you live, Mr. Kloppman?"

  "I have a farm out near Eldoret."

  "Would you please tell us what brought you to Nairobi Central Court today?"

  "Well, y'see, my farm is isolated...."

  While he spoke, nearly every person in the courtroom, especially the members of the jury, saw a man who, although not personally known to them, was nonetheless very familiar to them: the Kenya farmer. They all saw the tanned face, the dusty work clothes, the honest, coarse hands. Either he was very much like themselves or he resembled a good friend, a close neighbor. Everyone listened to what Hans Kloppman had to say, and no one doubted his word.

  "My farm is isolated. I don't get much news. I been out of touch these past months, and it was only when I went into Eldoret for supplies that I heard about this trial. And that's when I knew I had to come and speak my piece."

  "Why, Mr. Kloppman?"

  "Because you've got it all wrong. That lady didn't commit no murder."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because I was on the Kiganjo Road that night, and I saw the person on the bicycle."

  The courtroom erupted; the judge called for silence.

  When all was orderly again, Mr. Barrows asked the Boer farmer to tell the court exactly what took place on the Kiganjo Road, on the night of April 15.

  "I been into Nyeri town on business and visiting friends. I was driving in my van down Kiganjo Road when I seen this car parked ahead, on the right-hand side. The headlights were on. As I got near, I seen someone climb onto a bicycle, turn it around, and ride it down the road as fast as he could."

  "He, Mr. Kloppman?"

  "Oh, it was a man all right. And he pedaled that bike like it was on fire! Went right past me, didn't even seem to notice me. Pedaling and swerving on that mud like the devil himself was after him."

  "And then what, Mr. Kloppman?"

  "So I drive up to the parked car and I seen the motor is still running. I look inside and seen a man asleep, and I think, Well, I've had to stop and sleep one off myself, so I left him in peace."

  "You say, Mr. Kloppman, that the bike rider was a man. Are you sure?"

  "Oh, I'm sure all right. I didn't see his face; he had a hat pulled down over it. But he was a broad-shouldered man, and very tall. The bicycle looked too small for him. And he had to be strong, to pedal through that fresh mud."

  "Mr. Kloppman, will you please look at the defendant, Lady Rose, sitting in the dock? And will you tell us please if there is any possibility that woman could have been your bicycle rider?"

  The farmer looked at Lady Rose. His face registered surprise. "That little thing? Oh, no, sir!" he said without hesitation. "It wasn't her, all right. I'm telling you, it was a man."

  The court was thrown into chaos.

  "MOTHER?" MONA CALLED as she knocked on the bedroom door. "Are you awake?"

  Balancing the breakfast tray in one arm, she opened the door and looked in. The bedroom was empty; the bed had not been slept in.

  Mona set the tray down and hurried downstairs. She had a good idea where her mother was.

  It had been three weeks since the end of the trial. Mr. Kloppman had been subjected to intensive questioning and scrutiny by the prosecution but in the end the jury had reached a verdict of "not guilty" on the grounds that they could no longer be convinced of Lady Rose's guilt "beyond reasonable doubt." Since her release Rose had spent every daylight moment in the glade, seemingly unconcerned about recent events. She had cleaned and blocked and framed the completed tapestry. Last night Rose and Njeri had taken the enormous stitched work and hung it in Carlo Nobili's mausoleum.

  Mona followed the path through the woods that stood behind Bellatu. Before she got there, she could see the marble roof of the sacrario, like an ancient Greek temple hidden in a sylvan paradise. Rose had spent a great deal of money on her lover's final resting place; she had also set up a perpetual fund for its future care and upkeep.

  The gazebo and greenhouse were still in the glade, but the forest on the north side had been cleared. The mausoleum shone brightly in the morning sun. It was an incredible monument considering the short time in which it had been built. Mona estimated that it was about the size of the small Presbyterian church in Nyeri and that it would hold, if there were pews inside, perhaps fifty people. But the mausoleum was a hollow shell, its only contents a plain alabaster sarcophagus.

  Mona stopped short and stared at the gazebo.

  Then she cried, "Oh, God!" and ran to it.

  The African girl had used a stepladder. She had tied one of Lady Rose's silk scarves around her neck, thrown the other end over the central beam supporting the gazebo roof, kicked the ladder out from under, and hanged herself.

  Mona knew without close examination that Njeri was dead.

  "Mother?" she called. Mona looked around the tranquil glade. Birds and monkeys chattered in the trees. Shafts of sunlight played upon the forest floor. The greenhouse stood like a jewel in the sun, the blossoms within shimmering in multicolored facets through the skylight. "Mother!"

  She ran to the mausoleum. The double doors were unlocked. Pushing on them, Mona saw the cold darkness of death yawn before her.

  The single flame at the head of General Nobili's sarcophagus, meant to burn perpetually, gave off an eerie glow. Mona stood silhouetted in the doorway, staring at the duke's stone coffin, at the figure that rested gracefully, tragically upon it.

  Lady Rose appeared to sleep. Her eyes were closed; her face was as white as the alabaster lid upon which she lay. Thin red ribbons of blood led from her wrists and pooled on the stone floor.

  Later the coroner would report that she had died before dawn but that she would have had to inflict the wounds shortly before midnight. It appeared, therefore, that Lady Rose had died slowly in the dark and cold, alone with her beloved Carlo.

  42

  D

  AVID MATHENGE STOOD AT THE ROADSIDE, WATCHING THE trucks roll by. He knew who drove them, what they meant; it was white immigrants arriving in Kenya to start farms offered by Britain under a new soldier settlement scheme.

  Such a plan had been used once before—back in 1919, when the Crown had wondered what to do with soldiers returning to Britain after the first war who had no jobs and nowhere to go. The solution, it seemed to David, had been to pack them off to the colonies. Now again, in these early weeks of 1946, returning soldiers, finding a financially ruined Britain and no employment for themselves, were receiving grants for farmland in Kenya's "white highlands." Of course, in order to make room for the newcomers, African "squatters" were being moved off the choicest land and being forced back onto the native reserves.

  It was madness
.

  What shortsighted men, David wondered, were governing the empire that they thought Africans would tolerate such an outrage a second time?

  Already the seeds of rebellion were being sown. Young Kikuyu were asking one another, "If there is plenty of room on the richest land for white settlers, why can no room be found for us?" The answer, that a major economic depression would strike if something weren't done soon and that only Europeans, not Africans, had the capital and international contacts to make profits in a hurry, did not satisfy the restless young Kikuyu. "Give us a chance," they had said to their deaf colonial masters. And thus were the "Nairobi wild boys" born.

  Nearly a hundred thousand African troops, returning to East Africa after having fought in some of Britain's bloodiest campaigns, had come home to find big new houses in Nairobi, cars, hotels, and shops full of luxuries. These were men who had been trained in many useful skills, who sought honest occupations. Fifteen thousand of them had been trained to drive trucks; they had come back to a country in which there were only two thousand trucks. There were simply no jobs to absorb this sudden influx of educated and skilled young men who believed they deserved compensation and recognition for their service in the war. Those who did find employment discovered that their wages were far lower than what they had received in the army. Bitter and resentful, and unable to channel their grievances into normal legal means, these homeless, landless young men—the Nairobi wild boys—were starting to collect in secret meetings throughout the province. And this time, David knew, they would succeed where their predecessors, who had been stopped back in 1939 because of the war, had not.

  And there was a difference between today's hotheaded youths and those of David's early political days: The Nairobi wild boys had been taught how to fight—by their white officers.

  But it was not something David could dwell upon right now. Because of his own immediate problems, he could not afford the luxury of worrying about his countrymen. For one thing, he, too, was unemployed; for another, Wanjiru was pregnant at last.

  Turning his back on the road, David Mathenge, twenty-eight years old and troubled about his future, strode back toward the river where, on the bank below, three huts stood around a cultivated shamba. His mother and wife were down there now, tilling the plots, tending the goats, carrying water, mending the roofs, making beer, and cooking his supper while he, their son and husband, their protector, their warrior, was as useless as a calabash gourd with a hole in it.

  Frustration filled his mouth with a bitter taste.

  There should at least have been some consolation in the knowledge that the Treverton Estate was in trouble. But even that brought no pleasure to David. In fact, when he had heard of Memsaab Mona's difficulties with the field hands, he had found himself not gloating, as he once would have, but thinking what unfortunate news it was. After all, that land was his and would be returned to him one day, according to his mother's promise and prophecy. And so he hated to see the land go neglected simply because the headmen, who had once loyally served the earl, now refused to take orders from his daughter, a mere memsaab.

  David paused on the red-earth road that turned away from the ridge and went into the estate, and he thought of the two women he lived with: the indomitable medicine woman, who watched her son in a kind of wordless chastisement, and his dissatisfied wife, who complained about the slowness with which men got things done. Wanjiru had tried to goad David into joining the Kenya African Union, the new militant political organization that was coalescing all over the country. But David had had enough of fighting in Palestine. He also knew that unarmed Kikuyu, no matter how numerous, would be no match for the tanks and airplanes of Britain.

  If change was going to come to Kenya, he believed, it must be achieved through rational thought and careful process. But what power had he and others like him, educated but jobless, to start the wheels moving toward that necessary change?

  It was all that had occupied David's mind this past year, ever since his return from the Middle East. In order to be listened to, in order to convince those in power, and the rest of the world, what a righteous cause Kenyan independence was, then he himself must be a responsible, thinking man. The British, he knew, did not pay attention to the Nairobi wild boys or to the KAU hotheads. They did, however, sit down and talk with African teachers, businessmen, and men of some influence.

  As a landowner of considerable acreage, in the heart of the choicest land in the choicest province, then David Mathenge would be listened to. He would be a leader.

  Land...

  He hungered for it—as a root does for water, he thought, as a bird does for the sky. He had been born to the land, he was tied body and soul to it, and all this would have been his if his father had not been duped nearly thirty years ago into turning it over to the white man. Wachera's words rang again in David's ears as he gazed out over the Treverton farm: "When someone steals your goat, my son, it is roasted and eaten and you forget it. When someone steals your corn, it is ground into meal and eaten and you forget it. But when someone steals your land, it is always there and you can never forget it."

  David would never forget that these rich acres had been stolen from his ignorant father, that they were David's legacy, and that they should rightfully be returned to him. But force and impulsiveness, he knew, such as were the mainstays of the Nairobi wild boys, would never get him his land back. Careful planning and caution, he told himself, to move like a lion, to study the prey, to follow it and be on constant alert for its one moment of weakness—these were going to be David Mathenge's weapons.

  He was going to get his land back, legally and honorably and in a state of prosperity.

  He looked out over the five thousand acres of coffee trees and made his decision.

  DAVID FOUND MONA Treverton in the southeastern sector of the estate, not far, in fact, from the fateful turnoff on the Kiganjo Road. She was standing on the flatbed of her truck, shielding her eyes and turning a complete circle.

  "Damn!" she murmured, and was about to climb down when she saw David.

  He looked up at her, suddenly remembering things: how she had sat so stoically through her mother's trial; the way she rode a horse on the polo field; the night of the fire when they both had been caught in the surgery hut.

  Mona stared down at him, feeling suddenly cold in the warm sun. Several times, during the trial, she had glanced up to find David Mathenge watching her. He watched her in the same way now, his face a mask.

  "What are you looking for, memsaab?" he asked in English.

  "My field hands. They've run off again. It's the fourth time this month." She climbed down from the truck and pushed a few strands of black hair from her face. "These berries are ready to be picked."

  "Where are the women and children?"

  "I sent them to the northern section, to do the weeding. I need those men!"

  David studied her. The memsaab was angry and frustrated, he saw, a woman now alone in the world, in that big house on these five thousand acres, with no husband, no man.

  She thrust her hands into her pockets and walked a few steps away. Mona turned her face to the rolling hills of green coffee trees, the scarf on her head fluttering. She took in a deep breath to steady herself. "How can I get them to work for me?" she said quietly.

  "I know where the men are," David said.

  She turned. "You do?"

  "They have gone to a beer drink at Mweiga. They will be gone for days."

  "But the coffee must be picked! I don't have days! In a week my entire crop will be lost!"

  He thought, My crop, then said, "I can bring the men back for you."

  Mona gave him a wary look. "Why would you do that?"

  "Because, memsaab, you need a manager and I need a job."

  Her eyes widened. "You want to work for me?"

  David nodded.

  She stared at him.

  "Do you think you could do it? I mean, all this—" She held out her arms.

  He told h
er of his studies in Uganda, the diploma he had received.

  Mona thought about it. She was uncertain. Could she trust him? "I've been trying to find a manager, in fact," she said slowly. "But everyone wants to start his own farm. No one wants to work for someone else. I would pay you a good salary, and you can build a house for yourself on the estate."

  "I will need to have complete authority over the workers. I will need to have unlimited freedom. It is the only way."

  Mona considered that. Then she thought of the red figures in her ledgers, of the debts mounting up because the farm had gone neglected during the trial and the months following, and she said, "Very well then. We have a deal."

  When she held her hand out, he looked down at it, taken aback.

  She continued to hold her hand out.

  Uncertain, David Mathenge brought his right hand up and took hold of hers.

  "You can start at once," she said quietly.

  He looked down at the two hands, brown and white, clasped.

  PART SIX

  1952

  43

  W

  HEN WANJIRU'S LABOR PAINS BEGAN, SHE KNEW THERE WAS something wrong.

  Placing a hand on her lower back and her other on her abdomen, she straightened and took a few deep breaths. Mama Wachera had cautioned her to be careful with this pregnancy, but Wanjiru, stubborn and unable to be idle for even a moment, had ignored the advice of her mother-in-law and had come into the forest to collect lantana leaves.

  It was David's fault, Wanjiru decided as she waited for the contraction to subside. His mother was entering that stage of life when she should have the help of her son's several wives on the shamba, instead of having to make do with just one. But David had married only Wanjiru and, in the seven years since, had not even spoken of buying another wife. That was why Wanjiru, because Mama Wachera required the healing leaves for her medicines, had had to cross the river today and go in search of lantana.