The Book of Secrets

by M G Vassanji

  He walked through the small crowd that had gathered, until only a few men stood in front of him. He caught glimpses of the mukhi standing at the doorway, expostulating with someone inside, whom Corbin saw was Pipa. The bridegroom of a few hours ago was shaking his head from side to side in vehement denial. When he saw Corbin he took a threatening step towards him which the mukhi blocked. The young man, in loincloth and singlet, was sobbing; the mukhi gently pushed him back inside, and then said to Corbin, “Please, sir, go. Not now.” The door closed behind him. Slowly Corbin walked away, back up the hill to his house.

  The mukhi came early the following morning. He stood with his fez in his hand, a pained, hesitant look on his face, his head tilted sideways questioningly.

  The ADC was sitting at his table with a cup of tea. The Mission ladies were not around.

  “Now tell me, mukhi. What was that matata about? Did the boy have a change of heart?” Corbin said.

  “Bwana. Most unfortunate matter. Tragic.”

  “What happened?”

  “What to say, sir? Boy says girl not pure. She was touched.”

  “How do you know …” Corbin began foolishly, then stopped and stared at the man.

  “What to do?” said the mukhi.

  The Englishman continued to stare.

  “What to do? Now the stepfather, sir, he spreads poison, the boy is in grief … and your good name, sir …”

  “What about my good name, mukhi?”

  “Forgive me, bwana. But Rashid says the girl was in your bed one night.”

  24 July, 1914

  I have denied the stepfather’s accusation in the strongest possible terms. The man has to be watched for mischief. I told the mukhi as much. When the mukhi left, I saw Miss Elliott walking about on the verandah, having just returned from her walk. She came in as soon as we exchanged looks — I wonder how long she had been there. Mrs. Bailey soon came in from the spare room, and the two women discussed their needs at the station in a rather formal way.

  No more was said about the accusation. The ADC kept a low profile and applied for leave. The girl and her husband would soon be on their way to Moshi in German East.

  But the war came first.

  Miscellany (i)

  From the personal notebook of Pius Fernandes

  April 1988, Dar es Salaam

  And so ends the diary, with more than four months of empty pages. As far as is known there is no record of any other diary of Alfred Corbin; no indication that the Englishman ever again committed his thoughts, his observations to paper (until, more than five decades later, he published his memoir entitled Heart and Soul, a terse — not to say soulless — account covering his several decades and posts in half a dozen colonies).

  But the story doesn’t end here, of course. Questions remain. Like a snoop I must follow the threads, expose them in all their connections and possibilities, weave them together. What else is a historian but a snoop? But, no, the urge is stronger. Like a bloodhound I will follow the trail the diary leaves. Much of it is bloody; it’s blood that endures.

  The questions. What are we to make of Bwana Corbin’s denial of involvement with the girl Mariamu? What became of her in the years that followed? What evil acts did her stepfather, Rashid, purportedly able to communicate with lion spirits, make her commit? How did the diary leave the Englishman’s hands? How many times did this diary change hands before landing in mine now? What of all those people whose lives it touched?

  The diary is not a voice in the wilderness. There are witnesses. Think of a name, a place, a time, and immediately there are witnesses who come to mind — those who know the place, the person, the time, who passed through and wrote about them, who received letters, who spoke about them, who heard the stories.

  There are many paths to choose from. And no one path is quite like any other, none of them will return to quite where it began. The path one takes is surely in large measure pure accident; but in equal measure, it must be determined by predisposition. And so I know, am forewarned. Ultimately the story is the teller’s, it’s mine.

  Correspondence

  Toronto, March 25, 1988

  Dear Mr. Fernandes:

  I am thrilled by your request and what it purports. I have always railed — given the opportunity — against the lack of a sense of history in us. (Recently I gave a talk to that effect entitled “What Is Not Observed Does Not Exist” — an idea stolen and adapted from physics.) My own researches — which have brought me to Toronto — have taken me in the direction of showing that the bhajans (hymns, gyans), which have been considered exclusive property of a religious community, with specific attribution of authorship, did in fact belong to a milieu, a collective — think of what that does to people for whom every word has been considered sacred.… Already battle lines have been drawn between the traditionalists (dare one call them fundamentalists yet?) and the academics. A world conference on this sticky problem, which no one dreamt of when they told us to educate ourselves, is to be held in London in a week.

  More from London when I’ve had a look at what the libraries have to offer regarding the colonial bwana of your interest …

  Regards,

  Sona

  London, April 9, 1988

  Dear Mr. Fernandes:

  In 1963 the Oxford Colonial Records Project was founded, in which former colonial officials or their families were asked to deposit at Rhodes House Library the personal records of their years in service. Most of the material was donated. The library is interested in the content of the material — even Xeroxes would do, and so they would pay little or nothing for the diary in your possession. Now if it belonged to a famous poet, things would be different. But a mere colonial bwana, when Empire is an embarrassing reminder.… I’m sorry, you’ll have to disappoint your benefactor.

  Also, regarding the material relating to Sir Alfred Corbin. I’m afraid these bwanas did not write much — or else did not donate the juiciest stuff. The Corbin family has not donated any personal effects. Of course there are records of official correspondence (Governor to Colonial Secretary, price of groundnut oil, etc.), but hardly anything personal and nothing from the period of your interest.

  That fox Maynard wrote a journal, but access to it is restricted. He did publish a version of it, probably edited. A typical entry runs: “Saw 20 zebra, 10 oryx …” Corbin is mentioned as a “sound but stodgy chap.” Maynard stopped at a town called Mbuyuni, near Taveta, and there had an encounter with a German or Swiss resident called Lenz. An incident in which a dog gets killed by baboons gets mention, as does a passionate defence of his punitive attack on a village — the event that attracted publicity and got him transferred out. The published diaries end before the War; the restricted version goes up to 1917.

  I am sending Xeroxes of interest under separate cover.

  Keep me posted!

  Sona.

  Appendices

  (1) Sir Henry Johnson, Cambridge naturalist of independent means, writes in the introduction to his published diaries about a hunting and exploring safari planned in 1895 with his older friend and hero the author H. Rider Haggard. But the older man, wary of the entailing physical hardship, “cried off” at the last moment, and the young Johnson went on his own. He stayed several months in Lamu as a guest of the British Consul. In his diary Johnson mentions his “banker,” one Jamal Dewji, whose son, “a rascal,” accompanied him on his voyage round Zanzibar and inland, until he seduced a young convert at the MCA station in Taita country and stayed on at a village there. Johnson sent many details of local colour to the author, who subsequently based one of his characters on him.

  (2) One of the three German letters confiscated by Corbin was addressed to an H. Lenz of Mbuyuni, a town some ten miles away. It reads as follows:

  Moshi, 19 October 1913

  My dear friend:

  Herr Braunschweig is of the opinion that the map of the Taveta region published by the Voi District Office is in error. Could you ascertain if new informat
ion is available. Our own maps can only remain incomplete without it. I am afraid the British are rather lackadaisical in matters of accuracy.

  We hear a new ADC has arrived in the area and seems like a nice fellow. Perhaps he is of a more scientific disposition.

  With kind wishes from all of us here,

  (Signed) W. Greiner

  Oberleutnant

  From the personal notebook of Pius Fernandes

  April 1988, Dar es Salaam

  My patron Feroz comes once in a while like the fairytale dwarf to judge the progress of my industry, in these rooms he has provided for me. “So, sir, what do you make of the diary?” He already knows it has no financial value. His interest now is in what I make of it, as he puts it. Patience, I tell him. Meanwhile I have some questions.

  “What do you know of shetani?”

  “You mean shaytaan … well, sir … you know, people believe in them.”

  “And exorcisms — do they still go on?”

  “You don’t hear much about these things these days. Zanzibar — that’s the place for them — full of shetani. There was a case recently in Dar, but.… There’s a Memon who does it, removes the shaytaan. I’ll find out for you.”

  Sometimes he takes me to his home for the afternoon meal. At heart he is a lonely man, I think. He lives with his wife and daughter above the other store, the main one. The second child, a son, is studying in England. Running two stores, the husband and wife keep out of each other’s way. She is quite his opposite in temperament.

  There is a hubbub in the main store when we arrive. In the noon-hour rush, a thick-set Arab in a kanzu has been accused of attempted shoplifting, and unconvincingly but not without humour he attempts to clear himself: hasn’t he just been to Juma prayer? But to no avail. Shouts and verbal abuse from Zaynab follow him out. Feroz and I have one meal, after which we depart to the store on Pipa Corner. I am only too aware that in her eyes I stand very low and under suspicion: an unemployed teacher with ideas. But she is polite, has to do the necessary to reflect the harmony of her home, and so she gives us a thermos of tea to take with us.

  “Any news of the visas?” I ask Feroz. There is some action, I know, to remove part of the family to Canada.

  He looks up. “No.”

  I interpret this to mean failure.

  “I’m happy here. Perhaps I’ll send the kids for education, and the wife can join them there.”

  We have tea. From time to time something gets sold, something is in short supply, and he phones the other store to request stock. He has a code, every item has a nickname: “brown plastic,” “Hong Kong maridadi,” “Taiwan with buckle.” … He knows his inventory by heart, knows on precisely which shelf he can find how much of anything, what the cost price is. It occurs to me that this is what one means when one says that business runs in the blood; the monetary worth of anything is at the fingertips.

  “I have news for you. Do you know Rita … Gulnar?” asks Feroz.

  “Gulnar Rajani?” I try to sound calm, but it’s impossible; that name means too much, and he knows he’s hooked me.

  “Former student of yours, wasn’t she, sir?”

  “Yes … quite some years ago — what about her?”

  “She’s coming to Dar.”

  “What, here? What on earth for? Isn’t she fabulously rich in England now —”

  He’s had the effect, and he looks away, busy with a customer, enjoying his fun. At length the customer leaves and Feroz returns to me.

  “Well, as you know, Rita is Pipa’s daughter-in-law. I wrote to her about the diary — and that you were looking at it. So she telephoned. She said she had been planning a holiday here — she also owns property in Dar through her father — and she was very curious about what we had to say about the diary. She’s very keen to see you again.”

  Keen to see me, or the diary? What, if anything, does she know about it? I wonder at this intrusion of the personal into my research.

  “It belongs to her, then,” I say.

  “That remains to be seen,” he says, impassively.

  In the locked cupboard of the Dar es Salaam Library, there is an old exercise book in which the title of every book in the cupboard is neatly noted down. There are even the names of absent books and where they were last known to be. A copy of Henry Johnson’s Diaries is in this cupboard. Against the entry for Alfred Corbin’s Heart and Soul, the writer has penned, “Sent to Moshi Library, upon request,” followed by the date of the entry: 16 February, 1967.

  Last month I placed an ad in the Dar es Salaam Daily Herald for two days running, requesting information from anyone whose family had anything to do with the First World War in Kilimanjaro region, especially in Moshi, Taveta, and Kikono. There was no response, which means nothing; everyone is too busy existing, scraping a living. A question like mine sounds ludicrous, and if I have the time to pursue such questions, I must have time to pursue witnesses. Which is what I decide to do. And so I take a bus to Moshi.

  The Moshi librarian wants to know who told me about his locked cupboard. The cupboard in Dar, I tell him. You have to get permission, he says. From whom? He is not quite sure. Come back in the afternoon, he replies. I decide to look around the town (there’s nothing like the sight of an old building for confirmation that, yes, there was a past) and, inquiring in the streets among the elders sitting at corners and outside mosques (“Eti, mzee, are there old buildings here — or cemeteries …”), I am directed finally to the Utamaduni (Culture) office. The Party cadre at the reception booth asks much, says much, commending my interest in history, even introducing me around as someone doing valuable service. But before divulging anything specific, he directs me to the Cultural Officer, a tall man of about thirty-five in blue jeans and jacket, a drooping moustache, looking like a Swahili with much Arab blood.

  He takes me to his office — a large room with a large wooden desk littered with paper, some filing cabinets, and a table and chairs for meetings — and agrees with me, yes, much research needs to be done on local history. Archives need to be preserved, buildings need to be maintained, but there is no money. The Germans are interested, are busy looking up sites, marking them, preserving them. He works part-time with them. But most of their efforts are in the Tanga region — their favourite town then and now. It was here that the British suffered their biggest and most humiliating defeat in East Africa. He smiles faintly.

  “When they were defeated by a swarm of bees,” I say.

  “Yes,” he smiles.

  His name, he tells me, is Jamali. He was brought up in Moshi.

  “Your babu-bibi? Grandparents?”

  “I saw my grandmother.”

  “In Moshi?”

  He nodded.

  “And where was your grandfather from?”

  “Lamu,” he says.

  This man sitting across from me is, of course, the grandson of Jamali, the mukhi of Kikono.

  He has much to tell me, does Young Jamali, as I will call him.

  II

  The Great Riddle

  The two quarrel by day and make up at night.

  — Swahili riddle

  (Answer: the panels of a door)

  9

  The wedding procession that with music and ceremony had escorted Pipa and his bride to their room had dispersed, the last of its members leaving reluctantly with suggestive, even lewd, remarks to relieve the couple of their bashfulness, remind them of the night ahead. The room was off an empty store, separated from it by a curtain of gunnies; there was an entrance at the front and a doorway to the backyard. The bed had been strewn with jasmine flowers, sprinkled with perfumes. The air was filled with the sweet clinging vapours of halud to rouse the senses. There was a tray of fruit by the bedside, slippers had been placed nearby.

  Outside, the evening’s mood lingered a bit in the occasional shout or burst of laughter; inside was very quiet and still. The bride and groom sat on the bed next to each other, exactly where their happy escorts had left them. He in gr
ey suit and red turban; she in green frock and pachedi. She was staring at her red hennadyed hands clasped in her lap, waiting. Throughout the evening he had caught only glimpses of her — this girl he was taking away, this gift he had been given but could not look at yet. He had been aware of the shimmer of sparkles and sequins beside him, the soft movement of the pachedi — the occasional thin clink of the bangles on her arms the only sound emanating from her. Looking at her now beside him, finally his to relish, he realized that the jewellery was not hers. People had lent it to her, putting trust in her groom; they had dressed and anointed her and had sung wedding songs for her, a daughter of the community.

  He took his turban off and placed it beside him. Then very slowly, delicately, he put his hand to that richly decorated pachedi at her forehead and pulled it back over the hair and the garland of flowers behind it and let it drop to her shoulders. She turned to look at him, and took his breath away.

  “Eh, Mariamu, you are truly beautiful,” he said almost reflectively.

  How could it be? Pipa thought. He, a former street urchin, without even the dignity of a father’s name to attach to his, and beside him in this little room this houri — a celestial being such as was promised only in heaven. She was so perfectly beautiful, there was such a nobility in her. He could not deserve her. The long oval face, the chin and cheekbones, the long nose — not the round features of the shopkeepers’ wives — and the thick wavy hair he caressed, and the long smooth neck under it that felt so hot to his touch.

  “Come my little dear,” he said, fingering the necklace. “We must put away the jewellery carefully. We must change.”

  He got up, and from a trunk took out a checkered loincloth, and turning low both lamps that hung in the room, he went into a shadow to change. Then taking one lamp with him, he visited the backyard. When he returned, Mariamu was sitting on the bed, changed into a simpler frock, her other clothes folded neatly beside the bed.