The document that he and Brian had drawn up was a manifesto and a vision of horror. It envisioned orphanage plantations to harvest human organs; human cloning factories in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, all clothed in the idea of a universal good. What had been going on in Kenya was just the beginning.
“And, Mugure,” Johnston broke in, “I looked at the document again—at your insistence, I must say. All the horror stared at me afresh. Brian’s evil genius lay in projecting the vision to Paulina and her Alternative Clinics. You might say it saves us from a moral dilemma.”
“But why were they fighting for the original document?” I asked, still baffled.
“Ego,” Ben explained. “Pretty much the way children fight over things. ‘I got it first’ type of thing.”
I asked how the moral dilemma was solved for those who had escaped the judgment of the gun. Ben said that Brian would be extradited to the US. Melinda and Reverend Susan were arrested that very night. Susan was released at the insistence of Maxwell Kaguta, the minister of faith and religion, who claimed that she was an innocent victim of foreign mega-televangelists envious of her success. A victim of racism. Melinda was declared a persona non grata and somehow got herself on a flight back to the States.
“Interesting that both crooks clothed their evil with morality and legality,” said Ben.
His comment reminded me of the debate between Wainaina and the philosopher at NYU years back about a universal ethical imperative. Was there an inner imperative that made humans clothe evil with holiness, or was it the universality of the simple statement that the road to hell is paved with good intentions? And yet for every Zack or Brian or Susan, there is a Sister Paulina, a Wainaina, a Jane, or a Betty who has learned to fight evil in their ways. I would like to cling to those moments, short-lived at times, longer at others, when good seems triumphant over evil. For me and, I suspect, the others, that moment was the reunion of Betty with her child. It was only appropriate that mother and child were the center around which the celebration at Jane’s house revolved.
Questions remained, so many, but mostly about me—why I could not see what was in front of me. How could I have been so wrong in some of my judgments: Mark, for one. Melinda had painted him as the devil. His temporary disappearance was a visit to Mexico. He had never visited Kenya, and the suggestion of the Kasla agency had come from Melinda, its director, alongside the Rhino Man.
Joe was another. I had called him the previous night to offer my apologies. His late business call to some of his genuine business associates had sent me into paranoia. In speaking about calming her, he’d been referring to a client who was threatening hell because her mortgage had not come through in time. Joe had the good heart to play down how he had felt. He laughed at the absurdity of the chase: his complete puzzlement at my speeding up every time his car approached mine; and how his every gesture of peace was met with murderous rebuff. All would be forgiven, he said, if . . . But he knew my answer, he said, laughing again and thanking me for apprising him of the situation. “Oh, my friend Zack,” he said, sighing.
I thought of Joe still describing Zack as his friend. Did he mean it? Who was I to judge history and others’ actions in absolutes of evil and good? I had gotten Kobi through a crime committed by another. I had enjoyed money gained from unspeakable crimes. My education had been paid for, all the way from primary to university, by a father who would not see me and whose only moral instruction was for me not to fall into the hands of white boys. Melinda was black. Sam was white. Sam’s dad, as conservative as they came, had taught me to defend myself. I had to admit that life is not always black or white, and when we get to read the blurred lines in between, life takes on another meaning.
I decided not to seek my father. I no longer wanted to confront him. I had Kobi to live for; he needed me now more than ever. My only problem was how I would explain to him the absence of a father in a manner that would satisfy without attendant trauma; and without creating a need to undertake endless missions about his roots or identify with a father seen through the romantic vision of loss and distance.
I did feel the need to visit my mother’s grave before undertaking the one journey and the one encounter I dreaded most but which I knew I had to face: Wangeci’s mother, now Kobi’s grandmother. My mother, even in her grave, would give me the support I most needed. The certainty was founded on reason. Every time I visited my mother’s grave, I felt a calm. Gikuyu people think of death as sleep, and for them, spirits mean the sleeping ones, ngoma, spirits. It gave me comfort to think of my mother as sleeping in peace but somehow able to hear me. These last few weeks, I had thought of her spirit as the mystery gardener who would not leave her precious herbs unattended.
It was a shock, almost—really, a disappointment—when I found the gardener in the flesh. I stood at the gate looking at him. I did not feel like communing with my mother in the presence of a stranger. But he sensed me watching him, and he walked over. “Yes, miss?”
“Oh, I was just admiring the garden, the herbs. Have you been working here for a long time?”
“No, no,” he said, “the owner used to do it himself. He would come in his car, work on it, and then leave. Now he can’t, so he gives me the flowers, or rather, he sends the driver to give me the flowers to lay on the gravesite. Diabetes is horrible. Not all the money GG had could save him from getting his leg amputated.”
I had more questions but didn’t ask. Complicated, really complicated. It was best that I leave. I just could not take any more. George Gata. The gardener was my father. I walked away without another word.
• • •
My next stop was Tigoni. It was important that I tell Wangeci’s grandmother in my own words that the criminals had been arrested. I was surprised to find the small walk-in gate open. I wondered if I should ring the doorbell anyway. Just then I saw Wangeci’s mother coming toward the gate. She was soon joined by Mwihaki and another woman I assumed was Mwihaki’s mother. They came close to the gate before veering away. They were taking a stroll in the yard.
Why complicate their lives further? I didn’t even know how I would tell her that the person who had ruined her daughter’s life and eventually taken it away was also my husband, and that I was the beneficiary of Wangeci’s loss.
Slowly, I turned my back to the gate and walked to the car. I told the taxi driver to stop by Tigoni Dam, where Wangeci’s body had been dumped. I stood there, staring at the waters; my lips were trembling. I emerged from the dam a little stronger, a little calmer, clinging to the image of our last embrace. I wished that Wainaina had taken that picture. But did it matter?
Wangeci and I were forever joined by ties of motherhood to Kobi, whom we both loved.
29
The next day I flew to the US and went straight back to Sam’s house in Ohio to reunite with Kobi and Rosie, as well as thank Sam and his father. Kobi and I ran toward each other. We embraced tightly, tightly. He seemed to have grown. Sam and Rosie were holding hands, with huge grins. I guessed Ohio was a romantic place after all. I called Mark who kept repeating, “I don’t believe this,” as I explained how his name had been misused. I felt I owed that to him now that Zack was dead.
I was still in Ohio when I received a text from Jane: She and Wainaina were expecting . . .
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my literary agent, Gloria Loomis, for taking on the novel, and for making the business of getting published a smooth one. To Malaika Adero of Atria Books, a big thank-you for believing in the novel. I am really grateful to Henry Chakava for his creative suggestions; thanks to maitu Njeeri wa Ngũgĩ for detailed comments on the early draft; my father, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, for the creative writing discussions/lessons and for being a fierce critic of the characters; to Sami Sallinen for the loving support and for poring over several drafts of the novel; to the children, Alem and Nyambura; to my siblings and fellow writers Tee, Kimunya
, Ngina, Nducu, Mukoma, Njoki, Bjorn, Mumbi, and Thiong’o for reading drafts of the novel, sometimes twice, sometimes more, but most especially for the “nuggets”; to my nieces and nephews Nyambura (N2), Nyambura (N3), Biko, Miring’u, Chris, and June; to my friend Dorina Owindi for being there during the process of writing; to my friend Peter Kuria and the HAFF family; to my great friends Amkelwa Mbekeni and Liz Ndegwa for keeping it real—lots of love and light!
About the Author
Wanjikũ wa Ngũgĩ is a writer and director of the Helsinki African Film Festival (HAFF) in Finland. She is also a member of the editorial board of Matatu: Journal for African Literature and Culture and Society, and was a columnist for the Finnish development magazine Maailman Kuvalehti, writing about political and cultural issues. She has also been a jury member of the CinemAfrica Film Festival, Sweden, in 2012–2013. Her work has been published in the Herald (Zimbabwe), the Daily Nation and Business Daily, Pambazuka News, and Chimurenga, among others.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Wanjikũ wa Ngũgĩ
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Designed by Rory Panagotopulos
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Author photograph by Sami Sallinen
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ngũgĩ wa, Wanjikũ.
The fall of saints : a novel / Wanjikũ wa Ngũgĩ. First Atria hardcover edition.
pages cm
1. Husband and wife—Fiction. 2. Secrets—Fiction. 3. Adopted
children—Fiction. 4. Families—Fiction. 5. Kenya—Politics and
government—Fiction. I. Title.
PH356.N48F35 2014
894’.54134—dc23 2013044335
ISBN 978-1-4767-1491-2
ISBN 978-1-4767-1493-6 (ebook)
The Fall of Saints Page 21