by Peter Kimani
“Not so loud,” Babu cautioned. “Some don’t think of fatherhood as a shared responsibility.”
“Never mind, you are our father. Tell me, where did you learn all those languages? Swahili, Kikuyu, Dholuo, Kalenjin?” Gathenji pressed.
“Well, it was all in a day’s work,” Babu allowed. “I worked with men from different communities, so I learned their languages.”
“And you know the most difficult part of it, my good mzee?” Gathenji said. “You built the rail with those hands of yours . . . the rail that now links the land of Waswahili to that of Wajaluo, Wakikuyu to Wakalenjin.”
“It was all in a day’s job.”
Gathenji waved him down. “Hold it right there, ngoja kidogo.” He had noticed Babu was not eating and still had his false teeth in. Gathenji dashed to the butchery and returned shortly with a mug of muteta soup and a glass of water into which Babu dropped his dentures, sipping the soup as he did so. They managed this exchange without a word.
“I hear this very house has an interesting tale to tell,” Gathenji said conspiratorially.
“Careful,” Babu smiled, flashing his bare gums, “walls have ears.”
“I agree,” Gathenji said. “Let’s not gossip about the stream while sitting on its rocks.”
“Words of wisdom.”
Gathenji was summoned back to the butchery by a customer. Babu took another sip of the soup and sighed. It was spicy, just as he liked it. He took a bite of mutura and chewed nervously, wondering if the meat was halal. Although he wasn’t very religious, he liked to eat right. The mutura was delicious, if a little oversalted.
Soon, Rajan took to the stage, calling the audience’s attention to the special guest in the house. Babu waved his walking stick from his seat as the revelers ululated.
* * *
Bringing his thoughts back to the present and to the mysterious kissing stranger, Rajan paused by the brazier and warmed his hands absentmindedly. With the return of the lights, the brazier had lost some of its brilliance, but the intensity of the heat had not diminished. The meat was spread on a mesh above the hot coal. A rising blue flame was snuffed by a trickle of blood. A blob of fat followed the route the blood had taken but got caught between two glowing coals. After some moments, the white blob congealed into a black knot, its fatty juice trickling down with a sparkle. The flesh sizzled, its red-pink color turning golden brown. There was a popping sound as a kidney puffed and burst, spewing a splash of fat that ignited a fresh flame that sprinted across the brazier, like a shooting star on a dark night, before it went down in a flicker.
Rajan felt a light wind sweep through. He lifted his eyes and peered at the animals by the watering hole. They, too, had lifted their ears, listening for threats to their lives. The carcasses of the animals that had been killed for the day’s meat nudged back to life, doing their upside-down dance at the butchery, attracting a fresh lease of interest from revelers. The sizzling of the meat and the heaving of the coals melded into the din of the night: the popping of a frosty, turbaned bottle losing its top, the clink of toasting glasses, the loosening of belts, the murmur of drunken men and women seducing one another.
Music came to the fore as someone bellowed: “Next onstage, the Indian Raj, the undisputed king of mugithi . . . Next onstage . . .”
Although Rajan was scarcely aware of this, he had gone almost full circle. He had combed the entire establishment in his search of the kissing stranger, to no avail. He had almost reached the washrooms again. The sound of the riff and the cheer from the crowd nearly brought him to his knees. There was something utterly overpowering about the music and the energized audience’s response. Somebody called out his name, and the riff sounded once more as the drums throbbed and the guitar wailed.
He was suddenly aware of the pressure on his bladder, which felt like the prick of a thousand needles, drilling a mild, burning sensation. There was even something pleasant about the pain. He shuffled to the urinal and listened to the rhythmic drone as the jet of urine drummed the white bowl, a haze of steam rising lazily in the air.
He felt happy and light as he sprinted backstage without washing his hands, feeling safe in the dim light, now insulated further by the taste of the stranger’s kiss.
He walked up to the microphone onstage and adjusted it to his height. He was small-bodied, like a stunted teen, with a clutch of jet-black hair held at the back by a red, gold, and green hairband. When fans saw him for the first time, they often remarked that fame does not match its owner, for his frame came up short of his towering reputation.
The instruments were building in tempo. Rajan trembled with delight and nodded appreciatively to the instrumentalists, tapping his right foot, responding to a rhythm that appeared to bubble deep inside him.
In his formative years as a singer, Rajan would shake with fright before the curtains opened, unsure how the audience might respond. Sometimes, lines that he had rehearsed for weeks would evaporate at the sight of hundreds of eyes. Now he was a lot more composed, but the dread before performing a show never really left him. It helped when he was under the influence of something. Steam is what they called preconcert intoxication; he’d had a few beers to “unlock” his mind.
Rajan let the instruments play on—the squeak from the keyboard, the wail of the guitar, and the throb of the drums building into a frenzy. He yanked the microphone from its stand and walked to the edge of the platform as dozens of hands rushed to touch him. He crooned in a low, mournful voice:
Barua nakutumia
Nikufunze ya dunia
Usije ukaangamia
Ewe wangu—eeeeeeeeeee!
He shut his eyes and let the music smother his face, now contorted into a mask of pain and pleasure. The air was tense as revelers fell silent. All the sounds from the orchestra were suffused in his small frame, his voice releasing the energy in dribs and drabs. The fans were hypnotized. When he sang the chorus again, the audience joined in, turning the song into a call-and-response, uniting those seated in different sections that once separated the races, building gently before cascading into the main riff.
Rajan fished a pretty girl from the mass of hands that waved excitedly at him. He always picked the most striking girls for this dance, which was a precursor to the gentler dance that followed backstage. The girl wore high heels and ascended the creaky stairs as though she were stepping on eggs. Her skirt was too tight to allow a full stride, which elicited more ululation from the audience. Rajan’s heart somersaulted at the flash of her exposed leg. He stretched his arm and held her dainty hand and pulled her onstage.
The music transitioned smoothly to a faster beat. Rajan turned his back on the pretty girl. She obviously knew the drill; she hoisted her hands on his shoulders. Other fans jumped onstage and lifted their hands onto those ahead of them, and soon the dancing troop had formed a convoy. This was mugithi, the train dance, bringing onstage the stories that Rajan’s grandfather Babu had narrated about his life building the railway.
That night, even as he danced mugithi and led the brigade of old and young alike trooping through the Jakaranda’s uneven and crammed dance floor to imitate the movement of the train, hands on shoulders and thick waists, feet falling with the perfect synchronicity of a centipede tread, his eyes were downcast, looking for the high heels that could only belong to the kissing stranger.
He had kissed many women. Since rising to prominence in Nakuru—the measure of his celebrity being his regular features in the Nakuru Times—female attention had never been in short supply. In fact, so many were on offer that he and Era, his childhood friend and bandmate, had developed codes to distinguish the women: News in Brief was the tag attached to the skimpily dressed; Long-Term Investment was reserved for the big-bodied; Coming Soon referred to the striking young girls about to blossom into womanhood; Takeout meant petite girls who could simply be packed away like a bag of chips.
Many other women, in shapes and sizes that defied codification, would steal backstage and commend Ra
jan for his singing. He would politely acknowledge their compliments, even when he was inclined to tear away and hide—from the drunks shouting because they were hard of hearing, from older women clinging to vestiges of youth. Or pretty girls with stinking mouths. In the spirit of uhuru, such yardsticks were waived and those wishing to test the limits of their newfound freedom were encouraged to proceed backstage.
It was hardly a backstage, just a tiny enclave where the musical equipment was loaded after every performance, sharing a wall with the butchery. Humans would pile on top of the stacked equipment and try to make a different kind of music, the neon lights flickering outside, the clouds of smoke from the butchery providing enhanced stage effects.
A week before the kissing stranger arrived on the scene, a horsehaired woman had wandered backstage and brayed her affection for Rajan. She tripped over the equipment, while still clinging to her glass of beer. Sprawled on the ground, Rajan had motioned for her to join him, but she was too drunk to lift a leg. Rajan walked over and touched her hair. Her horsehair wig fell off to reveal silly cornrows. He offered a hand and her plastic nails fell off. The false eyelashes dropped off when she cocked her head to look squarely at him. The woman removed her dentures and threw them into her beer glass. When she unhooked her bra, its stiff cups collapsed to reveal shriveled breasts. Rajan had fled and sought Era’s intervention. Era took one look at the woman and said: “Ugly cows belong in the butchery!” And with that, the woman, animal naked, was rolled over to the butchery where Gathenji received her with philosophical gratitude: Ciakorire Wacu mugunda. That might sound like an attempt to redistribute resources, but in those days, the young men called it growing up. They sat and laughed and toasted their green-turbaned bottles the following day, then drank and laughed some more as they narrated the events of the night. They played music and more besotted fans crawled backstage for a repeat performance.
It was remarkable how few words were exchanged backstage, which some band members also called kichinjio or the slaughterhouse. Perhaps Era and his band saw no need for further communication; like animals, they used spoor to pick their prey. But not everyone was willing to play the game. Only weeks earlier, a girl called Angie had flatly declined to cooperate with Rajan, even though she went backstage and undressed. “What do I mean to you?” she had demanded in a calm voice.
Rajan had propped himself on his right elbow and looked intently at the girl. Even in the faint light, he could tell she was strikingly beautiful. Her naked breasts, like filled jugs, stood erect, the wide hips seemingly out of sync with her slight frame. Her calm and beautiful presence appeared misplaced amid the riotous din from the butchery, the chorus of drunks ordering fresh rounds, the whimper of music equipment under the weight of two adults.
Rajan had kept quiet.
“Soooo, did you hear my question?” Angie had repeated without any hint of annoyance. Rajan could feel his indignation rising, like heartburn after a good meal. What did the girl expect him to say? And why did she impose her expectation that she should mean anything to him?
Angie had gotten dressed and stood to leave. “If you want to see me, I will be at Moonshine tomorrow at four p.m.,” she announced. “They serve nicely brewed tea.” Moonshine was another previously whites-only establishment, and young African women were quickly catching up with white culture, like having four o’clock tea. If this was the new African woman, Rajan shuddered, he and his ilk were in trouble. The era of free things was about to end.
Rajan had grudgingly honored the appointment the following day but arrived half an hour late.
“There is no hurry in Africa!” Angie said cheerfully. “You must know you are worth waiting for.” She was sitting by the pool, next to a whitewashed wall. An inverted image of Angie was submerged in the water, an image that threw Rajan’s mind to his grandfather Babu’s story of his treacherous journey by boat from India to Mombasa many years before.
Rajan had approached the girl. She looked remarkably different from his night visions. He remembered her spiky hair falling all over her face. Now it was pushed back and pinned, accentuating her forehead that shone against the sun. The high cheekbones were still sharp, perhaps sharper than an artist’s chisel, and her calm face, almost childlike, contradicted the mature, worldly mask Rajan had seen at night.
Accustomed to the dark and the comfort afforded by multicolored lights, Rajan had blinked like an animal out of his lair. He realized for the first time how rare it was for him to face the daylight. He typically slept through the day and sang at night. He found the sun blinding. He did not know what to say, for he never had to say anything to women. They all arrived at his feet seduced by his music, and hurled their bodies at him without a word. The best effort he ever made was to stretch out a hand and pick his chosen few from the sea of besotted fans. His microphone was the magic wand that drew them to him; without it, he was powerless.
Angie held his hand and squeezed it, her eyes dark with power and mystery. He cringed and thought of the image in the pool, envisioning their gazes mirrored in the water. He felt like he was drowning in the pool of her eyes and his hand went limp in hers. Unable to keep his grip, he lowered his gaze and pulled his hand away, then excused himself to go to the bathroom, although he felt no urgency at all. He used the back door and made his exit. He had not uttered a single word.
Quite often, Rajan woke up in beds where he could hardly recall how he’d gotten there in the first place, but where he did not need to utter a single word to get things going. Quite a few times, it was with a hint of regret, dodging kisses from stale mouths or breaking free before his captors could grant his leave, extricating himself from a mess he did not wish to get tangled in. In such circumstances, older women were usually the culprit. He dreaded their insistence on small talk that could only end in hurt—he was there to have a good time, not chat about life. Worse still, some sought his thoughts on their immediate future under a black ruler. But the one thing that he enjoyed was bedding different generations of women and assessing their values and attitudes toward life and love. He had discovered that all women, whether young or old, sought an affirmation of love—or at least some declaration that they meant something to him. The truth was, they did not, and he suspected that they knew as much, yet couldn’t quite leave him alone.
Then the kissing stranger arrived and disrupted everything. Just like that. For the lavender-flavored kiss on that balmy June night in 1963 breathed into Rajan a restlessness that infected his mind, and later his heart.
There were the awkward moments when he’d stop in his tracks, convinced a girl he passed on the street was the kissing stranger, only for her physique to transform into an image different from the one in his mind. At other times, he would walk into the washrooms at the Jakaranda to retrace her steps; he made so many trips there that his band members started speculating that he was suffering from a serious case of diarrhea.
In moments of despair, he stood on street corners scanning the women passing by before marshaling up the courage to confront one with a ready line, only to falter upon closer scrutiny. He thought the kissing stranger had dimpled cheeks, with a gentle smile playing on her full lips as she seductively swished away. But in other visions she would appear chubby and unsmiling. Occasionally, he found he had assigned her features from different women from his past until he got all mixed up. Then he would remember he’d never actually seen her face because it had been so dark.
One morning, Rajan went from door to door inquiring about young women who wore high heels. He pretended he was a fashion photographer looking for models to parody the flamingo dance, which was all the rage at the time. But no one ever remembered seeing anyone in high heels, the question only serving to remind many that they did not wear any shoes at all. The irrationality of his inquiry was amplified by a middle-aged woman who remarked: “Could anyone go tilling the land or carrying a load of firewood on her head in the kind of shoes you are describing?” The woman clasped her cracked hands to display her
dismay and squeaked, “Yu kiini!”
He did not gain access to any white homes because no one answered the doorbell and he was afraid of venturing in unannounced, since most homes had signs warning of mbwa kali, or ferocious dogs. The search bearing no fruit, Rajan broached the idea of placing an advertisement in the Lonely Hearts column of the Nakuru Times. But who was he looking for? Was she tall or short, slight or heavy? How many Nakuru women would fit that bill? Was she white, black, or brown? He froze at that question. Who among the three groups could have kissed with such sophistication? Probably a white girl, but then Africans, Indians, and Arabs were racing to make up for lost time, and could probably give whites a run for their money after only a couple of months of freedom.
Had he known the ethnicity of the kissing stranger, would that have narrowed his search and yielded better results? He reckoned that would actually be problematic, for how could he describe the subject of his admiration without arousing his prejudices about her imagined history? After all, humans do not wear identities on their faces. Where would he place her in a land where dozens of communities existed? And how could he describe himself anyway? A Kenyan of Indian ancestry seeks a lean, pretty woman who can wear high heels in the dark . . . ?
And would it be accurate to describe himself as Indian when his only encounter with the subcontinent was through the stories he had heard from his grandparents? He realized to his horror the perils of history and the presumptions that come with symbols. A turban may be the mark of a Sikh, but the Akorino of Molo and Elburgon wore them too. In that place, anybody could be anything. And when things appeared set and certain, nature erupted to remind him of the temporal nature of man. A dormant volcano leaped to color the land ashen gray. A landslide tossed a mass of red earth to bury houses in the bowels of the earth, erasing the markers that people had used to define their existence.