Leopard at the Door

by Jennifer McVeigh

  “About what?” he asks, then he lets go of the door handle and puts his hand on my breast. I lean back in the seat, turn my face away from him. A current runs through me like a sickness. “About this?” he asks. “Oh, but, you see, I don’t think you will. Your father doesn’t want to know about his daughter running around with a black boy. I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to tell him. All I’m asking for is your cooperation.” He runs his thumb lightly over my nipple and I feel a flood of hate and humiliation. Most of all hate. “Could you manage a little cooperation?”

  “I want to go,” I say, in as steady a voice as I can manage, speaking from a prison of despair.

  “You need to start by asking permission to leave,” he says, still cupping my breast. “You see, I’d like you to begin showing a little more respect.”

  There is silence in the jeep. I can hear the blood rushing in my head. I feel dizzy.

  “The mechanic said you were an easy pupil. Perhaps he was wrong.” His fingertips are under my arm, stroking at the hot, damp inside of my shirt. “I’m asking you to ask politely.”

  “Please may I leave?” I say, conscious that in saying those words I have committed myself to something awful.

  “You may,” he says, removing his hand, and with shaking fingers I pull on the door handle, get it open and run, tripping up the steps into the house.

  A few minutes later, in my room, I hear the engine start up and the jeep drives away.

  —

  “YOU SHOULDN’T come down here so often,” Michael says when I walk into the yard.

  “He spoke to you?” I ask, ignoring his words.

  He nods. “But I would say the same thing anyway. It isn’t safe.”

  “I hate him,” I say. “I hate him.”

  “You need to be careful.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “Does it matter so much?”

  “There is no room in either of our cultures for people who cross over.”

  I walk up to him and close my hand over his. “I don’t want to be careful. I want this.”

  I take his hand, too large in mine, and lead him into the barn. He pushes the door shut and stands watching me. I get down on my knees and hold him, and begin on something, feeling my way toward his desire. I want to obliterate Steven Lockhart and everything he has done to me. I need something more potent than his power. Michael puts his hands in my hair, and I feel his weight slackening, his thighs tightening under my hands, and hear the slow, deep intake of his breath.

  —

  I GO DOWN to the stables with Juno and let her puppies out. I cannot see Michael in the garage. The puppies are six months old now, almost adult, but whip skinny, and they dart around my legs, excited, looking for the rub of my hands along their coats. Two will be tall like their mother, but not Pirate who has the short stubby legs of a Staffy; more like a shenzi. He is a rolling, tumbling, sharp-toothed bringer of joy and I crouch down and let him put his paws on me, his nose sniffing wetly at my face, laughing as he finds my ears, knowing that I cannot stand it.

  Juno sniffs them nonchalantly, Pirate snapping at her whiskers, then they trot out of the yard as a pack, Pirate cantering his back legs to keep up. I see them disappear down the track. I call Juno just before she slips out of sight and she stops and looks at me, ears pricked. She does not want to come back to me, but she will if I ask her to. “Go on then,” I say, and she turns and trots around the corner, and is gone.

  I look for Michael but I cannot find him. The garage is empty. I walk in under the roof. A few tools are laid out on the floor, and one of my father’s old jeeps is pulled in, over the long trench in the ground. I wait for half an hour, then curiosity gets the better of me. I walk around the back of the garage. Here are two huts, side by side. One round hut, unoccupied, the palm roof gray and shredded, the other belonging to Michael.

  This is where he has always lived, ever since he first came back from the war—not in the shambas, but here, close to the house, as though it marked out his difference, his belonging to our family. His hut is not made of round earth walls, as are those in the shamba, to keep out the spirits who lurk in corners. It is rectangular with a corrugated roof. I have never been inside. Not even as a child. I hover outside the door. Apart from the birds, there is not a sound. I call his name, but there is no answer.

  Eventually I push open the door. There is no handle. No lock. I am standing in a small room with raw concrete walls. Light falls through a small, high window. There is a wooden stool, a blue plastic chair, a narrow bookshelf and a map on the wall, Sponsored by the British Overseas Airways Corporation. I recognize the rug on the floor—it is something that used to be ours. There is a rip down the middle of it. My mother must have given it to him, and I see that this is all he can expect; that having anything material in Kenya, as an African, must be bound irrevocably with the humility of the grateful.

  Beyond is an open doorway and what must be the bedroom. It is dark. This is different from a Kikuyu hut, but not yet a European house. I feel the intimacy of the space; the plastic chair, the small wooden shelf, the map stuck to the wall. How it defines him. The limitations on what he can achieve here, on this farm, despite his education, despite having traveled, despite the clarity of his political ambitions. There is no future beyond these four walls. I feel the crushing truth of it. I am an intruder standing here. It tells me too much about him, without his sanction, and I am ashamed and compelled, as though I am watching him when he does not know that I am there.

  The shelf on the wall holds a row of books, English classics—Dickens, Thackeray, Conrad, Shakespeare, Defoe. Books from another world to this one, where the sun beats down and everything is returned to the earth. I see a small hardback lying on the floor beneath the blue chair. It must have fallen unexpectedly, because it lies turned over, and I have to reach down to pick it up. A Christian Thesis. I go to put it back, when I see on the reverse, in small writing, a row of initials. There is a still sickening in my stomach as the letters settle in my mind. EJB. I look back at the open door—there is no one there.

  I have seen these initials before. On the handkerchief in Bowker’s house. I remember the bath, the blood, the smears on the walls. The smell of men in the house. The same smell up in the eyrie, Michael coming down the path, and—a long time ago—him being at the strike at Uplands when he shouldn’t have been. The look of hate and disappointment on his face. What had he to do with Bowker’s murder?

  I am in the bedroom now. It is dark in here. A rug has been tacked to the window and the little light that filters through casts a red glow on the mattress that lies on the floor. It is warm in here, and it smells of him. A blanket is folded on the end of the mattress. A stool stands in the corner. Everything is hostile. I am no longer curious—I am trespassing. There aren’t many places for something incriminating to be hidden. I do not know what I am looking for. I slide a hand under the mattress and feel nothing but the slats on which it rests. Take the stool, stand on it, and feel along the flat edge of the concrete wall, beneath the roof.

  My hand touches something smooth and solid. A quickening starts up inside me. I slide my fingers over it and pull it down. A long, curved section of wood, like a cricket bat. It takes me a moment to realize it is the body of a gun—no barrel, just the carved wooden form as though it has been made for a boy. My heart beats faster now. There are more that I can feel, and a bundle of long metal pipes that clank against each other in their cloth wrapping.

  The room darkens, and I spin round, stepping off the stool. It falls against the floor with a thud. Michael is standing in the doorway watching me, his body blocking out the light. I am looking into the seams of daylight on either side of him—I cannot see the expression on his face, but I feel it in the cast of his shoulders. His anger. In my hand is the block of wood.

  He walks a few paces toward me. The room without
him was a thing that I might pity. It was static. I could feel out its possibilities and map out the man who lived here. Michael—now that he is here—is so much more than the room said he was. He is not bound by its limitations. I am—for the first time—afraid. My throat is dry, and I swallow heavily.

  “Are you Mau Mau?” I ask, because I cannot bear the silence. Because I think by speaking, I might sound stronger than I feel.

  “What do you think?”

  “You said you weren’t.”

  “And it was true.”

  “But not anymore?”

  He walks forward, very close to me, and takes the wooden gun from my hands. I am backed up in a corner of the room.

  “You’re making guns,” I say, my voice quiet.

  “Yes.” He is unashamed. And very cold. A stranger, outside of my grasp, in control of what he wants to happen here, and it scares me. I realize how little he has shown me of himself; how little I really know him.

  “Guns to kill good Kikuyu? Guns to kill my family?”

  “They are fighting for freedom. One day they will be Kenya’s heroes.”

  “What about Bowker? Were you there?”

  “No.”

  “But you have one of his books?”

  For the first time he pauses. “It was given to me.”

  “And you accepted it.”

  “Why not? He is dead. And it is an interesting book.” I feel the anger in the distance he is putting between us. He is goading me with it.

  “Would you kill a man with a panga?”

  I am aware of his closeness, his body his own, not mine. Tight with energy that he might use against me. “I have killed a man with a gun.” He steps toward me, pulls out a knife from his pocket, slides it from its sheath. Wipes it against his trousers. “Is it so much more savage to kill with a knife?” He holds it up so I can see the steel blade with its smooth edge. I feel a moment of reeling, dizzying fear. He puts the blade of the knife flat against my neck. It is cold against my skin, sharp against my gullet. I remember my dream, the knife cutting me open. His other hand is at my neck, warm and dry, his thumb dragging the skin across my throat, feeling me swallow. “With the knife you look into your enemy’s eyes, you feel the pressure of his skin, the warmth of his blood. How much worse to pretend his death is not on your hands.”

  He slowly pulls the knife away and drops his hand. I take in a deep, ragged breath. “It is time for you to leave,” he says.

  I stand there. I do not go. Fear drains away from me. I remember my dream. I think of the factory, the chute and the slaughter line, and the old Kikuyu woman I had once seen killing a chicken in the intimacy of her yard, the soft strength of her hands against its neck.

  “Go,” he says, and I remember that he said this to me once before, at Uplands. We all had to make our choice; Michael, my father, myself. And I realize now that I chose Michael. It was not conscious. But perhaps it was inevitable. I had nothing to gain from allying myself to an old Kenya, my father’s Kenya, which had made no room for me. I was always going to be his.

  I look at the shape of his body, facing away from me, the dark curve of his head, and I want to go to him, to put my hands on him, but I cannot cross the distance. And yet the space is all mine. The steps of betrayal now that I know what he is. I walk forward and reach out a hand to his shoulder, his skin warm and soft beneath my fingers. My heart is in my throat. I think he might turn me away. That he might not want anything that I can give him. But he turns and—leaning down—rests his forehead on mine. “I get nothing,” he says in a hoarse whisper. “Nothing for myself. Not even this.” His hands are on my arms, crushing them. I feel his anger and absorb it. It is the closest I have come to seeing him cry.

  —

  I STEP OUT of Michael’s hut, into the bright sunlight, and walk through the yard up the track to the house. I hear a noise, and I turn and see a man walking up the path behind me. It is Steven.

  His lips are wet and red.

  “Been having a nice time?” he asks.

  My legs feel weak, and my mouth is still full of the taste of Michael. I can feel his protection over me, but it is fading. I do not have my gun. Steven laughs, and I experience the familiar force of him—the futility of my own strength. He still stands some distance away from me. I see something in his face, some premonition of what he wants, and I turn and run, but he is too quick for me. His boots fall heavy on the track behind me. I push myself forward, but he grabs my shirt—it rips, and I fall. He stands over my legs, breathing heavily. I scramble away from him, but he says, “I always had my suspicions, and now I know.”

  I stare up at him, my eyes spitting hate. “What do you know?”

  He walks over me. “I’m going to string up your black boy and have him skinned.”

  My heart is hammering. I cannot speak. “Of course,” he says, squatting down over me, his legs astride my body. “Your father doesn’t have to know.”

  I push backward, trying to get my knees up, but he sits down on my thighs, and his weight crushes my legs so that I cannot move. Panic flares inside me. “That’s it,” he says, rubbing the back of his hand under my chin. “You little bitch. Who would have thought.”

  “What do you want from me?” I say.

  He laughs softly. “Did you know that seven is a lucky number in Kikuyu?”

  I stare up at him.

  “No? You can’t guess why? There are seven orifices in the human body.” He leans forward. “There are two here”—he touches my ears with his two forefingers, then he places his finger and thumb over my nostrils, closing them. “Two here.” I am still out of breath. I have to open my mouth to breathe. “One here.” His fingers touch my lips and rest there a second. I know where he will put his hand next. I push it away, but his hand is stronger than mine; it forces itself downward. I scream and he puts a hand over my mouth to smother it, and I suck in air through my nose, struggling to breathe. Then he leans down over me, so his chest is against mine. I cannot move from under him. He is dragging my trousers down. His hand is between my legs. I lean into him and bite—sinking my teeth into the pink flesh of his cheek and he shouts, pulling back and slapping me so hard around the face that I feel a blinding blackening pain and see nothing. When I open my eyes he is pulling the buttons on his fly.

  “You can’t get enough of it, can you?” he whispers over me, and I hate him. “Once I have fucked you, you’ll take me down to the yard, and we’ll find your black boy.”

  “I won’t,” I say, sobbing. He licks at my tears. His breath is hot against my face.

  “I saw what you did,” I say, suddenly. “At Uplands.”

  “What?” He cannot process what I have said. I can see his mind catching up.

  “The strike. The man, in the room upstairs. You killed him.”

  He pulls his hand away from me. “What are you talking about?”

  “I saw it happen.”

  “So what?” he says, laughing. “You were a girl. He was a political Kikuyu. No one gives a shit.”

  “My father will.”

  “That’s what you think,” he says, but the redness has drained out of his face. I have broken the moment. Then I see a man behind him: Michael. He has the knife in his hand. He crouches down behind Steven, and I feel Steven stiffen against me. He pulls the gun out of Steven’s holster, cocks it. I wonder if he will shoot.

  “You black bastard,” Steven says, turning his head around. “I will make you sweat for this.”

  “There is a Kikuyu proverb,” Michael says. “Njita murume. When you knock someone about—if you ask him to call you God, he will do so; but the truth is still that you are not God.” Michael nudges the gun at him. “Get up.”

  Steven rises to his feet; his fly is undone. He turns and spits and it hits my cheek. “If you tell your father I will make your life a living hell.”

 
Michael pushes him down toward the yard, the gun at the small of his back. I get up after a moment. My hands are shaking. There is a sickness in my stomach.

  When I come into the yard Michael is pushing Steven into the barn. He has a thick metal bar in his hand. “I will be watching you. From the forest. From the trees. From the sky. If you touch her I will come for you.”

  He slides the bar through the steel brackets on the barn door, so that it cannot be opened.

  “Are you all right?” he asks, turning and seeing me standing there. But he is moving away from me as he says it. Pulling down a blanket from a shelf in the garage, throwing tools from his workbench inside.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. I follow him to the door of his hut.

  “You don’t have to go,” I say, tears pouring down my face. The world I know is crumbling. “I’ll tell my father about Steven. I can do it now.”

  “It will solve nothing,” he says. He strips down his overalls, pulls on a shirt over his vest, an army jumper and over it a coat. It gets cold in the forests at night. They say water freezes on the mountain. He is moving fast, wrapping things into the blanket—a tin cup, a plate, a long knife. He wraps the guns in another blanket.

  “What about me?”

  “I can do more for you if I am not here. Go to the house. He will not touch you now, not in your father’s house.”

  I can see that there is no saving him or me. We are both small in the world that is unraveling. I cannot ask for more than he is giving me.

  He holds my face in his hands, kisses me once, on the lips, and he is gone.

  In the yard Steven is shouting, “Let me out!” He throws his weight against the doors. The bar—a dull brown metal—shifts in its brackets. I wonder how long it will hold before it slips, and whether—if he sees me here—he will kill me. Time seems to slow down. I can no longer hear the tread of Michael’s feet. A crow lands in the dirt in front of me, wings outspread, and hops over the ground. “I know you’re there, you bitch.” I should move, but I cannot. His voice is like treacle, softening my limbs. I shake myself and start running for the house.