Munyasya could only laugh even harder, and then suddenly all was dark.
When he awoke, the white woman stood at the end of the bed, again haloed in sunlight. The white man stood at her side. Both peered down at him wearing expressions of impotent concern on their faces. He could see them clearly this time. The woman was passing her middle age by, but the man was still young. Now that he felt rather better, he recognised them both and realised where he had been taken.
We are in Muthale...
So what is special about Muthale? What does that little hill top have that cannot be found in Migwani?
There have been many changes over the years. One of these changes is that missionaries have come to this area. They have done wonderful things for us. This building is an example of their work. It is a hospital. There is no such place in Migwani. They care for the sick here.
Who are these people? The woman, the white cow...
Yes, if that is what you want to call her. She is Sister Doctor. She is called Kitunduma, thunder and lightening, by people here because she shouts at men - and farts, very loudly. Her words can sting a man’s pride.
And the man? Who was he?
He is Father Michael. He is a priest in Migwani. I have come to know him well though he has not lived there very long. He is a truly great man.
But he is very young... how can you describe one so young as ‘great’? Surely he cannot possess wisdom at such an age.
Ah, you do not understand Europeans, Nzoka. They become wise at a very youthful age. They can teach us very much if we listen.
Yes, they are fine teachers, but perhaps teachers of trickery if this ‘caring’ for the sick is an example. How were we brought here? Who brought you here?
It must have been the Father. He sometimes stays out very late at night. Some people call him a bad man because of it. They say that he behaves like some common drunk and frequents places where there are prostitutes and thieves. Well he must have been out late last night. He must have found me lying in the market place and brought me here.
Alone? He could not possibly have carried you all that distance. Muthale is half a day’s walk from Migwani!
Nzoka, have I not told you that there have been changes since you were alive? I am surprised that you have not seen these things if you really have been living my life alongside me throughout these years...
There might have been occasions when I was not as attentive as I might have been, my son.
Well, Nzoka, nowadays there are cars, machines that move on wheels very quickly. The Father must have put me in his car and driven me here. In a car the eight miles from Migwani are gone even before one cigarette is finished.
More trickery! So this man is the culprit: the one responsible for my mistake! I should have known it would be one of your European friends. And also one who, it seems, insists that people who are unrelated to him address him as their ‘father’. What bigger insult to peoples’ family loyalties could you imagine? Are you sure you didn’t plan all this with him to bring about my downfall?
Nzoka, you claim that you have followed my life that you have heard all that I have said, and vetted all the plans I have ever made. There was no such conspiracy.
“Can you make it out?”
“No. It’s gibberish to me.”
“Sheer mumbo jumbo.”
“No. That would be quite normal for him. Even drunk he was always full of words, but never like this.”
Sister Mary and Father Michael listened intently to the old man’s murmuring, trying in vain to decipher some sense, but finding none.
“I’m sure I’ve heard him say his own name once or twice.”
“Yes, that was clear enough all right. I’ve managed to make out ‘Nzoka’, as well, two or three times.”
“Nzoka,” Sister Mary repeated. “Nzoka... Snake. Nzoka, it means snake! You don’t think he was bitten by a snake, do you?”
“Not unless it came out of a bottle.”
“I suppose we would have noticed by now if he had been bitten.”
Again both listened intently, but found no sense. “I think it’s his name, Sister, though he has always been just Munyasya, or Major, as far as I know. I have never heard him use his father’s name before, but I have heard some other people use Nzoka as his father’s name.”
“He has definitely improved since you were last here. He seems to be able to move his arms and legs a little now.”
“Can he stand?”
“We haven’t tried that yet. Another fall could easily kill him. We’ll keep him in bed for a while yet, until he’s got some more strength. I doubt if he’d eaten for a week when you brought him in. We emptied his stomach and all he brought up was liquid.”
“Again, that’s not a surprise. Old Munyasya is a drinker, not an eater.”
“And I suppose there’s a wife at home doing all the his work while he stays out till all hours in the bar? I don’t know. These men. They don’t know they’re born.”
“Not him, Sister. He never married and he has no family. He lives quite alone. An army man, if ever there was one.”
Sister looked surprised for once. “An unmarried man of his age is certainly rare hereabouts.”
“He is a strange fish altogether. The uniform is real, you know. He never takes it off. He is so proud of it. He has spent his whole life in the army. Been all over the world. Goodness knows what would have happened to his world if someone had ever turned it on its head and made him see that he is a kind of colonial leftover. He’s a much-respected man, even though he is quite simply a drunk. He’s even on some of my parish committees.”
“Well it looks as if he’s finished with all that for good, Michael. I’m convinced he’s had a stroke, but it’s very difficult to tell...”
***
In the bottle is my madness, the spirit that exhausts me, taunts me, entraps me. I, the hunter, the warrior, am caged like a monkey. Let me free! Let me free to live my own life and die my own death. You hold the key, not I. I would break the lock but I can’t find the door. Another drink. Another drink to bring me closer to you, to hold you near until you let me go. Do you hear? You? Nzoka? Do you hear?
He had been ignored until then. Hundreds of people had passed him by, but even those whom he had befriended in the past offered neither greeting nor any sign of recognition. People had met and stood in conversation less than spitting distance from where he lay without even acknowledging his presence. It was as if he had become a part of the tree beneath which he sat, merely an exposed root to be stepped over and avoided lest one should trip. His constant, almost silent murmuring remained always inaudible amongst the daily bustle of the market place, especially on market day, itself, when this flat triangle of hardened, bare, red earth rang with the noise and commotion of trade and humanity.
These last words that he said, however, this oft-repeated question, habitually delivered with the air of a command, these words were never a whisper. Every muscle in him strained and shook to throw out the sound. His entire skeleton of a body stiffened and convulsed, the words grumbling forth from deep within his squelching chest. Thrown out as if spewed in rejection, the sound bellowed like thunder, chased by its own echo. It demanded attention, and received it, albeit begrudgingly and obliquely. It forced people to react, to look his way and thus acknowledge his presence. At such moments, all conversation, all business stopped for a moment as heads turned towards Munyasya’s tree. Those with no direct view craned their necks to see, would jostle for position for just a glimpse, but no one would want to go too close. No one would ever answer. No one would ever intervene.
Everyone had a personal idea of what might be revealed by a glance in Munyasya’s direction. The whole town, the entire locality, no less, knew that now he was mad, a child of God, mwana wa Mungu, and thus permitted to see that which always ought to be denied to the living. This
strange state in which he lived thus enabled him to reveal the forbidden. Any movement he might make, any audible word he spoke was noted, heeded and interpreted in case it proved to be the revelation which his privileged position was believed to be capable of both perceiving and communicating, but no one ever understood what he said, his only clear word being ‘Nzoka’, a word heard and carefully noted by all whom he encountered.
Do you hear me, Nzoka? The words were clear, addressed to Nzoka, a snake. Is he talking to snakes? Is he calling a name? There were some who knew that the old man’s stepfather had been called Nzoka, but surely he could never be speaking a dead man’s name? But then Munyasya was mad now, a child of God. It was now almost his duty to do with contempt those things that were forbidden to the living. In another second the silence was broken swiftly and utterly again by the usual daily business of the place. The old man spoke no more and interest faded as fast as it had risen. Business resumed. A few passing comments acted as a postscript to the declaimed outburst, before its complete confusion was forgotten.
I know you hear me. You can deceive me sometimes, but I know you are listening now, like a frightened child about to be beaten by his teacher. You must listen to me, Nzoka. You have no choice because I have you. I have you here in my head. My skull is your prison, your only heaven. Not the paradise you looked for, eh? And you’ll be in there forever if you don’t loosen your grip on me. Look at me! Look at me, Nzoka! Do you call this life? Do you call this bag of bones a man? I live, Nzoka, only because you shield me from death. You hold the key, not I. You are chained to me and I to you. If you would release me, you would release yourself. You have the power and don’t you try to deny it. My next drink could be poison if you so wished. How much easier it would have been for both of us if you had let me alone that night when I fell. But you couldn’t stand aside, could you? Impatience was your greatest folly in life and it followed you through your death. You just had to meddle. Ah, don’t give me that! I’ve heard all your arguments a thousand times and they still don’t convince me. So you died too soon, left jobs undone and have returned to finish them? But what jobs? You cannot even tell me that. You are still thinking, trying to remember. You are still a fool, Nzoka, and thus we are still here, you and I, still locked together. Another day, another night, another drink, another talk with you and yet we are no further along our road, no nearer this goal you cannot even see. What? What is it you say? You are doing all this for my good? To rescue me from a fate worse than my own death? You make me laugh, Nzoka. Am I not suffering now? Am I not telling you that I would rather be dead? Do I look as though I care whether or not I am condemned never to leave this place either alive or dead? We have argued too much, Nzoka. Oh, how I’ve tried to tell you that I want to take my chance. You say that my destiny is written, and that I can never escape; but I have different ideas and I believe in them, perhaps as strongly as you believe in those which governed your life and death. All I ask is for you to let me take my chance. I do not fear God. He can do me no harm. He can do no one any harm, even you. God protects people. He has no desire to harm us, so why do you fear him? I don’t fear him, but I fear you, because you stand between me and my future: you have trapped me. Do I want to join you? Of course, Nzoka. Have I not told you a thousand times? Even since this morning dawned? Don’t I see you beckoning me every day? Come on, come on, you say, as if all I had to do was piss. Pass away, I am told, but how can I when you tie my hands and keep me in this prison of life? Ah shut up, shut up, Nzoka. Speak to me no more. I have heard you say that you have tried everything. Well let me tell you that you have tried nothing. You are as lazy now as you always were in life, and also as weak, so weak that you can’t even cut down this dry old maize stalk which is all that is left of my life. I am so thin that the wind bends me like grass - and yet you can’t even crack my will! You see this string? Look at it. Do you see how its weight does not even bend my thumb? Do you see how I can make it stretch and loop, do anything I wish? Well this string is you, Nzoka, a snake, which has become my constant companion, my tame caged pet. If you bar my way, the cage will stay locked. You will be tied to me as my prisoner until you release me.
Ever since his accident, it had been clear to all that Munyasya’s mind had been affected. It had been easier to accept his physical deterioration; he was after all very old, and for quite some time had threatened to bring serious illness upon himself through heavy drinking. His acquaintances and friends - who had been many - expected to find him weaker after his fall and subsequent illness, so, when he was finally discharged from the hospital in Muthale, and he returned to Migwani but a wizened and broken memory of his former self, they had tried to show no surprise and had greeted him as they would have always greeted the Major Munyasya they knew. They found, though, that this old man knew no one. They were new strangers to him and he would not speak a word to them. The obvious initial response was that he had been seriously affected by his fall, that he had become deaf, or blind, or both, or that he had even lost the power of speech and this indiscernible murmuring was his vain attempt to communicate. All these explanations were soon shown to be wrong, however. Old Munyasya could always see what he wanted to see. And old Munyasya could certainly hear whatever he wanted to hear.
He would always react when a bus passed through the town. Every single one demanded his attention and interest, required his presence at the edge of the market place where people gathered to wait. While ever a bus stood on the town’s main road to load and unload, Munyasya would mount guard over it, standing to attention beside it, or sometimes presenting imaginary arms in front. It was as if he regarded this as a duty to the town, an act of guardianship that the community, perhaps, had neither the strength nor the authority to provide for itself. For this essential task, the town paid him in beer. Yes, he could certainly hear, because the very first knocking drone of a Diesel engine in the distance would cause him to stand and begin to make his way to his imaginary guardhouse. By the time the bus arrived, he was always in position, standing respectfully sentry-erect in greeting, sometimes even offering a slow, clumsy salute.
He could also certainly speak when he desired, though, when he did, the voice was surely not his. In the past he had always been such a mild-mannered, even-tempered man, but now, whenever he spoke above an inaudible murmur, his voice was almost as harsh as the words he used. His rasping and phlegm-rolling voice seemed to command his very body and hurt him deeply, as if his mouth were some mere tool manipulated by some other power greater than himself, and whose words not only pained but tortured him. At first his outbursts were seen as merely those of a demented mind, sheer nonsense shouted amid violent convulsions of pain. But, as time passed, it was noticed by some that he spoke consistently of a life which was not his own. He spoke of his own children, of which there had been none, and of the beer he himself brewed. Munyasya’s long-standing friends privately realised that here they were hearing of Munyasya’s stepfather, Nzoka, and they remained careful never to say the dead man’s name.
There were two distinct interpretations of the old man’s condition. Either he was a sick, demented and senile old man, or surely he had been possessed by a spirit. Irrespective of which opinion a particular person held, however, the pure fear which the latter explanation engendered guaranteed that everyone dealt with this stick of a wizened old man with cautious respectful distance.
A libation of piss in your memory, Nzoka. How do you like your own beer now? Grit your teeth and drink it, as I do! This is what your descendants have made of your famous brew. No honey, no muiatine to make it ferment. They use different things now, Nzoka. Sugar, water and a packet of yeast. And what do you think gives it the colour? The sugar is white, not brown like the honey you used. No, it’s the water that colours this beer. They make it with dirty water from the dam. It’s brown with silt, and on some days it stinks of the cow shit our herds have added for flavour. How do you like the changes, Nzoka? Drink and see. Do you agree with me? It’
s piss when it goes in and piss when it comes out, but it keeps me alive. Ah, you know that! I can see you cringing! Well, it’s all in your hands. Do you know what happens to an eagle that soars too long? It starves. Pounce now, Nzoka. Do your work and leave me. I am tired, Nzoka, tired of arguing with you, day in, day out, all night, every hour. You never listen to me. I don’t know why I bother to speak because my words are useless. You have the power, not I. It is your commands that move my limbs, your words that I speak, your eyes that see. I am too old, too tired. How can I be of use to you? How can I possibly act out your plan? Surely I have no time left. And you still don’t even know what it is that you want to do! You don’t even know what your plan is! I am too old, too tired to go on much longer. If you stay in this body much longer you will be like a cabbage growing to seed in the sun. Is that what you want? To dry into seed? To be reborn again a thousand more times, carried on the wind so that you can infect new ground, new minds? How can I know? Only you know, Nzoka, what awaits me. Tell me! Tell me while I sleep, because it’s too hot today. And my bottle is finished. See that someone drops a coin or two so I can refill it.
The old man drifts back to sleep. His bottle is propped upside down against his hip to show everyone who passes by that it is empty. A few people, on seeing this, throw small coins onto the ground as they pass, if, that is, a cartwheel Kenyan ten-cent piece could ever be described as ‘small’ change. It is clear that they have done this many times before and, although Munyasya is completely unaware of the accumulating sum which surrounds him, and despite the fact that such a sum would pay a bus fare home for almost anyone in the market place, no one tries to steal even a single coin if it lies near to the bedraggled old man’s bent frame. He sleeps for some hours, from midday to mid-afternoon, and, unknown to him, the day changes. The still heat wanes and a wind begins to grow. It is cool, blowing from the east. Clouds grow thicker and heavier. Occasionally they cast chill rainy shadows across the town.
Mission Page 48